sarahwrites-a-lot

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

people might think creating OC lore involves a lot of thinking & planning, but in my personal experience, OC development is more like a divine vision from a god slamming you over the head with a mallet while ur doing the fuckin dishes or folding laundry

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

the years of believing myself nigh inhuman with the shame and guilt and fear I felt led to such beauty. such loves. So cradle that little sparrow, see. She is small and dying upon the ground. You won't ever hear that song again, but you can save a life. So that's what you do. That's all that you need to do.

This is how it goes; the flutter of a brief, light heartbeat, quick as the step of a stranger passing by. Her little eyes peer up at you as little eclipses, blackened and shiny, unable to be understood, so foreign as she is. Thumb against her little chest, feeling the quick breaths, the soft feathers against such a tiny patch of skin. It didn't matter if she only lived for another day, another week, another month. She was alive for now. It doesn't matter if something will die later. If something fights to live, then it deserves that chance. It doesn't need to be beautiful to last, you see. It just needs to live.

Here is the moral. Here's the reason, the answer, the ending. You are laying on my chest and my face is tucked into the side of your throat; I am kissing the skin, gentle, soft as prayers. I've long since wrapped my arms around your ribs, hands resting against your back. Through my fingertips I think I can feel the deep thrum of your heart, beating out of your skin. Sometimes I wonder if the frail pieces of you yearn to burst out of your body and settle into my hands as mine do for you. I rub circles with my fingertips against the skin, touching the knobs of your spine, careful against stretch marks, trailing my nails against the skin and feeling the barely-there drag. Our legs are all kinds of tangled; my foot is numb, I can't tell who's legs are who's, and the blanket's all wound up between us. My voice is hoarse and dry in this morning, quiet and subdued, meant just for you. This is where I tell you of love; I tell you this story, describe it with simple, meaningful words. I make it personal, sweet, like an early-morning serenade. I litter your jaw with kisses, hand between your shoulder blades, gentle pressure.

This is the ending, you know. The sparrow lives. It is held and kept warm until it can fly away. It may never sing again, but it is gorgeously, wonderfully alive. Here, in this morning, you tell me that I am divine; I tell you that you are the spark which ignites me. What God has worth without a worshipper? I believe a God is the same as any other person without worship. You give this to me—divinity—in sweet words and living gestures and long, euphoric moments just like this. Just like this.

That's the answer. That's the conclusion. We are two dancers out in the field: we are clumsy and beautiful. Sunlight makes you into God in my arms. The sparrow settles upon the branches, a flicker of gold in the leaves.

You can save a life. Of course you must do this. Submit to the messy mortal shame of kneeling in the dirt to cradle a little bird. It's the right thing to do. This is how it all ends. She has such beautiful eyes, eclipsed.

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

So for over a month and a half I’ve been told in my Creative writing MA class that my writing is too poetic and abstract to work in the form of a novel and that I need to simplify my meanings and sentences. I did as I was told and lost all interest in writing if I have to write in the same style that every other novelist does. Today I received this note from a classmate and didn’t realise how much I needed to hear it. Don’t change your art just because other people don’t get it. Don’t change your style to fit in with everyone else. It’s your story not theirs.

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

if the vibes are off, close your document. stare at the wall. think about your protagonist’s childhood trauma. return stronger.

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

yeppppp! getting serious "wishes for ginkgo biloba" vibes from this

i remember you from when we were bugs

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

Victor Frankenstein syndrome aka you spent nights over nights crying and bleeding over this work and now that it's finally done you're just like "nvm. it's trash" and go to bed

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

"i believe in the god that punishes. ain't as definite who he rewards" -augusta gein, random augustas [drama]

🪚 👵 🩸

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

Jean Anouilh (trans. Lewis Galantière), Antigone

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

jason molina’s writing advice to matthew j barnhart via his blackberry in 2008 

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

“I know how this must go: eventually, I have to walk through the shape of  your loss like a door, to the world without the secret knowledge of  birds.”

— Aria Aber, from “An Essay on Loss”

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

Isaac Kariuki for The Isis Nicole Magazine Issue 12

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

the grief of growing

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

my thing i haven’t made is so good 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

Well, I did have the pleasure of dramaturging a world premiere stage play on queer history, and I've never been normal in my search for history to identify with.

So, this is what I can share:

Online Interactive Map

a far from complete canvas of LGBTQ+ spaces and bars in the 20th century Southeastern U.S.- we've always been here!

Selected Research on LGBTQ+ gathering spaces in the 20th century Southeastern U.S.

A document contextualizing addresses, clandestine whispers, and fabulous dens of selfhood for LGBTQ+ people over time in SE U.S.

A gallery of some historic LGBTQ+ historic images to supplement the above^^

some beloved literatures, histories, articles:

Queer Liberation Library, no physical address required

Ben Hurry, an example of a 'physique film' which flew under the comphet radar in historic cinema while making space for queer desire and queer visibility [inspired by this post]

BEING IN THE PICTURE: THE MOVIE FAN AND QUEER LITERATURE

Dr Jekyll's Closet - Elaine Showalter

My Sister, My Spouse: Woman-Identified Women in Medieval Christianity

Mystical Acts, Queer Tendencies

Queering History

LGBTQ dramatic literature (a list as short as my memory currently)

Angels in America, Part 1: Millennium Approches

The Laramie Project

A very queer Romeo and Juliet

Queer Shakespeare: Desire and Sexuality

Broadway's Relationship with the LGBTQ+ Community: A History of Representation and Activism

some social accounts dedicated to LGBTQ+ history and literature:

History is Gay Pod

TheFruitslice Magazine

Pink Triangle Legacies Project

Queer Histories of Hawaii

Keep up the fight, y'all! I promise we're in this together 🔥💚 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Okay, so I try hard to cover global queer history, and this isn't marking a stop to that, but I am aware that most of my audience is American, and I want to address them very directly right now.

Google Removed Pride Month From Its Calendar App, and Stonewall National Monument's "LGBTQ" status was changed to "LGB" on the government website. This is the beginning of the erasure of queer history, not the end. I don't know what the future of the United States looks like, as someone who studies queer history and has done so for many years, I want to share some tools with you.

Now is a good time to prioritize local queer history, Making Gay History is a great project, so is the Digital Transgender Archive, but also check your city and see what resources there are.

Read and buy books about queer history. I have an affiliate list with some of the books I personally recommend.

If you use Google Calendar, repopulate that resource with so much queer history with a free queer history calendar plug-in, it has names from queer history that you can also learn more about for free when they come up. As the author of these articles, feel free to save them, print them off, whatever makes them freely accessible as suppression get's worse.

Use your local library. Email the board about book bans, request banned books, request queer books, and make your voice heard.

Make queer art. Share queer art. Protect queer art. Here is some public-domain queer art to use as you wish.

Keep up with queer news, THEM is a great resource.

All of these tools are currently freely accessible with an internet connection. Queer history is a community responsibility, do your part.

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

"And Cain says, “When you split me and my brother in the womb, you did not divide us evenly. He got kindness, and I got longing. He got complacence, and I got ambition. I want to kill him sometimes. I think sometimes he wants to die.”

- Nathaniel Orion, "Hevel"

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

oh! western and eastern humor both have featured this distinction especially for comic potential - for millennia! 😁 op pressed a button and a random smattering of the 'tism came out, aka what would happen if media parallels and random bits of trivia had a baby:

so you see, humans really are funny sometimes in seeking out the banana-shaped and orange-shaped of our world, lol

examples below the cut:

"make 'em laugh" - singing in the rain (1952)

pantalone and il dottore

friar bacon and friar bungay

groucho and chico marx

the rabbit and the wolf

laurel and hardy, photo via bettman archival collection

abbott and costello, photo by glen adams

kenan and kel (1996-2000)

waldorf and statler

friday (1995)

rosencrantz and guildenstern

Indian Hindi-language film duo akshay kumar and paresh rawal

xiangsheng, or crosstalk , photo by @/susans_cookietin2

* oh, and * bigness, littleness, fat, and skinny, and other opposites pertaining to bodies can indeed be loaded concepts. we celebrate all bodies here- and footnote with some awesome scholarly texts on this language's very real impact:

Fat Commentary and Fat Humor Presented in Visual Media

Fat stigmatization in television shows and movies

From Amazon Warriors to Hobbits: Heightism and the Cultural “Staturization” of Identities

[sarahwrites-a-lot]

Short Story Recommendations

These all fuck me up to a varying degree of emotions

Crime

Philomel Cottage - Agatha Christie

Lamb to the Slaughter - Roald Dahl

Death and the Compass - Jorge Luis Borges

Horror

The Landlady - Roald Dahl

A Walk in the Dark - Arthur C Clarke

The Wife’s Story - Ursula K Le Guin

The Veldt - Ray Bradbury

The Hanging Stranger - Philip K Dick

The Colour out of Space - H P Lovecraft

The Spider - Hanns Heinz Ewers

Sad

The Life You Save May Be Your Own - Flannery O’Connor

A Small, Good Thing - Raymond Carver

Cathedral - Raymond Carver

The Haunted Boy - Carson McCullers

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - Ursula K. Le Guin

The Chef - Andy Weir

The Martyr - Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

Jambula Tree - Monica Arak de Nyeko

The Rats Do Sleep At Night - Wolfgang Borchert

Sci-Fi

Love is the Plan the Plan is Death - James Tiptree Jr

The Last Question - Isaac Asimov

The Nine Billion Names of God - Arthur C Clarke

The Star - Arthur C Clarke

Reunion - Arthur C Clarke

The Commuter - Philip K Dick

Exhibit Piece - Philip K Dick

To Serve Man - Damon Knight

Brothers Beyond the Void - Paul W Fairman

What the Fuck?! 

The Lottery - Shirley Jackson

A Collapse of Horses - Brian Evenson

Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby - Donald Barthelme

Hopeful Monsters - Hiromi Goto

The Box Social - James Reaney

He-y come on ou-t - shinichi hoshi

The Garden of Forking Paths - Jorge Luis Borges

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang (just the entire collection bro)

Other

Broken Routine - Jeffrey Archer

A Man Who Had No Eyes - Mackinlay Kantor

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been - Joyce Carol Oates

The Lady, or the Tiger - Frank R Stockton

The Continuity of Parks - Julio Cortázar

The Dinner Party - Mona Gardner

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings - Gabriel Garc��a Márquez

On Exactitude in Science - Jorge Luis Borges