preposterousprophetess

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"If you use em dash in your works, it makes them look AI generated. No real human uses em dash."

Imaging thinking actual human writers are Not Real because they use... professional writing in their works.

Imagine thinking millions of people who have been using em dash way before AI becomes a thing are all robots.

REBLOG IF YOU'RE A HUMAN AND YOU USE EM DASH

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i’m either the most brilliant person alive or an emotional wreck with a god complex. no in-between.

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Enya appreciation post!!! She is also known as: baby, darling, princess, enyard, angel, demon destroyer, Ms. sweetie pie, pumpkin pea, perfect :)

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you know what SOTR also calls out? (Spoilers🚨)

Louella, a little brown Seam girl from District 12, is replaced with a tortured nameless little Brown girl from District 11.

To the Capitol, one Brown girl is the same as any other.

To white media, one brown person being included is a success, is the same as any other

To their families, their communities, the people who know them— the difference is obvious and immediate.

We are not replaceable.

this has been another tea time with Hawk ���️🦅

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Finishing up my read of “Women and Girls with Autism Spectrum Disorder” and now I’m starting To Realize™️

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reading a basic sentence another writer wrote: yes, masterpiece, wonderful

reading the same quality of sentence i wrote myself: dogshit. why do i try?

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Me when there’s a cat

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Hi guys! This is my finalized version of a creative nonfiction essay I wrote about my relationship with my “home.” I hope you enjoy! ~ Liv

The Walls Are Watching

The second yellow house on Conner Court is a castle. These thick walls protect me from swooshing, swaying winds that storm through the shadowy valley my family calls home. The bright purple door welcomes visitors to our front porch once they’ve passed the moat of garden beds, vibrant with fresh strawberries and rhubarb. A canvas teepee sits in the forest clearing west of the castle, and the imaginary aroma from its unlit cobblestone campfire floats through the backyard. This wild yard—brimming with insect life, budding native flowers, and tiny rodents—is where I wander. Searching for treasure, magic weapons, the antidote to my poisons. In the wintertime, the top layer of the snow melts and refreezes strong enough to hold me up, and I dance in the backyard with the lightness of a fairy.

There is magic within these walls, the warm and fuzzy kind that permeates every corner of the house. It shows itself when I sink into the cushiony velvet of my parent’s living room couch, where sleep pulls me under, and I wake to the smell of warm bread fresh from the oven. It shows itself when my skin sticks to the pleather of the large red bean bag in the bay window, bathing myself in the summer sun whilst snuggling in a blanket. It shows itself in the high-pitched squeaks of our guinea pigs—from their large cage that took up a quarter of our living room—when my mom opened our veggie drawer. In the crisp, fresh well water. In the howling winds of the valley wispings through our window screens and rustling leaves on birch trees outside.

✤ ✤ ✤

The second yellow house on Conner Court is a sanctuary, a temple to the Christian god my parents bow down to. They adorn these halls with crosses and bible quotes, paintings and commandments. Every meal is served with the appetizer of grace, which must always be consumed before the entree. Each slumber is preceded by a family gathering, a nightly ritual to meditate on whatever is taking up our thoughts, praying for a better day. My parents enforce a strict adherence to the rules set out by their god, although they strangely don’t follow some because “that’s the OLD testament,” whatever that means. No swearing, no using god’s name in vain (yes, that includes “omg” and “jeez”), no words that imply cursing (frick, darn, shoot), no cropped clothing or low necklines. There are a lot of rules they ensure we follow, many of which they don’t even follow themselves. Funny how that works. I thought the saying was “lead by example,” not “do as I say, not as I do.”

It isn’t all rules and prayer, though. Every Sunday we spend hours upon hours playing four-square in the church parking lot, waiting on dad to finish up his counseling and advising. I like Sunday because that means donuts, Kathy always brings donuts to share. Wednesday night bible study is my favorite—we sometimes get to have a Papa John’s potluck, and mom drives us to McDonald’s for ice cream cones before heading home. I like memorizing verses and showing off my recitation of the ten commandments to my parents. I like being the know-it-all in Sunday school. I like being the pastor’s daughter. I felt like someone important.

My brother is caught stealing from the tithe box. I’m banned from babysitting the kindergarteners after telling the kids that god created everything, except for Ants—I created those. My sister refuses to come to church. My dad refuses her refusal. We act normal at church. We sing the songs before heading across the parking lot to Sunday school. We show up and play our part. We say the lines. We memorize the verses. We shake the hands we’re supposed to. He smiles. We’re putting up a perfect performance for them.

✤ ✤ ✤

The second yellow house on Conner Court is a fortress, its walls standing tall and firm, to both confine those within and bar those without. The walls watch as my siblings and I carefully tip-toe around the house, closing doors ever so gently, making sure our music doesn’t raise to a volume that is noticeable. They watch as my father berates his eldest daughter. How dare she get a snack late at night? How dare she take a shower? How dare she like a boy? How dare she turn into the spitting image of her father during his youth, quick to anger and slow to understand. The walls watch on as his words slowly break her down, as she wilts and rebels, as he spats bible quotes in her face as an excuse for his wrath. They watch as I turn the lock of my bedroom door, hoping it isn’t my room he comes to first when he gets home from work, hoping I don’t have to deal with the poison he spits.

I often wonder what the walls think about my father; what would they whisper to a listening ear? Would they remember the turn of events as I do? Would they be confused that I still love him? That I continue to visit despite everything he’s done? I want them to tell me his cherry, fat-and-happy old man demeanor is actually genuine. Perhaps that’s just how he interacts with people he doesn’t live with. Perhaps it would be different behind closed doors, like it was before. I want them to tell me if he’s actually changed, even if the answer isn’t what I need.

✤ ✤ ✤

The second yellow house on Conner Court is now as familiar as it is alien to me. On the hot August day, I packed my parents’ Expedition up with all the belongings I thought might be considered mine; I sensed a small hollow forming in my heart; an abrasion that wounded the safety I felt in familiarity. The wound has since scabbed over, but there are still days I long to be back behind those walls.

Despite my previous eagerness to run as far away as possible from them, I find myself being called back. When I visit, however, it is not the same. Of course, it is the same house it has always been, the same orange vinyl wooden floors in the kitchen and downstairs, the same sad-beige mid-2000s carpet that has been stained from all kinds of paint, the same glossy black fridge that hasn’t had a working ice/water dispenser in over a decade, the same eggplant purple front door. In many of the ways that matter, though, it’s not. The walls I was raised in now wear unfamiliar paintings and decor, their eyes boring holes through me as if I’m intruding into their carefully crafted space. The large, retro brown couches have been replaced by angular, modern grey sofas; the TV is as thin as paper and as large as an at-home movie theater; the dishes I grew up with have all broken by now. I no longer know where they keep the kitchen trash can or which closet houses extra towels. The items I forgot to pack when I left for college sit in boxes with my name scrawled in black Sharpie. The landline we used to share has been disconnected for years. I fall through the snow now. My fairy wings have withered. The magic I once knew sputtered out. The walls no longer recognize me.

[preposterousprophetess]

i’m so appreciative to suzanne for reframing the rebellion from the original trilogy as a “they saw their moment and took it” type situation and showing us that they’ve been trying, over and over, with so many failed attempts, to break the arena and incite a rebellion for decades. in this current political climate never giving up hope is so essential. haymitch wasn’t the first nor the last, and they kept going even when it seemed completely futile, and that’s what counts, and what ultimately saves them all.

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I am having a moment right now where I’m realizing I can use a plot I created and never used for a D&D campaign and a language I created last summer out of boredom and merge them with the characters/setting I’ve been brewing while bored at work to create something BEAUTIFUL!

WE’RE SO FUCKING BACK BABY

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I’ve been having a lot of writer’s block with this creative nonfiction piece I’m writing about my cat. Staring at a blank google doc is just daunting; I’m sitting there staring at a white screen and blinking cursor as my brain suddenly forgets everything I’ve ever known.

I’ve found some solutions by breaking the piece into different text pages on Scrivener. It allows me to focus on the minutiae of the specific section rather than the entire document.

What do you guys do when you have writer’s block? I would love to know :D

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PLEASE Write Your Book!

I'm serious. Please write it. If you need a sign to start, continue, or whatever is inbetween, this is it. Go do it.

I spent the past couple weeks indulging myself in some BookTok recommendations. While some were indeed good (Kings of Sin, my beloved), some were just...I don't need to finish my sentence there.

I DNF'd some books for the first time since I read Lord of the Flies (sorry Golding, you put me to sleep with your descriptions) and I powered through others in hopes that they would eventually get better. The general consensus I ended up getting was that I could not understand for the fucking life of me how these books got published. The writing in some of them was no better than that of a 2010s teen writing Maximum Ride fic on Wattpad for the first time, with the characterization abysmal enough to match.

I don't want to knock any specific author or book here, because I will concede one thing: they finished their books. They got them published. They're successful. For that, I commend them, because I'm still on my way there myself and I can't take that away from them. Jolly good show.

But that brings me to my point: if they can do it, YOU absolutely can do it too.

If some of these Amazon and NYT bestsellers can have prose on a Wattpad level with characters that have enough poorly-written cognitive dissonance to make Deadpool or Walter White jealous, your fleshed out, deeply intuitive, and remarkably creative epic can sit right alongside them no problem. Whether you're writing the next GoT or a romantic slice-of-life, there is a not a goddamn thing on this planet stopping you from rolling up with the big dogs.

If these guys can do it, so can you.

So, stop telling yourself you can't. Stop letting other people tell you you can't. Stop comparing yourself to these authors who, respectfully and bluntly, can't write for shit (or at least need to fire their fucking editors, good lord).

WRITE YOUR DAMN BOOK. PLEASE. WE NEED IT.

(If you like my guides, prompts, writing, or art, consider supporting the blog today! All donations help me keep this thing up and running and all are appreciated <3)

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[preposterousprophetess]

Getting my period on my birthday is a celestial curse I just know it.

[preposterousprophetess]

ultimate character development template

basics

name: meaning of name: nicknames/titles: age: gender: location: birthday: strengths + example where it's shown: weaknesses + example where it's shown: how it affects others:

emotional depth

attachment style + how it manifests in the story: physical fear: emotional/abstract fear: happy memory: sad memory: object of significance: philosophical outlook/belief: what characters are ignorant about themselves: how confident are they: goal: long-term dreams: what they're embarrassed/ashamed to tell others about: regrets: source of pride: source of misery: what they admire above all else: do they believe in fate:

personality

mbti: enneagram: big five: character archetype: star sign: who they pretend to be on the outside: who they actually are/how they feel towards the mask: mental health conditions: how it manifests for them: iq: eq: humour: reputation:

habits

bad habits: mannerisms when stressed: mannerisms when content: mannerisms when scared: mannerisms normally: verbal mannerisms/distinctive speaking style: how do they move across a room: what do they say and what remains unsaid: how they express love: hobbies:

appearance

defining features: eye shape + colour: hair texture + colour: skin texture + tone: vibe: height: build: clothing: any bodily disfigurement (scars, etc.): overall attractiveness: their opinion on their appearance: appeals to:

relationships

who they trust most: what they wish they could do for them: what's holding them back: who they hate most: what they wish they could do to them: what's holding them back: relationship with the protagonist: relationship with the antagonist: siblings: relationship with them: parents/step-parents: relationship with them: previous broken relationships: why did it break: what others expect of them: who believes in them: their mentor character/who they look up to: political/religious/other affiliations: what makes them different from every other character: non-human relationships + why: romantic "type" + why: relationship dynamics:

backstory/background

primary emotion towards their past: primary feelings while in their past: where did they grow up: defining incidents: earliest childhood memory: saddest memory: happiest memory: major accomplishments: their opinion on it: notable people in their backstory: effect on them today: trauma: what have they already lost: financial circumstance:

progression

why are they important (eg. why're they the only one able to do something?): what do they learn about themselves throughout the story: what do they learn about the world: how do they feel towards their newfound knowledge: character arc (positive, negative, neutral): how relationships change because of their actions: what mistakes do they make: what scene is their character highlighted: do they get what they want: why or why not: what happens to them after the story ends:

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I might just be fucking stupid but it just hit me that I don't NEED my laptop to write my stories. I don't NEED to sit down on my bed or kitchen table and stare at my keyboard trying to make it type on its own. I can open the WIP on my phone and do it there. I have free will. There is nothing stopping me. There is no right or wrong way to write