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I occasionally see not-logged-in youtube because I don't install the app or log in on my phone and good lord that homepage is like 50% heteronormative white thirst trap nonsense. is this what tiktok is like. anyway there was one of those taboo-sex-topics-click-me bait yt shorts of a woman showing pictures of onlyfans stars to her fiance and being all "omg babe why do you know who this is!" he said she follows them on social media, which she (gigglingly) acknowledged, and like. I can't be the only one who thinks that'd make a funny "um... so I'm bi" setup right.

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if you're trying to get into the head of your story's antagonist, try writing an "Am I the Asshole" reddit post from their perspective, explaining their problems and their plans for solving them. Let the voice and logic come through.

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You can and should write fanfiction that isn't perfect. You can and should write whatever fanfiction you want. You can and should write fanfiction that brings you joy even if it's silly or goofy or weird.

Except for me. My fanfic has to be perfect and read like a novel and ruin at least one person's sleep schedule.

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worlds slowest fanfic author tries really really hard

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Enough of the small talk, are we building this blanket fort and fucking in it or not?

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i had a dream i worked in an underwater restaurant and people kept ordering ice in their drinks and then getting mad at me when it would float away. and i’d tell them beforehand that the ice would float away & they’d be like lol no that’s not how it works just give me the ice. I’m fighting customer service battles never seen before

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writing tip #3727:

if you set a scene in a really dark room, you don’t have to bother describing anything

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This from In Writing, a collection of writers reflecting on practice, really resonated with me.

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I hate I when I get an idea for a novel. Like oh no here starts the slow sad slip n’ slide to dissapointment again.

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There was a stretch where it looked like social media and mass surveillance were going to put paid to the idea of costumed superheroes with secret identities, but at this point the classic "superhero who's an urban legend everywhere outside of their home city" trope is more plausible than ever.

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the intimacy of sleeping together, but not in a sexual way. the intimacy of feeling the warmth of their body in a cool room. their hands hugging you tightly. the intimacy of synchronized breathing. sleepy half-kisses. feeling safe. feeling warm. waking up and realizing how much you love them. how precious this is. finding the happiness on the tip of your fingers, brushing their hair. closing your eyes again. pulling closer. falling asleep.

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there's a secret good sequel series that lives only in brain where finn and rey are force-sensitive foils to each other and they still spend movie #2 entirely apart but it's because they're exploring parallel and at time opposite relationships with the force and their place in the universe

and in my secret good version. okay hear me out. the han-leia kid is a hot lady. okay. are we following. and she DOES abandon luke's new jedi, not by falling and murdering people, but by stealing the millennium falcon and running off to escape responsibility and swaggers around with incredible han solo "loser pretending to be cool" energy. and then. she accidentally picks up two force sensitive teens on jakku and she's like. are you KIDDING me

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happy to announce that it has been long enough (two years!) that when I went back to reread what for a long time I thought might be the best work I'd ever create, I was finally like "yeah this is good but I can improve on this."

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Bounce

Elliot and Magdalene bounce within three days of each other.

Magdalene bounces first, at the ripe old age of 82, bed-bound and breathing only with the aid of a respirator. The pooling blood in her legs had formed into little coagulated beads, and one finally dislodged and swam the stream to her brain, where it wedged in tight like a pebble caught in the rudder of a boat and flat-lined Magdalene.

The on-call doctors do nothing but watch. Magdalene’s heart stops, and her brain waves quiet to nothing, and the wisp of breath vanishes from her throat. The flat keen of her monitors confirms she is entirely, unmistakably dead. The nurse assigned to her sits at Magdalene’s bedside, idle and distracted, fingers fiddling her pager, hovering, waiting.

It takes 20 minutes for Magdalene’s vitals to stir again. A single staccato blip breathes back into her heart rate monitor. A second blip follows. And a third. Her heart rate stabilizes. Her blood oxygenation spikes. Her monitors flicker back to life. The bedside nurse removes the breathing tube from her throat and marks Magdalene’s chart as “bounced”.

Elliot bounces 3 days later - from the blunt force trauma of falling down the hospital stairs. He claims he fell while trying to visit Magdalene one floor below. He also claims to have forgotten about the elevator. The doctors all suspect he intentionally bounced himself, but it’s not worth fussing over. Ethical bouncing is common enough. And for the sake of joining his wife, his bounced age is close enough. Elliot isn’t even hospitalized. His bouncing is perfectly clean.

For the next 4 months, Elliot visits every day to wheel Magdalene around the hospital garden. She is able to leave her bed now, but she is still immobile, her hips too worn to support her weight. So Elliot pushes the wheelchair, and they talk and talk about hopeful nothings, two octogenarians moving in frail, stuttering, slow circuits around the garden pond. They have a lot of plans to make, and a lot of time to pass, and a lot of bad jokes to tell. Elliot likes to flex his trembling arms and say he’s spry again, like a 60 year old, and he can feel it. Magdalene doesn’t tire of the joke. She laughs every time.

Keep reading

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*struggles while writing* i suck and writing is hard

*remembers some ppl use ai* i am a creative force. i am uncorrupted by theft and indolence. i am on a journey to excellence. it is my duty to keep taking joy in creating.

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one of the characters im writing has a very specific fetish i do not have and have not been able to give myself yet but i’m hoping by the time i have to write sex scenes with him i’ll have developed the fetish in earnest so i can write it from a place of truth

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I want to write a movie that is sort of the flip side of a Hallmark holiday movie. Not an anti-Hallmark movie, just like the other side of the same coin.

It starts with a well-dressed professional woman driving a convertible along a country road, autumn foliage in the background, terribly scenic. She turns onto a dirt road/long driveway, and stops next to a field of Christmas trees, all growing in neat, ordered rows, perfectly trimmed and pruned to form. She steps out of the car--no, she's not wearing high-heels, give her some sense!--and knocks on the door of a worn but nice-looking farmhouse. An older woman, late fifties maybe, answers the door, looking a bit puzzled. The younger woman asks if she can buy a Christmas tree now, today. The older woman says they don't do retail sales--and the younger woman breaks down crying.

Cut to the two women sitting at the kitchen table with cups of tea. The young woman (Michelle), no longer actively crying, explains that her mother loves Christmas more than anything, but is in the hospital with end-stage cancer. Her doctors don't think she'll live to see December, let alone Christmas. Nobody is selling Christmas trees in September, so could the older woman please make an exception, just this once? The older woman (Helen) regretfully explains that they have a contract to sell their trees that forbids outside sales. The younger woman nods, starts to stand up, but the older woman stops her with a hand and asks her what hospital her mother is in. After she answers the older woman says that "my Joe" will deliver a tree the next day. "Contract says I can't sell you a tree, but nothing says I can't give you one."

Next day "Joe" shows up at the hospital in flannel and jeans, with a smallish tree over her shoulder. Oh, whoops, that's Jo, Helen's daughter, short for Joanna, not Joe. Jo sets up the tree and even pulls out a box of lights and ornaments. Mother watches from hospital bed with a big smile as Jo and Michelle decorate the tree. Cue "end of movie" type sappiness as nurses and other patients gather in the doorway, smiling at the tree.

Cut to Michelle sitting in her dark apartment, clutching a mug of tea, staring out at the falling snow and the Christmas lights outside. Her apartment has no tree, no decorations, nothing. She starts at a knock on the door, goes to open it. Jo is standing there, again holding a tree over her shoulder.

Plot develops: the second tree is a gift, because Michelle might as well get it as the bank. The contract for the tree sales was an /option/ contract, which prevents them from selling to anyone else, but doesn't guarantee the sale. The corporation with the option isn't going to buy the trees, but Helen and Jo can't sell them anywhere else, and basically they get nothing. They'll lose the farm without the year's income. Michelle asks to see the contract and Jo promises to email it to her.

Next day at a very upscale law firm, Michelle asks at the end of a staff meeting if anyone in contract law still needs pro bono hours for the year. No one does, but a senior partner (Abe) takes her to his office and asks about it. She says the contract looks hinky to her ("Is that a legal term?" "Yes.") but contract law's not her thing. He raises an eyebrow and she grins and pulls a sheaf of paper out of her bag and hands it over. He reads it over, then looks up at her. "They signed this?"

More plot develops. Abe calls in underlings--interns, paralegals, whatever--and the contract is examined, dissected, and ultimately shredded (metaphorically). It's worse even than it looks--on January 1st Helen and Jo will have to repay the advanced they received at signing. The corporation has bought up a suspicious number of Christmas tree farms in previous years after foreclosure, etc.

Cut to Abe explaining all this to Helen and Jo while sitting with them and Michelle in a very swanky conference room. The firm is willing to take on the case pro bono, hopefully as a class's action suit for other farmers trapped by the contract--but there's no way it can go to court before January. Which will be too late to save the farm's income for the year. They might get enough in damages to tide them over, but….

After Michelle sees Helen and Jo out, she comes back and asks Abe if there's anything they can do immediately. Abe looks thoughtful for a long moment, then gets a really shark-like grin on his face. "Maybe…."

Cut to Helen wearing a bathrobe, coming into her kitchen in the morning. She looks out the window…and there's a food truck stopped in her driveway. She pulls a coat on over her robe and goes out--two more trucks have pulled up while she does this. Driver of the first truck asks her where they park. Another truck pulls up behind the others. Behind that is a black BMW--Abe rolls down the window and waves. Helen directs the trucks to the empty field/yard next to the house. Abe pulls up next to Helen's car and Jo's truck and parks. He and Michelle get out--Abe wearing a total power suit, Michelle in weekend casual.

The case will be easier if the corporation initially sues them for violating the (uninforcible!) contract, rather than them suing to corporation (damn if I know, but it's movie logic). So they're going to sell the trees now, and rounded up some food trucks and whatnot to draw people in.

Cue montage of Jo and Michelle running around helping people set up while Abe and Helen watch from the kitchen table. The table starts out covered in file folders…and slowly gains coffee cups and plates of cinnamon rolls. It becomes increasingly clear here that Abe and Helen are becoming as close as Jo and Michelle.

Everything gets set up and a very urban, very motley crowd appears--tats and studs and multiracial couples and LGBTQ parents and everything--and everyone is having a wonderful time eating funnel cake and choosing their tree so Jo and a bunch of rainbow-haired elves can cut it for them. At which point someone shows up from the corporation (maybe with a sheriff's deputy?) and starts yelling at Helen, who's running checkout. And suddenly Abe appears from the house and you realize why he's wearing that suit on a Saturday….

Cue confrontation and corporate flunky running off with their tail between their legs, blustering about suing. Cue Jo kissing Michelle. Cue Helen walking over and putting a hand on Abe's shoulder and smiling at her.

I want the lawyers to be the heroes because they are lawyers and know the law. I want a lesbian who lives in the country with her mother. I want urbanites to turn out as a community to help someone who isn't even part of their community. I want Michelle to keep working at her high-power job, loving Christmas and grieving her mother.