#and originally i was going to try to like. excerpt it and shape it more to my taste in that way

[aeide-thea]

As soon as I stopped talking about myself in second person, it sucked the defensive posturing, language, and energy out of most of the conversations I had with people, both in person and online.

Quick recap on first, second, third person

First person uses: I, me, mine, we, etc. Second person uses: you, yours, etc. Third person uses: they, she, he, her, him, their, it, etc.

What the hell I mean by “talking about myself in second person”

“Oh, you know, when you’re trying to get out the door for work in the morning, and it’s just one thing after another. First you break your favorite coffee mug, then you can’t find your keys, then you drop your purse and spill everything out. You know that kind of day?”

I’m not actually talking about “you” in that paragraph. Not until the last sentence. I’m actually describing ME, a morning I experienced. But, I’m not simply describing my day and asking if “you” (the person I’m speaking to) knows what I mean. I’m, with my speech, assuming they’ve shared this experience, and talking about it as if it’s a shared experience that they do know. Further, I’m assuming, with my language, that they feel about it the same way I do.

Some experiences ARE universal. … I think. Maybe. If we take care to talk about them vaguely enough and don’t include details which vary from person to person. Many experiences are NOT universal.

The BIG and UNNECESSARY gambles that talking about myself in second person takes

When I project my experience onto someone, unless my projection “feels good” to them, chances are they’ll want to defend themselves against it.

It could be that they have a negative perception of the experience, or the kind of person who has had that experience. Some really put together not-clumsy folks (whose hands don’t occasionally just spasm open and launch something across the room for no reason) look down on forgetful, clumsy experiences like this morning I just described. Some people feel shame when they themselves are clumsy. When I describe THEM as being clumsy and forgetful that does NOT feel good to them.

It could be that I’m describing something as negative that they don’t believe is negative at all. For some people, this is a relatively NORMAL morning, which I’m describing as being abnormal and bad. Hence, I’m calling them abnormal and bad, and assuming they feel abnormal and bad about themselves.

It could be a dozen other scenarios I’ve not thought of.

THE ONLY way this kind of communication is successful is if we both share my experience and also my feelings and perception of the experience. And they’re open to sharing those feelings with me.

There’s no reason for me to make that one scenario the only successful communication scenario. Nor to leave so many possibilities for defensiveness.

What I can say instead

I can just use the first person. That’s it. It’s that simple.

“Oh, man, I’m having one of those mornings I do sometimes. Just trying to get out the door for work, and it’s been one thing after another. First I break my favorite coffee mug, then I can’t find my keys, then I drop my purse and spill everything out. You know that kind of day?”

In this scenario, I’m not asking the other person to picture themselves having this awful day. They don’t think about their coffee mug breaking, nor having trouble finding their own keys. I’m not insinuating anything about how put-together or not-put-together they are. Or what they feel about this kind of day. I’m just sharing what happened to me, and letting them picture me instead of themselves as I describe it. When I say “you” in this version, I actually DO mean the person I’m speaking to, and NOT myself.

With this version of the story, my communication has a much better chance of being successful. That is, of me being able to accurately paint a picture of what I’m describing without introducing unnecessary barriers to the information.

If someone CAN imagine this happening, and they’re willing to keep talking, then I’ve succeeded. They don’t have to respond to their own emotions about my assumptions about them. They can instead just listen and respond to me.

It CAN sometimes be good to speak about an experience in this way, assuming it is shared

It actually CAN be a useful bonding tool, to assume with my language that the experience and my feelings about it are shared. It can feel good to both of us not to be alone in this life and all the crazy, horrible, beautiful things that happen to us in it.

It’s just that that’s ONLY helpful to do when it’s TRUE.

This has been a weirdly hard habit to break, but soooo worth it

Turns out, when I’m really craving to know I’m not alone in something, or when I feel vulnerable, I WANT it to be a shared experience. I really, really WANT it to be true that it HAS happened to the person I’m talking to, and that they share my feelings. At least, that’s why I think this habit really took hold of me. It’s also true that this was the way adults around me spoke when I was a kid, and I just learned it the same way I learned all language.

The payoff in breaking this habit has been HUGE though.

My sloppy language use in mixing up what is “me-stuff” and what is “them-stuff” had meant I actually never had to THINK about the possibly different experiences and perspectives of myself and people I spoke with. Assuming, with my language, that both our experiences and perspectives of those experiences were the same meant that I was actually ASSUMING these things were true in reality.

Turns out, as soon as I stop to think about my word use, and sort out if I am talking about me or them, I actually have to STOP and THINK about the two of us as being different.

This has been a goddamn gold mine. For real.

It allows me to be open to other people sharing something different about what I say. I don’t feel closed off and defensive if they don’t share my experience. I’m already entertaining the idea that they might feel differently about this kind of experience, or that they might NEVER have had it at all, and have only an outsider’s perspective of it.

I end up holding FEWER assumptions about other people, because I’m not making those assumptions about them when I speak about myself. Because I’m making fewer assumptions about them, there’s fewer things for them to feel defensive about.

I also am able to feel so much more clarity, in my own mind, about when I *am* actually talking about other people, and not myself. This has been additionally really helpful to my healing from codependency.

So there it is, my favorite communication life hack: When I’m talking about me, my experience, my life, I talk in the first person. It means I’ve stopped projecting myself onto the people I speak with, and thus, they don’t have to defend themselves against my projection onto them.

[ohcorny]

hey corny. so i always see people recommending to outline their story before starting it, but could you talk a little bit more about what that means? what is an outline and how do you structure one? how long are the ones you write, depending on the project? do you focus on plot beats or feelings? how specific do you get? can u recommend any readings for learning more?

up front i don't have any resources for this, only experience. and outlines feel like one of those things where it's like... there are a million ways to do it and the way that works for me might not work for you. i have a friend who writes out all his ideas on index cards and that, for me, is insane. but he's also a better writer than me so who can say what is right or wrong.

anyway an outline is essentially a sketch but for a story. you go through the whole thing, start to finish, and figure out what goes where and what happens when. the idea is that this is the stage where you work out all the big picture stuff and make sure it all fits together, now, and not after you've drawn twenty pages and suddenly go "wait shit that doesn't work" and have to do it over. it is much easier to delete and rewrite a paragraph than to redraw several pages.

doing anything more, ie including dialogue or feelings, depends entirely on how useful that information is to you at that point in the process and whether the purpose of the outline is for your own guidance, or so somebody else can tell what you're trying to achieve.

this got really long with multiple examples

here is an excerpt from the original outline i used to pitch Hunger's Bite to publishers. this one had to be polished to a professional standard, because somebody else was going to read it and decide whether they wanted to give me thousands of dollars to tell this story. (also several of the details are no longer accurate. for instance it now takes place 9 years earlier lmao)

this paragraph represents the first eight pages of the book. the final book is 264 pages long, and the outline was 12 pages of paragraphs as dense as this one.

it establishes where we are, who's there, and what they're doing. i describe their conversation, but i don't commit to the dialogue. i will occasionally include snippets of literal dialogue, but usually only if it's Important Dialogue, or i just don't want to forget a good idea i had while outlining. it's not expected at this step.

an outline written as part of a pitch to a publisher should tell the whole story, with all the important details, and leave nothing ambiguous. they need to know the tone, shape, and the arcs. no secrets! all the spoilers. outlines for yourself should do this too, but outlines for others need to be as clear about your vision as possible. again, an outline like this exists for the purpose of getting you paid thousands of dollars. you should write it like that.

in comparison, here's an excerpt from the outline i wrote for revisions to my WIP prose novel, so i could show it to my agent (who already read the draft) to be like "do these changes sound good?" i'm not selling it to anyone yet, just making a guide so i can have a conversation about it. so it doesn't need to be neat, it just needs to be functional and clear. the first chapter was entirely new stuff. the second bit was just writing down what was already in the chapter that existed.

i have historically been very bad at outlining things when i don't think i "need" to, and only wrote this one after having written like 60k words of the book without any overall plan. i gave what i had to my agent for feedback and then sat down and figured out how i could apply it. it's made the whole revisions process significantly less daunting. now i have a checklist for things i need to do! this one was a paragraph or two for each chapter, with the ones that needed a lot of rewriting given a bit more detail.

lastly, here's a bit of the outline for the first roger crenshaw book. i was the only person who had to see this, and since the story was planned to be very short i didn't have to worry about a whole lot. as long as i knew what was supposed to go where, it would work. honestly it's not a whole lot different from the previous example.

this one was like five paragraphs and it did the job, and this story was like 15k words. you only need as much or as little as will actually help you on the page.

basically if you take nothing else from this, it's that there are multiple ways to write an outline, that it does not need to be perfect if you're doing it for yourself, and that it only needs what you think is important (unless it is for other people. then it should have everything). and also it's a good idea to do it earlier in the project than after you've written 60k words or drawn--jesus christ i got up to 12 chapters in never satisfied? it's amazing i didn't quit sooner

[kaylinalexanderbooks]

Find the word

Thanks to @writingsfromspace for the tag!

My words: find, water, star, fly

Your words: ground, copy, thought, bottom

Tagging @awritingcaitlin @writernopal @winterandwords @sarandipitywrites @mjjune @dyrewrites @sarahlizziewrites @i-can-even-burn-salad @sleepywriter00 @sunset-a-story @stesierra @imsoveryveryconfusedatlife @finickyfelix

TSP intro

TSP tag list (ask to be +/-): @thepeculiarbird @illarian-rambling @televisionjester @finchwrites

Keep reading for:

Ash nearly faints

Take a shot of water every time I say water in this excerpt

Argument between Rose and Maddie

Gwen meets Akash

Find - from The Secret Portal Part One (Ash POV)

I felt like collapsing in a cluster of red ferns by the time I reached the trees. Soon, I was using the trunks to hold myself up. A sudden ringing in my ears made my head feel like it split open. I let out a cry as I pressed my fingers to my forehead. I heard a little girl screaming. I tried to find the origin of the sound, but I found no one. The screaming didn’t stop. I kept going forward, covering my ears, trying to make it go away. I collapsed on the ground in a patch of violet-colored flowers, curling into a ball. My head spun as I stared at the petals. They weren’t like any other flower I’d seen. Their purple color was so vibrant, I debated its existence. There were three layers of tear-shaped petals swirling around the center, creating a dizzying spiral. I closed my eyes; the petals were making me sicker. Slowly, the screaming stopped. My vision cleared. I shook my head and pulled myself up and rested my body on the nearest tree trunk. I closed and opened my eyes slowly as the world slowly came back into focus. What just happened? Who was that?

Water - from The Secret Portal Part One (Ash POV)

I entered the kitchen, pushing off the wall so I could rummage through the cabinet. I pulled out a glass and filled it with water from the fridge. I guzzled the water but almost spit it out. As soon as the water graced my lips, a sudden blue light flashed in front of me. Shaking it off as an effect of the devices, I refilled the glass to the brim. The blue lights happened again. During the third refill, my eyes rested on the time, a small light on the fridge. It was six am. There was no way I used the devices before even two. And there was no way that vision took more than five minutes. “Shit!” I hissed as my shock caused the water to spill over the glass. I guzzled the water again before grabbing a towel to clean up my mess. Once I did, I stood back up, tossed the towel on the counter, and looked at the clock again. I sighed. I wasn't sure what I was going to do in the remaining time that I had before everyone else awoke.

Did you take the shots of water? Do you have to pee yet?

Star - from The Secret Portal Part One (Maddie POV)

“What’s happening?” Rose murmured. “You lead us through a death portal,” I muttered, joking slightly. Rose swiveled her head toward me. “Excuse me? You were the one who had a mental breakdown when Lexi didn’t answer her damn phone!” “Well, Lexi and Ash ended up here, so I had the right idea,” I said, not sure why she was mad. “Fine. You were right. Gold star.” Rose glared down at me. “And don’t blame me for what happened to Noelle.” “It’s partially my fault,” I said, lightly pushing her away from my face. “I suggested Lexi's disappearance, but you led us here, so a bit of yours, too.” Rose stepped toward me again. “This. Is not. My fault.” “I said it’s partially my fault,” I insisted, pushing her away again. She pushed me back this time, which irritated me. I only pushed her because she was in my face. “Why don’t you admit you’re partially responsible for Noelle’s injury?” I pushed in retaliation this time. “We’re gonna get her to a hospital, and then we’re gonna look for my sister, who you seem to have forgotten about because you’re too wrapped in yourself to care if Lexi’s okay.” I bit my tongue. That wasn't a good thing to say. I wasn't sure where it came from. Rose’s jaw clenched. She lifted her fist—I thought she would push me again, but she just jabbed me with her finger on every word— “Don’t. Ever. Say. I don’t care about Lexi. She means more to me than you could imagine.” “I’m her sister,” I pointed out. “How could you—” I poked her back— “imagine how much she means to me?” Rose took a step back. She looked down at her feet for a second. I did the same. Gwen pointed out I was arguing earlier when I didn’t mean to, which sometimes happened to me. Arguing wasn’t gonna get Lexi—or Ash—back, and it wasn't gonna get Noelle to a hospital either. I wondered if Rose would hate me forever after this.

Fly - from The Secret Portal Part One (Gwen POV)

My left foot slammed into a vent cover, knocking me off balance and causing my butt to slam against the cover, knocking it off. I fell through the hole and somehow managed to grab the edges of the vent. I heard the cover crash onto the floor below me as I dangled from the ceiling. “Hey, who’re you?” a voice said. I looked around, trying to find the owner of the voice when my eyes finally rested on a boy. He was probably a year or so older than me with dark brown skin. He had short and spiky hair and his ears stuck out a little. He wore a yellow polo t-shit over a long-sleeved white shirt and dark-blue jeans. It took a moment to realize the boy was at eye level while I hung from the ceiling. I looked down and saw the boy’s feet were a good ten feet from the ground. He was floating. “Who are you?” the boy repeated. I looked back up. I realized he was kinda cute. Even with the messy bedhead. “Um, Gwen.” “Akash,” he said. Actually, especially with the messy bedhead. I realized I was staring when Akash smiled. “You’re new around here, aren’t you?” When I didn’t answer, he added, “You want me to help you down?” I nodded, and Akash wrapped his arm around me. I flinched slightly—a cute boy was touching me!—but allowed him to do so. I let go of the vent and let him fly me to the floor. I suddenly realized I had wrapped my arms around him. I quickly pushed away from him. “Thanks,” I muttered. I glanced off to the side and panic ran through me when I noticed a bed. I could feel my cheeks turning red. I just fell into a cute boy’s room! As if I wasn’t embarrassed enough.

[havendance]

Batman for Dummies

Chapter 3: Starring NIGHTWING as the Cavalry

AO3: Chapter 3 | Read from the beginning

Fandom: Batman

Featured Characters/Relationships: Helena Bertinelli & Tim Drake, but look basically everyone shows up this chapter including, but not limited to: Dick, Barbara, Jean-Paul Valley, and Bruce too I guess.

Wordcount: 9100

Fic Summary:

In the aftermath of the quake that shook Gotham, Helena Bertinelli takes on the mantle of the Bat. (It isn’t like Batman’s using it.) If she’d known the cowl came with a certain moralizing little bird following her around — well, she probably still would’ve done it, but it would’ve been nice to know in advance. (Or: Tim and Helena team up 2: electric boogaloo. Now with more bats!)

We are back, baby! I got so much procrastination on my school projects done while editing this.

After two chapters of drama, it's time for something more chill and fun before we hit the endgame :)

Excerpt:

“Knock knock.”

Helena groaned and blinked. Someone was shining a flashlight in her face. At her side, Robby made some equally unhappy noises as he tried to pull the blanket over his head. It took Helena a second to wake up, but then it happened all at once. Someone else was there.

She kicked out, but her legs were still tangled in the blankets and the intruder easily dodged back.

Robby finally noticed something was wrong and sat up. “’Lena, what?” he said with a yawn. Then, more alert: “Nightwing?”

With the flashlight no longer shining in her eyes, Helena could see the black and blue costume she’d originally missed. She flicked on the LED lamp near the bed, and there he was, looking in far better shape than anyone inside the city had been in months. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“When did you get here?” asked Robby.

“To answer your questions: last night and I was sent to fetch you. B called a meeting,” Nightwing said.

Robby crossed his arms. “B knows what I think. You can tell him that sending you isn’t going to change that. No offense,” he tacked on apologetically.

Nightwing nodded. “So you’re both out then?

Helena exchanged a look with Robby. “Both?” she asked.

Nightwing shrugged. “He told me to get both of you.”

“Really?” she asked. “Because he was pretty clear on what he thought of me the last time we met.”

“Hey, I just got here.” Nightwing held up his hands. “I’m just telling you what he told me.”

Robby was looking to her. “Do you think he means it?”

Helena shrugged. “You know him better than I do, kid.”

“Well…” she could see the wheels in his head turning, “maybe. He did kind of try to apologize last time.” To Robin, not to the Bat. “I won’t go if you don’t,” he decided.

Helena turned back to Nightwing. “Who else is going to be at this meeting?”

“Me, Oracle, Azrael I think. It’s an all hands sort of thing.

So either she was actually included in that, or else he just wanted to chew her out in front of a larger audience. Helena knew she really shouldn’t get her hopes up; she’d been burned enough times before, but if he really was serious this time… Well, She never had completely managed to rid herself of the part of her that wanted for Batman to see her, to respect her. Though, admittedly, with the events of the past months, that part had gotten pretty small.

What were the options here? If they went and it turned out he was still an asshole, it’d be annoying, but she could just leave. A waste of morning at worst. But if they didn’t go and it turned out he was serious… Helena was honestly a little surprised that Robin had stuck with her this long. He'd been the only thing keeping her from spilling blood all over his precious bat symbol and he’d still chewed out Batman for her in the end. If Batman was serious, she owed it to the kid to at least give it a try. She knew he didn’t like being at odds with Batman, for all he was willing to be.

“We’ll come,” she said.

“Where are we going?” Robby asked.

“Clocktower,” Nightwing said. “I figured I’d come along with you once you got suited up.”

“How long until we need to be there?” Helena asked.

He shrugged. “Sooner’s better. It starts whenever everyone shows up.

She probably wouldn’t have been able to get back to sleep anyway. Helena stood up and stretched. “Well then, let a woman have her privacy?”

Robby dragged Nightwing out the door.

She could hear them talking in the other room as she stripped off her sleepwear and pulled on the Batsuit.

“You had me worried, you know,” Nightwing said.

“Really?” Robby asked.

“Yeah, I had to hear from O that you were hanging out in No Man’s Land.”

“Oh.” A pause. “I didn’t think you’d notice.”

“Really? You come by every other week to bother me. Of course I’m going to notice when you stop. Then you stop answering your phone and of course I’m worried.”

“Um, I’m sorry?”

A snort, probably from Nightwing. Helena could empathize. “Punk. So, you and Huntress?”

“She’s the Bat,” Robby said automatically. Then, more suspicious: “And what do you mean?”

“I’m just saying, after all that shit you gave me for letting her see my face, where do I find you?”

“It’s not— I’m not— It’s practical!” Robby sputtered. “I’ve known her for longer! And there’s only one bed!”

“Sure, kid.”

“You agreed we weren’t going to bring that up!”

“I’m just saying…”

The conversation devolved into scuffling. Helena pulled on her mask and went around to the doorway. Robin was only half-way suited up and Nightwing had him in a headlock.

She coughed. “So, are we going?”

Nightwing let Robin go and he hurried to finish putting on his tunic. “I’m ready,” he said and headed to the exit.

Nightwing turned to her. “Ladies first,” he said.

She rolled her eyes, but headed for the door.

[alovelyburn]

So there’s this Japanese fan on twitter who has been posting a lot of excerpts from interviews with Miura and such.  This is the reason for my post the other day about feeling increasingly correct the more I read Miura quotes, but at the time it was all just  in Japanese so I didn’t really get into it. But now they’re posting translations and so I feel a little more like talking about what they were posting, some of which was just chef’s kiss.

-About Griffith, he said that he was trying to create a character who gives a different impression depending on who’s around him or who is reading - if Griffith is giving off a definite impression then he’s not Griffith anymore. Even if Griffith is strategizing, Miura wanted it to be unclear whether he was carefully plotting or moving on instinct. He wanted Griffith to be kind of a void that way (where its impossible to know what exactly his deal is and he’s mysterious). He said if he had to put it into words he wanted to establish a childlike mysterious character ( here )

-He said that originally Griffith was supposed to be the confident and indomitable one and Guts was supposed to be the insecure one, but as time went on facets emerged and Griffith became a person who desires certainty (as opposed to one who is genuinely certain). ( here )

-He says that it’s Griffith is a professional’s professional as far as affecting people’s hearts, so it’s unusual for him to “fall” in personal relationships, but Guts is the exception to this and he portrayed it (brought it to catharsis) by making Griffith do the most unGriffithlike foolish things. ( here )

-He says that Guts will probably end up becoming like Griffith because Griffith is the one who gives him the sustenance to live. ( here )

edit: to be clear, he does specify the Guts of NOW, he’s not talking about Griffith shaping him during the Golden Age.

-He designs characters with the thought of what they will bring out in Guts. He goes on to say that Grififth brings out Guts’ “impatience (in the sense of being anxious to do something), will to fight and loneliness,” Puck brings out his humor and crushes his seriousness and Casca brings out guilt, frustration and pity (this is prior to her mental healing). ( here )

This is the Twitter  - a lot of the quotes are from a 30 page interview with Miura in a research journal. but some of it is from stuff that’s been translated previously either by fans or in official publications like the guidebook.

Anyway it’s all hilarious to me because I spent a whole day going through the twitter and just kind of wildly gesticulating and screaming, “I KNEW IT” internally. Its also pretty funny in light of the “how does Japan see Griffith” discussion from last week because if you scroll around you’ll see

-the twitter’s owner suggest that Berserk won’t have a revengey ending and will involve a reconciliation -them retweeting someone who says griffith is disgusting and selfish -and someone suggesting Berserk will end with Griffith ascending to the throne of God.

IT’S JUST FUNNY RIGHT like this is what I mean about there being a much wider range of reactions and expectations vs what goes on in the west which is basically “he did a bad thing hes bad and evil and it has to end by butchering him violently.”

(TBH I was kind of reluctant to post about it because western fandom is so rude sometimes, but I don’t know how many of the rage monster types read my tumblr tbh, like why.)

[annlillyjose]

Dairy Whiskey – Update 03

[image description: on a background of dark green leaves with water droplets, a white serif font reads, “dairy whiskey – update 03”. / end id]

hi again! after what seems to have been ages, your girl is back with yet another dairy whiskey update, the third of its kind.

if you ask me how the project is going, well, it’s been stagnant, but i’d just like to call it a marinating piece of literature. there’s about ten thousand words to go and i know exactly what to do, but it’s just not been working. i’m hoping that i can get back to working on it during camp in july.

but for now, here’s an earlier chapter from the draft which i’m posting for three reasons.

i love sharing my work with y’all

i’m desperate to find some means to get back into the book, so i’m going to rely on a tumblr update to dive into chapters i had finished two months back

any and all hype motivates me to write, so please be kind to me <3

i think that’s all. let’s go to the update!

excerpts and taglist under the cut.

disclaimer: this is an original work of fiction. plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated.

TWs: this novel deals with themes of childhood and religious trauma, sexual, emotional, and substance abuse, mental health issues, self-harm, abortion, suicidal ideation, etc. so please be kind on yourself and read ahead only if you’re comfortable. while the excerpts i share may or may not touch on these, the themes are very prevalent. please be kind on yourself and read ahead only if you’re comfortable.

a lot of the plot is kept private for now because i intend on publishing this book, so please excuse the lack of context. i hope you can enjoy the prose, though.

chapter five – rose in the plain, lily in the valley

here’s the opening line, where we look into dinah’s childhood with her mother.

When I was a child with neat pigtails and crunchy, sequinned frocks, mother took us to the hills of Vagamon.

in the next excerpt, dinah, along with her mother and ephron, is at a textile shop in town to pick out an outfit for a wedding reception to come. dinah wants a skirt that twirls but she can't find any. this is the scene where she finds it.

When she emerged from the godown carrying a pile of five or six sets, I spotted a squash-orange. It was the only one I wanted to try on. “The orange one,” I told mother. She took it from the salesperson and she guided us to the trial room. Mother helped me into the skirt, beaded and jewelled at the edges. The blouse was sleeveless with a square neck and an open back, with a string looped criss-cross down and tied at the bottom. The front of the top was embroidered with orange jewels in the shape of flowers, leaves, and small doughnuts. “I love this,” I said. Mother smiled at me and helped me out of it. She handed it over to the salesperson and paid the bill at the counter. We went back home in another auto.

honestly, congrats girl! i was so happy for little dinah that i almost shed a tear or two writing this scene. but, as we all know by now, she can't have one good thing thanks to her family. the grandmother is displeased with the colour of the set because it, apparently, makes her look darker than she really is, and hence begins her insecurities with skin tone. thanks, grandma.

Grandmother held my chin in her palm and wiped my tears. “Oh, don’t cry, angel. It’s only the colour. You look darker, like a crow. If it had been some other colour, then maybe…” “Stop it!” mother shouted. “Don’t talk to her like that. My daughter can wear whatever she wants. She looks beautiful in this dress. She always does. Stop telling my daughter she is not pretty. Stop lying to her.” I had been crying more intensely now, tears wetting my school uniform. “She would have been so much more beautiful if she was fairer. I told you to give her saffron milk but you never listened to me. Because of your arrogance, your daughter will have to suffer.” “She’s the prettiest little girl I’ve seen,” mother said. Her voice cracked like a twig in her throat. She looked at me, and then at Ephron. She told him, “Go inside with your sister.”

and hence, he takes her to their room and they have a really sweet moment there, which i'm depriving you of because plot...

moving on, the next chapter begins with dinah remembering how ephron saved her from dying and how he had taken care of her all that while. and then, she says she's going out the next day (with austin, but she leaves that part out).

and this party is where i'm going to cut it off because, again, too much plot that i can't reveal. but, here's a heartwarming scene where dinah sees her mother as someone beautiful and feels better abut herself.

But it was on that day that I noticed – mother was darker than I was. She always had been. And she wore red and orange sarees through the house, with her oiled black hair and household sweat. And she looked beautiful. She had always looked beautiful. She had given me something so beaming and radiant – her skin. She had also given me her eyes. And her teeth and bones and eyelashes. She had given me the form I occupied, and when I looked at her, I saw where I came from. I saw where my body was heading and forgot about the squash-orange long skirt making my skin too dark. I saw mother and saw the house of my blood, the vessel that had carried it for years, and forgot about everything and wanted to dance. So, when the bride and groom got on the stage and began to dance to their choreographed dance routine, I grabbed Ephron by the arm and we danced at the back of the hall. He ran to the front, holding my hand, and twirled me around until I felt dizzy.

again, i shed a tear writing this. she was too innocent to have been broken like that. i'm sorry, pal. i'm sorry about all the trouble i gave / am giving you.

vignette five – vineyard secrets

in this episode, we discover something that had been too obvious to begin with – dinah is not straight. everybody please welcome veronica to the party.

here's the opening line:

Dinah remembers Veronica by her face – plump and glossy with a berry flush at all times, her skin the colour of almond milk.

if you're wondering who she is and where she's from, here you go.

She was her roommate at the hostel to which she had moved for higher secondary, hoping that she would go unnoticed like she had at boarding school. But Veronica, who had lived in the UK her whole life with a Malayali father and an Italian mother, had found her intriguing.

the day veronica moves into hostel, dinah had already been there for a week. she helps veronica, who insists on being called nic, settle in and shows her around. in the evening when she shows dinah pictures of her family, dinah gets sad and tells her about mariam. it was at this moment that they kiss.

yep, i'm not that cruel. i give her good times too.

Like lightning to the night, they had crashed and collided. The rumbling would come after. There would be no fire, no wounds, no burns. They would leave their secret to ripen between them, like a juicy orange – sweet and tangy. They would see each other until they left school two years later, and after that, their secret would be buried in the ground.

and here's the last line, mirroring the first.

Dinah remembers Veronica by her face, but also by her breath, laden with mint.

so, that's it for this update. hope you enjoyed reading my no-context-whatsoever excerpts. tell me what you've been up to, how writing's even going, what your plans are for camp in july, and how you are in general.

thank you for reading. i'll see you again in another update.

– ann.

general tagist (ask to be added or removed)

@shaonsim @heartfullkings @vnsmiles @dallonwrites @sienna-writes @violetpeso @flip-phones @rowansghost @ambidextrousarcher @zoe-louvre @writing-with-l @magic-is-something-we-create @femmeniism @frozenstillicide @wizardfromthesea @rose-bookblood @coffeeandcalligraphy @rodentwrites @saltwaterbells

[arachling2]

Where is my Drow barbie & my plans for the future:

I’m still alive! I’ve decided to go on a slight hiatus to develop some things behind the scenes. I’m coming into contact with a lot of conflicting ideas between like D&D canon & what i’m trying to build for A’byssel & its making my brain frown when I try to write. Originally, in his first iteration he was a bhaalspawn from the generation born before the time of troubles & after major retcons occurred, I never really sat down & actually patched the holes in the character I made. So hes more like a collage of everything which - I don’t hate it but Its a bit inconsistent & that drives me bananas. So I’m working on that.

To assist I’m also taking notes and building a server that doubles as my personal reference guide that has links to 1-5 E sources & guides that are cited in the channels where I break down certain aspects (like the houses, tenants, rituals, etc. pasting excerpts from the different editions to refer to.) It’s already helping me shape some things by giving me references, I do also want to include book excerpts but I have to tackle things one at a time.

That being said, when I feel ready to move forward its probably going to be another remake. This is partially because I love fresh starts, but that doesn’t mean I’ll discontinue threads. They’ll just be moving over to the shiny new account dw about that bit.

And regarding that shiny new account: Plotting is taking priority. I like to plot & have dynamics built out to better enrich writing & interactions. I hope to have more to offer when I smooth out abby’s wrinkles!

[baronetcoins]

HELLO please I would like very much to hear about your bisclavret au (also the selkie au, if you'd like to discuss that too! lots of enthusiasm about shapeshifters goeth on at this time!!)

Yes!! Both of these started with my dear friend @kangoo who I made watch the film with me and who has since been a brainstorming partner of mine when I want to write Them. He is welcome to add his thoughts if he feels inclined.

The Bisclavret AU centers around the traitor’s plot—the kings of England have a secret, with men able to take on a wolf’s shape. Of course they can only turn back if they have their clothes as per the original tale. So when Scroop is persuaded to join the plot to remove Henry from the board before he can cross the channel, he can’t find it in his heart to actually kill the man he loved. He does, however, know about that secret, and hides Henry’s clothes away.

Montjoy, meanwhile, is traveling back and forth between France and England as the French try and use the chaos to their advantage and the English are frantically searching for their king who vanished without a trace. Of course there also happens to be a mysterious wolf who keeps following him around on his travels whenever he’s on the island, and acts much more like a big dog than anything threatening.

Eventually Montjoy decides he has a dog now and starts telling that bold faced lie to anyone who questions why this wolf keeps following him around. It’s a big guard dog. Keeps me safe in the wilderness. What do you mean it doesn’t look like a dog. The reveal comes when Henry sees Scroop and tries to fucking kill him at which point Exeter finally puts two and two together.

I think it’s very fun to cast it in this way because at the time Europe, as a rule, hated wolves. Kings had all kinds of policies about trying to kill as many wolves as possible. It ties in really well to the idea of Hal as having been this wild, irresponsible youth who people looked down upon. I haven’t written too much of this yet, just a bit of the opening scene (which I have posted an excerpt from already), but it’s rattling about in my head again.

The selkie AU is less real and mostly a set of vibes passed back and forth between us where I’m mostly just going to excerpt our DMs because that’s what exists so far though I do want to come back to it properly.

[dandelion-wings]

What's the context for those excerpts?

I mean, I did say presented without context :P but also I do enjoy a ramble, so. Ideally I would have written the sort-of-intro I have for the universe, but that's going to be longer than I would have the time for this week even if I wasn't trying to actually finish a WIP before the end of October, so, alas, maybe someday.

In the meantime! This started life as a Crimson Peak AU, because some cool friends watched it and so I read the book so I could share in their enthusiasm XD and my Genshin brainrot is such that I try to hash any and all media into Genshin AUs, so. But it has turned to a canon-divergence AU from the girls' childhood, and also a sibling-swap!

I am putting a cut because the next two paragraphs contain a few spoilers for the movie/book. Also, as with the bitlets, warnings for domestic violence/child abuse mentions.

There is a Jean/Diluc/Kaeya version out there (feat. a grief-maddened Crepus trying to kill one of the boys to bring back his beloved) that runs much closer to the actual movie plot, but while we worked out the tragic backstory parallels for Jean and Barbara, Jean does not work nearly as well as Diluc as a brooding romantic hero who seduces rich paramours to steal their fortunes and then allows their more ruthless sibling to kill them.

The tragic backstory works so well, though. All you need is an abusive parent and a sibling determined enough to protect the other to kill them, so running with 'grief-maddened' as parental motive again, we had Seamus die protecting Barbara when she was very young, before whatever led to their divorce had developed in the relationship, presumed that Fredrica had truly loved him enough to be grief-maddened, and let her blame Barbara for it (she was, for the record, six), and then went from there!

In the version that turned into this AU, Fredrica's blame becomes her driving tiny Barbara way, way too hard in training and punishing her extra viciously for failure, in ways that are actively endangering her health and well-being, and in some of the sparring sessions actually threatening her life. (Fredrica does get thoroughly villainized for this, but that's the nature of the original source material, rip.) Jean, unable to stop her or to get anyone to intervene, decides she's going to take care of Barbara whatever it takes, and I'm still working out the exact shape of the scene, but I know that Fredrica tries to make Barbara keep training with a life-threatening wound, and when begging doesn't make her stop, twelve-year-old Jean gathers all her resolve and stabs her in the kidneys. Which gets her an Electro Vision, incidentally, we worked out elements today.

And then she heals Barbara with her new Vision (it's a lucky break, she hadn't been sure what she was going to do about that), marches down to the Ordo, and turns herself in directly to Varka. Who knew Fredrica was unbalanced and feels so guilty he can't, like, take her to court, so he manages to evade that by being like 'her Vision appearing proves her action was necessary and it was pure defense of another, we don't need to drag the eight-year-old who has now seen both her parents die in front of her through a trial,' but there have to be Consequences. Jean is stripped of her inheritance as a Gunnhildr and placed in the Church's custody, ostensibly as an orphan but with very restrictive rules because they are Watching Her.

Barbara, meanwhile, is Crepus' goddaughter, because I'm running with my "Seamus and Crepus were friends" headcanon, and once she got her way with Jean, Fredrica gave Seamus that as a concession. Crepus really wants Diluc, who is desperately lonely, to have a companion of equal rank that he can actually play with, and he also genuinely cared for Seamus and is genuinely concerned for Barbara, so he pulls that string and gets two birds with one throw! Neither Diluc nor Barbara want to consider the other siblings per se, because Jean is a very present ghost in that relationship, but they resolve this by Diluc swearing himself to her, in a very knightly style, as her protector in lieu of Jean until they both reach majority and are permitted to see each other again. He is acting on behalf of her big sister and that works for them both.

When Kaeya shows up all of a month later, Crepus has already satisfied his desire of getting Diluc a companion, and also is dealing with Barbara's incredible, massive PTSD and doesn't have the capacity for another sure-looks-traumatized kid. So Kaeya gets shuffled to... the Church orphanage! Where none of the other kids want to socialize with a weird twitchy foreign kid, and he ends up plopping himself down beside the other kid no one wants to socialize with. Because she killed her own mother. I am applying another of my pet headcanons here, the "Kaeya's mother turned into a monster" one, and so they have a conversation that goes approximately:

Jean: You don't want to be my friend. I killed my own mother. Kaeya: So did I. Jean: What? Why? Kaeya: She was turning into a monster. Jean: ...So was mine.

Anyway! Friendship accomplished. With the worst possible person with regards to his purported mission here, but Kaeya is, honestly, desperate for anyone to be nice to him, and Jean may be mired in guilt here (redoubled by the fact that she still can't think of anything better she could have done), but she is not going to be mean to this scared flinchy foreign kid who looks scared in so many of the same ways Barbara did. And then, like three or four years later, Varka dumps Rosaria on the Church as well, and she naturally gravitates to the "killed our own parents and also none of the other kids like us" club. XD

Anyway, things proceed as canon re: Ursa, and that's where we are as of the bitlets! Jean and Barbara, if it wasn't clear, are forbidden to contact each other at all until Barbara has reached her majority, and both are abiding by it for a couple reasons, including fear the other one will report them if they violate the rule, because they're both deeply attached to the idea of their sister they haven't seen in five years, but are also unhappily aware that neither of them know anything of what that sister is like now. :( Both hoping the other wants them back, but terrified that they won't.... Better to follow the rules, and put off the harsh reality.

(Rosaria thinks this is stupid and Jean should just sneak across town and rip off the bandage. Rosaria thinks a lot of Jean's feelings and fears are stupid. Jean did one badass thing at twelve and then let this purported 'civilization' Rosaria has been forced to join make her feel bad about it. Rosaria would still do a murder for Jean, mind XD she just has Opinions. Kaeya also has Opinions but unlike Rosaria keeps them to himself, because he's gotten pretty good at being the kind of diplomatic required from a brother in the Church, and would rather hatch plans about it than argue.)

(Eula, when she shows up in the Ordo a year later and is greeted by a young knight from the Logistics Company who holds out her hand to her when no one else is speaking to her and smiles (because it's what Jean would have done, Barbara thinks, and besides, given what happened in her family, she can hardly judge the Lawrences any longer), decides that if Jean is cruel to Barbara when they do reunite, she will make her pay, because Barbara is one of the few bright spots in an Ordo rotted hollow at the center, and she deserves better.)

(Diluc is on his murderventure, but has significantly more faith in both sisters than they have in themselves, and is a much more active correspondent with Barbara than he is with Kaeya in canon. Because he made her oaths, and it would be a betrayal of both his childhood friend and the girl who's become almost his sister to fail them.)

[rockinlibrarian]

For the fanfic ask game: E, M, P, and R. :)

That would be THIS Fanfic Ask Game. Thanks for asking! I love answering! (You, too, non-Assaily Reader, can Ask as well!)

E: If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it be about?

I don't know, what fic? I think if I HAVE any sequel ideas, they're in process at least. A lot of my fics take place within the same timeline, like, so they're in series, like The Loudermilk Chronicles; or how I thought I'd write just one Fiktor fic to get it out of my system and ended up adding not just chapters to that one but several sequels because apparently I can't stop. A lot of my fics, on the other hand, are outright prequels-- the sequel to them is the source material itself!-- because one of my favorite ways to conceive of fanfiction is by saying "I wonder how THAT happened?"-- how characters met* or how certain situations at the start of canon came to be.

*I just reread this one recently for the first time in awhile and it's a dang good little slow burn romance-based-on-friendship if I do say so myself.

Actually I'm not sure I actually answered that question. Oh, but here's an example that might fit better in the next answer:

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you'd care to share?

I thought of doing a series-- or maybe just a bunch of excerpts-- jumping off of the Viktor Tells the Show to His Therapist fic: if I was feeling REALLY ambitious I'd do the Show in Therapy Form from every individual sibling's POV. But that might be TOO ambitious. I started writing that fic in the first place because I was thinking of a Fiktor-related spin on the therapy fic, and that original idea does still come out and haunt me sometimes.

But I also have a bunch of Works in Not-Progress that EXIST more than a premise, actual files in Scrivener, but are still pretty much on the back burner. Like the story of Cary and Kerry at college, and several crack Legion pieces based on dreams; there are a few DWJ scenes; my Ghosts I Have Been ship; and the rest of poor poor "Tesseract" which I PROMISE has not been abandoned no matter what it looks like. And I've got the Riordanverse study "Child of Hypnos" which is almost done even though I haven't worked on it in awhile, but I've also since read The Sun and the Star in which Hypnos actually appears as a character and is almost nothing like Hypnos in my story, which annoys me, because mine is better, but I don't know if that makes him non-canonical now or what.

I was actually having a "who even cares about my stories" moment in the past couple of days, so getting to talk about upcoming ideas is sort of helping to counteract it?

I'm waiting to hear back from a beta on my Legion meets the Wizard of Oz fic, which will hopefully then be the next thing posted, then after that-- well, I guess deciding what to write after that was giving me the "nobody cares" moment, because I couldn't decide what to work on next. I might do the next chapter of "Captain with Seven Children" actually, although I'm still not QUITE sure how to make a certain plot element happen. But maybe I'll figure that out by working on it, which leads us to the next question:

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an "architect" or a "gardener"? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)

I am most definitely a gardener, but I don't know how Mr. Martin does HIS gardening, but I DO spend a good deal of time in February and March planning out on paper what I'm going to try to put where, and when I need to do each step, and what I need to buy. So the story's growing and unfolding and I prune and shape it, but I also sometimes take a step back to plan a bit, for longer stories/ multichapter things, mostly. But the planning is certainly not architectural.

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?

I feel like Diana Wynne Jones is possibly my biggest writer influence, if only as like a motivational speaker, in a sense. She reminds me to let my imagination go wild-- just reading her words makes my brain open up, like. I can't begin to imply I can write as WELL as her, but her existence helps me write. It's weird but true. Madeleine L'Engle was an extreme influence on me over the course of my life, but not so much in writing style as in Big Picture stuff-- the weaving of the mundane and the spiritual and the universal and the specific all together. My actual voice doesn't sound very much like her at all. I'm not sure where my particular writerly voice comes from, specifically-- I feel like my tone may have picked up a lot of Rick Riordan, but I also feel like my basic fictional voice got established long before him, too. It's basically a lifetime of middle-grade story intake.

As for fanfic writers, my biggest influence is Versaphile, who got me posting on AO3 in the first place!

[thegirlsgirlsstuff]

RENEGADE BY BIG RED MACHINE FT. TAYLOR SWIFT APPRECIATION POST

UHM CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW I COMPLETELY SLEPT ALL OVER THIS SONG?????

LIK WOWWW, HAVE YOU GUYS HEARD THIS SONG??? IF NOT STOP AND GO AHEAD AND LISTEN TO IT RIGHT NOW.

LIKE NO SERIOUSLY, ITS SOOO GOOOD

THE VISUALS?? OHMYGOD OHMYGOD, THEY ARE MESSED UP AND MIXED UP BUT SO SO SO SO PERFECT

THE LYRICS??? BROOOOOOOOOOO I CANNOT PUT ENOUGH EMPHASIS ON HOW GOOD IT IS HERE ARE SOME EXCERPTS THAT I PARTICULARLY LOVE A LOT ( it may or may not b the entire song)

I tapped on your window on your darkest night The shape of you was jagged and weak There was nowhere for me to stay But I stayed anyway

okay so even the comment section is perfect for this song like you could spend days in that section but, i read one that said

look how taylor says she tapped on the window, it couldve been knocked on the door, but no she went with tapped on th window, and w all know nothing taylor does is just a coincidence, so this person's theory was that she knew what she was getting herself into, when we knock on a door we have no idea on whats on the other side of the door, but when she tapped on a window she knew exactly what was going on n she decided to go in anyway and i just love that you know, like these little things are what make taylor swift taylor swift

And if I would've known How many pieces you had crumbled into I might've let them lay

And if I would've known How sharp the pieces were you'd crumbled into I might've let them lay

so th first para is in the starting of the song, implying she never knew how long the process of fixing actually was going to be and the second para is at the end of the song, saying she never realised how painful that process was going to be, mind blowing right??? There's more.

You fire off missiles 'cause you hate yourself But do you know you're demolishing me? And then you squeeze my hand as I'm about to leave

YEPP SHE JUST DID THAT, AND I SLEPT ON IT OHMYGOD, LIKE DO YOU SEE THE BEAUTY?? ITS SO HEARTBREAKING BUT SO BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN

Is it insensitive for me to say Get your shit together? So I can love you Is it really your anxiety That stops you from giving me everything? Or do you just not want to?

look, again someone said in the comments section (thats comment section is bomb btw, its like 100s of literary students have convened and are dissecting th song and giving their opinions on it, its really beautiful imo) that this song could be our one half-broken, battered and tired self saying these exact lines to our other, want to be better but cannot because of so many excuses and doesnt it make perfect sense?

so this song can be about two people being in a relationship but it can also be about us, trying to be better but failing and it still makes perfect sense.

I used to always be super confused when someone asked which ts song to first listen to but now i am damn sure that it *has* to be renegade, even tho it is a collab, i think its the most lyrical song by taylor and aaron dessner and justin vernon.

ALSO THAT PART WHERE TAYLORS' AND JUSTINS' VOICES MIX???? OHMYGOD, TAYLOR, JUSTIN AND AARON SHOULD JUST FORM A BAND ATP

anyway, that is it, it became much longer than i originally intended it to be, but i really really really like renegade, do listen to it if you haven't already!

love you always byee

[shirtshinedplum]

False Idyll

This project was made for EA020 Nature, Culture, Society. We had two weeks from the day it was assigned to the showcase. The assignment was to create an art piece related to an environmental topic, so just incredibly broad. Everybody made something super unique and very cool. I really enjoyed seeing all their work.

Brainstorming ↓

The professor was encouraging, though not requiring, us to engage with the idea of "making the invisible visible." I was also thinking a lot about purity culture and the idea of purity in environmentalism. We had read an excerpt from Alexis Shotwell's book Against Purity where she argues that "purity" is impossible to achieve and dangerous to attempt. "Purity is never made simple. Aspirations to purity, are…misleading ad copy on one level and secret carcinogens as a cell boundary-crossing material reality on another." There is not even such thing as real purity, "there is no primordial state we might wish to get back to, no Eden we have desecrated, no pretoxic body we might uncover..."

Refining the Idea ↓

I came to the idea of sewing a sort of cottagecore dress and attempting to subvert the ideals of purity that exist within that subculture and reveal the hypocrisy present in the way these people present themselves.

Before I talk about cottagecore, I want to say that I did not really go deep into the subculture. I had been exposed to it online before and knew a bit about it and then did some surface level research focused around the look it presents, but I don’t know the nuances of this community and perhaps that is reflected in my analysis of it.

But anyway— Cottagecore is an aesthetic that idealizes rural life. I feel it draws especially from late 19th-century European pastoral life, but it pulls inspiration from multiple places and periods and is not trying to authentically recreate any past style. The aesthetic promotes the ideal of living simply, disconnecting from the internet, being self-sufficient, baking bread, and having traditional feminine and creative hobbies such as embroidery, pottery, painting, baking, etc.

Cottagecore seems to intersect with environmentalist messages, though believe it to be a coincidental byproduct of their want to return to simpler times as opposed to a deliberate want to live or promote a sustainable lifestyle (I'm sure there are people who are interested both in environmentalism and cottagecore and perhaps even picked up on the aesthetic for those environmental reasons, but I presume them to be in an extreme minority). Traditional rural living is more eco-friendly than modern city life: homemade goods, traditional crafts, growing your own food, reducing reliance on consumerism. Consumerism... that's what I'm especially interested when it comes to the cottagecore aesthetic. They idealize a time before rampant consumerism, a time before the internet, a slower, simpler time, just sitting down and reading a book or connecting with your environment. I see a lot of pictures of women collecting wildflowers, picking fruit from their gardens, going on picnics in the rolling countryside. But at the same time, this aesthetic originally gained and has maintained popularity on TikTok. An app that perhaps stands as the antithesis to that type of lifestyle. TikTok is fast-paced and trendy, obsessed with constant engagement and constant consumption. Also ads everywhere! Promoted videos, sponsorships, TikTok shop, undisclosed ads, sometimes it feels like everyone is trying to sell you something.

Look, I like the cottagecore aesthetic. I think it's super cute and, in the current landscape, I can't help but idealize that sort of pastoral living. But engaging in this trend isn't an escape from consumerism. It's driven by consumerism.

Cottagecore is an aesthetic. At its very core, it's about commodification and surface-level adoption. By engaging with it, you are feeding into an industry that exists to shape consumer desires and drive sales. So most people who are interested in this sort of aesthetic aren't really attempting to extricate themselves from our highly consumeristic culture, quite the contrary, they are purchasing products that align only with the image of living a life free from corporate overlords and late-stage capitalism.

Anyway, I've gotten away from the point a little bit. What I was focusing on in this project was the fashion industry. We all know how much fast fashion is ruining the planet and how incredibly exploitative it is.

Here is my extremely quick and condensed summary of ethical problems in the fashion and textile industries:

The fashion and textile industries are major contributors to pollution, resource depletion, and labor exploitation. Industrial monocropping and irrigation deplete soils of nutrients and heavy use of pesticides impacts the quality of the soil and the workers who apply it. Pesticide runoff contaminates water supplies and thus the health of humans, animals, and plants in the area. Even stuff that isn't immediately harmful or toxic accumulates in bodies and magnifies up the food chain. Not to mention just the sheer amount of water that cotton production requires.

Additionally, most fashion brands rely on cheap labor, child labor, and even slave labor in dangerous working conditions particularly in developing countries. These practices violate basic human rights and perpetuate cycles of poverty and exploitation in vulnerable communities.

Here are some links to get you started on further reading if you're interested: Sweatshop Facts — The World Counts; Modern slavery is on the rise. Fashion’s role remains steady — Vogue Business; Fast fashion: an industry built on exploitation — Collective Fashion Justice; The impact of textile production and waste on the environment (infographics) — European Parliament; Tons of water used in cotton production — The World Counts

All of this exploitation of people and Earth's resources contradicts the values of simplicity, authenticity, and connection to nature that cottagecore seems to represent. Perhaps cottagecore was born out of a genuine love and interest in the simple, the homemade, the vintage, and the sustainable, but it has fully been co-opted by commercial interests. Brands have capitalized on its appeal by pumping out mass-produced cottagecore-inspired goods (especially clothing) that not only do not align with those values but fully spit in their face. When purchasing this aesthetic, you are purchasing the idea that you believe in its 'core values.' You are purchasing the illusion of a connection to nature and authenticity while directly supporting practices that undermine those very values.

(I do feel it necessary to point out that there are people that exist who fall into the cottagecore aesthetic but do not engage in the capitalist side of it. However, they are by far not the majority. Like it or not, the aesthetic has been taken over by corporate interest and consumeristic behavior.)

Designing ↓

Cottagecore clothing is very old-world inspired. Milkmaid dresses, prairie dresses, ruffles, light colors, florals, that sort of arena. Because of the time constraint, I decided to incorporate a dress I had already made. A few summers ago I made a milkmaid dress (pattern: Mood Fabrics Anthea Milkmaid Dress). It's like the second real sewing project I did so the construction is kinda wonky, but it has the right sort of top for the look I'm going for, and with my other classwork, I didn't think I'd have time to sew a new top for this project.

For the skirt, I knew I wanted it to be floor length and was thinking sort of like a prairie dress skirt. I ended up going with another Mood pattern (The Heather Dress) though I really could have drafted it myself and I altered it so much anyway.

Going into this stage I knew I wanted the skirt to tell a story about its production. I was thinking sort of a story map style narrative wrapping around the skirt. I was inspired by story tapestries and children's storybook styles.

You can see more of my thought process and ideas below, but this idea had to be scrapped due to the time limit. There was just no way that I was going to be able to design and execute this whole story map idea in just a few days.

I pivoted to a different idea that you can see started to form on those pages. The idea of having the hem appear to have been dragged through mud or blood.

I really wanted to go with the look of having the hem soaked in blood representing the hidden cost behind beautiful garments. The blood of the human beings who work the cotton fields, who sew your clothes, who toil in the hazardous conditions under which our clothes are produced. A visceral reminder of the very real human suffering that produces innocent-looking clothing.

Now that I have made that aspect of the design the entire thing, I felt I needed to expand it a bit. I wanted hands grasping at you as if begging for help. The desperation and anguish felt by workers subjected to abysmal treatment in their work. Blooded hem and haunting images would contrast the pristine and innocent look of the bodice and upper skirt. The stark juxtaposition between our two positions. Their desperation against our indifference. You could extend a helping hand but choose not to, turning a blind eye to their suffering while enjoying the fruits of their exploitation.

Sewing ↓

I went to thrift stores looking for fabric. Reusing fabric from something else supports the message of the piece, but really my main motivation was that I'm cheap. I was looking for a light-colored fabric that matched the tone and weight of the dress I was using for the bodice. Having to match the bodice made the search more difficult, but luckily I was able to find something that works. For $2.99 I got a slightly stained king top sheet. The color goes surprisingly well with the bodice's shade of green, I think this is the best result I could have hoped for given the parameters.

I used my school's makerspace to sew. The machines are kind of crappy, I had quite a few issues with them which caused it to take longer than I could have done on my machine at home, but the job got done and honestly I'm just glad that I have access to a machine out here at all. The thing I will complain about though is the chalk. Like on one hand, thank you for putting chalk in the sewing makerspace. On the other hand, this room was not stocked by somebody who sews. They have blackboard chalk not tailor's chalk which is totally fine except that they only have colored chalk! I didn't look it up beforehand (which maybe is my fault but also I was using supplies in a sewing room) and it stained my fabric. I thought it would come out in the wash, but no. I don't have anything for laundry here besides detergent and baking soda, so when I go home I'll treat it properly and hopefully that will help.

I needed to lengthen the skirt pattern so it went all the way to the floor and then totally forgot until I had marked and was about to cut the fabric. Whoops. And then I didn't actually measure how much to lengthen it by and just guesstimated it. The main part of the skirt should have been longer and then the bottom panel much shorter. The entire skirt ended up about two inches too long. It drags on the floor much more than I would like it to. I could bring up the hem but I hate hemming skirts so much that I've just let it be.

Another thing about the pattern is that it wants you to gather SO MUCH. From the pictures, I did not anticipate the amount of gathering. It's such a pain, and honestly, I think it looks better with the amount I ended up doing instead of using all of the fabric. The problem is that I didn't realize what was going on until I was too far into the process. It would have been such a pain and cost me precious time to cut the fabric and rework it so there was the 'right' amount of gathering and the panel seams hit at the right place. So the placement of those seams is super wonky. I hoped that in the waves of the skirt they wouldn't be noticeable unless you were looking, but turns out that is not the case. Also this meant that there was all of that extra fabric now in the skirt's back panels. In order to install a zipper, I would have to cut those. But I'd have to cut them exactly the right amount and at the right angle. The skirt was taking much longer than I had planned to sew and at this point, there were only a few days before it was due. I decided screw all that tedious work, I've already done so much of it, I'll just use buttons and let the extra fabric (hopefully) cover up the slit in the skirt in a natural way.

I ran into a second problem with the gathering as well but in the opposite direction. The bottom panel is supposed to be as gathered as the top one but it's just so much fabric. I did technically have enough fabric to have 3 panels the size the pattern called for, but I hate hemming and I had the finished edges of the bedsheet right there and I was so frustrated with sewing at this point so I just cut one panel down the length of it. It turned out to be not enough fabric to gather almost at all. If I didn't have a deadline with this project, the gathering does mean enough to me that I think I would have spent the time to cut another panel and hem the whole thing, but unfortunately, that was not the scenario I was in so I just left it how it was. It doesn't look bad the way it is, I just think the shape of the skirt would have been a little bit better. Another factor to consider though is how that would impact the design on the skirt. I was a little worried about the amount of gathering impacting how well the design translated. So I guess it's good for me that I never had to decide how much gathering I wanted for the shape versus how much I could get away with and the design still be readable.

And then with the buttons!! The makerspace did surprisingly have a buttonhole AND button foot, but for some reason the buttonhole foot didn't really work. I've made them before on my machine at home and I watched a tutorial to make sure I wasn't forgetting something, I have no idea why it didn't work. I never took a picture of the failed attempts, but they were just not buttonholes. Instead, I just made them with a series of zigzag stitches. I mean, that's what the machine is doing with the buttonhole stitch anyway, what I did is just a little bit jankier.

Mudding ↓

I finished sewing the dress two days before the assignment was due which left me only one day to translate the design. I'm really glad I simplified it as much as I did and I still think it does a good job of getting the core message across.

Going into the final day I had to work on this, I was still fully planning on painting it. The original plan was for the design to be in 'blood' not mud. The problem is I don't own any paint and wasn't interested in spending any more money on this assignment. Obviously I first looked in the makerspace, but for some reason they don't have any paint?? I went to a few other spaces I thought might have some I could use but came up empty-handed. So I moved on to plan B. Actually, mud was my mother's idea. She suggested it one time when I was talking to her back in the brainstorming phase. It totally works. Mud is freely and widely available and still reads as very similar to the blood idea, only less shocking. So after dinner (yes, I spent all day searching for paint and trying to come up with an alternative without resorting to dirt), I went out in the pouring rain to some fields behind my college to collect dirt.

One important thing I had forgotten about the dirt around here is how sandy it is. The dirt where I grew up was pretty clay-y, that's what I'm used to, and I had just forgotten that dirt around here isn't like that. It's not like the sandy dirt was any kind of deal-breaker or anything, I just thought (1) rubbing it into the fabric will damage the fibers more than a dirt with more clay content and (2) it's probably gonna leave more little rocks and pieces of sand in it's wake.

But it was fine and also like 9 o'clock the night before it was due so I didn't dwell on it. Problem though, it's dark and raining outside, where am I going to do the dirty work? The answer: just in my dorm. My room had dirt and grit everywhere for like a week afterward.

Applying the mud was actually very easy. I first drew the design on the skirt with a light-colored washable marker and then made a mud slurry and really just slopped it on. On the edges and finer areas, I used a popsicle stick to get a harsher line. I also attempted a bit of an ombre effect going up. It was inconsistent, but I stand by the idea.

I draped my skirt over my floor lamp for this, which was a great idea if I do say so myself. The whole process from when I got home with the dirt to when I finished the skirt was maybe four hours and this was certainly the part I enjoyed the most.

Final Thoughts ↓

In the end, it actually turned out kinda okay. You can see in the pictures that I decided to button it at the front side instead of in the back like how it was originally supposed to be zippered. This means that one of the panel seams is right there in front, so not a fan of that. But overall, I'm happy with it. I took these pictures 6 weeks after I finished it and was pleased with how well the mud lasted. I was worried that because it was so sandy, it wouldn't stick as well to the fabric. It did come off some, as you can see, and if it was something I had worn or otherwise moved around more, it would have been a bigger deal, but as it was, I actually liked the way the dirt faded.

If you care, I got a 91% on the assignment, but it was cos my artist statement sucked not because of my actual piece.

....well, goodbye

February 2024

[marriagecounselingalt]

Family of Origin

The Impact of One’s Family of Origin

Marriage counselors at marriage counseling Ashburn and marriage counseling Vienna VA help couples better understand each other by examining each’s family of origin.  The family we grew up in shaped us and put us on a trajectory that impacts how we interact with our mates. For example, one woman grew up in a home where the mother was in charge and the father was subservient. On the other hand, this woman’s husband grew up in a family where the dad dominated and the mother was subservient.  It is easy to see why such a couple would initially struggle with control in the relationship and decision-making.

Imagine a girl who was raised in a less-than-loving environment.  Her mother was very critical of her and constantly judgmental. This, in turn, caused her to lack confidence through her teenage years and into her adult relationships. In her marriage, what her husband considered normal complaints, she took as personal attacks.  This caused her to “walk on eggshells.” She was very wary of being criticized and became very defensive.  Instead of talking things through, communication dropped off, negatively impacting the marriage. In such a situation, a loving husband would do his best to reassure his wife that he loves her and adjust his behavior to make her feel safe and accepted.

Counselors at marriage counseling Vienna VA and marriage counseling Ashburn examine a couple’s respective family of origin to help clients better understand the historic basis of their behaviors. Such an understanding will not change your relationship in and of itself. It will, however, help highlight what was missing in the other’s childhood and informs how you can each provide for the other today what was missing then (e.g., love, respect, comfort, etc.).

Illustration

Excerpt from the book, “Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy for Dummies,” by Bradley & Furrow

Dwight shared that his parents often slammed doors when they were fighting. As a child, he used to sit down on the floor in a corner of his room, gather his toys, and try to be “small and quiet” to escape the sense of fear and anxiety he felt while his parents were fighting.  When he heard doors slamming nearby, he got more afraid because that meant someone was near his bedroom. When his door would sharply open, usually one of his parents would address him angrily.  He always jumped as a child when that happened. Now, as an adult, he couldn’t help it.  “My body just jumps and tenses up.,” he said.  “My heart races, like It’s going to burst.  I start breathing fast. I sweat. I tense up like I’m ready to fight an intruder. At this point in my life, it’s just built in I guess. I can’t help it.” 

Karen had no idea about Dwight’s history. As we talked about it, she began to feel empathy for Dwight around this like never before. “I’m so sorry, honey,” she said. “I didn’t know.  I can just see you as a child sitting there afraid. I’ll be more careful. I promise.” Marriage counselors at marriage counseling Ashburn and marriage counseling Vienna VA stand ready to help you strengthen your marriage by looking at all aspects of your marital relationship, including your family of origin.

[plloydarts245-02]

Reflection No.9

I'm pretty sure I wrote too much last week by mistake. However, this week I will just discuss the current project and try to show some thought processes. Even though "it does not really matter."

This week has been pretty fun. Conducting research about a topic, without having to write a paper about it is great for me. I have enjoyed the deep dives into the history of the university. (I chose WSU). I found myself fishing through the archives of student newspapers from the early 1950s-60's. (The WSU Sunflower)

I have struggled with fleshing out the persona that I want to create. At times the directions were unclear especially since this is my first time creating an identity. Much of the process requires some extra creativity with this project because it forces me to wear more hats. I am giving myself directions on how to complete my own work (??)

As I have narrowed down my options (because I started out with several). I feel like did not receive adequate feedback, but I guess I'll just go with my original idea. The airedale terrier popped into my head as soon as I sat down and started to work. Its head is just wheat-shaped in my mind and dogs are a very popular subject of mascots/logos. They are also described as hardworking, protective, farming dogs, that fit well with the perceived ethos of the school. I have not started any actual logos as of yet. I am trying not to move too fast and create something I've spent hours on only to get snubbed.

This feels like a big undertaking, but hopefully, I'm up to the challenge.

*I thought these were funny/interesting (excerpts from the student newspaper) I know they are unrelated to the project.

[frankensteinshimbo]

I finally have a WIP worth working on. Call it the whimsy of the world. But even with that said, It won't be advertised or, likely, categorized. It's definitely the shape of something, but I don't feel like it has enough substance to write a summary for it, or make images.

My honest take of a lot of the focus of WIPs on Writeblr is that they have the potential to feel forced. There are people who have a project they are ready to put onto a showcase, but this standardization of presenting our ideas in this way inherently puts the onus on us to make them marketable. There was nothing more detrimental to my writing process as taking something underdeveloped and trying to make it publicly appealing.

A lot of my process is letting things ruminate (a line I stole from @paradifeloft) and ferment over a period of time. Trying to build hype really cut into that by cinsructing something people could eat out of half-baked ideas. A lot of the emotional resonance I wanted/needed was lost in favor of having something. Anything.

Not to be a bog hag. I believe there's good in talking about characters or concepts you're passionate about, but I'm going to openly criticize the need for a well formed presentable project being the standard format for a Writeblr.

So, I post what feels ready to be shared and that has intellectual/creative value to me. A lot of that is poetry. Which is malleable as these shorter easier works are influenced by the overall winds of my day-to-day emotions. Sometimes what I post is excerpts from a manipulative gay vampire tragedy. It's also my old Writeblr WIP idea that I'm ruminating on :)

Removing it from being any sort of a WIP changed the landscape of the idea immensely. Being a vampire isn't even instrumental to the idea, and I don't plan on retaining it. It's abuse, feral revenge, and a lot of trauma that was very personal and very monstrous. But the medium of inserting the characters into formats that can be stripped away doesn't diminish the short stories they participate in, which is a play of the original idea I eventually want to write cleanly. Eventually.

All of that is to say that I wouldn't expect a lot of traditional WIP posting from me, if that's the sort of content that feels the most meaningful to you. I tend to be very quiet when it comes to bigger projects I'm working on. I like playing with things the same way you toss clay between your hands. It's very slow and drawn out, but you'll definitely find the ideas I put out are interesting reads.

[fakecrfan]

Hi just want to say your story about the superhero was incredible. It broke my heart and I loved it

AN ASK ABOUT AN ORIGINAL THING I WROTE? 🥺

I wrote two superhero stories but only one has been getting likes in my activity feed recently so I think you mean my construction superhero short story. (checks the post) oh uh wow that’s getting more traction than I realized. Shit. So that’s why a bunch of people followed me recently.

Anyway, I don’t know if you are still watching my blog anon but since you liked my story have another snippet I whipped up just for you.

--

Excerpt from an interview with prisoner #4598, also known by the code names “Constructor,” “Destructor,” and “the Architect.” Transcript incomplete due to being salvaged after the attack on the prison records. Interview conducted by Mitchell Newman.

---

MN: Okay, well, since our memory experts can’t see anything in your head but muck and have established we’re not going to get any information out of you, anyway…

4598: Lethe is very good at memory stuff.

MN: Right, yes, of course she is. So since you’ve forgotten all useful information and I have to visit you at least for two hours a week just so this doesn’t count as solitary confinement--

4598: Could I talk to Sandy?

MN: Ms. White hasn’t asked to speak to you.

4598: Right.

MN: Anyway as I was saying, since I have to be here anyway why don’t you just tell me about yourself? Give me the whole manifesto.

4598: (no answer).

MN: Right. Well. Let me just continue then and you can answer if you feel like it. Sound good? Good. So, here is my question. What do you think about what people call you now? The first time you got arrested, you didn’t escape for months. Why?

4598: (no answer)

MN: Everyone thought it was because you needed to know the makeup of the material in order to shape it. When you stayed put they thought they’d gotten you with their Akonite walls. But it turns out you never needed to know that and you were just… sitting in there anyway.

4598: Right.

MN: What stopped you from escaping?

4598: (no answer)

MN: Did you think that you’d be let out if you played along, since you had good PR then?

4598: No.

MN: Okay. Was it that you still believed in the justice of the system?

4598: No.

MN: Second thoughts about trying to stop the construction of that stadium?

4598: Uh, no.

MN: Alright then. Why?

4598: (no answer)

MN: Is it related to your apparently still-developing powerset? Are you hiding some ability or--

4598: Depression.

MN: What?

4598: I was depressed.

MN: Ah.

4598: Everyone I had looked up to wanted me in jail. I thought no one would agree with me, so there was no point.

MN: Right.

4598: Uh, that’s something Sandy taught me. It doesn’t really matter what powers you have. If you want to get things done--big things, like building cities--you need lots of people. The things I’ve done, rebuilding… It's always because people have helped me. Cleared away poisons so I could go in the area. Gave me materials. Helped me learn.

MN: And without those people, you decided you couldn’t do anything?

4598: Yeah.

MN: So what changed your mind and made you decide to enact the largest villain breakout in history?

4598: It…

MN: What’s that?

4598: I had to try. It wouldn’t be right to just give up immediately. I couldn’t do it alone so I decided to find people who could help.

MN: And those villains--many of them serial killers and terrorists--these people shared your altruistic goals?

4598: (no answer).

MN: Right, sorry. That was a bit blunt on my part. I just mean it must have been a difficult group to work with.

4598: Hm.

MN: You’re pretty famous for not killing anyone yourself, even now. I really believe you don’t want people to die if they don’t have to. How do you reconcile that with working with, oh, Inferno. You know, the one that burnt innocent congressmen alive?

4598: (no answer).

MN: Some of the villains who escaped that day went on to kill innocent people, even if the ones you became friends with didn’t. Do you have any regrets?

4598: ...Skinner killed three children before we caught him. Toxica got… one, but made 48 people very sick for a while. Um, the others--I counted it all up. The amount of people who died due to the actions of villains that escaped because of me was 28.

MN: So you--

4598: The attacks your heroes do on other countries have casualties that number in the hundreds. Thousands sometimes.

MN: We were tracking down a highly dangerous villain with a power that could--

4598: That could not do half of that damage. They never can. The serial killers and terrorists--they’re hideous people. But there has never been one with the power to do what American “heroes” do every year.

MN: That’s because we kill them first.

4598: And then there is the damage afterwards. The sickness. People who die in the rubble. People who have their entire homes destroyed only to be turned away as undesirables when they try to find a home somewhere else.

MN: That’s not equi--

4598: You asked me if I have regrets. Yeah, I do.

4598: I regret every single fucking base I built for all of you.

---

The rest of the transcript is unsalvageable. Prisoner #4598 escaped shortly after, as containment measures on the subject once again failed. Future heroes are advised to use lethal force on sight, as containment has proven impossible and these transcripts indicate de-radicalization is unlikely.