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[clarinhawrites]

Define Your Grind

[clarinhawrites]

turns out Frankenstein begins with a guy going out into the sea and not with the little monster being created on a rainy night?? The things we learn

[clarinhawrites]

10/100

Just yesterday I saw The news of a girl Who died of hunger She did not make the headlines— For her story's too common— They gave her only a corner In the column of daily tragedies. We shared a surname And we shared our eyes— The dark brown of forgotten lands Too bright for this country Too dark to matter. I wondered if we were Long distant cousins Had our great-great-grandmothers Come in the same boat Escaped the same farm Drank by the same river? Perhaps they shared an orange Many summers ago, On a young trail across the semiarid At that time of the day When the sun sets on the copper-colored hills And the cicadas start to sing. Perhaps they spoke of us, Between one bud and another, Of the many summers ahead. Of a future that—

Would never be.

As your parents kiss your bony cheeks goodbye, (If you hadn't kissed theirs first) As someone buries you under the dry earth, Or the vultures find you by our trail, (Now turned into a beaten road) I hold an orange in my hands And stretch them out in the air. I wonder Why are we so far apart That I can't share it with you?

[clarinhawrites]

We went to the market today. It's finally getting brighter, and although it's still cold, the snowflakes melt before they hit the ground. I went out in my warmest coat. You wore a jacket you refused to zipper.

I've been told you're not doing well, and even if I hadn't I'd have figured it out anyways. You've been skipping class. No one knows where you've been, not even me, though we live in the same building. I've sent you messages with no answer. It's fine, I tell myself, you've just slept for too long again. And I wait for you to come out from wherever you are.

You did, today. We went out for a walk. We bought something for ourselves—for the first time ever I paid for it—, we had strawberries and cream. The strawberries still suck because in February, but the cream helps.

We watched a whole season of an old anime. I put the subtitles in your language, not to make you feel you're home but because I like the challenge. The words I couldn't understand you couldn't either. We laughed.

I'm back in my room, you're back in yours. My day was so bright today, for the first time in a while. I hope yours was too.

[clarinhawrites]

I had to see this image so now you do, too.

[clarinhawrites]

All criticism aside for this inexplicable and worthless arc, Marwa’s transformation brings to my mind the ship of Theseus. Is Marwa still Marwa after so many changes? Does she know she’s been tinkered with to the point she has become a completely different human being? When she is turned back (if she is), how can she deal with the knowledge that her very essence has been violated for the sake of Nandor’s fleeting preferences? 

[clarinhawrites]

spiders ?

[clarinhawrites]

I really hate that pixel art is becoming associated with NFTs, pixel art rules

[clarinhawrites]

Sherlock Holmes modern adaptation but the main characters (Sherlock, Watson, Mrs. Hudson, Irene Adler, and maybe even Lestrade) are all vampires and they’ve just been doing their thing since the time period of the original books

Irene gets to be from New Jersey like she is in canon and she’ll occasionally show up and help Sherlock with a case but they don’t ever date or hook up or anything

[clarinhawrites]

8/10

“You’re ugly,” he said. The boy was what, eight years old, maybe seven? He could barely read, but believed he knew enough about life and beauty to confidently state that I did not have it. 

I was probably as old as he was. With small wounds on my legs and arms caused by mosquito bites. It would have been logical to think they played a role in it — as other classmates would so often point them out — but I knew there was more to my ugliness. My body hair. My nose that turned wide when I smiled. The way I spoke. It all pushed me farther away from beauty. I started shaving when I was ten. I stopped smiling. And talking.

I became shy — since nothing I said had any value — and then had to learn how to speak again from scratch. After hundreds of YouTube videos on how to be charismatic, and some friends here and there, I still could not shake my ugliness off. I could feel my hair growing under my skin, the wide nose beneath my thin one, and inconvenient remarks forming in my mind, that like sneezes were almost impossible to fight off. The moment I felt them coming, I had to blurt them out.

I hurt myself physically and mentally for years before realizing that hair doesn’t stop growing, no matter how often I wax them, and noses don’t grow thin, whether I smile or not. The battle I fought would always be lost, unless... laser treatments and plastic surgeries often came into my mind. But they meant months without being exposed to sunlight or breathing properly. No walks in the morning or swims in the beach. Winning that battle was not worth the value of living.

The option left was to give up. Let it grow, let myself smile and speak whatever my mind comes up with. There’s no use submitting myself to pain if I’ll be ugly anyways, right?

But I remember the way my legs feel after waxing them and the pictures I took in the beach last summer. And how my classmates think I’m cool now instead of annoying. And I haven’t heard “you’re ugly” since elementary school.

So I keep on shaving, and not smiling, and not talking. For however long I’ll manage to.

[clarinhawrites]

…Do you ever see people critiquing specific word usage in novels and wonder if they know that language can be used in fun and figurative ways? And that this is half the joy of writing?

An example off the top of my head - if I say ‘He gave a whisper of a smile’, it does not mean that the smile is literally whispering; it means that the word ‘whisper’ invokes a sense of smallness, due perhaps to subtlety or shyness, and that is something I want connected to your mental envisioning of this dude’s smile. 

Saying ‘But that makes no sense; a smile and a whisper are two different things’ misses the point e n t i r e l y

[clarinhawrites]

7/10

We went to the forest today. A mosquito landed on my thigh and I managed to grab him by his legs. How amazing it is that we can hold life on our hands, I thought. But then it fluttered its wings and flew away, leaving only two of its legs behind. I got back home and did my things and wrote. And then on my way to the bathroom, close to midnight, AH! A giant spider on the floor, its legs spread out! I take a jump over it and grab my flip-flop like an American must grab a gun when he hears noise outside. Turns out it was a mosquito, already dead (had I stepped on it on accident before?), an enormous one, the size of my finger. I hit it with my flip-flop as a safety measure.

I wrapped it in toilet paper and flushed it down the toilet, as disgusted as I was fascinated by his smaller counterpart a few hours back. Was that vengeance? Did mosquitos have their own ways to know when one of their kind has died, and come to torment us?

Maybe they know of all the mosquitoes I killed back in Brazil, by slapping them in my hands and spraying them with repellent. Maybe that's why they want my blood.

[clarinhawrites]

Looking for a random cause of death for a character? Click here.

Looking for a random city? Click here.

Looking for a random city that people have actually heard of? Click here.

Need a random surname for a character? Click here. (They also give prevalence by race, which is very helpful.)

Helpful writing tips for my friends.

[clarinhawrites]

Matt Damon explains why they don't make movies like they used to. Pls watch.

[clarinhawrites]

guillermo de la cruz is literally THE most character of all time. hes gay. hes latino. hes fat. hes badass. hes sexy. hes a serial killer. hes a mamas boy. hes insane. hes the most normal one here. hes by birth and lineage a vampire killer. hes spent 13 years trying to become a vampire. hes my best friend hes my pal, my homeboy, my rotten soldier, hes my sweet cheese my good time boy