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"But I need wizard school media to live" just develop bad opinions about the X-Men like a normal person.

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thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.

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my radical belief is that the disabled and the elderly should be paid at least the average cost of living, regardless of the life they lived. regardless if they ever worked or what work they did or if they were responsible with their choices in life or not

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There's a progress flag in the window of my favorite book store. It's been there for years. It's there year-round. It's the reason why it's my favorite book store. It's so comforting to know you're welcome somewhere

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you people will just. say anything

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Design graphics Geya Shvecova (Glass Substance) V.2 Archive_281224

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this answer on a “what’s the most embarrassing thing you did as a kid” reddit thread has been haunting me since i read it

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Puppy who saw his owner on TV

⚠️do not reupload or edit my photos and postings without my permission｜禁二传

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my tumblr ads are alternating between reminding me i’m a dyke and telling me to fear the space scorpion

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I also have a brain dump doc where I literally just write the thoughts. “What if my OC and this one got married”, “wouldn’t it be so cute if x and y did this thing?”. It doesn’t feel as stressful as writing the whole scene out because it’s just a one-sentence idea. Sometimes it turns into an outline or a little drabble, but often it stays just that one sentence.

Any advice for people who have lots of Thoughts™️ about fictional characters but who have not, in the past, enjoyed the act of writing? I was always bad at it in school, which didn't help, and I know ~"you should write it even if it's bad"~ however I am still a recovering perfectionist and this is easier said than done (hence the not enjoying it). Add on top of that that writing fiction is very different from writing a 5 paragraph persuasive essay or whatever else they taught in school, so the little I do know doesn't feel applicable. (I'd just draw fanart instead, but my abilities do not lie there either lol). But I desperately want a way to actually engage in fandoms instead of just lurking in the shadows, and you seem to be quite knowledgeable about writing

Okay so first of all I am SO EXCITED for you because you get to start a new creative pursuit and it's one that comes with a huge community of like-minded people. One of my absolute favourite things in fandom is getting to see people posting their first fic. Truly a magical experience. I am always so so proud of them.

Second, have a quote from Jodi Picoult which is a favourite amongst my beloved writing group:

You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

The trick with writing is that in order to do it, you have to do it. In this way it is similar to the majority of human endeavour.

If you genuinely hate the process then my sincere advice is to not do this. You've only got, like, 100 years at the outside on this little rock. Better not to spend any of them doing things you do not enjoy in your leisure time, if at all possible. Make playlists or reclists, start conversations, take up podficcing, take up fic binding, write meta about your character thoughts, do something congenial to you (and some part of fandom must be congenial to you or you wouldn't like. Be here.)

However. If you do want to write, and you think you could learn to love the process, or at least want to try, here are some inroads you could take a crack at:

Outline your idea rather than trying to write it as a polished narrative and post that. I do this a lot. Sometimes I then go back and actually write the fic, sometimes someone else writes the fic for me, which is delightful. (This looks like "So I'm thinking about a fic in which Aloysius inherits a haunted mansion..." etc.)

Use an established format. The only one of these still remotely in fashion is 5 + 1 fics, I think (back in my day we wrote songfics and listfics and Very Secret Diaries riffs but I think if you do that last one now Cassandra Clare steals your lunch maybe idk). This I also do all the time, as a way to break the seal on a new fandom. The format is such that you're practically just filling in the blanks. You could do something like this in as little as six sentences.

Try epistolary format (letters/texts/emails/post-it notes/notes scribbled in the margins of a notebook/whatever). This cuts all the tricky bits of prose narrative and allows you to focus on the events of a story using a form of writing you are undoubtedly already comfortable with.

Try a retelling. This is what the pros do when they're stuck & it's just fanfic layered with fanfic, really. Crack open a copy of your favourite fairy tale and just rewrite it. Sentence for sentence if you like, with nothing more than names and details changed. Pick a single scene from something you like and rewrite it for The Characters.

There are probably a million more ways to approach this, but the overall point is to get you to start. You simply cannot do a thing without doing the thing. Once you've started, then you can worry about improvement. Or not. You are not obliged to be 'good' at writing in order to do it. Many professional career writers are fucking awful.

A bonus few things I wish I could personally carve into the inside of every new writer's skull:

You are allowed to write more than one story in your life, the first one does not have to say Everything You've Ever Wanted To Say or contain Every Single Idea You've Had. It's probably better if it doesn't, even!

It is orders of magnitude better to finish a very short story that has a complete arc than to get 10% in to an epic and then stop because you don't know how to continue it. If all your writing practice involves writing openings and then stopping, you are teaching yourself to write openings and then stop. Better to write 100 words and have it be a complete story than 10,000 words of introduction.

There's no such thing as 'good' or 'bad' art and you should be suspicious of anyone who tells you there is. The measure of success in art is that it's what you meant it to be.

You cannot possibly please everyone. The person you should focus on pleasing is yourself, because you are the only person obliged to interact with your work. Might as well be fun for you.

Talent isn't real. Anyone who appears to be 'talented' has put a lot of hours of work into doing the thing they're doing.

If you take no other advice from this list, take this piece: read more. Read widely. Read old books, read new books. Read people's dropped grocery lists. Read amateurs, read professionals, read poetry and lyrics and the backs of shampoo bottles. The more words you absorb, the more you have to draw from when you sit down to write.

All that said: please imagine me rolling out the welcome mat and blowing a party whistle while eagerly beckoning you to come in and join the wider writing community.

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I love all books but sometimes you read a book and you’re like so were all 21 thousand of you blindfolded and at gun point when you rated it 5 stars

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What if you went grocery shopping and the produce section was just missing?

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abled people are so funny because theyll be like 😳 wow i didnt think of that 😳 and its like yeah i'll bet

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A Texas judge last month ordered Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York City, to pay the penalty for allegedly breaking that state’s law by prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine. The Texas attorney general’s office followed up last week by asking a New York court to enforce the default civil judgment, which is $113,000 with attorney and filing fees. The acting Ulster County clerk refused. “In accordance with the New York State Shield Law, I have refused this filing and will refuse any similar filings that may come to our office. Since this decision is likely to result in further litigation, I must refrain from discussing specific details about the situation,” Acting Clerk Taylor Bruck said in a prepared statement.

This is what we're talking about. This is the resistance someone can do in their everyday job. Judgement gets passed down and you're just supposed to dot the i's and cross the t's? Don't. Just refuse.

Now, I know an acting county clerk isn't just anyone - this man had a very unique opportunity to do some very serious blockading in his everyday job - but that's kind of the point! Nobody's just anyone. You never know when you'll have an opportunity.

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The only way a bisexual house episode would happen is house makes a weirdly specific and knowledgeable joke about gay sex and Wilson asks if that’s true/how he knows that and house goes “from fucking men”. Wilson’s initial reaction is a bit weird so he spends the rest of the episode trying to show how good of an ally he is by trying to support house’s bisexuality by “checking out” men with house like he would with women but it’s just weird. House wants to see how far Wilson will go with his allyship and it gets to the point where house brings Wilson to a gay strip club, where Wilson is extremely uncomfortable. They get back to house’s place and house finally tells Wilson he’s just fucking with him, Wilson doesn’t need to do all that weird shit, just treat him like he normally does. Wilson actually takes it to heart and asks what kind of men house is into and house answers by describing Wilson exactly. Wilson low key freaks but then he realizes house is fucking with him and he’s like “oh you’re messing with me” and house is like “fucking obviously. I like twinks with big butts, why do you think I hired Chase?” Wilson turns to his drink on the table and laughs, camera shows house looking lovingly at Wilson, end of episode