#its one of those that are better without the context

[having-conniptions]

Love In The Air episode 11 live reaction under the cut (long post)

We're gonna get a kiss in this episode aaaaaaaa

Hahaha the way he gently rejected her

Namtan is so underrated lol she's an icon

"I'll tell you what I wanna eat if you can fly to Beijing to buy it today" listen Sky I appreciate you going full sugar baby princess mode but it's not good for the environment

Prapai is so whipped we love to see it

Hahaha what an entrance Rain

The good old paper roll bonk, Sky you mean to tell us you don't have siblings but do the most sibling thing ever?

Pai being questionable again... telling Joy that he and Sky are a couple and asking her for a key card to Sky's room...

Sleepy baby Sky too sleepy to be tsundere

"It's fading. What do I do?" PLEASE WHY IS HE SO CUTE that's like sooooo close to a confessio

THE WAY I GASPED WHEN THEY FINALLY KISSED yeah if I was Prapai I wouldn't have been able to hold back in that moment either omg the softness of it all

WHAAAAAT WTF THAT WAS JUST IN PAI'S HEAD?? boy I feel u

Also that kiss was exquisite lemme rewind

But yeah Sky is way too sleepy rn

The hand kiss aaaaaaa

The cheek kiss AAAAAA

...huh? Sky calling Prapai and telling him to come over?

HAHAHAHA HE CALLED HIM TO ASK HIM FOR HELP WITH HIS HOMEWORK boyyyy we both know you just wanted an excuse to see him

SKY'S SHIRT SAYS "MORE THAN FRIENDS LESS THAN LOVERS" boiiii u ain't subtle

THE WAY HE JUST KISSED HIM AND PAI MANAGED TO STAY MAD??? bruh u should have melted like a normal person

Whaaaaat why is Sky being so cute he's not even trying to be a tsundere anymore

He has literally given in this was him basically going "actually I do want to kiss you" this is everything Pai wanted... yet Pai can't accept it bc he's gotta sulk a little more xD

Now that Prapai is being cold Sky is absolutely falling over himself

Very smooth of Pai to just go to sleep in Sky's bed and fall asleep before Sky can kick him out... but he still looks mad even while sleeping

Homoerotic bike sharing ftw

I absolutely LOVE Pai's surprised face when Sky kisses him it's too good

Awwwwww Rain's gushing about Phayu and Sky is thinking about Prapai... <3

HAHAHAHA "P'Phayu is not the only one who's cool and handsome and the best" OH YEAH SKY WHO ELSE? CARE TO SHARE WITH THE CLASS?

"This is bad." Oh no babyyy he's still scared to get hurt (because obviously falling in love doesn't miraculously undo trauma)

Pai in that gray tanktop? Yes please.

Lmao he's deleting numbers of old hookups

Omg it's a wind pin that's so cute

"Go clean the bathroom" HAHAHA HE IS AWARE OF THE POWER HE HOLDS OVER PAI AND HE HAS NONPROBLEM USING IT

Wait is he doing this so he has an excuse to kiss him again as "payment" because while it does sound kinda cute I think he needs to stop viewing intimacy as a currency

Ok maybe he's doing it as a test or to drive him away

The way I GASPED bc Sky has gone back to his old "he's only doing all this because he wants to fuck me" way of thinking nooo babyyy

"I sound like a dick" congrats Pai you finally realized hahahaha

HUH???? Welcome to another round of "does Sky actually want this or is he doing what he thinks is expected of him?"

Idk all of this strikes me as so utterly unromantic and I'm so confused that I can't even enjoy it... "please get bored of me soon" HUH???

The kiss that Prapai imagined gave me 100x more butterflies than this...

And now he's thinking "please don't get bored of me" ? I'm so confused

"I slept with you so you'd stop pestering me" uh... for real or is he just being a tsundere again? Bc I feel like he hasn't fully admitted to himself that he actually likes Prapai (even though he secretly knows he does) which makes all of this rather uncomfortable to watch

Ok he's teasing but still idk what to make of all of this

Oh no not Pai asking about the piercing

Oh no his ex actually did the piercing wtf

I still feel like Sky is trying to keep his distance emotionally

But he's also smelling and cuddling Pai's shirt awwwwww

Hahaha Rain's braincell is working so hard it's got smoke coming out of it

Bonus scene: bro don't tear out the whole page that's wasteful af

[nothoughtsnoya]

various asnys ive amassed. also a vampire noya

[ark1os]

.

I didnt know the tags woulr be so much i shouldve just wrote a long vent 😭😭😭 rip

[excellentsnorting]

[unluckyxse7en]

I bring a "guy you can just ignore/talk over" vibe to the discord that my BPD really don't like

[gibbearish]

to anyone watching the james somerton situation and going "well how DO you write your own things like this then? everyone's talking about how /not/ to but i dont know where to start, the way highschool taught me essay writing was all about the number of sentences in a paragraph and mla citations :("

you know how james made things up between his """sources""" that sounded just plausible enough that people accepted it? he did it in the wrong order, do that part first THEN research. 100% serious right now, just make some shit up in your head that sounds vaguely right based on what you know now, write it down, and then go check if you're actually right or not. boom, now you have a topic. thats literally all it is, its just you saying "i think (xyz)" and then checking to see if the facts agree with you or not. if you turn out to be right, talk about what lead you to the conclusion initially and anything you learned about that you didn't predict. if you turn out to be wrong, talk about the right answer and examine why you thought differently at first. then either way talk about how things got that way, if you think it should stay like that, and why (e.g. how does it being that way effect people right now). tada suddenly you have an essay that is unplagiarized and entirely your own thoughts, with a plethora of sources on hand to cite because That's What You Used To Check. now be free your beautiful doves

[fursasaida]

This article is from 2022, but it came up in the context of Palestine:

Here are some striking passages, relevant to all colonial aftermaths but certainly also to the forms we see Zionist reaction taking at the moment:

Over the decade I lived in South Africa, I became fascinated by this white minority [i.e. the whole white population post-apartheid as a minority in the country], particularly its members who considered themselves progressive. They reminded me of my liberal peers in America, who had an apparently self-assured enthusiasm about the coming of a so-called majority-minority nation. As with white South Africans who had celebrated the end of apartheid, their enthusiasm often belied, just beneath the surface, a striking degree of fear, bewilderment, disillusionment, and dread.

[...]

Yet these progressives’ response to the end of apartheid was ambivalent. Contemplating South Africa after apartheid, an Economist correspondent observed that “the lives of many whites exude sadness.” The phenomenon perplexed him. In so many ways, white life remained more or less untouched, or had even improved. Despite apartheid’s horrors—and the regime’s violence against those who worked to dismantle it—the ANC encouraged an attitude of forgiveness. It left statues of Afrikaner heroes standing and helped institute the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which granted amnesty to some perpetrators of apartheid-era political crimes.

But as time wore on, even wealthy white South Africans began to radiate a degree of fear and frustration that did not match any simple economic analysis of their situation. A startling number of formerly anti-apartheid white people began to voice bitter criticisms of post-apartheid society. An Afrikaner poet who did prison time under apartheid for aiding the Black-liberation cause wrote an essay denouncing the new Black-led country as “a sewer of betrayed expectations and thievery, fear and unbridled greed.”

What accounted for this disillusionment? Many white South Africans told me that Black forgiveness felt like a slap on the face. By not acting toward you as you acted toward us, we’re showing you up, white South Africans seemed to hear. You’ll owe us a debt of gratitude forever.

The article goes on to discuss:

"Mau Mau anxiety," or the fear among whites of violent repercussions, and how this shows up in reported vs confirmed crime stats - possibly to the point of false memories of home invasion

A sense of irrelevance and alienation among this white population, leading to another anxiety: "do we still belong here?"

The sublimation of this anxiety into self-identification as a marginalized minority group, featuring such incredible statements as "I wanted to fight for Afrikaners, but I came to think of myself as a ‘liberal internationalist,’ not a white racist...I found such inspiration from the struggles of the Catalonians and the Basques. Even Tibet" and "[Martin Luther] King [Jr.] also fought for a people without much political representation … That’s why I consider him one of my most important forebears and heroes,” from a self-declared liberal environmentalist who also thinks Afrikaaners should take back government control because they are "naturally good" at governance

Some discussion of the dynamics underlying these reactions, particularly the fact that "admitting past sins seem[ed] to become harder even as they receded into history," and US parallels

And finally, in closing:

The Afrikaner journalist Rian Malan, who opposed apartheid, has written that, by most measures, its aftermath went better than almost any white person could have imagined. But, as with most white progressives, his experience of post-1994 South Africa has been complicated. [...]

He just couldn’t forgive Black people for forgiving him. Paradoxically, being left undisturbed served as an ever-present reminder of his guilt, of how wrongly he had treated his maid and other Black people under apartheid. “The Bible was right about a thing or two,” he wrote. “It is infinitely worse to receive than to give, especially if … the gift is mercy.”

[mrfoox]

Oliver with anything kinda weird/gross/bad: wanna see/touch/smell it?

[lunahearts]

Soooo I read all of Dungeon Meshi in this past week and I have many thoughts bouncing around in my brain and I think the only thing to do with them is some AGGRESSIVELY CLOSE READING of a scene I wanted to come back to and try to understand better.

So: I want to talk about chapter 28

This entire section of the story is something I feel like I am going to want to come back to a lot, because its such a transitional time and I feel like there are a lot of themes/ideas that I wasn't fully aware of during my first reading, and stuff I missed because of that.

One of the biggest things I have been turning over in my head is... hey, what was UP with the Marcille/Falin bath scene? Maybe it was because I was already primed to pay attention to stuff with them going into the story, or because I had already seen a couple of panels out of context. In any case, it really kind of stuck out to me as being very short but also VERY intense, while also being... hard for me to define? Some part of the nature of the intensity felt like it was going over my head.

I wasn't sure that revisiting it would help with this right away, but to my surprise, it actually WAS a lot easier for me to follow and understand when I went back to it. So I want to just do a close reading of That Scene and some other parts of the chapter & context around it all, because I think it offers insight into Falin & her relationships, and what purpose this chapter serves within the story as a whole.

So first of all, I think it's interesting that the scene starts with Marcille bathing Falin.

It feels very caring in a more platonic, less charged way then what will follow.

Marcille goes from this caretaker mode to joining Falin in the bath, and then of course we get the first of The Panels

(as a small note, I only noticed when revisiting that Marcille is using the rest of her Kelpie soap in the bath. Isn't that just the most heartwrenching little detail. Augh)

Anyway, one of the first things I thought was interesting going back to this is how much it reminded me of the very different sort of intimacy that came just before it - when Laios and Marcille assembled Falin's bones.

This is such a beautiful and intimate sequence, and something about Marcille examining Falin, whole, after the fact... I can't imagine there are not some echoes of those bones in Marcille's mind. The action seems more startling/intense for Falin at first, and maybe part of that is because Marcille has already experienced this level of intimacy with Falin's body in a way Falin herself wasn't a part of.

This panel in particular I think is a summation of the difference in the experience for them. This looks like... near orgasmic for Falin tbh, and Marcille is very focused on the actual like practical part of what she's doing, seemingly completely unaware of the Effect she is having on Falin.

The whole short sequence is focused on this intimacy that Marcille initiated seemingly without fully being aware of what she was actually doing. And once Marcille is satisfied, she is also the one that ends it, sitting back in the bath and moving out of Falin's proximity. All on her own terms, and for her own ends.

HOWEVER... Falin doesn't just let things go.

Instead, she returns Marcille's attention. First, by asking after her wellbeing:

Marcille, of course, deflects (there will be a lot of that in this scene).

But Falin doesn't let it go.

Falin is not a confrontational person. She likes to keep the peace. In this context, and in context of the way that Marcille was the one to come into Falin's space initially, the way that Marcille controlled the initial intimacy... this is striking. I genuinely think that these three panels might convey one of the most assertive actions Falin (as herself) takes in the entire story. One of the only things that outdoes it is the fucking INCITING INCIDENT OF THE WHOLE STORY.

I'd also like to point out here that this action of Falin's also parallels her resurrection by Marcille & Laios. It's is also a forbidden magical action done to save someone(s) she loves, and its something she does TO them, that they are not fully aware/able to react to until its done.

Anyway, back to the bath scene. Falin is taking action here and asserting herself. And how does Marcille react?

She flips out!! She rejects it! She tells Falin that she isn't supposed to be acting like that.

It's a very distancing response from Marcille, and also one that puts her back in that caretaker mode from the start of the scene. She also puts even more distance between herself and Falin by sinking into the water.

Falin doesn't give up though! She continues to assert herself. She's okay, she is allowed to chose to do this.

And Marcille continues to push her away. It looks to me like she only starts to relax a little once she fits Falin into a role she can better define and control. You're a patient, you're recovering, I understand this fact and you don't. Let me take care of you.

But, for a third time, Falin pushes back.

I don't think it’s coincidence that this is where she opens her eyes. She asks directly about the thing that they have both been dancing around:

The resurrection spell. The fact that Falin KNOWS about this, at least in part, recontextualizes the quiet battle for control between the two them. They both know at least some part of the truth. Marcille wants nothing else then to ignore it. Falin wants to be able to talk about it. Marcille's blatant refusal to give her those answers, I think, is what keeps them out of sync - intimate only ever in one direction at a time, never fully together.

And of course, even when directly confronted, Marcille refuses to engage with the truth.

This moment being on the bottom of the page is notable too. There's a beat here. The last panel holds on Falin's face. The reader reaches the bottom of the page, and they are held here for a beat as well, with Falin. It's not quite a rejection yet. What Marcille says isn't directly an answer to Falin's question, but it is a response. A valid one, even! Falin wasn't just asking the question after all, but struggling with guilt that Marcille has every reason to want to reject.

But then you move on the next page, and...

Marcille isn't actually addressing the question at all, not directly. She's deflecting, again. Oh we had a ~difficult time~, there were a lot of "tough situations." Even though she and Falin both know about the resurrection, and Falin has made it clear that she wants to talk about it, Marcille pushes away from the actual topic. She keeps things broad and indirect.

She offers the smallest gesture to Falin - nothing more than a whisper of 'don't worry about it I won't get in trouble' (even though Falin's concern was never just about Marcille getting in trouble).

Marcille then continues to deflect even further, completely changing the subject onto clothes and frog adventures, which seems to distract Falin as well, as she finally gives up on pushing.

And that's where the scene ends! Marcille pushes into Falin's space (without fully realizing), and Falin pushes back. She tries three times to get Marcille to acknowledge her wants, and three times Marcille rejects her, though she does eventually convey some truth. She is honest in her belief that Falin doesn't need to feel guilty, and that things will all work out, even as she continues to deflect the rest of the question. Falin finally accepts that, the topic of conversation changes, and we move on.

But there is a little bit more that happens between them. Towards the end of the chapter, they have this little 'oh no we have to share a bed' situation. Classic stuff.

And Falin seems to realize that the context of this is kinda different now then it was when they were in the magic academy. She's not a kid any more, and they just had those intimate moments in the bath. There's a new tension between them, or one that new at least to the bed sharing of it all.

And in this respect, too Marcille pulls away from what Falin is trying to say. She tries to frame Falin as a kid, tries to insist that nothing is different.

When I first got to this part, it honestly felt... a little uncomfortable? After the bath scene, it is really weird to move into a new intimate situation with Marcille explicitly treating Falin as a kid.

What I have realized in coming back to this scene, though, is how much I think its meant to feel uncomfortable. Throughout the chapter, Marcille's responses to Falin become increasingly patronizing. By letting some of that conflict between them resolve at the end of the first scene, the chapter seems to let things rest, and lets you set it out of your mind.

Then, when the same type of conflict comes back at the end of the chapter, Marcille is even more blatantly treating Falin like a kid, and the unfairness of it hits even stronger. They are both adults, and Falin deserves the truth. After 27 chapters from the perspective of Laios, Marcille, and the others in the group, this progression lets you feel things from Falin's perspective. It's supposed to feel uncomfortable because it IS uncomfortable for Falin, the way no one will quite tell her the truth.

After all, Marcille isn't the only one to do this kind of deflecting when Falin tries to ask about what happened. Laios has a similar response, right down to the 'treating her a bit like a kid' part.

Even more importantly, this final conversation of the chapter reveals one last layer in the knowledge/power imbalance between Falin and the rest of the party: she doesn't actually remember sacrificing herself and teleporting them out.

As I mentioned before, that action was one of the most assertive things we see Falin do in the story, and she doesn't even get to keep that for herself. Instead of being her action, her choice, it becomes yet another thing that the others know more about than her.

I think that's part of why there is such an air of melancholy to this hug they share on the next page

Obviously, obviously, there are so many emotions here for Laios and I don't think its all meant to be viewed as a negative thing, or that he or Marcille are being completely unreasonable. They've been through a lot, and what's more, they think they have time now. So much more time then they actually will have. Time to explain, to open up, to let Falin return to the group in full - as a teammate and not just as someone to be cared for and protected.

But they don't get time. And this relenting by Falin, this "I won't do it again," it's not something that feels triumphant. It's an attempt to comfort them, more a prayer than a promise. As if she is trying to exorcise a spirit. As if she is capable of promising that death won't come, eventually. It's what Laios needs, not what she wants.

That's the real tragedy of the chapter, I think. It's the one time, in the midst of everything, that they have the chance to give Falin what she wants - and they don't do it.

But I do think they realize that, and I think that this failure is a core part of their journey. It's another bittersweet taste to add to the mix - all the missed chances in this chapter to connect, amidst the moments of genuine peace they do get throughout it.

As Laios puts it later...

If Falin hadn't been eaten by the dragon, and perhaps if they hadn't failed her here, they never would have had the adventure that they got to share.

(or, perhaps more tactfully: in life & chapter 28, there are both good times and bad. Thanks, Chilchuk)

[creature-wizard]

Looks like it's time to talk about starseeds and the New Age movement again.

Since I'm seeing more starseed content being posted, I'm gonna make another post on why the whole starseed thing and the surrounding New Age belief system are... not good.

So for those who don't know, New Age mythology is essentially a hodgepodge of cherrypicked and distorted myths from various cultures, racist pseudohistory, and far right conspiracy theories. To put it very briefly, starseeds are supposedly here to help Earth resist the reptilians, a race of politics-manipulating, war-starting, media-controlling blood-drinking aliens. For those who don't recognize the tropes here, these are basically all antisemitic canards. The reptilian alien myth as most know it today comes from David Icke, who ultimately cribbed a bunch of his material from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a Russian hoax created to justify violence against Jews. He was also influenced by the work of people like Fritz Springmeier, a hateful crank who based much of his work on other hateful cranks.

(David Icke, by the way, also claims that transgender is an evil reptilian conspiracy. You'll never find just one form of bigotry with these people.)

There are supposedly numerous alien races out there, and one of the most prominent among them are the Pleiadians, AKA Nordics. While modern depictions of the Pleiadians give them more variety in skintone, there's no denying that older Pleiadian mythology basically pictured them as Aryans In Space, even associating them with the swastika.

You see what's going on here? "Good" swastika-loving Aryan aliens versus "evil" Jewish aliens? Sound familiar?

Racism isn't just a tangential part of the starseed myth, either. It lies at its very core. It's inextricably tied in with the ancient astronaut hypothesis, which has a history of racist motivation behind it. The TL;DR is that a bunch of white people couldn't believe that non-white people had built a bunch of things they couldn't figure out how to build themselves (EG, the Great Pyramids), so they proposed that the real builders were anyone from Atlanteans to aliens. (Atlantis, by the way, never existed; it was a literary device created by Plato.)

One supposed purpose of starseeds is to help the world "wake up to the truth," which basically just means "convert people to New Age spirituality." New Age believes that world peace is contingent on a majority of the world being converted to New Age belief, and that resistance against their belief system is ultimately the work of the aforementioned reptilian aliens.

To put it another way, New Agers think they understand other cultures' spiritual traditions better than the actual members of said cultures, and think that anyone who disagrees with them is being manipulated by the conspiracy, or is an agent of the conspiracy. This includes Indigenous cultures which are already endangered from white Christian colonialism.

Essentially, endangered cultures cannot speak up for themselves and resist New Agers' efforts at cultural assimilation without being labeled a problem and an enemy. It's basically white Christian colonialism repackaged as "spiritual, not religious."

Again - if you heard from these people that some ancient text or myth describes extraterrestrial beings visiting our planet for one reason or another, you heard misinformation. They twist and misrepresent literally every myth and text they get their hands on. For example, you may have heard that the vimanas from Hindu traditions were actually alien spacecraft. They were no such thing. Or maybe you heard that the Book of Enoch describes aliens performing genetic experimentation on humans. It literally does not. At best, all of the stories they cite just kind of sound like aliens if you ignore most of their content and pay no attention to their cultural contexts.

The starseed movement preys on alienated people, especially autistic people and people with ADHD. You can look up nearly any list of signs that you're supposedly a starseed, and many of them will align perfectly with characteristics associated with autism and/or ADHD, or that people with these conditions commonly report. Some people within the movement even go so far as to claim that ADHD and autism don't even exist, but were actually made up by the conspiracy as a cover to suppress and control starseeds, which is some yikes-as-hell ableism.

So basically, people are being told that if they have these certain characteristics or symptoms, that means it's their job to spread New Age spirituality to defeat the conspiracy and help others ascend to the fifth density.

And what's the fifth density, you might ask? It's supposedly humanity's next evolutionary level, because New Age is also based on biological misconceptions. Supposedly once everyone's DNA "upgrades," they'll essentially morph into an aetheric form. Supposedly, this is preceded by a number of "ascension symptoms," including depression, headache, gastrointestinal issues, and any number of other symptoms that could indicate almost anything, including stress.

What many of these people don't realize is, this prediction has already failed. Back in the 2000s and 2010s, experiencing "ascension symptoms" was supposed to precede ascension to 5D beginning December 21, 2012. One lady, Denise Le Fay, was convinced that the hair loss she was experiencing in 2008 was an ascension symptom. As we can see by looking her up, she's very much still with us on the 3D plane these days, repeating the same tired old scripts New Agers recycle endlessly.

By the way, everything you near New Agers saying today about old systems being dismantled, dark forces being arrested or kicked off the planet, and new economic systems on the horizon? They've been recycling these scripts for years now. Take a look at this page written back in 2012. You got stuff about the complete dismantling of an enormous network of sinister forces," "the arrest and removal of a world-wide cabal," and a "new economic system."

("Cabal," by the way, is a dogwhistle term for "Jews.")

Furthermore, people in this movement are often encouraged to try and access past life memories through dreams or hypnosis, which makes the whole thing feel even more real to them. But the thing is, you can have incredibly vivid experiences about literally anything you put your mind to - the people in the reality shifting having vivid experiences of living another life in the Harry Potter universe are a great example of this. Just because you have vivid experiences, doesn't mean they have any bearing on anything happening in this reality.

So yeah, the starseed movement and the larger New Age movement are both extremely harmful. They promote racist pseudohistory, medically-irresponsible pseudoscience, conspiracy theories that target numerous marginalized groups, and functionally target aliened people with ADHD and autism to convince them that spreading its beliefs is their job.

[creatingblackcharacters]

Lesson 4: "Do Black People Blush?" Bringing brown complexions to life

Inspired by this ask

So, do Black people blush?

We are human beans 🤣! Blood rushes through our veins! This isn't just a nonblack misconception either; I know plenty of Black people who think we don't blush. Stop saying that shit. It's not true! If you thought this at any point, I'm glad you learned, TAKE THIS L IN SILENCE! I am sparing you the indignity of saying this out loud, ever! 🙏🏾

Jokes aside, the actual issue usually lies with the depiction or description. Depending on our skin tone, most of us aren’t going to turn ‘bright pink’ with a blush (if you write that in your y/n or roleplaying fics, that’s an easy way to negate a good amount of your potential Black audience). Think of a cherry coke- how you still see the tint of red in it, but it’s still brown? Like that.

One way to dodge this in writing is to say “flushed”, or “ears/cheeks became hot”. This is describing the physical action of blushing, without having to describe the color of someone’s face. If you’re really nervous about not writing us correctly via blushing… there you go!

Colorism

Okay. So this is something I’ll likely do its own lesson on, because there’s no way I could encapsulate it into one little blurb and I’m not going to try! After asking the internet an admittedly confusing question 😅, one thing I was able to reaffirm is that people have different opinions on what ‘dark’/’darker’ skin tones mean. People recognize that different cultural upbringings and contexts will change what that means! And that’s good- that an important part of the larger conversation!

However, I want everyone to understand that you don’t have to be Black to be dark/’darker’ skinned- you can be Black and very pale! We discussed that in the last lesson! There’s no ‘singular point of brown-ness’ that designates a Black person as ‘Black’- there’s an entire sociological conversation behind that!

My point is, this isn’t a ‘oh Black people OVERALL aren’t depicted blushing properly’- because there are ‘lighter’ skinned Black people that wouldn’t suffer as much from this particular issue.

Blushes and Undertones

Three Links for Tips on Medium to Deep Skintones

Different complexions are going to require different colors, there's not a 'one fits all' option. However! What we want to do for deeper brown complexions is to focus on BOLDER, not lighter! Putting light pink or a white person’s ‘nude’ on our skin will often make us look ashy and undercolored. And we don’t like looking ashy.

"It looks like they're ashy!"

What do we mean when we say this about a piece? Well, worse case scenario, it looks like this:

This was NOT one of KD’s better days, and he was thoroughly mocked for this. He got more than enough money for lotion! Anyway, when we say that your art looks ‘ashy’, it means that it feels like the skin of your Black character is gray, or dead. Like a corpse. We don’t look like that unless things are dire.

In fan and professional art, you can sometimes find people user a grey undertone for deeper shades of brown on Black people: NO! We are NOT grey! We are not pitch! Many skin shades of brown can be found based in the oranges and the reds. Based on lighting and depth of complexion, you might even have to go into the blues and purple to capture the brown you’re seeking.

I’m begging us to stop desaturating the browns we use. We can see the difference. It’s usually one of those ‘White Man Painted Brown’ techniques I discussed before; an attempt to ‘make a character Black’ without really committing to it because the brown skin tone ‘doesn’t look good’ to the artist. Brown is beautiful! Commit to brown! Commit to the full design!

Put in the work to create the brown you need!

While this is a traditional art piece (follow Ellie Mandy Art, a Black creator), I want you to notice how she incorporated many colors to create the deep brown for her piece.

-8:05 for the list of paints

-8:05-17:29 for the process

She used black, yes, but it was nowhere near the base color. She incorporated blues and reds and other browns to capture that depth. It wasn’t ‘toss in a bunch of black or grey to get the brown darker’. (SKIP TO THE END TO SEE HOW GOOD THIS PIECE IS, BTW. I felt like I was in the presence of a master watching her do this, fr. We gotta pay artists more.)

I want to use this model as an example to show that while we might get very dark, we're still not 'pitch black'. You can see the flat of the black of their clothes versus their deep complexion. They're not the same!

Even if your character's complexion is very deep brown into black, you still need to incorporate ‘life’ into them (if that makes sense). And you know what? Even if you want to describe your characters as having ‘black’ skin, that’s fine, but there are still other ways to do it- obsidian, the night sky, velvet. Find a way to romanticize our skin (there’s an entire conversation about how ‘black’ is used in a negative connotation in language and storytelling, and we’re ALSO going to have that conversation later!)

A Real Simple Way (i.e. how I do it)

I tried, but I cannot find my skin tones palette link anymore. I’m sorry! But, it’s been essential to my character design. If you don’t ever buy anything else, I would HIGHLY suggest investing in a skin tones palette for your art program.

Everyone say hello to Philia, my OC! I’m used to drawing her, so I’m going to use her as an example. Now remember, I am still an amateur! But this is how I do it!

Admittedly, I do the one on the left when I'm feeling lazy, but more often I'll take the time to do the one on the right. Now here’s the thing- I’m not actually blending the red into the brown. This is on a whole different layer. What I’m actually doing is adding to and fading the color until it’s at a color that I feel is natural. There's definitely an easier, smarter way to do this, but that’s what I like to do- I like to see the stages slowly until I’m comfortable.

You have to mess around and practice; see what looks good and what doesn't. Go into the reds, the oranges, the pinks and observe how it looks- I may go through multiple before I settle on one. It’s really just a matter of getting used to drawing Black skin tones and how they look in different lighting. This one's not perfect for sure.

Resources

Here are some really good posts and Youtube videos on how both to paint skin, and to add blush tones. And remember, as per my usual, the best way to learn how the draw and paint Black people is to follow and learn from Black artists! Another good idea might be looking into Black makeup and Black SFX makeup artists. As people that work with skin on a regular basis, they would be a good place to study what colors can and should be used on different skin colors as a whole.

ami0amii

Likelihood Art

Tiara Anderson

Proko

Sinix

Ross Draws

In summary, focus on bolder colors, be willing to test until you get what you need, and practice! All you can do to get better is to practice! And as always: it’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers!

[plorpl]

More info (and insane screenshots) from the House MD DS game for those who want to know.

Way, way too much info under the break!!

The game took me about 5 hours to play total, including pauses for screenshots and cackling laughter. There are 5 cases, and each one has: the main case, a clinic patient, and a small subplot about Cuddy that strings through all 5 cases and concludes at the end of the game. It's extremely linear. To solve the case, you do activities when you are prompted, each having its own types of mini games. Activities include: examining the patient, ddx-ing, running tests, running labs, questioning the patient/friends/family, and searching houses/other areas for clues. All of these mini games suck. The best one is when House has to have an epiphany so you play brick breaker with his brain:

WHEN YOU DDX THEY USE THE MOUSE BITES PHOTO

You'll notice here that the visuals are a little uncanny valley. The likenesses are... not good.

The worst offender is 13, who always looks just a little bit off.

One of my favorite parts of the game is that you get graded on your performance and if you do bad, Cuddy doms you.

And when you do good, Wilson kind of negs you?? Feels like the people who made this game were obsessed with him (same). The contrast in these two screenshots really gets me.

More insane top screen screenshots without context:

Honestly, some of my favorites need both screens to really be appreciated:

I do not recommend playing it, really. These are the best parts, and the game itself is slow and can be frustrating. There is also... a lot of problematic nonsense. Worse than the show. Not going to try to make excuses here.

That being said, it's surreal. House is like a bad stand up comic for most of the game, and so much is out of character - House visits the patient FIRST THING every case, the whole team misses very obvious deductive leaps, there's no gay sex, etc, etc, etc. But at the same time, the people who made the game clearly had a love for the show. It follows the typical structure of an episode faithfully and has some detailed, satisfying visuals in it. Everyone's clothes change each episode, even in their little bottom of the screen sprites. This Wilson makes me happy with his show-accurate mug and hand gesture:

And there are some nice interiors/exteriors of the hospital and better rendered pictures that make me smile:

It made me and my friends laugh a lot. And it also makes me a little sad. I spent a lot of my childhood playing shitty licensed games like this (remember the madagascar one???), but they are mostly a thing of the past. I know they were cash-grab trash, but it's odd that there's this genre of game that doesn't really get made any more. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm glad this game exists.

Anyway, here's an upsetting House and Wilson for the road:

[wip]

Please make it possible to hide users' posts without blocking them. Like, in cases where a person hasn't done anything wrong to be blocked, but you just don't like their posts.

Answer: Hello, @deithwen!

As it turns out, we’ve received this feature request a lot over the years. Usually, it comes in as wanting the ability to “mute” other blogs on Tumblr. While we would love to build it, we’ve balked at it a bit because of its technical and product complexity. Let us explain what that means:

In terms of technical complexity, our current blocking feature is closest to how “muting” would work. Our current blocking feature may seem simple, but it’s very complex because of how big Tumblr is. Every time we fetch a list of blogs for you or anyone on Tumblr, we have to also fetch the list of who you’re blocking, and who’s blocking you, and filter out anyone with that block relationship. This mapping of who’s-blocking-who is stored in a directional way right now, so the “cost” of loading that list gets higher the more people you’re blocking and the more people who are blocking you. If you’re blocking 1,000 blogs, we have to check that list a lot. If you’re being blocked by 1,000 blogs, that’s another big list to check against.

In technical terms, this is a “many-to-many” relationship, which is almost always incredibly difficult to manage while not degrading the experience of using a platform like Tumblr. The more people who are blocking, the harder it is to store those lists in a way that’s easy to check, but we’re working on making it smoother. The vast majority of people don’t block many others, if at all, so it’s never been a huge problem. But the outliers who block thousands of others (or are blocked by thousands of others) can degrade performance for everyone over enough time.

Adding muting would throw on top of that yet another list of blogs to check, increasing the complexity of something that’s already pretty complex. It helps that muting would be one-directional and not bi-directional (as in, it doesn’t matter who’s muting you), but, as that list of muted blogs grows, your experience may degrade further. So we’d need to solve for that, which is definitely doable. It would just take time—and lots of it.

And, as a product, Tumblr is already pretty confusing to people trying to figure out what “blocking” means already, as well as our other filtering options. Up until fairly recently, blocking was almost entirely one-directional, the opposite way you’d expect: blocking made it so the blocked person couldn’t see you, not that you couldn’t see them. We’ve been updating blocking to work both ways instead, which is more common on social media these days. Similarly, the options to filter tags versus content cause a lot of confusion because they don’t work the same way as each other.

So if we wanted to add another filtering option to that mix, “muting” blogs, we’d need to be conscious of how all of those options work together—and are confusing in context with each other. We should really clean up that experience to be more streamlined and simple, not more complex. And I didn’t even mention the oddity of how different settings apply to your primary blog versus your sideblogs if you have more than one blog!

Taken together, it is a great idea for us to clean all of this up, improve our existing options here, and add “muting” for even more control and granularity. Sadly, however, it just isn’t high enough on our list of priorities to tackle anytime soon. We don’t want to simply tack on muting for the sake of doing it—we want to do a better job than that. I hope that makes sense!

Thanks for your question. It was an important one to address. If anything should change here, you will get news through the usual channels: here at WIP, or at @changes. 

[dmercer91]

hooked, jh86

in which jack is quite literally sleeping with the enemy.

most of the rangers give me egregious vibes so there are hardly any in here and i used their ig handles for twitter i didn't feel like finding the correct ones - set in 2023-24 season

jackhughes

liked by yourusername, nicohischier and 147,122 others

jackhughes: drives me mad

view 1,239 comments..

yourusername: in ny we hard launch like grownups

→ jackhughes: oh yeah?

→ yourusername: once you fuck this one up i’ll swoop in and prove it to u hughesy ;)

trevorzegras: admitting that you’re easily rizzed is crazy

→ jackhughes: easily 🤨

→ trevorzegras: ‘the hit could’ve been harder maybe she likes me 🤭’

→ user: did she hit him with her car or????

user: hit? as in like hockey hit? y/n??????

→ user: she just threatened to mr steal your girl him tho so idk

yourusername: jhugh big foot guy eh?

→ jackhughes: what the fuck y/n

_quinnhughes: luke?

→ lhughes_06: i can’t even explain without giving myself a migraine

dawson1417: i’m telling nico

→ jackhughes: there’s nothing to tell nico 🤨

→ nicohischier: nico uses context clues to deduce things

elblue6: ❤️

view more comments..

yourusername

liked by _quinnhughes, jackhughes and 129,483 others

yourusername: van @ nyr except i adopted the sad one

jack was there too, unfortunately

load 1,612 comments..

jackhughes: now what is this

→ yourusername: i’m already planning on adding z to my collection when the ducks are up here

→ trevorzegras: did u just say collection

→ jackhughes: so you wanna be friends with all my friends but i try and be friends w u and i’m gross? ouch

→ yourusername: have u ever considered that you’re my teams rival

→ jackhughes: i’ve considered it and also decided it won’t stop me

→ yourusername: have you considered that you’re icky

→ jackhughes: wtf

_quinnhughes: ankle biter

→ yourusername: it was his shoulder and i can bite him whenever i want

nyrangers: traitor :(

→ yourusername: no admin it’s ok it’s the good hughesy

→ lhughes_06: i’ve done nothing to you

→ yourusername: you get in my way a lot

shesterkinigor: funny

→ yourusername: i try

view more comments..

njdevils

liked by yourusername, dougieham and 17,444 others

njdevils: we guess this one’s not so bad 😉 @yourusername

view 592 comments..

user: this is.. unsettling

user: him patting her after every connection was top tier i need her in a devs jersey

yourusername: don’t let this fool you i still like quinn better

→ jackhughes: will you let me have this one

→ yourusername: you’re lucky i didn’t throw the game just so you’d lose

→ lhughes_06: there’s always next year

nyrangers: we can admit that this one (1) thing is cute

→ yourusername: enemies to lovers??????

→ nyrangers: no, y/n.

→ yourusername: ok attitude

jackhughes: thanks for the passes or whatever @yourusername

→ yourusername: shut up

user: they’re sleeping in the same hotel room??

→ yourusername: no j just commits some light b&e in his free time

→ jackhughes: did you just call me j

→ yourusername: i also called you a felon

→ trevorzegras: i think he’s just gonna look right past that

user: loving the full blown conversations happening in comment sections lately

view more comments..

yourusername

liked by elblue6, dougieham and 179,537 others

yourusername: ⛽️

view 2,029 comments..

jackhughes: i thought nyers hard launched 🤨

→ yourusername: do you have my notifs on??

→ jackhughes: no comment

user: those are jacks hands

→ user: why do you… know that, even?

user: this is why the nhl is all men lmao they aren’t focused on fucking their opponents

→ yourusername: oh babe.. i have some news for you

→ user: ITS A PLAYER?????????

dougieham: gross

→ yourusername: behave douglas

lhughes_06: what pro hockey player has another man tie her skates for her

→ yourusername: the kind that knows your address and will take your ligaments away

nyrangers: our girl

→ user: can i have your girl

→ njdevils: ^

→ nyrangers: no

_quinnhughes: you hurt my brain

→ yourusername: ok

user: THE TYING THE SKATES!!! JACKS SOFT LAUNCH

view more comments..

twitterhockeybropodcast

y/n y/ln has allegedly requested a trade out of new york 👀

722 ❤ 312 ↳ 147 💬

view comments..

dawson1417: you know @/yourusername i’ve heard jerseys pretty nice

→ dawson1417: you wouldn’t even have to move!

→ yourusername: oh boy

trevorzegras: y/n/n y/ln YOU are an anaheim duck

→ _quinnhughes: step back off my teammate

→ yourusername: you’re both delusional

user: awh the guys wanting her on their teams 🥹

colecaufield: i’ll teach you french @/yourusername

→ yourusername: i only want to know the bad words

→ colecaufield: that’s doable

→ yourusername: sold

user: quinn and the honorary hughes’ is cute but WHERE IS JACK??

→ user: right like he hasn’t even liked it

→ user: he took down his soft launch?

edwards.73: you will eventually get to play with me if you go to jersey @/yourusername

→ yourusername: it's really cute that you though this would help build your case ed

→ edwards.73: can't blame a guy for trying

jackhughes: does this mean we can be friends now?

→ yourusername: oh lol sure

→ user: oh this was painful to read

to, j 💥: is everything ok?? read, 6:33pm

to, j 💥: jack what the hell read, 7:12pm

to, j 💥: you can't really be moody cause i requested a trade from a team you don't even play for lmao

from, j 💥: i'm at practice. talk later

to, j 💥: i'm literally with daws and luke right now dude

to, j 💥: wtf did i do?? read, 7:44pm

to, j 💥: since when am i the one begging to make this work????

to, j 💥: you've been telling me for fucking months you didn't care what it meant as long as we could try us out

to, j 💥: you can't tell me how much you want me around one day and work so hard to make me believe you and then completely flip my world around the next that's not fair read, 8:19pm

to, j 💥: i at least deserve an explanation

from, jack: maybe i'm sick of people telling me i'm fucking up my whole life for you and that you're just gonna dump me before the playoffs so i lose focus

to, jack: hello?? lose focus against the team i'm requesting to leave?

to, jack: and who is people? all i've done is prove that i wouldn't fucking do that

to, jack: i'm literally with two of your teammates right now read, 8:25pm

to, jack: whatever, j. i asked for a trade for you lmao

from, jack: how is that for me? you're gonna be in a completely different fucking state and we'll never see each other

to, jack: that's what this is abt?? you could've just said something, j

from, jack: i don't think you can just unrequest the trade, y/n.

from, jack: what's done is done

to, jack: what would've happened if they just traded me regardless of if i asked?? would you have shut me out cause you don't like the distance when it wasn't my fault?

from, jack: that's different and u know it

to, jack: whatever jack

to, jack: see you wednesday

from jack: against the avs?? you got traded to fucking colorado?

to, jack: no. i got traded to the devils.

njdevils

ranger devil 😈 @/yourusername

2922 ❤ 456 ↳ 78 💬

view comments..

yourusername: i've always looked good in red

→ njdevils: our girl

dawson1417: FUCK YEAHHHH

→ yourusername: LEFT LOCKER NEIGHBOUR!!

→ dawson1417: RIGHT LOCKER NEIGHBOUR !!!!!!

lhughes_06: i'm gonna get bullied so much more often

→ yourusername: amen to that moosey

→ lhughes_06: no, not amen to that y/n/n

user: again i ask WHERE IS JACK

nicohischier: another one that won't listen to me

→ yourusername: not reporting for duty, cap 🫡

→ nicohischier: i'm not endeared

→ yourusername: fuck yeah you are

trevorzegras: i know i'm not meant to take personal offence to this but i am

→ yourusername: quinn is GROUCHY

→ _quinnhughes: why does jack get all the cool people i want to have a lake house adoptee on the canucks

→ yoursername: just bring petey

→ eliaspettersson_: do not volunteer me for that chaos

user: i'm kinda concerned at the lack of jack and y/n lately like what happened

jackhughes: new liney?

→ yourusername: new liney :)

→ lhughes_06: 🤨

→ user: luke don't expose your brother's weird cryptic comments as being weird and cryptic challenge

→ lhughes_06: hmm no

njdevils

liked by nicohischier, jackhughes and 34,899 others

njdevils: we think we've seen this film before and we loved the ending (bratter - jack - y/n/n line supremacy)

view 583 comments..

jackhughes: start building the statue

→ yourusername: fucking right

user: the way that she just screamed in his face on her first assist to his goal i could SOB

→ user: and his fucking SMILE BACK AT HER

→ user: and her third goal!! the jump into his arms

user: in love w them actually

→ njdevils: us too

lhughes_06: they should've smooched on centre ice with the hats falling down

→ lhughes_06: what lol who said that

dawson1417: RIGHT LOCKER NEIGHBOUR DID THAT

→ yourusername: i couldn't have done wonderwall with out your harmonizing merc

→ dawson1417: i do have the voice of an angel

trevorzegras: i love how it feels to be a hater

→ _quinnhughes: ^

→ yourusername: wonderwall concert, 5pts, and i got quinn hughes to agree with trevor zegras. i am her.

yourusername

liked by jackhughes, nicohischier and 289,111 others

yourusername: j <3

view 677 comments..

jackhughes: favourite liney?

→ yourusername: forever liney

lhughes_06: open your messages you demonic being

→ yourusername: do u know how much EFFORT that is

→ lhughes_06: i could imagine it's not a lot??

dawson1417: yucky

→ yourusername: we facetime like teenaged girls n you and ryleigh screeched in excitement when you recognized his room this morning

→ dawson1417: ok???? i screeched cause of the yuckiness

_quinnhughes: i guess you not being a canuck is tolerable if this is the outcome

→ trevorzegras: speak for yourself quintin i want her to be my liney forever 😾

→ yourusername: sorry z <3

→ jackhughes: she's not sorry

→ yourusername: i'm sort of sorry

→ trevorzegras: good enough!

user: SCREAMING AND CRYING OMG

→ user: WE'VE BEEN WAITING

user: mom n dad

dougieham: this is terrefying

→ yourusername: ok

john.marino97: new reality tv show live in the locker room except theres no drama it's just hughesy being whipped

→ yourusername: your favourite!

→ john.marino97: i hate every second

njdevils: it's not like we saw this coming or anything

→ yourusername: ADMIN

view more comments..

[bettsfic]

writing cheats

i know i’ve probably written about these all individually but i’m putting them together in one post. these are writing tricks that are extremely cheap and dirty; when you use them it feels like cheating and honestly by posting them i’m probably exposing all the easy moves in my own work, but more than a writer i am a teacher, so here you go, some writing cheats that have never steered me wrong.

quick character creation

what’s really annoying is when you have two characters sitting at a restaurant or something and the server has to come by. to what degree do you describe the server so that it’s clear they’re just a background character but that they’re not just a faceless form, so that the world has texture without taking up too much space on the page? rule of three, babeyyy: two normal things and a weird one.

she had pale skin and blue eyes but her hair was dyed black like a 2010 emo kid.

he was tall and broad, and he wore a sweatshirt with an embroidered teddy bear on it.

the woman stood there comparing the prices of toilet paper. she had a short angled bob and carried a keychain the length of a trout.

why does it work? it gives the reader something to hang onto, a brief observation that shows the world exists around your narrator. it also works when introducing main characters, but there’s so much action going on that you can’t take time to write a rich long paragraph about them. all you need is a little hook.

quick setting creation

i used to TOIL over descriptive paragraphs. for years i was like, description is my weakness, i must become better at developing imagery. i believed this because a famous writer once projected a paragraph i had written onto a screen and asked my cohort, “count how many images are crafted in this paragraph.” there were none. none! my friends were sitting there like, “we are TRYING” but they couldn’t find any.

i would say that after years of studying imagery development at the sentence level, i am, perhaps, competent at it, but what was more helpful was for me to shrug and tell myself, “i’m just not a writer who does that.”

anyway. my cheat is thus: 

there’s not much you can assume about your audience. the audience is not a homogenous whole. but your ideal audience is something you can guess at, and that means you can play around with their existing knowledge and expectations. 

if you say your characters are in a tacky shit-on-the-walls restaurant, if your ideal reader is an american who went to restaurants during the maximalist era of franchise design, they will conjure their nearest memory of one of those places. and for those readers who aren’t familiar with it, they’ll use other context clues to conjure that space. the point is, you don’t have to list every single stupid license plate nailed to the wall. you can leave it as one detail of one sentence and let your reader extrapolate from there.

if i say the dentist’s office looked like a gutted 90s taco bell, maybe no ideal audience would have ever seen a place like that, but a lot of people can mentally conjure a dentist’s office and a 90s taco bell and overlay them together to create a weird and fun image.

you can go even simpler than that: a bathroom the size of an airplane lavatory. a tiny studio apartment with a hotplate instead of a stove. a mansion with a winding stairwell. the point is that you want to define the size of the space and its general vibes.

in some ways detailed description can be overrated, because your reader conjures images even in absence of them on the page. and for those readers who can’t mentally conjure images, it doesn’t matter anyway; they take you at your word. the trick is to figure out what details are unexpected, relevant to understanding the story and its characters, and those are the things that you add in.

one other note: after working with hundreds of writers on drafting, for *most* of us it’s difficult to develop images and establish setting in a first draft. it’s nearly always something to be saved for a second or later draft. i think it’s because while we’re writing we tend to put character and action first.

nail the landing

there’s a joke i heard once from a writer i really admire: “you know it’s literary fiction if the story ends with a character looking at a body of water.”

and god it’s so painfully sad and true how easy it is to nail the landing of a given story by ending on a totally irrelevant piece of imagery. the final beat of a story followed by your character looking up at the sky and seeing a flock of birds in the shape of a V flying past. or maybe they’re sitting in their car and they count the rings of a nearby church bell. or maybe they watch an elderly couple walk down the sidewalk hand-in-hand. i don’t know!! when in doubt shove an observation, an image, whatever, something neutral at the end and it’ll sound profound. 

(this cheat is the only one that can really bite you in the ass because if the image is too irrelevant you risk tonal incongruity. for use only in the most desperate of times.)

sentence fragments

when writers ask me how to punch up their writing or start developing their own style, my go-to advice is to give up the idea of a complete sentence. fuck noun-verb-object. if you have a series of character actions, knock off the sentence subjects like in script action. if the clause at the end of your sentence is particularly meaningful, don’t separate it with a comma but a period and make it its own thing. if your character is going through something particularly stressful or heinous, that bitch is not thinking in complete thoughts so you don’t have to convey them that way. make punctuation bend to your will!!

rhetorical moves

this one opened a lot of doors for me stylistically. remember that famous writer who called me out on my lack of imagery? i always thought his prose was beautiful, that he’s one of the best living prose writers, etc. once i learned more about rhetoric though, i realized he just employed it a lot. 

usually when we talk about beautiful sentences it means a sentence that uses rhetorical devices. the greeks were like, you know what, when we give speeches there are certain ways to phrase things that make the audience go nuts. let’s identify what those things are and give them names so we can use them intentionally and convince people of our opinions.

i love shakespeare, i really do, but one of the big reasons he’s still a household name today and his plays are still performed is because every sentence of every goddamn play utilizes a rhetorical device. the audience is hard-wired to vibrate at the sound and cadence of his writing, like finding the spot on a dog that makes their foot thump. for five hundred years, william shakespeare has been scritching that spot for us.

i have no idea why, cognitively, rhetorical devices are so effective. i’m no rhetorician. all i know is that well-deployed anaphora makes a reader want to throw their panties on stage. my intro to rhetorical devices was the wonderful book the elements of eloquence by mark forsyth, a surprisingly fun read! hopefully that will open some doors for you the way it did for me. 

the downside to this is that once you know rhetorical devices, it’s like learning how the sausage is made. on one hand, as a writer, you’ll have a lot stronger grasp of style, but as a reader good prose loses some of its magic.  

pacing it out

many writers, myself included, rely on the tried and true “he bit the inside of his cheek” or other some such random action to help pace out dialogue. one time my thesis advisor sat me down and said “you’ve got to take all of those out.”

“all of them?” i said.

“all of them,” she said.

i thought, but that will weaken the text! it didn’t. once i cut what i came to call cheek-biter sentences i never went back. and now when i edit for other people i’m like, look i know where you’re coming from but just cut all these out and see how the scene stands. if it doesn’t feel right you can put some back in. a lot of times when you’re drafting you put those in the way some people say “um.” they’re just sentences you jot while you’re thinking of what the other character says, so from a writing perspective it seems like you’re pacing, but readers don’t read it that way. they just want to get to the next line of dialogue.

but sometimes you really do need to pace out a scene and i think there are other ways to do that that don’t rely on banal physical movements, such as:

interiority: a sentence or paragraph of relevant cognition, bonus points if you weave in background context. good interiority defines the voice of your writing.

observations: i know i just said description is overrated but idk sometimes you just need a character to note the back and forth clacking of one of those desk ball toy things.

character texture: maybe your character notes something about the person they’re talking to. a wilted pocket square. a mole that looks like it needs looked at by a dermatologist. a scar on their forehead. some detail that deepens or complicates our understanding of a character.

narratorial consciousness and access

this one is less a cheat and more a problematic opinion i have that doesn’t win me any popularity in writing circles.

i believe that if you’re writing in first person or close third or any narration which is dedicated to the mind of one character, you are only ever obligated to convey the experience of that character’s consciousness. and nothing else.

by that i mean, if your point of view character is unobservant? then they’re not going to even notice the flight attendant is missing one of their canine teeth. if your pov character is focused and obsessive, they’re going to think lavish, detailed paragraphs about that which they’re obsessed with and have no acknowledgement of the rest of the world. if your pov character has no understanding of time, does your story even need to be linear?

defining the scope of a narrator’s cognition early on can give you parameters in which to work. even if you don’t consciously do this, you still do it. if you write in third person limited present tense without really thinking about it, that’s your scope. i’m just pointing out you can choose to do it differently. you get to define your narrator. 

whenever we talk about narration we also talk about information access and the order of information being revealed/conveyed. writing must always be in order; even if you’re writing multiple concurring things, it still has to be rendered on the page in order one after the next, because the human mind can’t read two sentences over top of one another. 

if we’re restricted to the mind of a character, that means we’re also restricted by their knowledge and experiences, and this can be used to your benefit. i don’t want to take too much space for this but i do talk more about the relationship between narration and reality here.

in short, you the writer get to choose 

what the reader knows,

in what order they know it, and

its relationship to the presumed real events of the story, which develops the (un)reliability of your narrator

okay going to cut this off now before i go on more rants about narrative scope. i hope you found this helpful and go on to put some of these nasty lifehacks in your own writing!!

[cripplecharacters]

Writing Intellectually Disabled Characters

[large text: writing intellectually disabled characters]

Something that very rarely comes up in disability media representation are intellectually disabled characters. There is very little positive representation in media in general (and basically none in media meant specifically for adults or in YA). I hope this post can maybe help someone interested in writing disabled characters understand the topic better and create something nice. This is just a collection of thoughts of only one person with mild ID (me) and I don't claim to speak for the whole community as its just my view. This post is meant to explain how some parts of ID work and make people aware of what ID is.

This post is absolutely not meant for self diagnosis (I promise you would realize before seeing a Tumblr post about it. it's a major disorder that gets most people thrown into special education).

Before: What is (and isn't) intellectual disability?

ID is a single, life-long neurodevelopment condition that affects IQ and causes problems with reasoning, problem‑solving, remembering and planning things, abstract thinking and learning. There is often delay or absence of development milestones like walking (and other kinds of movement), language and self care skills (eating, going to the bathroom, washing, getting dressed etc). Different people will struggle with different things to different degrees. I am, for example, still fully unable to do certain movements and had a lot of delay in self-care, but I had significantly less language-related delay than most of people with ID I know. Usually the more severe a person's ID is the more delay they will have.

Intellectual disability is one single condition and it doesn't make sense to call it "intellectual disabilities" (plural) or "an intellectual disability". It would be like saying "they have a Down Syndrome" or "he has autisms". The correct way would be "she has intellectual disability" or "ze is intellectually disabled".

Around 1-3% of people in the world have intellectual disability and most have mild ID (as opposed to moderate, severe, or profound). It can exist on its own without any identifiable condition or it can be a part of syndrome. There is over a thousand (ranging from very common to extremely rare) conditions that can cause ID but some of the most common are;

Down Syndrome,

Fragile X Syndrome,

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,

Autism,

Edwards Syndrome,

DiGeorge Syndrome,

Microcephaly.

Not every condition always causes ID and you can have one of the above conditions without having ID as long as it's not necessary diagnostic criteria to be met. For example around 30% of autistic people have ID, meaning that the rest 70% doesn't. It just means that it's comorbid often enough to be counted as a major cause but still, autistic ≠ intellectually disabled most of the time.

A lot of things that cause intellectual disability also come with facial differences, epilepsy, mobility-related disabilities, sensory disabilities, and limb differences. A lot, but not all, intellectually disabled people go to special education schools.

Intellectual disability isn't the same as brain damage. Brain damage can occur at any point of a person's life while ID always starts in or before childhood.

"Can My Character Be [Blank]?"

[large text: "Can my character be [blank]?"]

The difficulty with writing characters with intellectual disability is that unlike some other things you can give your character, ID will very directly impacts how your character thinks and behaves - you can't make the whole character and then just slap the ID label on them.

Intellectually disabled people are extremely diverse in terms of personality, ability, verbality, mobility... And you need to consider those things early because deciding that your character is nonverbal and unable to use AAC might be an issue if you're already in the middle of writing a dialogue scene.

For broader context, a person with ID might be fully verbal - though they would still probably struggle with grammar, what some words mean, or with general understanding of spoken/written language to some degree. Or they could also be non-verbal. While some non-verbal ID people use AAC, it's not something that works for everyone and some people rely on completely language-less communication only. There is also the middle ground of people who are able to speak, but only in short sentences, or in a way that's not fully understandable to people who don't know them. Some might speak in second or third person.

Depending on the severity of your character's disability they will need help with different tasks. For example, I'm mildly affected and only need help with "complex" tasks like shopping or taxes or appointments, but someone who is profoundly affected will probably need 24/7 care. It's not infantilization to have your character receive the help that they need. Disabled people who get help with bathing or eating aren't "being treated like children", they just have higher support needs than me or you. In the same vein, your character isn't "mentally two years old" or "essentially a toddler", they are a twenty-, or sixteen-, or fourty five-year old who has intellectual disability. Mental age isn't real. Intellectually disabled people can drink, have sex, smoke, swear, and a bunch of other things. A thirty year old disabled person is an adult, not a child!

An important thing is that a person with ID has generally bad understanding of cause-and-effect and might not make connections between things that people without ID just instinctively understand. For example, someone could see that their coat is in a different place than they left it, but wouldn't be able to deduce that then it means that someone else moved it or it wouldn’t even occur to them as a thing that was caused by something. I think every (or at least most) ID person struggles with this to some extent. The more severe someone's disability is the less they will be able to connect usually (for example someone with profound ID might not be able to understand the connection between the light switch and the light turning off and on).

People with mild intellectual disability have the least severe problems in functioning and some are able to live independently, have a job, have kids, stuff like that.

What Tropes Should You Avoid?

[large text: what tropes should you avoid?]

The comic relief/punching bag;

The predator/stalker;

The "you could change this character into a sick dog and there wouldn't be much difference";

...and a lot more but these are the most prevalent in my experience.

Most ID characters are either grossly villainized (more often if they have also physical disabilities or facial differences) or extremely dehumanized or ridiculed, or all of the above. It's rarely actually *mentioned* for a character to be intellectually disabled, but negative "representation" usually is very clear that this who they're attempting to portray. The portrayal of a whole group of people as primarily either violent predators, pitiful tragedies or nothing more than a joke is damaging and you probably shouldn't do that. It's been done too many times already.

When those tropes aren't used the ID character is still usually at the very most a side character to the main (usually abled) character. They don't have hobbies, favorite foods, movies or music they like, love interests, friends or pets of their own and are very lucky if the author bothered to give them a last name. Of course it's not a requirement to have all of these but when there is *no* characterization in majority of disabled characters, it shows. They also usually die in some tragic way, often sacrificing themselves for the main character or just disappear in some off-the-screen circumstances. Either way, they aren't really characters, they're more like cardboard cutouts of what a character should be - the audience has no way to care for them because the author has put no care into making the character interesting or likable at all. Usually their whole and only personality and character trait is that they have intellectual disability and it's often based on what the author thinks ID is without actually doing any research.

What Terms to Use and Not Use

[large text: What Terms to Use and Not Use]

Words like: "intellectually disabled" or "with/have intellectual disability" are terms used by people with ID and generally OK to use from how much I know. I believe more people use the latter (person first language) for themselves but i know people who use both. I use the first more often but I don't mind the second. Some people have strong preference with one over the other and that needs to be respected.

Terms like:

"cursed with intellectual disability"

"mentally [R-slur]"

"moron"

"idiot"

"feeble-minded"

"imbecile"

is considered at least derogatory by most people and I don't recommend using it in your writing. The last 5 terms directly come from outdated medical terminology specifically regarding ID and aren't just "rude", they're ableist and historically connected to eugenics in the most direct way they could be. To me personally they're highly offensive and I wouldn't want to read something that referred to its character with ID with those terms.

(Note: there are, in real life, people with ID that refer to themselves with the above... but this is still just a writing guide. Unless you belong to the group i just mentioned I would advise against writing that, especially if this post is your entire research so far.)

Things I Want to See More of in Characters with Intellectual Disability

[large text: Things I Want to See More of in Characters with Intellectual Disability]

[format borrowed from WWC]

I want to see more characters with intellectual disability that...

aren’t only white boys.

are LGBT+.

are adults.

are allowed to be angry without being demonized, and sad without being infantilized.

are not described as "mentally X years old".

are respected by others.

aren't "secretly smart" or “emotionally smart”.

are able to live independently with some help.

aren't able to live independently at all and aren't mocked for that.

are in romantic relationships or have crushes (interabled... or not!).

are non-verbal or semi-verbal.

use mobility aids and/or AAC.

have hobbies they enjoy.

have caregivers.

have disabilities related to their ID.

have disabilities completely unrelated to their ID.

have friends and family who like and support them.

go on cool adventures.

are in different genres: fantasy, romComs, action, slice of life... all of them.

have their own storylines.

aren't treated as disposable.

don't die or disappear at the first possible opportunity.

...and I want to see stories that have multiple intellectually disabled characters.

I hope that this list will give someone inspiration to go and make their first OC with intellectual disability ! This is just a basic overview to motivate writers to do their own research rather than a “all-knowing post explaining everything regarding ID”. I definitely don't know everything especially about the parts of ID that I just don't experience (or not as much as others). This is only meant to be an introduction for people who don't really know what ID is or where to even start.

Talk to people with intellectual disability (you can send ask here but there are also a lot of other people on Tumblr who have ID and I know at least some have previously answered asks as well if you want someone else's opinion!), watch/read interviews with people who have ID (to start - link1, link2, both have captions) and try to rethink what you think about intellectual disability. Because it's really not that rare like a lot of people seem to think. Please listen to us when we speak.

Good luck writing and thank you for reading :-) (smile emoji)

mod Sasza