ecrivainsolitaire

[ecrivainsolitaire]

we have all noticed that "self-care" basically ended up as a replacement word for "pampering" in a marketing lexicon and not as an active set of behaviours intended to allow the body and brain to adequately rest and revive in the face of the ceaseless crushing grind of capitalism yes

[ecrivainsolitaire]

there's being 'a regular fucked up piece of shit antisemite' and then there's being 'a fucked up piece of shit antisemite who hacks elmo' and while both are trash the second is definitely a new kind of trash

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[ecrivainsolitaire]

terfs would lose their minds if they were exposed to 2000s-2010s "a girl can do anything a boy can do, including beating them at sports" messaging like why are you all acting like nobody has ever said this and that it's radical to think that women aren't inherently worse at things. open your mind. read some feminist theory. touch some grass. the most basic banal middle-class white woman feminism of the 2010s looks fucking radical and visionary compared to the misogynistic victimization complex y'all are peddling

[ecrivainsolitaire]

everyone knows that space is very very cold, and the sun is very very hot. so i assume there's a bit of space kind of near the sun which is just right. balmy space

[ecrivainsolitaire]

You could legitimately make a fortune by parking outside of the DMV in a van with an inkjet printer, charging $5/page to people trying to get REALIDs who've been told they need to produce a printout of yet another bill or bank statement for the clerk to glance at and then shred.

[ecrivainsolitaire]

YOU know him as the human pet guy, I know him as the "modern militaries need medieval armor cuz they reflect bullets" guy. We are NOT the same.

[ecrivainsolitaire]

I don't know if you possibly have any advice/encouragement for this but...I feel like I'm only any good at fanfiction/character studies, and absolutely garbage at plot. I'm an extensive outliner and I've read all the how-to books, but it just doesn't come to me. Antagonists, motivation, pinch points, magic systems...I struggle so much with anything that isn't character interactions and dialogue, but I want so badly to make well-structured, plot-heavy original fiction.

Help?

Right, I'm going to break the emergency glass of all writing advice and tell it to you frank:

If you can't figure out how to plot, steal.

Let's say you really like Sherlock Holmes and really want to write a Sherlock Holmes story, but you think no one will want a story where Sherlock Holmes was a modern doctor (House), or a superhero (multiple takes on Batman), or as a sci-fi/fantasy augmented woman reliant on her assistant (Robert Jackson Bennet's The Tainted Cup), etc etc. What I'm saying is that this is not only common, but an acceptable form of writing. It's not about boiling a character down to tropes and going with that - it's about taking what you like from fiction and making it your own.

The second question is how. I'm not telling you to rewrite The Hunger Games and set it in space (partly because arguably that already exists), but what I do recommend is:

Take your favorite media and break down why you like it. If you're writing a novel, I recommend sticking to novels, but there's no harm in taking a look at your favorite movies or comics either. What appeals the most to you about the plot? Which parts of your favorite media hit the hardest? Do you gravitate toward space operas or heists? Can you connect some consistent themes or character moments they share?

Pick your top favorite and break down the plot in an outline. The Save the Cat Beat sheet works really well for this (click here for examples of how to use it!), but if you prefer a different method or have your own, use that. Try to nail down as much of the plot into an outline view that you can. Note the big moments (the Inciting Event, the Middle, the Climax, etc) as much as you can, as well as when they happen.

Boil that specific outline down to a generic outline that could apply to any story. Here I want you to strip out the identifying information until you have an outline that follows the plot of your favorite movie without directly referencing it. Here's an example:

The Hunger Games Inciting Event: Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her sister's place in a death game. Generic Summary: Main character takes a loved one's place in a nearly unsurvivable situation.

Most importantly, I do want you to do this for the entire piece of media. Not because I want you to write a Hunger Games rip-off, but because I want you to distill down what really appeals to you about this story in a format where you can see how the plot comes together. If you have the time, I recommend doing this to a few different favorite stories, just so you can build your library of plot points and how to connect them.

Second step, and this is the hard part, take those outlined plot points and try to put your characters in them. You don't have to follow one outline - if you have a couple, mix and match to see what fits together. If this still feels too hard to do with your original characters, try fanfiction! Fanfiction can really help you shake off the fear of being too derivative and allows you to experiment.

Now, even if you end up with a draft that reads like "The Hunger Games in 18th century France and Also There's Dragons For Some Reason," do not panic! The first draft is your private little experiment to get a working plot. If you do have a working plot, you now are in a way better position then you were before. Take a break from your book (I mean it, this step is important), and when you come back, look at it from a distance.

What parts of it do you like? Would it flow better if you plucked a subplot from another media you like and tried it out? Maybe you've realized you want a heist instead of a death game, but still want to keep the dragons. The first draft does not have to resemble the second, or even the third. But you will have a plot to build upon and rework, and the next time you take a crack at plotting, you will feel more confident. Even if you don't, feel free to use this format again to rework a concept you really like into something you feel is your own.

[ecrivainsolitaire]

[ecrivainsolitaire]

LOST (2004-2010) 3x08 - “Flashes before Your Eyes”

[ecrivainsolitaire]

[ecrivainsolitaire]

[ecrivainsolitaire]

As much as repairability can be valuable it's important to recognise that sometimes you can just make a product that runs for the entirety of its useful life. Like. The TV Repairman as a business doesn't exist in part because most TV's can just work for at least ten years now. Edge-lits are really the only remaining category of TV that regularly fails in less than a decade.

[ecrivainsolitaire]

a mech is just a sub par spaceship and a spaceship meant to kill shit is somewhere between a lumbering forklift with cannons on top and a mechanical wasp with a twenty foot lance as a stinger

[ecrivainsolitaire]

sorry if i'm gonna be quiet for a while. my country recently introduced laws that make it so that in order to use social media to the fullest (not being able to view ns/fw content and in a few cases, not even having access to dms), i HAVE to give the sites my id/face scan.

it goes into effect july 25th. it'll probably effect here too, since this place allows mature content (tho not full on ns/fw)

i'm very distressed about it bc i might end up not even being able to talk to my internet friends. i don't really have any irl ones

if i have to disappear on most socials by then, you know why.

[ecrivainsolitaire]

Isn't the smell of burning rubber an aneurysm symptom?

Things I cannot do in the last eight months without immediately causing The Horrors:

listen to music

concentrate on anything

do physical activity

interact with people

whack off ayoooo

feel emotions

sleep

The Horrors consist of, as described, the feeling of my free will being taken away, my body and thoughts physically twisted around, my face being pulled to other parts of my body, my mind being invaded by a huge horrible glob of sensation that is ever-accrediting and also a worm, my friends getting deleted from my mind and replaced with the smell of burning rubber, etc. etc.

Basically I all I can do is sit in my bed and suffer and scream "why, why, please stop" which I do many times a day.

Have I mentioned that I've been in full on, unironic, wailing "why, why, please stop" at the sky mode for a few months now? Turns out if you're freaked out enough it literally just comes out.

And post. My posting is fine. Semantic knowledge, reality checking, fine. I know my friends are not burning rubber. It's just that if I try to think about them I get burning rubber. So pretty nightmare kafka scp sort of scenario. Just to explain the deal. It's like like 24/7 horror movie hours over here.

[ecrivainsolitaire]