#or am i being presumptuous

[mediumgayitalian]

Im writing a ficlet to post here on tumblr and I got inspired by ur writing but everytime I read the mere start it's just a big no no What do i do???

first of all send it my way if you like!! second of all you have a few options:

1. Just Keep Going

remember you can go back and fix things!! if you keep writing you’ll stumble into a flow, and then you can go back and edit the beginning or middle to fit your vision.

2. Fuck Beginnings

the number one obstacle i had with writint when i was first starting out is that i could never think of a damn beginning. even now i struggle with it. best way to handle that: fuck beginnings. wherever you have a scene, start: in the middle of an argument, the middle of a scene, hell, the middle of a damn sentence. wherever the start of your idea is is the start of your story! don’t force something that doesn’t exist. (that 10k will angst fic i just wrote? started w the sherman & will argument scene! i had Nothing beforehand! and you’ll notice a lot of my stuff starts in the middle of a conversation, cause it’s easier!*)

3. Start Over

sometimes i’ll try so hard to make something i’ve already written work, even if i’m stuck, because i’ve already sunk so much time in it that starting again feels like a waste of time. but, dude, trust me — if you’re that stuck, just start over. maybe not the whole damn piece, but you can definitely rewrite a paragraph or chapter. personally, i tend to cut and paste whatever isn’t working into a new doc so i don’t lose it (in case i manage to reuse it elsewhere) and then i begin again, with uncluttered space.

4. Post What You Have

i should really link y’all to the first post i ever made. it was Hot Stinky Garbage. i don’t care. it Helped, you know? it started me out. maybe your thing isnt perfect — post it anyway. maybe nobody cares — post it anyway. (took like two weeks for someone to care about what i was posting on this account, and i posted daily. my first fic had zero notes for eight days.) you might even find that you’re just being too hard on yourself!

5. Dialogue Prompts My Beloved

dialogue is so so easy for me to write. it’s WAY easier for me to script a conversation and then build facial expressions, emotions, actions, and intention behind it, because i never shut up! i have a lot of practice. as you may have noticed i’ve been using the @p0ck3tf0x 100 ways to say i love you list — i’ve put it in a spinner wheel lol. so i spin the wheel and write the prompt, then i don’t have to make a decision. if i don’t like what comes up i spin again.

good luck!! wish you all the best!!

*it is a thousand times easier to build exposition through context. example:

Kayla walked up to her brother, who was sitting morosely on the porch. “Hey, Will. You good?”

Will shrugged. “I’m okay.”

vs.:

“Will. Hey. You good?”

“‘M okay.” He tried for a smile. “Thanks though, Kayla.”

see the difference? in the first, i am outright telling you that 1) kayla is walking over to will 2) he is sitting on the porch 3) he is sad 4) he is answering her question. this are all stated things, either by the narrator or by the dialogue. this is clunky! this is so clunky!

but why?

you know all these things. you know ‘hey’ is a greeting — so obviously kayla is newly approaching will. kayla calls will by name — you know who she’s talking to. will mumbles, and ‘tries for a smile’ — both things that indicate he’s feeling morose. he responds to kayla by name, so you know who he’s responding to. when you over-explain or state too much in your writing, you’re telling your readers twice, which can feel awkward.

[featherymainffins]

Peace and love on planet Earth but if I see one more post NOT about recovery and, in fact, encouraging eating disorders in the ed recovery tag, I might just turn into a chimpanzee and tear everyone's faces off.

[aztarion]

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[prince-liest]

previously was comfortable combining the lesbian thing and the aroace thing but am now starting to wonder if in fact it is just the aroace thing, seeing as the lesbian thing was largely a realization defined by Not Liking Men and now I'm exploring the concept of Not Liking Anybody At All

it's kinda interesting bc I went through a whole phase of reading only sapphic books in 2017-2018ish when I had the lesbian realization and now I'm actually actively put off by them because it makes me weirdly dysphoric. kind of the way that I used to feel dysphoric when reading m/f!

wow, in the end it always comes back to the yaoi, doesn't it. unu

interestingly enough a lot of parallels between the lesbian realization and the aroace realization specifically because they both circled around the revelation that I'm quite good at gaslighting myself into thinking I desire the things that I am "supposed" to desire a la compulsory heterosexuality except also just compulsory allosexuality.

whenever I previously contemplated about what I would want in an ideal partner, it was always like. a running list of all the ways they'd have to not disrupt my life so as to be minimally tolerable, inevitably culminating in "a mail order android would be ideal, to be very genuinely honest" and now I can happily remember that I don't have to like ANYBODY.

I really love people! but, like. [Astarion voice] don't... touch me.

/jazz hands

[luobingmeis]

wei wuxian is so funny because he’s like “jiang cheng! stop assuming me and lan zhan are dating! we are ONLY friends! we are NOT romantically involved! we have been PLATONICALLY traveling for two months!” and lan wangji (heartbroken) is just standing there like 🧍

and then jiang cheng is like “that fucking rapscallion lan wangji” and that’s when wei wuxian is like “NO!!! THAT’S THE THING LAN ZHAN IS SENSITIVE ABOUT!!!!!!!!”

[slut-for-a-good-latte]

necrophilia

white cotton underwear

damp with your needy exploring mouth

white dress hiked up to my hips

white dress, you said, like hers

white dress, i think, made you think

of hers

and i hate the way blood curls in my mouth and my eyes start to twitch when i think about her, and

white dresses.

white dress billowing behind me

scurrying across the street, vermin

reaching a hand out to passing cars and asking, can you take me home?

your hand tugs me through the door

before i can say the thing i dare not say

you are asleep with your glasses on.

i take myself to bed and doze off in the spot that is not mine

was not mine

will not, i worry, ever be mine.

i wonder if, when you stumbled in later, you mistook me for her. for half a second. did you see my sleeping form and think, thank god, she's home?

we are not same

and i know comparison is as useless as a white dress unfulfilled and unworn on a hanger

never to see the sun again

but there is a bitter hard ugly part of me that feels in some way

corpselike

something dead pretending to be alive

begging take me home and finding myself in the place of another white dress.

[steelycunt]

hello! when u post ur pride AU will you post it all at once or as chapters ? 🐣 genuinely just curious lol

hi! the plan for posting when the time comes is that i wont post it until the entire thing is at least drafted, but maybe more likely ill only post it when its done completely. i dont intend to post the entire thing all at once since thats just. a lot to dump the whole completed five chapters on ao3 at once! but since the whole thing will probably be finished and ready, ill probably just post each chapter on a pretty consistent schedule, maybe once a week or every ten days or two weeks--something like that : ^ )

[aholefilledwithtwigs]

It would be so cool if i knew how to react to flirting

[safyresky]

Your Existential Crisis & You: a Guide, with love, xoxo The Frosts

Part 2: The Twins vs NIHILISM

eheheheheehehehe >:)

(Part 1) Part 2

I am ONCE AGAIN waking up from a nap on Friday evening to post Thursday Night Doodles and cackle to myself all evening about it >:)

Once I had the doodles for the Cold Front well on their way, the image of Fino and Fiera as that nihilism meme, you know the one:

Popped into my head unbidden and I IMMEDIATELY printed it to trace the poses and then give it my BEST ATTEMPT WITH THE TWINS. And y'all. Getting the stereotype one for Fino was a fucking NIGHTMARE. I have no less than SIX (6) skeleton sketches, one of which was basically almost done but wasn't crouchy enough lol. What a fun challenge that was!!

And, of COURSE, here are the sketches because A) I liked them just as much as the scans up there and B) THE SKETCHES ACTUALLY WORK SIDE BY SIDE FOR THE MEME! Whereas the SCANS don't quite--hence why they're one on top of the other, lol.

BOOM.

Do I have something for the Blinter? WHY YES, I DO! An IDEA. I have Blaise for sure but the one Winter's slotted as rn doesn't seem to fit in with the theme. Granted, she is the most unhinged of all the Frosts (it's where they get their shenanigan related ideas from lol) so it checks out that she'd be not QUITE in the same wheelhouse with their existential crisises but THAT'S FOR ME TO DWELL ON, AND YOU TO LAUGH ABOUT IN 3 TO 5 BUSINESS WEEKS :D

happy weekend everyone! I'm gonna go do the aforementioned cackling now >:)

[hecantsaveyou]

My work crush who’s not my crush is moving to Las Vegas (I’m so brilliant for quitting at this time) ik I probably only liked him bc proximity to attractive person but he is so evocative to me. He’s so open and lighthearted and giggly and vulgar and somehow made friends with ME even tho I speak like 20 words max per day. But he also carries a lot of pain and talks about it openly and I can physically see him struggle to talk about it and I find it very moving like maybe I’m projecting but I feel like he has an instinctual understanding that he has to keep his heart open or at the very least be real/be who he is. And he says he doesn’t give a fuck what ppl think about him but I think that’s only partially true he rly just gives a bigger fuck that he is having fun and being true to himself. It’s so moving. LOL. Tomorrow might be his last day so I hope I get a chance to tell him that I think he is so special bc why not

[beeapocalypse]

dont say this enough but i truly appreciate all of you. thank you for every moment shared

[askdacast]

a bit of a personal ramble here...actually no I’m about to be really cringe as I kind of rant about the anxieties and issues I’ve been going through lately in a super roundabout way

but in the long ago days (by which I mean like 10 years ago) and when I was an even louder Persona fan, I made a Shadow version of my main OC/blatant self-insert Alyss Baraen and it was therapeutic to some extent

(more under the cut)

Shadow Alyss even had a cringe name and design - Gerhild, the Witch of Destiny (very long story), and was kind of a representation of my suppressed anger issues and general teenage angst at being different. One could say, a manifestation of the Id.

You can actually find that name in the really old posts of this blog but...please don’t “orz

All that was kinda based off the issues that a teenaged me knew of herself, but I feel rather ashamed to say, those issues haven’t 100% gone away, they still ebb and flow and take different forms, and I gotta smash them all the same

What I am saying is that I’ve been gnawing on the idea of re-doing the “Shadow Alyss” idea with the updated knowledge of myself now and the more recent anxieties I’ve had to deal with. And the hilarity is that the motif is completely the opposite of what I did as a teenager while somehow still being thematically the same.

Given the witch/Carmen San Diego design motifs the regular Alyss already has from the red and hat, I couldn’t help but also notice how much like a Spanish Inquisitor (insert Monty Python joke here) she looks like, and the moment I thought of that given Alyss being a very religious character, everything just completely fell into place

(Fun fact: Years ago when I was into imagining what kind of Personas my characters would have, Alyss’ was supposed to be Agustina de Aragon, Spanish folk heroine who is drawn with a big hecking cannon. It all comes full circle.)

(Inquisitor from DFO, danbooru link warning)

The Inquisitor would be all of Alyss’ self-depreciation and anxieties that she isn’t good enough at...well, anything. Mostly not being a good enough person or Christian. It’s not like she resents her faith, but she absolutely does feel like she’s been put under a microscope her whole life and she needs to scrutinize her every action as to whether it is moral or not. Chalk it up to her emotional nature and sensitivities that take her every action as reflecting on her moral character. A mistake or a failure to do “the right thing” isn’t just one bad act - it’s a stain on her very identity as someone who professes to follow God. Or a good daughter. Or a good friend. A good person.

Of course, this is a self-inflicted wound in many ways. She hates being criticized, and the expectation to always be ‘good’ or following the standards of what makes a moral religious person causes a lot of guilt in her when she does wrong, or anxiety that she might do wrong. A lot of what I imagined about The Inquisitor isn’t just the religious motif, but the motif of fear and punishment. The Judge and Executioner who instills the fear of God in sinners. A horribly apt symbol, imo, of what anxiety feels like, of that looming darkness that constantly beats down on you. The voice that says “this is ABSOLUTELY a terrible idea” even before you take a step.

Heck for extra factor on the monster of fear part, throw in the white eyes on a completely shadowed face a la Scarecrow from the later Batman TAS episodes

(this is the least disturbing picture I could find of him)

All these fear motifs are, of course, painfully ironic when you consider that not only this image is Alyss’ exaggerated idea of her faith, it’s also 100% contradictory of what her faith truly stands for. What she herself has constantly told others. That God isn’t an angry God who judges sinners, but a gentle one who forgives, and justifies not by adherence to laws, but faith in a greater power. In fact, the power that forgives and lets people not be punished for what they deserve.

And though this is a totally cheesy idea...I would like to imagine if you face the Inquisitor in a dungeon, in like a medieval-style execution grounds, you would see those crumbling old walls with broken carvings that have the words “Condemnation in Christ” on them, and then noticing the walls were broken, you’d eventually find the missing half of the wall which must be attached before the initial wall, with the words, “There is No”

Look, I’ve already spilled my guts out with this “I have a friend”-type post, I can afford to be cringe about something that means a lot to me

Especially since...it’s very obviously been weighing on my mind a lot lately

No matter whether Alyss Baraen thinks herself a “witch” or feels tormented by an “Inquisitor” the root cause is still the same - she fears that she isn’t worthy or that God possibly is angry at her for whatever sin or failure to be human/good she’s committed. And despite her own beliefs, or the love and support of others, being a clear evidence to the contrary, she finds it hard to trust that that love is real.

Many times, it’s terrifying to trust people you love, or to have any hope at all. Because what if you’re disappointed? Worse, what if you’re just plain wrong? You could say to yourself how much good you’ve done or how much people clearly love and care for you, and have it still mean absolutely nothing. Because the evidence for your imperfection, the world’s imperfection, and the hurts you bear feel so much more real than the idea that you might deserve happiness.

And the more you think that way, the more you inevitably project that idea onto a higher power, like God. Because how could it be true that He offers you all things for nothing? Less than nothing - you’re a “terrible person” who deserves to be punished, and yet He isn’t. In fact, He’s saying all’s good, you just need to do better and keep loving and trusting Him, and He’ll do the rest.

Without any obvious proof, except the life you’ve already lived, and the words He’s said.

A tall order to believe in, isn’t it?

Trust is never easy, and in fact, often seems far less logical than just continuing to remain on guard, always.

To believe in there being good and kindness in your future often seems too good to be true. And soon we start to believe it can never be true.

So I’ve spent a long time rejecting any kind of grace or kindness because I’ve convinced myself there’s no way it’s true. The truth, to me, had to be a harsh revelation of my inherent sinfulness and failure to follow God. Those were obvious ‘proofs’ in my life, after all. It could be nothing else. If I received a kind word, I must have been selfishly trying to avert my eyes from the truth, to what I wanted to hear.

But, you know.

That wasn’t the truth at all.

In my heart of hearts, I KNEW it wasn’t.

Well, no one ever said Faith was easy.

[apocalypse-gang]

Gerard Way isn't trans. He says he's a man.

I'm trans and I'm a man those things aren't mutually exclusive ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The tags I stole said he's a "trans icon" which doesn't necessarily mean he's trans, but he's an icon for the trans community. Many gay icons aren't gay or even the same gender, but their art and/or support of the community is what makes them an icon. Gerard is a trans icon because he constantly shows his support for the trans community, his expression of his gender and challenging of social norms, and his just the content of music itself (which I might go into in another post)

But even then, it's not like... I'm not wrong to associate him with the trans community? He literally associates himself with the trans community.

He's always gone against social norms with his androgynous and now feminine gender expression and presentation. He's literally talked about struggling with his gender identity, and how he identifies with trans people and women. He's literally said his pronouns are he/they!

He's never outright said his gender and sexuality. That's fine. I also try not to assume anyone's sexuality or gender. But he's also never said anything about being a cishet man either. And it's presumptuous to assume that he must be man because he doesn't say anything.

He's a trans icon, who he himself identifies with trans people, so it's not out of nowhere to identify him as trans as well

[adhdo5]

K so the reason we sniched was our friend found it straight up in call,told us and got heated in the moment and are now embarassed together with the author over sending that ask. The persons already feeling bad about being impulsive and adding fire to our friends embarassment

OK this is fair tbh and honestly like . I've been there

I am sorry we did this publicly that was Not fair of us. We discussed this and like I think we srsly got 2 comfortable considering our blogger collective as #irrelevant – which like we are, to be clear, but we r still like . In Public nd it was rude of us 2 be doing shit like this to Some Guy's work like it was the latest DJK article. I do think I will go dig up some stuff from middle school from myself or smth to shred bc like Fair's Fair

But yeah I . Am genuinely sorry I can definitely see why that would be upsetting to come across. I should in fact probably take my part of it down which I will do like . Tomorrow (later today) bc I did just fully wake up at 4 but yeag . It was our bad 2 thoughtlessly clown on your comrade's writing, in public no less, and I Am sorry, and will not b doing it again

[mikkaeus]

sometimes i will avoid saying hi to people i know on an acquaintance level because i dont know whether to call them by their (widely used) nickname or their full name and i feel like i should know by now bc we’ve known each other for years even though we’ve barely spoken irl

[disclaimer-performatico]

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