#imperfect simile

[karen-aronofsky]

i’ve been reading about the mariel boatlift recently and it’s been wild because it’s half got me convinced that republicans just haven’t moved past 1980. like “they’re not sending their best; they’re bringing crime; they’re rapists; and some i assume are good people”—this would have made some sense to say when the castro government was literally putting prisoners on a boat to send to the u.s. (but still alarmist since many of them were political prisoners etc.), but makes no sense now (not least because no one’s sending them). it’s like the boatlift is just the spinning top in the collective subconscious safe of the american right

[physalian]

Humanizing Your Characters (And Why You Should)

To humanize a character is not to contort an irredeemable villain into the warped funhouse mirror reflection of a hero in the last 30 seconds to gain “narrative subversion” points. To humanize is not to give said villain a tragic backstory that validates every bad choice they make in attempt to provide nuance where it does not deserve to be.

To humanize a character, villain or otherwise, is to make them flawed. Scuff them up, give them narrative birthmarks and scars and imperfections. Whether it’s your hero, their love interest, the comic relief, the mentor, the villain, the rival, these little narrative details serve to make all your literary babies better.

Why should you humanize your characters?

To do this means to write in details beyond those that service the plot, or the themes, or the motifs, morals, foreshadowing, or story. These might be (and usually are) entirely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. So, if I wrote lengthy diatribes on pacing and why every detail must matter, and character descriptions and thematic importance, why am I now suggesting go free-for-all on the fluff?

Just like real people have quirks and tics and beliefs and pet peeves that serve our no greater purpose, so should fictional people. Your average reader doesn’t have the foggiest idea what literary devices are beyond metaphor, simile foreshadowing, and anecdote, but they can tell when the author is using motif and theme and all the syntactical marvels because it reads that much richer, even if they can’t pinpoint why.

And, for shipping fodder, these tiny little details are what help your audience fall in love with the character. It doesn’t even have to be in a book – Taylor Swift (whether you like her or not) never fills her music with sexual innuendo or going clubbing. She tells stories filled with human details like dancing in the refrigerator light. People can simultaneously relate to these very specific and vivid experiences, and say “not that exactly, but man this reminds me of…” and that’s (part of) the reason her music is so popular.

What kinds of narratives need these details?

All of them. Visual media, audio, written, stage play. Now, to what degree and excess you apply these details depends on your tone, intended audience, and writing style. If your style of writing is introspection heavy, noir character drama, you might go pretty heavy on the character design.

But even if you’re writing a kids book with a scant few paragraphs of setting descriptors and internal narration, or you’re drawing a comic book – if you have characters you want people to care about, do this.

Animators, particularly, are very adept at humanizing non-human characters, because, unlike live acting, every single stroke of the pen is there with intent. They use their own reflections for facial references, record their own movements to draw a dance, and insert little bits of themselves into signature character poses so you know that *that* animator did this one.

How to humanize your characters.

I’m going to break this down into a couple sections: Costume/wardrobe, personality, beliefs/behavior/superstitions, haptics/proxemics/kinesics, and voice. They will all overlap and the sheer variety and possibilities are way too broad for me to capture every facet.

Costumes and Wardrobe

In the film Fellowship of the Ring, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment where, after Boromir is slain by the Uruk-Hai, Aragorn takes Boromir’s Gondorian vambraces to wear in his honor, and in honor of their shared country. He wears them the rest of the trilogy. The editing pays no extra attention to them beyond a split second of Aragorn tightening the straps, it never lingers on them, never reminds you that they’re there, but they kept it in nonetheless. His actor also included a hunting bow that didn't exist in the book because he's a roamer, a ranger, and needs to be able to feed himself, along with a couple other survival tools.

Aragorn wears plenty of other symbolic bits of costume – the light of the Evenstar we see constantly from Arwen, the Lothlorien green cloaks shared by the entire Fellowship, his re-forged sword and eventual full Gondorian regalia, but all those are Epic Movie Moments that serve a thematic purpose.

Taking the vambraces is just a small, otherwise insignificant character moment, a choice made for no other reason than that’s what this character would do. That’s what makes him human, not an archetype.

When you’re writing these details and can’t rely on sneaking them into films, you have to work a little harder to remind your audience that they exist, but not too often. A detail shifts from “human” to “plot point” when it starts to serve a purpose to the themes and story.

Inconsequentiality might be how a character ties, or doesn’t tie their shoelaces, because they just can’t be bothered so they remain permanent knots and tripping hazards. It might be a throw-away line about how they refuse to wear shorts and strictly stick to long pants because they don’t like showing off their legs. It might be perpetually greasy hair from constantly running their fingers through it with stress, or self-soothing. A necklace they fidget with, or a ring, a belt they never bother to replace even though they should, a pair of lucky socks.

Resist the urge to make it more meaningful than “this is just how they are”. If I’m using the untied shoelaces example – in Spiderverse, this became a part of the story’s themes, motifs, and foreshadowing, and doesn’t count. Which isn’t bad! It’s just not what I’m talking about.

Personality

In How to Train Your Dragon, Toothless does not speak. All his personality comes from how he moves, the noises he makes, and the expressions on his face. There’s moments, like in the finale, when his prosthetic has burned off and Hiccup tells him to hold on for a little bit longer, and you can clearly see on his face that he’s deeply uncertain about his ability to do so. It’s almost off the screen, another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. Or the beat of hesitation before he lets Hiccup touch him in the Forbidden Friendship scene. Or the irritated noise he makes when he’s impatiently waiting for Hiccup to stop chatting with his dad because they have a giant dragon to murder. Or when he slaps Hiccup with his ear fin for flying them into a rock spire.

None of those details *needed* to exist to endear you to his character or to serve the scenes they’re in. The scenes would carry on just fine without them. He’s a fictional dragon, yes, but these details make him real.

Other personality tics you could include might be a character who gets frustrated with tedious things very quickly and starts making little inteligible curses under their breath. Or how they giggle when they’re excited and start bouncing on their toes. Maybe they have a tic where they snap their fingers when they’re concentrating, trying to will an idea into existence. Or they stick their tongue out while they work and get embarrassed when another character calls them on it. They roll around in their sleep, steal blankets, drool, leave dishes in the sink or are neurotic with how things must be organized. They have one CD in their car, and actually use that CD player instead of the phone jack or Bluetooth. They sing in the shower, while they cook, or while they do homework, no matter how grating their voice.

They like the smell of new shoes or Sharpies. They hate the texture of suede or velvet or sticky residues. They never pick their socks up. They hate the overhead light in their room and use 50 lamps instead. They hate turning into oncoming traffic or don’t trust their backup camera. They collect Funko Pops and insist there’s always room for more.

And about a million others.

Beliefs, Behaviors, and Superstitions

*If you happen to be writing a story where superstitions have merit, maybe skip this one.* Usually, inevitably, these evolve into character centerpieces and I can’t actually think of one off the top of my head that doesn’t become this beyond the ones we all know. A few comedic examples do come to mind:

The Magic Conch in “Club Spongebob” and the sea-bear-proof dirt circle in “The Camping Episode”

Dean Winchester’s fear and panic-driven actions in “Yellow Fever” and “Sam, Interrupted”

The references to the trolls that steal left-foot socks in How to Train Your Dragon

I’m not a fan of wasting time writing a religious character doing their religious thing when Plot Is Happening, but smaller things are what I’m talking about. Like them wearing a cross/rosary and touching it when they’re nervous. Having a specific off-beat prayer, saying, or expression because they don’t believe in cursing.

The classic ones like black cats, ladders, broken mirrors, salt, sidewalk cracks can all be funny. Athletes have plenty, too, and some of them, particularly in baseball culture, are a bit ridiculous. Not washing socks or uniforms, having a team idol they donate Double Bubble to and also rub their toes. A specific workout routine, diet, team morale dance.

Other things, too. A character who’s afraid to go back downstairs once the lights are off, or fear the basement or the backyard shed. Or they’re really put-off by this old family photo for no reason other than how glassy their eyes look and it’s creepy. They like crystals, dreamcatchers, star signs, tarot, or they absolutely do not under any circumstances.

They believe in all the tried and true ways of predicting the weather like a grizzled old sailor. They believe in ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches, skinwalkers, doppelgangers, fairies. They talk to the cat statue in their kitchen and named it Fudge Pop. They whisper to the spirit that possessed the fridge so it stops making all that racket, and half the time, it works every time. They wear yellow for good luck or carry a rabbit’s foot. They’re not religious at all but still throw prayers out to whoever’s listening because, you know, just in case. They sit by their window sill and talk to the moon and the stars and pretend like they’re in a music video when they’re driving through the city in the rain.

Haptics, Proxemics, and Kinesics

These are, for all you non-communication and psych majors out there, touch and physical contact, how they move, and how they move around other people.

Behold, your shipping fodder.

Two shining examples of proxemics in action are the famous “close talker” episode of Seinfeld (of which every communication major has been subjected to) and Castiel’s not understanding of personal space (and human chronemic habits) in Supernatural.

These are how a character walks, if they’re flat-footed, clumsy, or tip-toers. If they make a racket or constantly spook the other characters. If they fidget or can’t sit still in a seat for five seconds, if they like to sit backwards or upside down. How they touch themselves, if they do a lot of self-soothing maneuvers (hugging themselves, rubbing their arms, touching their face, drawing their knees up, holding their neck, etc) or if they don’t do any self-soothing at all.

This is how they shake hands, if they dance while they cook or work. It’s how much space they let themselves take up, if they man-spread or keep their limbs in closer. How close they stand to others or how far. If they let themselves be touched at all, or if they always have their skin covered. If they always have their back to a wall,  or are always making sure they know where the nearest exit is. If they make grand gestures when they talk and give directions. If they flinch from pats on the back or raised hands. If they lean away from loud voices or project their own. If they use their height to their advantage when arguing, puff their chest, square their shoulders, put their hands on their hips, or point fingers in accusation.

If they touch other characters as they pass by. If they’re huggers or victims of falling asleep on or near their comrades. If they must sleep facing the door, or with something solid behind them. If they can sleep in the middle of a party wholly uncaring. If they sleepwalk, sleeptalk, migrate across the bed to cuddle whoever’s nearest with no idea they’re doing it.

If they like to be held or like to hold others. If they hate being picked up and slung around or are touch-starved for it. If they like their space and stick to it or are more than happy to share.

Do they walk with grace, head held high and back straight? Or are they hunched over, head hung, watching their feet? Are they meanderers or speed-walkers? Do they cross their arms in front or lace their hands behind them? Do they bow to authority or meet that gaze head on?

I have heard that Prince Zuko, in Last Airbender, is usually drawn sleeping with his bad ear down when he doesn’t feel safe, like on his warship or anywhere in the Fire Nation, or on the road. He’s drawn on his other side once he joins the Gaang. In Dead Man’s Chest, just before Davy Jones drives the Flying Dutchman under the waves, two tentacles curl up and around the brim of his hat to keep it from blowing off in the water.

When they fight, do they attack first, or defend first? Do they touch other characters’ hair? Share makeup, share clothes? Touch their faces with boops or bonks or nuzzles and eskimo kisses? Do they crack their knuckles and necks and knees?

Do they stare in baffled curiosity at all the other characters wholly comfortable in each other's spaces because they can’t, won’t, or don’t see the point in all this nonsense? Do they say they’re happy on the outside, but are betrayed by their body language?

Voice

Whether or not to write an accent is entirely up to you. Books like Their Eyes Were Watching God writes dialogue in a vernacular specific to its characters. Westerners and southerners tend to be written with the southern drawl or dialect, ripe with stereotypical contractions. Be advised, however, that in attempt to write an accent to give your character depth, you could be instead turning off your audience who doesn’t have energy to decipher what they’re saying, or you went and wrote a racist stereotype.

Voice isn’t just accent and dialect, nor is it how it sounds, which falls more solidly under useful character descriptions. Voice for the sake of humanizing your characters concerns how they talk, how they convey their thoughts, and how they become distinct from other characters in dialogue and narration.

If you’re writing a narrative that hops heads and don’t want to include a big banner to indicate who’s talking at any given time, this is where voice matters. It is, I think, the least appreciated of all the possible traits to pay attention to.

First person narrators have the most flexibility here because the audience is zero degrees removed from their first-hand experiences. Their personality comes through sharply in how they describe things and what they pay attention to.

But it’s also in what similes and metaphors they use. I read a book that had an average (allegedly straight) male narrator going off and describing colors with types of flowers, some I had to look up because I just don’t know those off the top of my head. My immediate thought was either this character is a poorly written gay, or he’s a florist. Neither (allegedly), the writer was just being too specific.

Do they have crutch words they use? like, um, actually, so…, uh

Or repeat exclamations specific to them? yikes, yowzers, jeepers, jinkies, zoinks, balls, beans, d’oh!

Or idioms they’re fond of? Like a bat out of hell. Snowball’s chance.

Do they stutter when they’re nervous? Do they lose their train of thought and bounce around, losing other characters in the process? Do they have a non-Christian god they pray to and say something other than “thank God”? Are they from another country, culture, time period, realm, or planet with their own gods, beliefs, and idioms?

When they describe settings, how flowery is the language? Would this grizzled war hero use flowery language? How would he or she describe the color pink, versus a PTA mom? Do they use only a generic “blue, green, red” or do they really pay attention with “aquamarine, teal, emerald, viridian, vermillion, rose, ruby”?

How do this character’s hobbies affect how well they can describe dance moves, painting styles, car models, music genres?

This mostly matters when you’re head-hopping and the voice of the narrator serves to be more distinct, otherwise, what’s the point of head-hopping? Just use third-person omniscient.

If you really want to go wild, give a specific narrator unique syntax. Maybe one character is the ghost of Oscar Wild with never-ending run-on sentences. Just be sure to not go too overboard and compromise the integrity of your story.

In the book A Lesson Before Dying, a somewhat illiterate, underprivileged and undereducated minor has been given a mentor, a teacher, before they face the death penalty. At the end of the book, you read all of the letters they wrote to their teacher. There’s misspellings everywhere, almost no punctuation, and long, rambling sentences.

It’s heartbreaking. The subject matter is heavy and horrible, yes, but it’s the choice to write with such poor English that has a much bigger impact than perfect MLA format.

How to implement these details

Most of these, in the written medium, need only show up once or twice before your audience notices and wonders why they’re there. Most fall squarely under character design, which falls under exposition, and should follow all the exposition guidelines.

These details exist to be random and fluffy, but they can’t exist randomly within the narrative. If you want to have your character be superstitious, pick a relevant time to include that superstition.

Others, like ongoing speech habits or movements, still don’t overuse, especially if they’re unique. A character might like to sit backwards in a chair, but if you mention that they’re doing it every single time they sit down, your audience will wonder what’s so important and if the character is unwell.

And, of course, you can let these traits become thematically important, like a superstition being central to their personality or backstory or motivation. These all serve the same purpose of making your character feel like a real person instead of just a “character”.

Just think about tossing in a few random details every now and then and see what happens. One tiny sentence can take a background character and make them candidates for the eventual fandom’s fan favorite. Details like these turn your work from “This a story, and these are the characters who tell it” into “these are my characters, and this is their story.”

[sparxemberflame]

Fuckin'... Aabria Iyengar.

I am... In awe. I am delerious. I am chomping at the bit. I just... Fuck!!

So. Past two weeks/episodes Especially. Watching/listening to Burrow's End and Worlds Beyond Number back to back is an Experience. Having 2 seperate shows that contain Brennan Lee Mulligan, Erika Ishii and Aabria, in my ears telling me different stories 2 eps at a time is an absolute blast (shoutout to Lou, Jasper, Isabella, Rashawn, Siobhan and rest of cast and crew on both shows too you're awesome! Not the focus of this little outburst.)

Anyway it's GREAT. Highly recommend both shows and there are parallels I'll get into elsewhere, elsewhen. But.

This is an Aabria Iyengar specifically fucking Stan post.

You have made me feel so many overwhelmingly cool, awesome and intimate emotions and ideas that I can hardly begin to explain them. For some reason the only fucking thing that comes close is this. Silly but sorta deep thing about my favorite snack (shout out to snack gang) a Ferrero Rocher:

Aabria,

Shall I compare thee intricate weaving of characters and narratives to a Ferrero Rocher?

I shall. For this is no poem or any such writing of iambic pentameter. It is at best a floundering simile.

You have a way of creating characters and stories which much like a certain confectionary treat when unwrapped contains such an immense blend of texture and flavor. Each instance containing a wholly unique configuration of features bound together in perfectly imperfect unity. Not wholly smooth round but spherical oozing with points of uniqueness sticking out all over.

But yet if you dig just a bit deeper. There's this. Shell. Not a Barrier as it might first seem. But an Obstacle. A Challenge of sorts. Put there not to deter you but to provoke a moment of reflection. I think of Suvi and her refusal to process or be truly vulnerable in most situations. I think of the intricate power-structures of Last Bast and the Hint of this Wall that something Richer. More interesting, more honest and lovingly crafted lies Just Beneath.

This shell. Which you'll find is litterally Wafer-Thin. Should you ask the right question. Follow the right narrative thread. Bite into it with your teeth.

That curiosity is. Always and forever rewarded. With a richness of flavour and care that feels like a hug, like understanding, like being, at last: Home.

It is easy to get lost in that and yet even in this sea of what I can only call love. You find it. The Core. The hazelnut. A moral. Or a question, or a consequence. Something to once again think about and bite into.

And you realise. Once you've finally reach it that this core. This secret. Was Always Obvious. It was Sprinkled. All atop the very first layer. Litterally poking out. Each and every goddamn feature sticking out. Every chopped up uniquely distinct feature.

Was made up of the same material. Was the Core The Whole Time. Visible to the naked eye. But now having experienced the whole show. The whole treat. It is gone.

But its nourished you. The treat nourishes my body. The way Aabria tells stories nourishes my very soul.

Thinking back on many stories told that core in plain sight is often about Family or Love and the relationships between. Far from an uncommon subject in stories. But something about it. Something about the unique way Aabria does it in not just one but seemingly every story and character she creates. Its fantastic, its familiar and it... I can't describe it any other way than that it fills me with elation, jubilation and a deep sense of belonging and the implications therein drives me absolutely insane.

It's with my hat off, eyes sparkling in adoration and my heart full that I say:

Thank you Aabria Iyengar for telling these stories, for bringing these characters to life. They have changed me and many others forever and have and continue to drive me to create my own stories and campaigns for many years to come.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

🥺✅️

🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?

When Chris hallucinates his mom during WRU and also I'm Here, when his memories come to the surface and he has to face all the ugliness he has survived all at once... Both of those always get my throat tight. Any piece where I contrast Chris with his parents and Chris with Nat, Jake, etc where you see he still has a family, even after losing his own.

Any time Jake deals with the legacy of child abuse and how it still is woven into his adult life today. Any time Kauri's internal monologue becomes repetitions of ways Owen has insulted him, and sometimes he doesn't even realize it's not his own thoughts.

Nat struggling with the weight of the lives she is responsible for gets to me a lot, too.

-

✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?

Hm. Definitely the idea of someone wearing a mask after significant trauma and having to learn how to take the mask off, every story has some of that. I think also complicated relationships with imperfect parents or relatives... I definitely, in a more technical sense, use a LOT of metaphors and similes, even when I don't mean to and can't figure out where they keep coming from.

[universetalkz]

“No two people think or react alike, because each person is at a different point on their journey. It is impossible to be in anyone else’s shoes because each person has their own place from where they observe the universe.

To make use of that simile— it is as though each person lives on a planet and a different galaxy. All of us are surrounded by the same firmament of stars but the configurations change depending on where the observer happens to be.”

~Nobuo Suzuki: Wabi Sabi— The Wisdom in Imperfection

[moondirti]

Like many, I've shamelessly become a Miguel simp and drove deep into the fics tag and stumbled yours. Eventually, I stayed for your writing instead because HOLY HELL! Your writing style is what I'm trying to achieve but difficult to do so! I have to ask what are your tips and techniques?

I also must add that your Miguel story is the only one I continuously keep tabs with! I'll wait anticipatedly for your next chapter! =D

this means so much to me babe😭 thank you so so much for sticking around and reading animalic, messages like this meep me going!

Honestly, I feel like my writing style is all over the place, but I’ll assume you’re referring to the more poetic bits of prose. For that, I recommend keeping a book/note of things you observe in real life that could be incorporated into your writing. In animalic 9, I write about a memory feeling like sand slipping through the imperfect gaps of your fingers. I came up that while literally on the beach, and it made the simile so much more… personal and visceral, if that makes sense?

Go out, experience things for yourself. Read too, if you’re the type to be inspired by others’ writing. I have a few mutuals whose work I constantly revisit for inspiration, but Ava Reid is a published author I absolutely adore. Her work is so… cushy, like a soft bed of moss, if that makes sense. I like to go through my annotations and tabs in her books while writing to look for how she describes certain things.

After a while of forcing yourself into the habit, your style will eventually form and things will start to come naturally to you. Remember that your harshest critic is often yourself, though, and to have fun during it because that’s what it’s all for <3

I hope this helps! Sorry for the late response :)

[amrv-5]

8, 12, & 13? 👀

HELLO AL HAPPY MONDAY!!! And thanks for the ask these are fun AND made me actually put down thoughts on an AU I had never actually framed out to myself before!!!!

Answers under the cut for length and pretension, but in short: thoughts on a Solaris AU and brief Mad Men mention; being more mercenary with my writing; yes to fanart/comics and a mayyyybe to podficcing!!!

8. Is there a story idea in your mental vault that you’ve never been brave enough to try writing? Is this the year? Can you tell us about it?

OHHH never brave enough to TRY... Nothing coming immediately to mind (besides maybe wanting to get better at writing sex lmao) but if pressed? I do love doing sort of weird AUs and have been slowly quietly only 1% seriously kicking around the idea of a Solaris AU take on MASH. Love the book, going to see the film for the first time Thursday, so we’ll see if that actually kicks something off for me?? Anyway I think it would be really fucking good. And weird. I think it’d be fun to play with that theme of hitting the edge of what it is possible for humans to understand, and staring down the absolutely alien / non-negotiably and permanently inexplicable. I want to put Hawkeye in a ship by himself and have the sentient ocean gently tune into his brainwaves and reproduce in its infinitely changing depths a scene of such horrific uncanniness it is nearly unbearable to observe and makes him temporarily insane. And then BJ of course is the one haunted by the imperfect (and unkillable and superhumanly strong) alien reproduction of his family. Etc. Lots here to have fun with. But Good God The Work Involved. Anyway. That or I’d love to try my hand at a Mad Men fic playing with the beloved Peggy/Stan/Ginsberg dynamic in some formation. HOORAY!

12. Will you change anything about the way you edit or rewrite this year?

Maybe???? I tried a few different things in my approach to All Octobers that I thought paid off. Or at least I still kind of like it even though it’s a few months old now, so that feels like a good sign?? Most of the changes took place in the writing stage, but I tried to be more mercenary with my editing, stricter especially with non-unique or already-extant similes, metaphors, etc., and willing to Gloss / Summarize. It’s The Year of Montage, Baby!!!!!! <- guy high off his ass on and irreparably damaged by hundreds of pages of film theory per week (if that didn’t already come thru in the . Endless meditation on the real / the sign / the image / the lens in All Octobers. Sorry LMAO).

13. Aside from fanfic, are there any other fan works you’d like to try creating? Fanart, or fanvids, gifsets, or podfic? 

YES! Fanart for sure!! I want to get back into drawing regularly if possible. Also if I can draw BJ and Hawk I can then start trying to do sort of — illustrated things (always thinking about Guide to Looking at Explosions for something I wish I had the skillset for, for example!!). Also I thought podficcing was fun to try and I may give it a shot again sometime, but also it’s a lot of work and a huge time suck for something not many people enjoy and which I also don’t get much out of after the literal act of recording it (love reading aloud!! but listening to my own voice… 😧)

[baladric]

The poem of the day yesterday was "Opera Singer" by Ross Gay and I thought of you :D Link: poetryfoundation(.)org/poems/92017/opera-singer

ohhhhh oh oh, this is gorgeous ohhhhhhhh, i am going to.. transcribe it here bc everyone needs to see it

Opera Singer

By Ross Gay

Today my heart is so goddamned fat with grief  that I’ve begun hauling it in a wheelbarrow. No. It’s an anvil  dragging from my neck as I swim  through choppy waters swollen with the putrid corpses of hippos, which means lurking, somewhere below, is the hungry  snout of a croc waiting to spin me into an oblivion  worse than this run-on simile, which means only to say:  I’m sad. And everyone knows what that means. 

And in my sadness I’ll walk to a café,  and not see light in the trees, nor finger the bills in my pocket  as I pass the boarded houses on the block. No,  I will be slogging through the obscure country of my sadness  in all its monotone flourish, and so imagine my surprise  when my self-absorption gets usurped  by the sound of opera streaming from an open window,  and the sun peeks ever-so-slightly from behind his shawl,  and this singing is getting closer, so that I can hear the  delicately rolled r’s like a hummingbird fluttering the tongue  which means a language more beautiful than my own,  and I don’t recognize the song  though I’m jogging toward it and can hear the woman’s  breathing through the record’s imperfections and above me  two bluebirds dive and dart and a rogue mulberry branch  leaning over an abandoned lot drags itself across my face,  staining it purple and looking, now, like a mad warrior of glee  and relief I run down the street, and I forgot to mention  the fifty or so kids running behind me, some in diapers,  some barefoot, all of them winged and waving their pacifiers  and training wheels and nearly trampling me  when in a doorway I see a woman in slippers and a floral housedress  blowing in the warm breeze who is maybe seventy painting the doorway and friends, it is not too much to say  it was heaven sailing from her mouth and all the fish in the sea  and giraffe saunter and sugar in my tea and the forgotten angles  of love and every name of the unborn and dead  from this abuelita only glancing at me  before turning back to her earnest work of brushstroke and lullaby  and because we all know the tongue’s clumsy thudding  makes of miracles anecdotes let me stop here  and tell you I said thank you.

[lovermanslament]

a bad poem

In the land of awful verse, here I stand,

To craft a poem, terrible and bland.

Prepare yourself, for this epic fail,

A composition that will surely derail.

Oh, the words I choose, they make no sense,

Randomly strung together, devoid of any pretense.

Like a jumble of gibberish, nonsensical and absurd,

This poem, my friend, is the worst you've ever heard.

Roses are red, violets are blue,

Nonsensical rhymes, oh, what shall I do?

Bananas dance with pineapples in the rain,

Absurdity reigns, logic goes down the drain.

A mishmash of clichés, a jumbled mess,

With each line, I plunge deeper into distress.

Metaphors gone wrong, similes misplaced,

This poem, my friend, is a complete disgrace.

The rhythm is off, the meter's a wreck,

I apologize, dear reader, this poem is broken like a neck.

It's a trainwreck of words, a chaotic blend,

A masterpiece of terrible, from beginning to end.

So, let us bid farewell to this dreadful creation,

A poem so awful, it defies explanation.

May it serve as a reminder, a cautionary tale,

Of what happens when poetic talent fails.

Though, in the midst of the chaos and disarray,

A glimmer of brilliance starts to make its way.

Amidst the jumbled metaphors and rhymes astray,

A subtle beauty emerges, causing minds to sway.

The words that seemed disjointed, without a thread,

Now evoke emotions, as if they were said

With purpose and intention, carefully led,

The poem's flaws fading, a new light is spread.

The nonsensical lines take on a different hue,

Inviting interpretation, to discover something true.

The banter of bananas and pineapples in the dew,

Unleashes imagination, a poetic breakthrough.

With each passing stanza, a revelation ignites,

A deeper meaning hidden in the poetic flights.

The trainwreck of words turns into delightful sights,

As readers realize, this poem truly excites.

In the land of awful verse, here we stand,

Witnessing a transformation, quite unplanned.

From terrible and bland, to something grand,

This poem, against all odds, starts to command.

So let us celebrate this unexpected twist,

As the poem's flaws turn into a gift.

For sometimes, it's in imperfections that we persist,

And find the beauty that even the worst can't resist.

[bluejayblueskies]

🎈 🎀 for the ask game?

fic writer asks

🎈 describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?

i think my style is relatively fixed! i do play with it a bit depending on what mood i'm going for, but i tend towards a bit of a flowery style. i don't think it's quite purple prose (and i've actually been taking steps to make it more efficient lately, for several reasons) but i have a tendency towards similes, metaphors, long internal monologues, description-heavy prose, and just in general something that's a bit more dense in nature. i'm ... honestly a bit self-conscious about it sometimes and am not sure how easy it is to read, so i've been cutting more and more of my particularly flowery bits lately. less is more and all that 😅

🎀 give yourself a compliment about your own writing

after i just disparaged my writing style in the previous paragraph haha 😅 i'm more inclined to be critical towards myself than complimentary, but i do think i do a good job of portraying complicated emotions! i like messy things, and i like imperfect endings, and i like relationships that push and pull together and apart again, and i love love love narratives where people choose to stay together and to love one another even when it's hard and even when they fight and even when the world is working against them, and i like to think i do a good job of writing these narratives.

[rotzaprachim]

one of the most interesting lenses I’ve been reading to talk about the (first two) terminator films and their reception has been about the way they put single motherhood, and slightly less leave it to beaver style family dynamics, on screen in a way thr was really radical for the 80’s- and hasn’t been reallly matched since. It’s messy- I see a lot of people, and later movies, who’ve clocked in on the Sarah’s-importance-to-humanity-is-her-uterus as a fairly reductive bio essentialist kind of plot device, and like, I get that- there are the literally hundreds of someone-to-remember-him-by one-night-stand-bam-pregnant plotline that followed and I mostly abhor, and some pretty shitty readings from later terminator films themselves. But I think like so many feminist lens issues context is everything (read: the debacle over star trek’s miniskirts) and it’s also true that James Cameron’s decision to make a single mother - and not one of the *good* middle class single mothers with the tragically dead husband but a working class waitress who gets pregnant from a one night stand with a guy she barely knows - the particular saviour of humanity was really radical in a time of mass national hysteria about single mothers themselves as the doom of American society. And she still stands out to me as a particular feminist icon along the axes of motherhood because she gets to live (for a while) and be imperfect. Which is a wild thing to say until you think about the sheer number of simile franchises since that have found ways to have a perfect, dead mother figure who’s completely absent from the narrative because she’s been unceremoniously killed off before the story even starts. It’s almost as if on some level we’re narratively more comfortable with a dead mother than a human one. There’s things to think I say about the way media continues to reflect some of our society’s particular misogyny in terms of every woman *must* be a biological mother but motherhood itself, when it recognises that either a mother or their children are human beings more complicated than conservative talking points, is really not an appropriate topic for media- let alone action movies. But also to say I really love Sarah Connor and think many of the sequels lost the plot of what made *that* story tick in the first place, apart from the particular focus in terminator genesys that Dani ramos is not the *carrier* of the future generation of leaders but the future leader herself- a purposeful return to the first film, and a statement in modern context

[jakedabon]

∘₊✧{Ang Babayng Way Bilbil} - Adonis Durado∘₊✧ and the Perfectionism of a Woman's Imperfections

"Ang babayng way bilbil kay morag baybay nga way kimba.

Morag sigay nga way bukobuko, tabugok nga way ata.

Sa bilbil mahibaw-an nganong bawron ang kadagatan,

Nganong gansang-gansangon ang mga batu sa hunasan.

Ang babayng way bilbil kay morag kawayang way buku.

Morag dapaw nga way katul, langub nga way tangu.

May misteryo ang bilbil nga susama sa misteryo sa lasang:

Engkanto sa pusod sa busay, minu sa pus-on sa pangpang.

Ang babayng way bilbil kay morag dan nga way kurbada,

Morag bungtod nga way subida, simbahan nga way kampana.

Ang babayng bilbilon morag sugilanong puno sa pasumbingay:

Sa gaawas-awas nga bilbil, magbunok ang akong pauraray."

A REFLECTION

Upon firstly reading the poem, I found it difficult to understand because of the deep Bisaya. I had to reread it a few times to get the general idea, and ask my parents to decipher the words to pick out the smaller meanings of each line and word.

The poem is a literary piece much needed to be read by those insecure of themselves. It encourages people to embrace their flaws as it is what makes them ultimately unique. People are imperfectly perfect.

Women shouldn't follow what other people say about what makes a woman "beautiful". They shouldn't feel insecure about the strict and toxic beauty standards upheld by society. What they think are "flaws" are exactly what makes them their own person; their own selves. Everyone has their own unique features, and each one is just as beautiful as those societal beauty norms.

This poem captures the importance of validating one's self and accepting and acknowledging the physical flaws of people. It is a poem that must be recognized more, especially this era where the youth is highly concerned with their physical appearance, and just pieces similar to this poem can bring reassurance that their flaws can be beautiful too.

ABOUT THE POEM

Ang Babayng Way Bilbil is a three stanza poem with four lines each. It is a free verse poem with a reflective atmosphere. Its imagery is thick and uses a lot of compare and contrast, or parallelisms.

The first lines in every stanza has the phrase "ang babayng way bilbil" followed by a comparison of another material. These materials have important aspects that display their purpose. He uses these metaphors and similes to deliver the main point of the poem.

ines of each stanza, he proceeds to tell the significance of these imperfections to our identities.

[angleation]

∘₊✧{Ang Babayng Way Bilbil} - Adonis Durado∘₊✧ and the Perfectionism of a Woman's Imperfections

"Ang babayng way bilbil kay morag baybay nga way kimba.

Morag sigay nga way bukobuko, tabugok nga way ata.

Sa bilbil mahibaw-an nganong bawron ang kadagatan,

Nganong gansang-gansangon ang mga batu sa hunasan.

Ang babayng way bilbil kay morag kawayang way buku.

Morag dapaw nga way katul, langub nga way tangu.

May misteryo ang bilbil nga susama sa misteryo sa lasang:

Engkanto sa pusod sa busay, minu sa pus-on sa pangpang.

Ang babayng way bilbil kay morag dan nga way kurbada,

Morag bungtod nga way subida, simbahan nga way kampana.

Ang babayng bilbilon morag sugilanong puno sa pasumbingay:

Sa gaawas-awas nga bilbil, magbunok ang akong pauraray."

. ⋅ ˚̣- : ✧ : – ⭒ ⊹ ⭒ – : ✧ : -˚̣⋅ .. ⋅ ˚̣- : ✧ : – ⭒ ⊹ ⭒ – : ✧ : -˚̣⋅ .

BEAUTY STANDARDS ARE LOW STANDARDS

Most Filipinos admire the following characteristics:

Fair skin - kids are told at a very young age to stay away from the sun because they will get dark and look “ugly.” Hence the rapid incline of bleaching products and whitening supplements.

Long, straight black hair - which may either be natural or rebonded

Tall nose - People like a nose with defined and proper eurocentric features.

Eyes, preferably slanted - the crescent shape eyes or the type of eyes that disappear when you smile is much coveted. That’s what most Filipinos love about Chinitas / tos

Lastly, a slim body type.

In other words, a rather un-Filipino appearance. Some claim that Filipinos never really recovered from their colonial mentality. Others argue that having dark complexion is too frequent in this area or that it is synonymous with poverty. The stereotypical beauty standards of Filipinos is highly unfair and demands too much for natural beauty itself.

A lot of Filipino women get pressured by these beauty standards and they try to appeal to them, disregarding their natural beauty. One of these imperfections are body flabs, or bilbil. The stereotype of a "beautiful" Filipino woman is having a slimmer body. Everyone is born different and with a different body, so why should there be a specific standard of beauty when everyone is so diverse in appearance?

ABOUT THE POEM

Ang Babayng Way Bilbil is a three stanza poem with four lines each. It is a free verse poem with a reflective atmosphere. Its imagery is thick and uses a lot of compare and contrast, or parallelisms.

The first lines in every stanza has the phrase "ang babayng way bilbil" followed by a comparison of another material. These materials have important aspects that display their purpose. He uses these metaphors and similes to deliver the main point of the poem.

EXAMPLES:

baybay nga way kimba

sigay nga way bukobuko

kawayang way buko

dan nga way kurbada

Durado compares a woman without flabs to materials without their aspects, such as a church without a bell or a bamboo without a sturdy stem. On the last two lines of each stanza, he proceeds to tell the significance of these imperfections to our identities.

A REFLECTION

Upon firstly reading the poem, I found it difficult to understand because of the deep Bisaya. I had to reread it a few times to get the general idea, and ask my parents to decipher the words to pick out the smaller meanings of each line and word.

The poem is a literary piece much needed to be read by those insecure of themselves. It encourages people to embrace their flaws as it is what makes them ultimately unique. People are imperfectly perfect.

Women shouldn't follow what other people say about what makes a woman "beautiful". They shouldn't feel insecure about the strict and toxic beauty standards upheld by society. What they think are "flaws" are exactly what makes them their own person; their own selves. Everyone has their own unique features, and each one is just as beautiful as those societal beauty norms.

This poem captures the importance of validating one's self and accepting and acknowledging the physical flaws of people. It is a poem that must be recognized more, especially this era where the youth is highly concerned with their physical appearance, and just pieces similar to this poem can bring reassurance that their flaws can be beautiful too.

[stinkybreath]

One of the things Wildbow fans will notice, especially in the last several years, is that he gives his characters this quirk of speech where they’re all prone to making bizarre and imperfect metaphors, which they will then further degrade by either stretching it too far or by walking it back. It was suffocatingly common in the early parts of Pale and has recently been reduced somewhat, to my great relief. To me, it was the single biggest flaw in his writing. Each of them stuck out badly and it made the characters lose some individuality since they all did it. But! However! I will give credit where it’s due because it’s clear he spent time thinking about them, thinking about how to explain them, thinking about the particular word choice, etc.

I’ve been doing a fucking lot of reading this year and quite a bit of listening (audiobooks and podcasts and video essays), and I don’t know if there’s been some sort of culture shift with fiction writers/editors lately, but I’ve noticed an overall increase in slapdash figure of speech (particularly metaphor and simile), stuff that is constructed only to sound good, to sound literary, to sound deep and interesting. And of course, if you take one second to analyze them, they fall apart and mean nothing and cheapen the work as a whole. I haven’t taken down many examples (because why would I) but the one that pissed me off enough to compose this post is one I heard today. In a published audiobook, the line went “I have lived my life in the deep shadow of the river” when all they meant is that they lived near the river. They were not trying to make a point about how the river has impacted their life, their mind, their emotional state, their development, they were just fucking word vomiting trying to come up with a cooler sounding way to say they lived near a river. The passage is not thematically about how the river impacted them. The river is no overbearing or malevolent force. The river is simply a setting with not much influence on the story as a whole. The river does not shape them as a person. The river does not psychologically hang over them. It’s just a throwaway fake deep line to give some character background.

Generally I’m peeved about the state of fiction publishing for many reasons, but this type of shit (this is only one example of many hundreds I’ve seen in the last year) makes me HOPPING MAD like nothing else. What is the purpose of an editor if not to strike dumb shit like that. What is the purpose of writing flowery prose if there is absolutely no meaning behind it. So as much as this tendency of wildbow’s annoys me, I am cutting him some slack for it, because he doesn’t even have an editor and his are SO much better and more relevant than hundreds of actually published works.

[shobiejuesna]

POEM

"Loving the imperfections"

You sad, you always

Hate your brown eyes (visual)

And wish the color

Sky and ocean

How you loathed your

Voice, cause it`s remind

You of rattling sound

Of thousands thunders (auditory)

But for me, I always

Loved your voice hence

It calms the raging

Storm in me (symbolism)

I always loved the

Your dark smooth (tactile)

Hair; the way it

Dance to the air (personification)

The way your smile

“The way you talk

And say my name!(allusion)

The beast tame (rhyme)

Being in your arms

It feels like heaven (simile)

And being with a

Sweet angel (metaphor)

Hush, hush, hush, hush(repetition)

That tame every

Fiber of my being;

“It just chaos in my mind” (understatement)

The strong smell musk; reminder of (olfactory)

Of the warm space (thermal)

You made me feel

[leanstooneside]

CROSSWORD CLUES "Q" (NEBULA)

- intrinsic evidence

- prominent persons

- same way

- imperfect reflexive

- broken pieces

- adverse fortune

- boding chant

- young warriors

- serious difficulties

- called; bravery

- other meanings

- last verse

- terminal o

- early rulers

- other; amo

- early period

- divine water

- wide things

- earlier ones

- similar metaphors

- reverential tzin

- frequent strife

- TEPEITIC n

- peaceful life

- precious stones

- early chant

- Open field

- old chieftains

- powerful suzerain

- public school

- ancient Huexotzinco

- dark place

- common phrase

- same simile

- considerable difficulty

- later productions

- iteocal quimaman

- terminal being

- mortal tongue

- same manner

- ancient Mexicans

- glorious memory

- native wine

- earthly pleasures

- fair God

- sweet voices

- prosperous place

- famous locality

- great joy

- ancient cyclus

- difficult analysis

- solemn occasions

- beloved jewels

- other writers

- dark night

- stranger appearing

- ancient land

- entire absence

- military officer

- other times

- little; oc

- left incomplete

- magic draught

- Younger brother

- magic; deriving

- all dwell

- ravenous beast

- ephemeral nature

- traditional history

- old verbal

- ancient religion

- last poem

- native fashion

- last line

- euphonic on

- dubitative particle

- authentic antiquity

- native sword

- MACAIC adv

- adjective refers

- common Mimosa

- musical instrument

- south; huitztlampa