basilspolaroid

[basilspolaroid]

You are a writer because you write. That's truly all it takes. You don't have to prove your worth to anyone. Your love for storytelling and desire to create is enough.

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Twisted fate

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..

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Just so you know, by the way: Hollywood lied to you.

Happy Endings where everyone gets what they want is actually not cringey. Happy Endings where the couple that everyone was rooting for actually ends up together and neither of them die is not cliche or childish.

Let yourself believe in Happy Endings because Hollywood has been trying to convince you this entire time that the only "acceptable" way to end a story or a character arc is by having someone fucking die or lose whatever it is they've been fighting for this entire time.

And fuck Hollywood.

We deserve some fucking Happy Endings.

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irresponsible illegal getaway drive

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Sketches from the ep

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but i just miss you so much

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it's okay:

to be proud of your writing

to boast about your writing

to abandon/start new WIPs on a whim, even if you've already got projects that need to be worked on

to have a bad day of writing

to not want to share your writing with anyone

to not want constructive criticism

to fail and start again

to succeed (achievements should be celebrated)

to write things because it's fun (even if it's not your forte)

to write things that are purely meant to be enjoyable, not everything has to come with a complex plot that deconstructs society as we know it

to not like everything you've ever written

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AI using your writing to train.

Hey writerly friends! Here's your warning that Google is making updates to terms and service allowing them to mine your data and train AI with it. It's focused on emails right now but Google docs facing a similar change is on the horizon.

Keep your eyes peeled for terms of service updates because you've already accepted future changes once you hit accept the first time. Unpublished novels do not have the same copyright protections as published novels and lawsuits are much more difficult to win. I would highly recommend anyone with a large amount of writing in Google docs start removing it from that platform.

If you don't want your writing used to train AI (and to be clear you won't be paid for it) then it's time to start looking at alternatives to Google Docs.

Some thoughts on alternatives

Microsoft Word - unlikely to implement AI training

Microsoft Word is possibly the safest bet at the moment. The Office suite makes most of it's money from corporate licensing. That depends heavily on strict privacy rules. The risk to their reputation is too high to even attempt it on just the personal version of Word. If you want to be very very cautious, get Word Professional as there is ZERO chance of it being used for AI scraping.

$159.99 USD one time purchase OR subscription model for $69.99 per year which comes with all of the Microsoft Office suite and significantly more cloud storage.

Microsoft Word Professional is $439.99 USD. You really don't need it for writing.

Scrivener - unlikely to implement AI training

Scrivener would probably not survive the kind of controversy AI scraping would cause as their customers are exclusively writers.

$59.99 USD one time purchase per platform (if you switched from windows to mac you would need to repurchase.)

Libre Office - read all the terms and conditions or don't risk it.

Libre Office has an AI tool. There are no stories circulating about them scraping user's data but they're not near as big as Google and may not have drawn enough attention yet.

Free! (Which unfortunately makes data scraping more likely.)

Also don't forget:

Platforms like Ao3, Wattpad, Smashwords and possibly even Tumblr are all being targeted by AI companies for data scraping. In fact OpenAI are being sued for doing just that.

Be careful where you post your writing.

That's all folks!

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"Link, you must find me"

!! Spoiler version under cut !!

The Dragon's Tears

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when you walk face first into the literal point of the barbie movie’s reverse power dynamics theme, meant to show how ridiculous the patriarchy is and how it harms both men and women, and you STILL don’t understand how it’s a direct reflection of modern society and demonstrates how women have been fighting for decades, even centuries for their rights, finally climbing to a point where women can exist independently of men for the first time in history, only for our rights to be continually stripped, ignored, or denied as the 21st century progresses. Rights that men still have and hold without a shred of threat to them, mind you.

when you literally type with your own two thumbs, “see how it feels” and “ken showed them being on the opposite end sucks” and you cannot grasp the idea that what you witnessed in 114 minutes of cinema is what women have been living through for the last 174 years.

if you get angry over the idea of oppression and inequality continuing after the oppressed have expressed it’s harm ONLY if it’s a man who is depicted as lesser than, and you choose not to walk away directing that anger at dismantling a harmful and unrelenting patriarchy, and instead go online to shout at women about how unfair the fictional matriarchy was and how feminism will kill us all, then you are simply oil to the rusted gears of an autocratic system that cares no more about you than it cares about the women you shame for fighting for something better.

“Isn’t this just hypocritical?” Yes. It’s supposed to be. And even with it spelled out in big pink bubble letters for you to understand, you willfully choose to ignore the point.

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you must find me

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@bastardbeewoman I SIMPLY HAD TO >:000

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soukoku wip :”im magnetic to the things you hate the most”

ok so i started this thing and idk if i should complete it or not

its basically where the pm is like a book publisher which chuuya was in, but acts as dazais replacement who left, and he finds dazais old pm book at a random library and gets attached to it for basically no reason (or so he thinks)

Each page precariously wailed with words of solemnity and passion. Remarks that he could never comprehend and had made no sense to him when he was but an adolescent traversing the world through the more… unconventional substances.

No gifted child could ever stray away from such solutions (even under his parents’ strict surveillance) which is why Chuuya fell in love with people who despised the words ‘success’ and ‘life’. Not so much that he had felt the same, he just enjoyed picking apart these ‘reasons’ and countering them in his own work.

It’s kind of dumb.

For this reason, he never wrote books - he wouldn’t dare. He sought so highly over etching out people's lives in their stories and feared those doing the same to his. No matter what conclusion they would arise, it would never be the one they expected.

That’s why Chuuya wrote poems, you can only speculate about something so short and vague, with the only factual evidence being a semantic field of pain and melancholiness.

So fuck, only a genius could write Chuuya’s story from that.

And that’s also what brought him to a bookstore.

Pondering over each book created anxiety fluttering through the pages as if the texts sweat under his gaze, which they most likely did.

Something about the pensive smell of a traditional bookstore dragged him in.

The types of books he enjoyed were vast and nonexistent—a divide between fairytale-esque worlds to fantasies created as a microcosm of real-world issues.

Something crafted to combat boredom, or in his case, burnout.

Nothing had captured his tastes quite yet, as such of a bohemian romantic.

Not until a certain Shuji Tsushima had bled into focus. A pen name, surely. Or possibly a name meant to shove the reader into a ruse.

Chuuya meekly slides a hand around the spine of the book, in a tight, strangler motion.

The cover is entirely duo chromatic, devoid of pigments but two contrasting fades, a fuchsia pink and a deep black, with a scene of a silhouetted statue.

“No Longer Human”

Shuji Tsushima.

A tale in which one traverses through life with Western ideas meshed with a traditional Japanese Aristocratic family, where he finds himself “disqualified from being human”. Obo Yozo attempts to create reasons to become obsessed with people and how they should be written. He records the cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.

A true resemblance of pure sorrow and despair, a pathetic representation of mankind.

Truly, Chuuya didn’t mean to grab the book, something hypnotic pulled him against the tide and beckoned him to sink his teeth into Obo Yozo’s life. Prying open the paperback cover to skim the forefront page, usually containing reviews or a lettered version of the title, however, instead, was a short author note, nothing but four words, directly in the center of the page written in typewriter font.

                                                    To my future soulmate,

Soulmates? What a brash thing to believe in for someone who wrote a story of misery and weakness. Surely someone of that calibre would have no taste for soulmates, a metaphorical phenomenon for someone bound to you, destined to find each other despite the situation.

A stupid ideology.

Chuuya digresses, as his interest did not waver, and this ‘interest’ was piqued, as they would say.

Possibly a normal person would just brush it off.

Well, Chuuya is not normal, at least not to the degree that is considered ‘normal’. Chuuya Nakahara is a goddamn poet whether the world likes it or not, and he suddenly has a profound interest in Obo Yozo.

“Hey, are you getting that book or nah?” A voice bellowed from across the shelf towards the counter. The store owner stared at Chuuya with sleek almond eyes.

“Yeah.”

“Sure, sure, that’s fine. It’s been on that shelf a while, so it’s good to see someone buyin’ it finally. Although- I won’t lie, I only thought a proper nutter would buy it,” She shrugs, “Guess you are that nutter.”

Chuuya raises an eyebrow and shuffles closer to the counter than to the shelf, not yet placing the book down for purchase, “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said, mate. Weird story actually, some guy came in here and dropped the book on my desk. Told me to put it on sale in that exact corner you got it from. Dunno why, assume the guy must’ve been some friend of the author, spoke about the author on a first name basis and went on about some vengeance.”

The girl behind the counter frowned and widened her eyes, “But like, I don’t wanna put you off the book, y’know… It’s a bestselling book and stuff, so there’s gotta be some merit to it, but damn when I read the back couldn’t help but feel a bit irked. That’s prolly do to with the guy tho, seriously he was weird, had no eyebrows and shit.”

Alright, weird book with weird origins.

“Okay, and because some guy came and gave you the book means it’s scary?”

The girl tilts her head, “Uhm, well, I mean, that’s not everything. I may not seem like it, but I read a fair bit, sweetie, and I’ve read books by Dazai before, ain’t nothing weirder than his books. I’m just telling you, but it’s almost like the guy ain’t got a soul in him, no faith in humanity at all. Book’ll make you depressed for a good week after, but you seem like the typa guy to eat that stuff up.”

“Excuse me?”

“Kidding. Obviously.” She half smiles.

Chuuya slams the book onto the counter, “Just give me the book.”

This causes the girl to flinch and raise her arms, “Alright, calm down Speedy Gonzales.”

“That’ll be ¥1500- wait, Nakahar- damn, you’re in my English Anthology, old man.”

So when he briskly purchases the book and pockets the number with swift zephyr, nobody is surprised.

—

Yet, Chuuya does not even glance at the cover when he reaches his domicile. A place of tranquil importance, yet not in the aristocratic style of Obo Yozo. On the mention of him, Yozo truly was a despicable man.

Chuuya had never hated a character more than he hated Obo Yozo. He used as many women as he would see fit, just to fulfil his empty pleasure. Tsuneko was a prime example of such behaviour of Yozo. Fully consecrated by a vow of death, in which Yozo had deemed romantic yet tragic that she had passed and he had not.

“I drank the liquor. She did not intimidate me, and I felt no obligation to perform my clownish antics for her.” The only woman Yozo had ever loved was one who wished to die more than he did.

If Obo Yozo did not see himself as human, was Tsushima one to follow the same ideologies? To produce a story of pure irascibility, you must have many unwanted thoughts or even traumas.

Was this how Chuuya’s generation was reflected, through the eyes of a sorry sob?

The question still stood, why was Chuuya compelled to finish the entirety of the book despite loathing the main character’s decisions?

Would it be such a stretch to believe this author had anything but a heart?

Shit.

Chuuya slammed the book on its paperback cover. He doesn’t care what that woman said, what does he care? The person who wrote this book was probably just an entitled snob that didn’t deserve this much thought

“Y’know what, fuck this. Fuck this stupid book, and fuck this fucking… this fucking author.”

The moment he opened the book, his fate was sealed.

Poets are dramatic, as far as the stereotypes go, and well, they aren’t wrong.

Nothing been hurt more than anticipation however, as, the walls curved together and words pained to look at had shown that Chuuya has had enough.

He tossed the book, causing it to crash against the meagre wall, and pushed his throwover across his head.

—

I thought, “I want to die. I want to die more than ever before.

There’s no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it’s sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame.

That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves—it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute.

I want to die.

I must die. Living itself is the source of sin.”

—Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human.

[basilspolaroid]

bots

tumblr’s bot problem is actually ridiculous

[basilspolaroid]

Love yourself, take pride in your appearance, self reflect, sculpt your body, prioritise beauty, stretch regularly, meditate, journal, eat nutritionally abundant food. You have one body — optimise, nourish and take pride in it.

[basilspolaroid]

Listen as tragic as it is I love when AO3 crashes because within minutes there are hundreds of post freaking out about it. The sense of community is unmatched