ladywritesthings

[ladywritesthings]

Ever think you’re going to update “The Parts of You”?

i'd love to, someday, if my shit could just chill for like two seconds.

[ladywritesthings]

When yo XS fic gon' continue? that shit's rad af.

oh dip dude thanks

i think i can count on one hand how many people have asked about xs since i started writing fic way back when (including the years in which i exclusively wrote xs) so that means a lot

i wanna get back to writing fic in general, and i was always gonna finish my current wips if it killed me whether or not anyone read em, but i'm glad that at least some fans of my og otp are still alive and kicking 💞

[ladywritesthings]

my guy, I just finished your incredible miraculous fic and was vibin and then in the authors note you mentioned critical role and I was like !!! this person gets it. anyway, love your writing and the story you crafted and you have excellent taste in dnd shows

DUDE THANKS

the hiatus is killing me but love is suffering so here we sit. and speaking of hiatuses, i know i haven't updated in eons but i haven't forgotten my fics or where they're going! life just, uh... finds a way. to fuck my shit up :)

[ladywritesthings]

hi im still not dead btw, which is me trying to be Sarcastically Casual and Blasé except now that plague 2: electric boogaloo has basically cancelled modern civilization for the time being it actually functions as useful info and a genuine status update.

i realize it's been months since i interacted with tumblr basically at all so for anyone interested here are some brief highlights of The Road So Far:

• norway's on lockdown. went to the pharmacy to refill my meds and the mall was fucking deserted. i could go into detail about changes/safety measures/ the general Vibe, but i won't. the important thing is that it felt genuinely apocalyptic/dystopian in there and i've had the heebie-jeebies ever since.

• i bought my first ipad a couple weeks ago and have basically lived in procreate ever since, and it felt good to finally be creative again (check out my art ig lol). except it died overnight and i have no idea what happened, but figuring how to get it fixed during nationwide quarantine is gonna be real fun.

• everyone is playing the new animal crossing except me because i don't have a switch. i am displeased.

• changed my add meds. they seem to be working better, although i'm still trying to work out how to remember to eat. but, like, at least i'm accidentally hitting my weight loss goals with minimal effort in a totes not unhealthy/unsustainable way /s

• i've played so much two point hospital it's not even really fun anymore. i am still playing two point hospital.

• mortal kombat is super fun and younger me who refused to play it for the sole reason of "well i already play soul calibur and they're basically the same thing except mortal kombat is 'gritty' for no reason and thats dumb" was a moron and a square. sorry i can't hear your whining over the snapping of this dude's spine i just ripped out and strangled him with. for the aesthetic.

• i want to write something. i'd rather draw instead. i can't draw the way i want to and finish those pieces i was already working on because my ipad decided to be a little bitch. instead of doing anything creatively fulfilling at all (because that would mean COMPROMISING on my WHIMS and we can't have that) i just self-flagellate by spending hours watching youtube videos i have no interest in and would rather not waste time on out of spite towards myself. don't worry about the logic, there isn't any.

• turns out being told i can't go outside is precisely the boost i needed to absolutely NEED to go Do Things, which is a very sudden heel-face-turn from the mentality of "apathetic hermit" i've embodied the past 4 years. coincidentally, i now understand what cabin fever is.

i'm sure i'll think of other things that nobody asked for, but i hope everyone who sees this is staying safe!! (and, like, people who don't read this too, obviously. but they can't hear me so.) anyway uh. i have a twitter if that's your thing, which i post my art to sometimes + my artstagram is linked there. not to self-promo or anything, but on the off-chance you genuinely wonder where i go and what i do the months where i dont post shit on tumblr i've been using ig and twitter in general a lot more recently bc it's just. less effort than tumblr lol

but yeah stay safe stay home and wash yer goddamn hands xoxo

[ladywritesthings]

Me: Yeah I can totally do one shots

Me later:

[ladywritesthings]

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[ladywritesthings]

Source: This

[ladywritesthings]

How to: write pain

Don't make paragraphs about it - battles are supposed to be fast-paced

Describe:

- the object used to harm the character

-where the injury is

-how long the character had had the injury

-how deep the cut is (for blades)

-whether or not the wound triggers other things (dizziness, bleeding)

There are different kinds of pain

punch/blunt force trauma:

-how it feels: aching, a single spike of pain before it fades into an ache, throbbing, numbness

-effects: swelling, bruising, broken bones, unconsciousness, dizziness, concussion, internal bleeding.

stab wound/cut

-how it feels: stinging (shallow wounds), burning

-effects: bleeding (the blood from arteries is a brighter red, like vermilion, the blood from veins is dark crimson), dizziness from the blood loss, unconsciousness, infection (if left unattended), death

gunshot

-how it feels: depends on the caliber bullet, from how far away they were shot and in what place

-effects: same as stab wounds

Things that an injured character may have/do

-heavy, harsh, ragged breathing

-panting, gasping, crying, grunting, hissing, groaning, whimpering, screaming, shrieking, clenching their teeth

-ears ringing, unable to speak

-pressing their hands on the injury to try and stop the bleeding, trembling, eyes rolling up into their head

-vision blurring, room spinning

Where to hit in a fight

temple and jaw - good for a knockout punch, but are near the skull so it will be dangerous if you miss (it can broke/dislocate your fingers)

nose/eyes - messes up the senses and distracts the opponent

neck: can mess up breathing, talking and the spinal cord

inner elbow: can disable the opponent's arm

solar plexus: hard to hit but very effective

liver: causes immediate pain, dizziness and loss of breath

kidneys

groin

outer/inner thighs

knees

-----------------

But not getting into a fight stops the injury for both the opponents :)

(thank you very much for all the support!!! i appreciate every single reblog/like/comment 💕 I'm happy I could help you)

[ladywritesthings]

Important things to Remember While Creating Characters

How they grew up shaped who they are now.

If your character lives a rough lifestyle, they should look like they live a rough lifestyle.

Knowing their mindset will make them more dimensional.

How they dress should depend on who they are and what they like.

Whether they like their job or not could say a lot about them (if they enjoy being a cashier, they probably like people. If they like fishing, they probably enjoy relaxing on a boat or by shore)

[ladywritesthings]

[ladywritesthings]

I'm curious--how do you guys go about creating your OCs?

[ladywritesthings]

me @ AO3

[ladywritesthings]

here it is: the post Literally no one was waiting for. i'd put it under a read more thing but i'm on mobile and can't be assed to get out of bed so fuck it. we air our dirty laundry on main for the world to see like men.

so waaay back in february or something, i started seeing a psychologist again. i'd been seeing a psychologist for a while last year, but she had a private practice and got too expensive over time, so i had to stop. now, however, i finally got a referral to the public mental health offices in my county. which is nice, because norway has this neat thing that means when you go to the doctor, public health care facilities, refill prescriptions for medications you have to take daily, etc, the money you spend on those things gets recorded and after you've spent like $260, you get a free card that gets logged into your medical records and you don't have to pay for any of those things for the rest of the year.

anyway, i mentioned a couple of years back that i finally got put on antidepressants for the first time. they helped a lot, but then i just... stopped taking them. there wasn't a reason, really. i just forgot to take them one week when i was stuck in bed with a headcold, and then it was hard to get back in the habit again. i tried to get back on them off and on for a long time, but i'd inevitably just forget again. until, like, i wanna say november/early december last year? i started taking them again. there were still some slip-ups every now and then, but for the most part i took them almost every day. any gaps were no longer than two, maybe three days at the most, and those gaps were maybe once a month or so on average. averages aren't really useful in this context, but i hope you get the idea.

anyway, i finally convinced my doctor that, no, seriously, i really need to see a psychologist, i've always needed to see psychologists my whole life, seeing psychologists help me, i can't afford a private psychologist so i need a public one, and after a lot of begging and insisting on my end and a lot of hemming and hawing on her end she finally agreed to refer me. except she forgot to actually send the email she'd been typing in front of me, and then she quit, so there was a lot of confusion and time spent sorting things out until i got my first appointment.

i didn't like my psychologist at first. she was way older than i'm usually comfortable with (that's a personal me-problem that i know is irrational, and i'm not gonna go into the why but yes i'm working on it), and very blunt in an exasperated sort of way. she made me angry sometimes. she made me feel like i wasn't trying hard enough. but she helped me get shit done, so i guess she was doing something right.

in june she called in a psychiatrist to help adjust my medications, so i started taking zoloft in addition to the other medication (remeron, aka mirtazapine) that i was already taking. the mirtazapine was helping with my depression, but my anxiety was still pretty bad. the zoloft helped.

by my second appointment with my psychologist, she asked me whether i could have adhd, or if there was a history of it in my family. now, i have a lot of family with adhd (how closely related we are by blood is a bit of a mystery to me, my family tree is more like an overgrown hedge and who knows who fits where), and my grandma used to joke that the women in our family "all have a little bit of that adhd brain in us", but as far as i knew, nobody in my immediate, direct bloodline had such a diagnosis. i had my suspicions about myself, of course — i knew that not every focus or attention related problem necessarily has a specific attention disorder source, but i also knew that what i was experiencing couldn't be "normal," in the sense that if i walked into a room with 100 people in it, 86 of those people wouldn't necessarily look at a list of my symptoms and go "oh same hat." i've had add on my about me for a while now. maybe that was silly of me; i hadn't been diagnosed with it, and what i knew about the specifics of it were picked up piecemeal off the internet. you know, that super-reliable place where everyone is honest and factual all the time?

anyway, this began the process of investigating the merits of such a potential diagnosis. research was begun. questionnaires were taken. my mom was invited to one of my sessions, in which she revealed that, oh yeah, bee tee dubs, she's always suspected i have adhd. did she mention that she has also apparently always suspected ocd and that i'm autistic? no? whoops, well, she has now.

end of june i was referred to the neuropsychologist devision of the public health care place. over the course of a little over 6 weeks i went in for 2 interviews, in which i answered several questionnaires, talked about my life and childhood and traumas and what my mom had told me about her pregnancy and labor, every possible symptom i'd ever had, and was sent home with even *more* questionnaries. in addition to these, i went in for two rounds of "testing," in which i was tested on my memory, pattern recognition, reaction time, impulse control, and probably a dozen other things. i was nervous. it was exhausting. i wanted answers but was terrified of what those answers would be.

end of august, my mom came with me for the big reveal. and guess what? she was right. primary diagnosis: adhd, special emphasis on the attention deficit part. bonus diagnosis: asperger syndrome. surprise! i'm autistic, i guess.

it was hard to come to terms with. which sounds really silly, since i wouldn't have even been taking those tests if i didn't think the outcome was a possibility. and it's not like the diagnoses were surprising either. the adhd part was easier to accept, mostly because i already felt pretty confident i had it. but the asperger diagnosis was harder. having to unlearn all those ingrained ableist stereotypes and social stigmas is hard, especially when you had some you didn't even realize were there. it's very surreal to think a thought and be like "no, wait, i do that. that joke is about me." it's a very surreal and slightly upsetting experience to realize how biased you are as general rule, but especially about a facet of your own identity you weren't aware of. and the feeling of everything and nothing changing all at once. i've always been like this. a doctor telling me i have two cognitive/developmental disabilities isn't an event that magically gave me these disabilities. my brain has always worked like this. the only difference between me now and me a year ago is that i have an official, medical reason for Why now.

that's another thing: coming to terms with the idea of being "developmentally disabled." it's not like i'm suddenly a different person — i have to constantly remind myself that my brain has always been like this. but having a piece of paper confirming that i am legally entitled to special allowances in the workplace or at school because i have not one, but two "disabilities" is absolutely buckwild to me.

it makes me reevaluate my life and my past. how many situations did i make worse because i did not have the capacity or knowledge about how my own brain works to self-reflect? was i high-functioning in the past because life was simpler? was it because i subconsciously had a better handle on what works for me and what doesn't, and somewhere along the way i lost that? or was it simply because i didn't have the option to be anything other than high-functioning? it's confusing.

i also lost my spot at college. i can still reapply next year if i want, but at least now i know why i was failing out lmao

anyway, by my birthday in september we started the process of adjusting my medication again. upping my zoloft, getting me off remeron, and as of 6 weeks ago or so, beginning ritalin.

it was a rocky start, but i'm up to 60mg now. two pills in the morning, one in the afternoon. i have a goddamn alarm for 8am every day, even weekends. my sleeping is still wonky, but at least im genuinely tired by 8pm every night. the psychiatrist still wants me to try melatonin for a month (even though i told her multiple times it has never worked for me, and my problem has never been "i'm not sleepy enough"), so i'm on a whopping 2mg of melatonin for the next 30 days. norwegians are fucking WEIRD about melatonin, don't even get me started.

a slightly unexpected side-effect (on my end) of these medication changes: remeron made me gain weight. like, a lot of weight. and i was constantly hungry all the time, overeating to ridiculous amounts. why did nobody ever tell me that weight gain and metabolism changes are a side-effect of anti-depressants? i was more active this summer than i'd been in, like, three years and i just got fatter. which was incomvenient because i kept outgrowing my clothes. anyway, a side effect of ritalin is a loss of appetite and general weight loss. the combination of regularly taking ritalin and dropping remeron entirely? i eat a fraction of what i used to before, i've almost entirely stopped snacking, and i've lost 15 lbs in less than a month. i've already noticed my face is slightly slimmer now. maybe by christmas i'll be able to fit into my old tshirts again.

anyway, my psychologist quit, so i have a new one now. i've only seen her a few times, but she's veeeery different from my old one. i can't decide if i like her or not.

in the middle of all this, i've been going to the social security office as well to kind of get some of my own money, possibly help me get a job at some point in the future. my caseworker is super nice. if she's over 30 i'd be shocked. i relate to her really well, she's very helpful and understanding, and she's very patient with me and my bullshit. she's the kind of person where if we met at a party or something we could probably hang out.

anyway, she's helped me get out of the house sometimes. she introduced me to this youth club volunteer group thing called the fountain house, designed for young people who've dealt with or are currently dealing with mental illnesses and such. i hung out there yesterday and the day before and did some basic office work. it's nice. and then there's a work placement place that can either give you a job on site in one of their four departments, or help you get a job at an actual business elsewhere with more support and leniency than you might get if they just hired you off the street. i'd start in their second hand store. they clean and restore all donations they recieve, and they're super fucking cheap. i treated myself to my literal lifelong dream of owning a vintage typewriter (!!!!!) yesterday, because it's almost christmas and goddammit, i've been doing so much shit the past couple of months i deserve it. do i have space for it? not really. do i have a plan on what to use it for? no. was it heavy and miserable trekking through the snow and rain yesterday back and forth? was it worth the backache in the morning? fuck yeah it was.

a fucking lot of things are happening all at once. diagnoses, medications, lifestyle changes, work placement, social clubs, dealing with bureaucracies on all sides just so i can feel like a person again, not to mention juggling hobbies like writing and drawing and maintaining my irl friendships. i'm getting as many balls rolling as i can while i have the opportunity and mental/emotional capacity to, but i'm worried i'll burn out again. i'm stabilizing and slowly building my life back up, but jesus christ it would suck if this stupid house of cards collapsed again. but i'm tentatively optimistic. who knows, maybe it's not to late to course-correct my mistakes.

so long story short, that's why i've barely been active on tumblr for months. that's why i haven't been writing, drawing, or reading fic. it's coming along, but it's slow.

i guess the most important thing is that it's coming along at all.

[ladywritesthings]

[ladywritesthings]

I've been gone for ages, I know. Life has been... wild. I haven't been much on tumblr the past few months and therefore haven't really talked about it (I would on my main, honestly, now that things are settling a little, but I don't know if anyone would care about the specifics lmao), but the short version is basically I've been rebuilding my life and mental health from very nearly the ground up. This has been going on since... February, maybe? But specifically since June things got turned up to 11 and writing and watching Critical Role had to be shunted waaaay down the priority list. Which is very sad for everyone involved, especially me.

But hey! Things are looking up! I wrote nearly 1k the other day! And to celebrate, have two screenshots of a scene from the upcoming chapter from Welcome to Burlesque. Parts of it were written months ago, a few words or phrases have been edited when I've had the time and spoons over the last couple of months, but most of it's brand spankin' new as of Wednesday. Sharing anything before then felt a bit like cheating.

I can't promise it'll be up soon. I can't really guarantee this wasn't a fluke, and that my life won't go bananas again. But the important thing is that I know now that I can write again, even a little bit. And that'll have to be enough for me for now. Every little bit helps, after all.

Thanks to everyone who still follows this mostly-dead blog I'm trying desperately to keep on life-support. Thank you to everyone who reads my fics, and rereads them, and subscribes and bookmarks and comments and sends lovely asks. I'm trying really hard to come back 💖

[ladywritesthings]

every once in a while i reread welcome to burlesque because i forget exactly how good it is and i want to remind myself

[ladywritesthings]

writers:

break up your paragraphs. big paragraphs are scary, your readers will get scared

fuuuuck epithets. “the other man got up” “the taller woman sat down” “the blonde walked away” nahhh. call them by their names or rework the sentence. you can do so much better than this (exception: if the reader doesn’t know the character(s) you’re referring to yet, it’s a-okay to refer to them by an identifying trait)

blunette is not a thing

new speaker, new paragraph. please.

“said” is such a great word. use it. make sweet love to it. but don’t kill it

use “said” more than you use synonyms for it. that way the use of synonyms gets more exciting. getting a sudden description of how a character is saying something (screaming, mumbling, sighing) is more interesting that way.

if your summary says “I suck at summaries” or “story better than summary” you’re turning off the reader, my dude. your summary is supposed to be your hook. you gotta own it, just like you’re gonna own the story they’re about to read

follow long sentences w short ones and short ones w long ones. same goes for paragraphs

your writing is always better than you think it is. you just think it’s bad because the story’s always gonna be predicable to the one who’s writing it

i love u guys keep on trucking