lunapwrites

[lunapwrites]

Are you becoming what you've always hated?

Isle of Dogs / Game of Thrones / Painting by Jenn Mazza / Unknown / Ancestral Memory by Hari Alluri / Unknown / Venetta Octavia / Emma Tranter / Unknown / Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo / @ machineryangel

[lunapwrites]

The question isn't "would this character ever admit to needing help or are they determined to be a totally stoic wall?" it's "what would it take to make this character who's determined to be a totally stoic wall desperate enough to ask for help?"

Scare them so bad they decide it's worth breaking their own internal guiding doctrine and facing the mortification of admitting to their friends that they're fallible.

[lunapwrites]

STOP! before you decide you are irretrievably doomed, try one of the following options:

transition

bdsm

iron supplements

[lunapwrites]

[lunapwrites]

Somewhat on the vibe of "your glorious revolution doesn't exist," I want to talk to you all, especially the young folks, about effective anarchism.

Spoiler alert, it's not blowing stuff up or arson.

I am considered the most anarchical person of all among my friends. Granted, most of my experience has been wreaking anarchy against the systems present in my high school and college, but the principles are the same.

Practical anarchy is not the big, flashy, romanticizable thing people online make it out to be. It's more about the long haul - digging in your teeth and just being a menace that no one can really get rid of.

Everyone's "Why vote when you can firebomb a Walmart" posts (that they don't follow through on) are just not pratical because this is a surveillance society. With CCTV and DNA testing and cell phone cameras and GPS tracking, if you do something big like that, you are GOING to be caught; then that is the end of your anarchical career. And, keep in mind that you might get caught while you're setting up this big event - it's a crime to blow up a Walmart and also a crime to conspire to blow up a Walmart, so your career in anarchy might end before it begins, and then you are permanently out of the game. No matter what causes you were working for that inspired you to do something big and violent that you thought would get someone's attention, you now can't help at all ever again in your entire life. What you did will be a passing headline on the news, and then everything will go back to exactly what it was because big, acute actions can't compare in effectiveness to small, constant actions (just being a thorn in the side of the system, poking and poking, but unable to be dislodged).

This is just the practical side of it too: think about the risk of hurting innocents if you really advocate for doing things like that. You think blowing up a Walmart would really make a dent in that big of a corporation? But if you intentionally or unintentionally kill a bunch of Walmart shoppers, that's going to devastate families that had nothing to do with whatever your cause is.

So all that big talk about violence and destruction: not practical, not effective, not ethical.

The only way I've started to change oppressive systems around me is by justing chipping away from within the confines of the rules of these systems, and/or only stepping just outside them (never breaking rules in a big way that could have allowed said system to easily and "justifiably" get rid of me).

So if you're going to be an anarchist, you need to consider:

Having the longest career in anarchism possible (i.e. being careful enough and judicious with your actions so that you don't get expelled from the system you wish to fight).

And then for any given anarchical plan:

2. Potential consequences.

3. Insurance.

I'll give you an example. I had serious beef with the culture of my college's science department. Students were constantly overworked, and if they expressed their misery outloud or reached out to any of their professors about their struggles, they got apathetic responses if not direct insults to their abilities or dedication. I had too many similar disparaging interactions with professors in one week, and I realized a lot of the responses I was getting were just the result of professors not really knowing how they sounded when they said certain things to students (ex: If someone says they're struggling with a course, don't IMMEDIATELY respond with "change your major," - you can give that as an option, but if you make it your first suggestion, the implication to the student is that if they're having any trouble with the course, they're not good enough for the program).

So I wrote up a flier of examples of good and bad ways to respond to students having anxiety with explanations and distributed it to every professor in the department. Everyone who knew about this perceived it as a great personal risk - that I would get in some kind of unspecified trouble or piss off an important professor, so before embarking on this project, I considered...

Potential consequences: I couldn't really think of any specific college or department rules I could be violating. People postered and handed out fliers in the department all the time. What I was doing fell pretty clearly under freedom of speech. I just shoved the fliers under professors' doors, so I didn't trespass in anyone's office. Worst I could think is that individual professors would get mad at me and make my life difficult, or I'd simply be told to stop fliering in the department.

Insurance: Just in case there were any consequences that I didn't think of and to insure me against the ones I had thought of, I didn't put my name on the flier. It was typed in Word, something everyone had access to. I came in to do it after professors had all left for the day but before I needed to use my ID to get into the building (no electronic record of me being there). I took the elevator to the first floor offices because the stairs require ID swipe after 5pm, but the elevators do not. I found out the building had no cameras by asking about it on the grounds that something of mine had been stolen a few weeks prior. I shoved the flier under the doors of dark offices and left it outside offices with lights on (so that no one would come out and spot me). And here's one of the most important pieces of insurance: I put up a few of the fliers on public bulletin boards in the building. This was important so that if I slipped up and said something that conveyed that I had knowledge of the content of the flier, I would have an excuse for that, i.e., I read it on the bulletin board before class this morning.

And then I did the thing. And surprisingly, it was incredibly well-received by professors. A few who knew that the flier must have been mine (because of previous, similar anarchical actions rumored to be associated with me) told me that everyone was RELIEVED that they finally had an instruction manual from the student perspective on what the hell they're supposed to say when one of their students is panicking. It sparked a real change in the vibe of the department and student experience. Had it instead pissed people off, I would have simply said I could not claim authorship of the flier but had read it and thought it contained good ideas then gone on creating more anarchy while angry people grasped at the zero straws I had left them to pin the action on me.

That's an example of a single action I took that was part of a much longer (~3 years) campaign of mine to change the culture of my department. Everytime I did something in that campaign, I made that consequences vs. insurance calculation to make sure they couldn't expell me from the program, the department, or the school before I succeeded.

[lunapwrites]

the absolute best dynamic to read/write about is between 1 person who is so good at performing and wearing masks that they don’t know who they really are and 1 person who cannot be anyone but their most excruciatingly authentic self at all times and sees right through them; the mirrorball and the one who is not like the regulars, so to speak

[lunapwrites]

Six Sentence Snippet

For WIP Wednesday or whatever. Feel free to post your own. ❤️

There was a grit to their son though that both his parents had lacked. A bite. It came out in Lily’s protectiveness, in James’ sense of fair play. A longer fuse than either had ever been blessed with — but a more explosive temper, once it was burned through.

He was grateful not to be on the receiving end this time. His nose could only take so much abuse.

[lunapwrites]

editing is just you vs. past-you in a duel of questionable comma placement and emotional instability

[lunapwrites]

Writing update (?) of sorts:

I've opted to tackle the problem of "why are there too many cooks in this kitchen" by backtracking to the moment when the third (conscious) character entered, and determined that actually, I would like a longer period of the first two characters talking to each other in relative private. We don't get enough of that. I then realized it worked better if I changed the order of entry for the other three in order to slowly ramp up the chaotic energy while still holding the narrative thread (which I felt like I was losing before.)

Feeling good about this change! And more importantly it's not a total rewrite so much as just heavy editing and some additions. :)

[lunapwrites]

Something that comes up often in art that's about artists is that you'll be told that this character made an amazing, record-shattering, highly acclaimed book or movie or song or whatever and then you'll see the piece of art they made and it's painfully mid. Like, you have to accept that within the world of the story being told, that's the most amazing piece of art ever but you're sitting there like, "There's no way that would ever catch on like that IRL."

Anyway, shout out to KPop Demon Hunters for sidestepping that problem entirely by having the in universe songs chart so high IRL that they beat out actual established KPop groups, proving definitively that those songs WOULD have set the charts on fire and beat out their competition even as the new kids on the block.

[lunapwrites]

i feel like high school/middle school sitcoms set the unrealistic expectation of being able to have lunch time outside

[lunapwrites]

Just in case!

[lunapwrites]

looking for opinions both from americans and non-americans: what would you consider to be the big 4 american cities in terms of like, vibes-based cultural impact?

[lunapwrites]

I hate how people will look at popular indie artists who had one or two songs go viral on TikTok and start making fun of anybody who listens to them. "Oh you listen to Lemon Demon, Will Wood, Jack Stauber, Glass Animals, and Mother Mother? Tsk, don't you know that is stupid TikTok neurodivergent white transmasc preteen music? It's so mid and bad you should listen to real music–" you are a pit of misery

[lunapwrites]

you ever see a character and go "wow, this character is so nuanced and morally gray! their actions and morals don't always align! they're complicated and make bad decisions and behave painfully realistically! I hate them and love them at the same time and that's on purpose! they're so cool! .... fan content is going to misinterpret them completely, isn't it."

[lunapwrites]

Nothing humbles you like your dog making eye contact with you while he's pissing in your shoes.