juliairian

[juliairian]

Eyes of the forest. Aspen trees

[juliairian]

Current writing advice I'm seeing on TikTok and Insta is telling authors to stop using em dashes in their work because, "AI uses em dashes so people will think you've used AI."

Y'know, the AI that was trained on the stolen work of real authors?

Anyway, I will not be doing that. What I will be doing, however, is adding a note at the start of all my books that no AI was used in the creation of my work because I, the author, did not go to university for four fucking years to study English literature and linguistics only to be told I can't use proper grammar because someone might think a robot wrote it.

Fucking, insane.

[juliairian]

I get to be more free as an adult than I ever did as a child and I think more kids need to know that. as a high schooler part of what made my depression so bad was being told over and over again that it was the most carefree time of my life. while I was trapped in an abusive home + amongst bullies at school + in a body that wasn’t right for me. opportunities to be carefree don’t end when you turn 18. you can be more you than ever as an adult and that’s such a gift. I know ‘it can get better’ is an annoying thing to see over and over when you’re as trapped as I was back then. and I know that if you’re still a kid you deserve to be free right this second. but it can and will get better and this is not where life stops being interesting. promise

[juliairian]

reading the last chapter of my wip to remember what the vibe was so i can continue writing and damn this fic is so fun and well written and great. i hope the author continues it

[juliairian]

My daughter (4) has already mastered the art of British understatement.

Referring to a long screaming match about a blanket she wasn't allowed to have:

"Mum, remember the fuss about the blanket from the other day?"

The Fuss

I can't even. Goodnight. 🫡

[juliairian]

I'm just saying, "We created a computer to make decisions for us, but it assimilated all of the bias that was implicit in the dataset and now makes incredibly racist decisions that we don't question because computers are logical and don't make mistakes" literally sounds like a planet-of-the-week morality play on the original Star Trek.

[juliairian]

MERLIN 3.12 — The Coming of Arthur: Part One

[juliairian]

[juliairian]

[juliairian]

Hey fellow Merlin fans have you seen this

Link to Reddit Post

The comments are also a goldmine on this one 👌

[juliairian]

It recently came up in conversation with my toddler that some birds can talk, and this has caused her great concern.

See, we were talking about how movies are pretend and how in real life, animals don’t talk. I mentioned that there are some birds who talk a little bit, but not like the animals in movies, and she just looked at me like “???”

So I informed her that some kinds of parrots can copy sounds that people make, and can learn how to say words. I thought this would give her a giggle, as fun new facts often do, but she was just deeply perplexed and a little worried about this.

“Birds can talk?” “Do they ask questions?” “What do they say?” Why do they talk?” “Do chickens talk?” “What about Blue Jays?” “Why do some birds talk?” “How do they talk?” “Birds TALK???”

We showed her a video of a parrot doing the “Hello, pretty bird, give a kiss” thing, and she was dead silent the whole time, hugging her comfort pillow with her knees to her chest. We asked if she wanted us to turn it off, and she shook her head. But we also asked if she wanted to see another one, and she shook her head even harder.

I don’t know why it has distressed her so greatly to learn that some birds can mimic human speech; but then again, I don’t know why it doesn’t distress the rest of us more to know that some birds can mimic human speech.

I keep thinking about that post that’s like “The first person to hear a parrot talk was probably Not Okay.” Because that’s exactly what happened. She had never been introduced to the concept, and her entire worldview got SHOOK.

[juliairian]

[juliairian]

I was thinking about Merlin and reincarnation. And I always see them reincarnated into modern day, but I wanna see Merlin and Arthur in Camelot are reincarnations.

With the way the druids talk about Emrys and the prophecy about the Once and Future King, I can see a story hundreds of years before Camelot, of a previous Arthur (lets call him Carwyn), a low and struggling peasant, going to pray at an altar to the great god Emrys. And Emrys comes down and is just, "sure I'll help, I'm kinda bored anyway." Which leads to adventures of this powerful god of magic (and probably dragons, with his children being dragons and dragonlords) frantically protecting his favorite human, who despite being a peasant, has a strong moral compus and the urge to protect people, and gets into fights he shouldn't.

And I love the idea that Carwyn is Arthur's ancestor, and Emrys, who holds the title 'Pendragon', gifted the title to Carwyn as a surname to show his divine right to rule. So Carwyn Pendragon becomes the first lord/king of the land they're in, believed to be blessed/favored by the God of Magic, while Emrys is hiding his divinity, pretending to be his right hand man (manservant).

And of course, it has to get angsty, and the reason the reincarnated is because Emrys looked away from Carwyn for just a moment during a fight, and Carwyn dies. And as Carwyn is dying, Emrys panics and binds their souls together, because as an immortal he can't tie. But by binding their souls, Emrys gives up part of his immortality, allowing him to die physically, but his and Carwyns souls to linger and be able to reincarnate.

As for what this means for Arthur and Merlin? I imagine that they'd have dreams, or intuitively know things (part of why they became friends so quickly). Like, imagine the context of their first meeting. Merlin, who sees the knife throwing and subconsciously remembers Carwyn doing something similar and going to far in training to protect, and says the same thing that Emrys would have. "That's enough my friend." And Arthur scoffs, looks up, and for the barest second has a moment of recognition. He asks, half mockingly, "Do I know you?" Making Merlin realize that he was speaking to a stranger, that even if he felt like he knew this man his whole life, he didn't.

And I just want to see more reincarnation AU's where Arthur and Merlin were the new lives, instead of the old.

[juliairian]

There is a standard media depiction of a "healed" person. Someone who has Gone To Therapy. I've noticed this in a few works recently. We often see them at the end of a story, maybe in a "ten years later" epilogue. They speak in a soft, serene voice. They have Accepted what they cannot change. They have let go of a lot, including most of what we see them actually care about in the story itself. They are Happy, At Peace, in some non-descript way. They bare little resemble to the person we were actually shown. They bare little resemblance to any person. We were shown, as we usually are in stories, an agent, a desirer, someone becoming. Now they have Become. And they look back on all that silly becoming as something childish that they have moved past. Fire, you know, fire is for children who don't know any better. To be Healed is to have your fire rightly extinguished; to not even miss it.

[juliairian]

jokes to make after failure that aren’t self-deprecating:

I’m the best to ever do it

Nobody saw that (best if said loudly)

No one’s ever done it like me

I could be President/they should make me President

Behold, a mere fraction of my power!

The public wants to be me soooooo bad

I’m an expert in (thing you just failed at)

How could this have happened to god’s favorite princess?

Nothing ibuprofen and a glass of water cant fix

I’m being sabotaged

[juliairian]

Piece is finished. Might go back and add in some scenery in the background, but the main parts are finished.

Still enjoying Loz:totk :3

[juliairian]

... no matter.