#this is more articulate than i had the other day. which was basically

[dykeminecraft]

I've been mulling over this for the past couple days trying to find a way to say it that doesn't come off aggressively to me but like. although I am very much allosexual. My approach to that is going to be vastly different due to. the aromanticism. & that's the part that's hard to word around, particularly if I'm not careful, bc I tend to open out with trying to make it abundantly clear, & then I feel like I'm being scolding about it.

but it is important to me, since it's a point of discomfort when I see certain things - obviously society expects a certain level of sexuality, but it also has to be the right kind, and i don't. Uh. The way I approach & feel about it does not fall under those rules, so while the "allosexual" bit Seems bog-standard on paper, the instant "aromantic" gets tacked on it starts breaking SOP and becoming insidious and dirty and bad. do you see what I'm getting at here

& I don't want to get much into the nitty-gritty of it since I don't want to cross any lines, but even if I were otherwise completely vanilla-oriented (which. I'm not,) it still wouldn't be enough to be "good". Due To The Aromanticism.

so in as blunt but also delicate a way as I can muster. I am perhaps a little weary of discussions where people find ways to frame sex (movie sex discourse primarily bc I saw a post the other day) as disgusting or unwanted. Or like it has to serve some sort of Intimate Beloved Purpose. personal discomfort does not always reflect moral values and all that but also. Goddamn it gets lonely in here sometimes. there needs to be discussions about representation and whatnot but it's Rough when it tends to come with people framing sex & sexuality as Inherently Disgusting and Immoral.

And I don't even have the good grace to pretend it's for ~romantic infatuation~ or whatever.

[saja-star]

I've had a hard time articulating to people just how fundamental spinning used to be in people's lives, and how eerie it is that it's vanished so entirely. It occurred to me today that it's a bit like if in the future all food was made by machine, and people forgot what farming and cooking were. Not just that they forgot how to do it; they had never heard of it.

When they use phrases like "spinning yarns" for telling stories or "heckling a performer" without understanding where they come from, I imagine a scene in the future where someone uses the phrase "stir the pot" to mean "cause a disagreement" and I say, did you know a pot used to be a container for heating food, and stirring was a way of combining different components of food together? "Wow, you're full of weird facts! How do you even know that?"

When I say I spin and people say "What, like you do exercise bikes? Is that a kind of dancing? What's drafting? What's a hackle?" it's like if I started talking about my cooking hobby and my friend asked "What's salt? Also, what's cooking?" Well, you see, there are a lot of stages to food preparation, starting with planting crops, and cooking is one of the later stages. Salt is a chemical used in cooking which mostly alters the flavor of the food but can also be used for other things, like drawing out moisture...

"Wow, that sounds so complicated. You must have done a lot of research. You're so good at cooking!" I'm really not. In the past, children started learning about cooking as early as age five ("Isn't that child labor?"), and many people cooked every day their whole lives ("Man, people worked so hard back then."). And that's just an average person, not to mention people called "chefs" who did it professionally. I go to the historic preservation center to use their stove once or twice a week, and I started learning a couple years ago. So what I know is less sophisticated than what some children could do back in the day.

"Can you make me a snickers bar?" No, that would be pretty hard. I just make sandwiches mostly. Sometimes I do scrambled eggs. "Oh, I would've thought a snickers bar would be way more basic than eggs. They seem so simple!"

Haven't you ever wondered where food comes from? I ask them. When you were a kid, did you ever pick apart the different colored bits in your food and wonder what it was made of? "No, I never really thought about it." Did you know rice balls are called that because they're made from part of a plant called rice? "Oh haha, that's so weird. I thought 'rice' was just an adjective for anything that was soft and white."

People always ask me why I took up spinning. Isn't it weird that there are things we take so much for granted that we don't even notice when they're gone? Isn't it strange that something which has been part of humanity all across the planet since the Neanderthals is being forgotten in our generation? Isn't it funny that when knowledge dies, it leaves behind a ghost, just like a person? Don't you want to commune with it?

[flimsy-roost]

I realized the other day that the reason I didn't watch much TV as a teenager (and why I'm only now catching up on late aughts/early teens media that I missed), is because I literally didn't understand how to use our TV. My parents got a new system, and it had three remotes with a Venn diagram of functions. If someone left the TV on an unfamiliar mode, I didn't know how to get back to where I wanted to be, so I just stopped watching TV on my own altogether.

I explained all this to my therapist, because I didn't know if this was more related to my then-unnoticed autism, or to my relationship with my parents at the time (we had issues less/unrelated to neurodivergency). She told me something interesting.

In children's autism assessments, a common test is to give them a straightforward task that they cannot reasonably perform, like opening an overtight jar. The "real" test is to see, when they realize that they cannot do it on their own, if they approach a caregiver for help. Children that do not seek help are more likely to be autistic than those that do.

This aligns with the compulsory independence I've noticed to be common in autistic adults, particularly articulated by those with lower support needs and/or who were evaluated later in life. It just genuinely does not occur to us to ask for help, to the point that we abandon many tasks that we could easily perform with minor assistance. I had assumed it was due to a shared common social trauma (ie bad experiences with asking for help in the past), but the fact that this trait is a childhood test metric hints at something deeper.

My therapist told me that the extremely pathologizing main theory is that this has something to do with theory of mind, that is doesn't occur to us that other people may have skills that we do not. I can't speak for my early childhood self, or for all autistic people, but I don't buy this. Even if I'm aware that someone else has knowledge that I do not (as with my parents understanding of our TV), asking for help still doesn't present itself as an option. Why?

My best guess, using only myself as a model, is due to the static wall of a communication barrier. I struggle a lot to make myself understood, to articulate the thing in my brain well enough that it will appear identically (or at least close enough) in somebody else's brain. I need to be actively aware of myself and my audience. I need to know the correct words, the correct sentence structure, and a close-enough tone, cadence, and body language. I need draft scripts to react to possible responses, because if I get caught too off guard, I may need several minutes to construct an appropriate response. In simple day-to-day interactions, I can get by okay. In a few very specific situations, I can excel. When given the opportunity, I can write more clearly than I am ever capable of speaking.

When I'm in a situation where I need help, I don't have many of my components of communication. I don't always know what my audience knows. I don't have sufficient vocabulary to explain what I need. I don't know what information is relevant to convey, and the order in which I should convey it. I don't often understand the degree of help I need, so I can come across inappropriately urgent or overly relaxed. I have no ability to preplan scripts because I don't even know the basic plot of the situation.

I can stumble though with one or two deficiencies, but if I'm missing too much, me and the potential helper become mutually unintelligible. I have learned the limits of what I can expect from myself, and it is conceptualized as a real and physical barrier. I am not a runner, so running a 5k tomorrow does not present itself as an option to me. In the same way, if I have subconscious knowledge that an interaction is beyond my capability, it does not present itself as an option to me. It's the minimum communication requirements that prevent me from asking for help, not anything to do with the concept of help itself.

Maybe. This is the theory of one person. I'm curious if anyone else vibes with this at all.

[softcaesar]

WE SHOULDN'T — NANAMI KENTO part one

context: your friend invites you over to work on your marine report. you end up staying past the curfew. he offers his bed for you to sleep… basically the good ol' bed sharing trope

pairing : nanami kento x f!reader

content and warnings: SMUT IN PART TWO, no curses, college au, nanami is a marine bio student

“I’ll be there in five?” you say, yawning.

“Just hurry up. We’ve got a lot to do.”

Five minutes later, you reach the front of Kento's dorm which buzzed with the comings and goings of its undergraduate residents. You spot a tall figure standing next to the doors waiting for you. It’s him. You notice he’s wearing a navy fleece jacket and his usual tan slacks. Kento acknowledges you with a quick nod before retreating into building, signaling you to follow him inside.

Five minutes later, you reach the front of Kento's dorm which buzzed with the comings and goings of its undergraduate residents. You spot a tall figure standing next to the doors waiting for you. It’s him. You notice he’s wearing a navy fleece jacket and his usual tan slacks. Kento acknowledges you with a quick nod before retreating into building, signaling you to follow him inside.

Five minutes later, you reach the front of Kento's dorm which buzzed with the comings and goings of its undergraduate residents. You spot a tall figure standing next to the doors waiting for you. It’s him. You notice he’s wearing a navy fleece jacket and his usual tan slacks. Kento acknowledges you with a quick nod before retreating into building, signaling you to follow him inside.

“I reviewed the analysis you wrote,” he began, monotonously, “Still needs to be fixed. Your abstract, however, is written well. Very articulate.”

“Thanks,” you replied, glancing around. It stroked you as a bit strange how he complimented you. Before, he had never stated his opinions on your work, whether negative or positive, only ever dismissing you with a nod or a ‘mhmm’. On good days, he would thank you but today, something was fishy. You’d have thought he’d be sterner and blunter throughout the duration of the assignment, if not completely uninvolved. However, it was quite the opposite.

As you turn the corner, you realise that his dorm hall was much louder and livelier than the relative stillness of your apartment building; students congregated in groups studying or working on projects, while others played Cards Against Humanity and video games in the lounge. You saw a few girls doubletake towards your direction and soon hushed voices spoke among the students.

"Look! It's Nanami!"

"Who is that with him?"

"He looks so handsome!!"

"Nanami!"

Kento led you upstairs to the second floor and down the hallway.

"You have a lot of fans." You joked. He ignored you.

“Where do you live.” His question sounded more like a statement.

“… the tool shed.” you whisper.

He pauses, raising a curious brow, “What?”

“Its called the tool shed coz apparently that’s where all the hoes live,” you answer and he immediately walks away. You jog up to him.

“I’m not a hoe,” you exhale and he chuckles, shaking his head.

“I’m sure you’re not.”

“It’s quieter over there.”

“Mmm,” he says, quickly looking back at you. “Must be nice."

“Yep,” you nod, “There’ll be vacancies around November. I can inquire if you’d like.”

“Don’t bother.” He states. His room is at the end of the hallway. He unlocks the door and pushes it open. There’s a small shared space, comprised of a slightly cluttered kitchenette and a bathroom. Two large doors indicate the two bedrooms of the dorm room; one for Kento, and one presumably for a roommate.

“You live with someone?”

“He’s visiting his parents for the week. This is my room,” he says, pushing open the door to the right.

Kento's dorm room was different than you’d expected. It was a spacious layout that he adorned with evidence of his interests. A number of fish figures, some made of Lego, were displayed on a shelf against the wall, along with various textbooks, one of which was open on a kotatsu, dog tagged on the edges and plastered with colourful sticky notes.

“Which class is that for?” you pointed at the open textbook.

“Chemistry.”

He turns to the side, pushing his glasses further up his nose bridge, shielding his eyes away from you.

You keep looking around. Kento's desk was clearly a science student’s desk, inundated with marine textbooks and piles of booklets and manila folders, and all sorts of student clutter, from ball point pens to scrunched balls of paper to flashcards. The white concrete walls were relatively unadulterated, save for the framed pictures of his family and friends, and a corkboard above his desk tacked with academic pamphlets, flyers and a calendar. Everything in Kento's room looked as if it had its own designated spot. And the twin-sized bed was neatly made with a navy-blue comforter, which beckoned to you like an oasis in a desert. You noticed a small aquarium beside his dresser.

“I’ve printed a copy but if you’d prefer to edit digitally, I can email you the updated version.” Kento breaks the silence. You say you would prefer the latter, having brought your laptop and forgetting your pencil case. He took off his fleece jacket, revealing a white t-shirt underneath that hugged the frame of his body perfectly, and took off his shoes. You follow his lead and do the same, trying but failing to suppress a yawn. Kento noticed and sighed.

“Let’s finish this quickly so you can go home,” he says. It’s all the permission you need to start, and you groan in gratitude as you sink down onto the fluffy grey rug, shifting forward to put your legs under the kotatsu. His room seemed to have an effect on you. It felt homely and comfortable, reminding you of your own room back at your dorm.

“Oh, that’s right. I was looking at the report before I came and we forgot to update the formula table,” you say with another yawn. Kento took out his laptop and settled at his desk, immediately typing, while you waited for your laptop to load and made yourself comfy. It was the first chance you’ve gotten all day to sit down and relax, and it felt great. Damn that 8am workshop. Exhaustion threatened to overcome you, but you had to finish this. Soon, you and Kento sink into a comfortable silence with the occasional question, typing intensely on your keyboards, brows knit together. Other than that, no small talk existed. Two hours pass by and you stood up to stretch, walking towards Kento to see what he was up to. He stopped writing on his notepad when your shadow creeped over his paper. He turned around slowly.

“What are you doing?”

He huffs, brown eyes illuminated by his open computer screen. “Writing tomorrow’s agenda.” He looks up and draws his eyes to yours. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve completed the formula tables and edited the evaluation,” you stretch as you look at your watch which displayed a dim 21:53, “Damn, its late. Alright, I’ll get going. Text me if there’s a problem.”

Kento sighs deeply. “Thank you for coming.”

“No problem. Sorry if I didn’t do too much today, I was up at 5 this morning and I've only had one coffee. I’ll swing by again this week.”

He observes your tired face. There were dark circles around your slightly red eyes. Your skin was dull and your lips were slightly cracked. Before he could contain his sympathy, he opened his mouth, “Stay the night.”

Your face stills in confusion. “Huh.”

“Stay the night.” Kento stood up from his chair, heading over to peer out the window. “It’s dangerous for you to go back alone.”

“What...? Walk me home then,” you quipped. “Plus, if I stayed the night, where would I sleep? No offense Kento, but if you want me to share a bed with you, you'd have to buy me dinner first.”

You snicker as the tall man purses his lips. “I can’t buy you dinner right now but there’s some instant ramen in the cupboard if you’re hungry.”

“Oh my God!” You groan, beginning to stuff your laptop into your bag. Your cheeks feeling tight. “I was just kidding. I’ll just run super-fast. If you’re so worried, watch me from your window and save me if something happens.”

He walks closer and sits at the edge of his bed next to your kneeled body. “(name), just stay,” he demands. The way he says your name makes your stupid heart do stupid cartwheels. “The curfew began an hour ago and you can’t go about wandering. Sleep on my bed.”

“No, Kento. It’s your bed. I can’t ta–”

“Sleep in the hallway then.”

Dude.

“It’s fine,” he says. “Look, I’m tired but not to the point where I’m about to collapse from exhaustion. Besides, I made coffee earlier. I can make it through the night. Take the bed.”

Still, it felt wrong to sleep on his bed.

He was reliable, trustworthy and knew what he wanted in life. Bonus, he was good looking. You saw the effect he had over the girls in the hallway earlier. There was no doubt he had a girlfriend. You were sure about it. You did feel slightly disheartened at the thought though as you had tried to flirt with him earlier this year but he had openly rebuked you and told you to stop (lmao). It was embarrassing to think about it. Your relationship with him was strictly in the friendzone. Friends offer their beds to their friends all the time right?

You were still unsure, really not wanting to spend the night in his room... with him. Alone. Anything could happen.

“I really can’t Kento, I’ll just go home. You probably have a girlfrie–”

“I don’t have a girlfriend, (name), just sleep,” he stood up and sat at his desk again, resuming his scribbling on his notepad.

You stand awkwardly, tugging at the strings of your hoodie. Great, you had been everywhere wearing these clothes all day. The lecture halls, the library, the café. You stared longingly at his clean bed, not a crinkle in sight. You didn't want to tarnish his spotless sheets with your gross clothes. You smelled stinky too. You silently hoped he'd have spare pajamas laying around...

“You can wear the pajamas from the bottom drawer. Return it in the morning. Don’t worry about washing it. Use the bathroom to clean up.”

It was as if he read your mind. Muttering a quick ‘thanks’, you rushed into the bathroom and washed up, changing into the clean clothes. When you return to Kento's room, the main lights were off. The nightlight beside his bed and the desk lamp were on, emitting a warm dimming effect. His eyes were looking at you. They searched your face before trailing down and up the rest of your body, a small smile on his lips. A pleasant shiver runs down your spine.

“Good night (name).” he says lowly.

“Good night,” you say back, “Wake me up if you need to sleep.”

Silence is your response. You almost let out a moan as you sink into his soft mattress. Warmth envelopes you and you knew that you were sleeping good tonight. You stare at his ceiling, thinking back to his small compliment earlier, to the sneaky glances you had sent his peaceful figure. To the strange offer to use his spare clothes for the night. To the furtive glances at you in his pajamas.

“Hey,” you whisper, “I can’t tell if you’re being really sweet to me intentionally, or if you’re really just a gentleman.”

“Intentionally?”

“You know… if you have some sort of ulterior motive or something.”

His eyes glimmer. “It’d be pretty hard not to be sweet to you.”

The tension. It’s back. Kento's brown eyes don’t release you, but you’re a willing captive. Nothing could break this moment…

Nothing but a big, fat, horrendously-timed yawn.

He sighs again, you turn away, embarrassed.

“For fuck’s safe, (name), just sleep,” he exhales.

“You should too.”

“I have homework. Do you want some water?”

“No thanks,” you say, but he had already opened the mini fridge by his desk and tossed a cold bottle at your direction.

He returned to his seat. You smile in appreciation and take a sip. “Now, sleep. Goodnight.”

“You look pretty beat yourself. Are you sure you don’t want…”

He shakes his head. “I wish, but I have a lot to do. Besides, you’re using the bed.”

“Right.” What were you even thinking?

“Sleep well,” he says, settling down again at his desk. You re-adjust his pillows. Except, for whatever reason, your brain finds the back of Kento's head too intriguing. So, you roll onto your other side, facing the wall, shut your eyes, and let your exhaustion overtake you.

[indigochromatic]

Some Basic Advice About EMDR for Systems

(drawing on our own experiences, reading about it, and comparing notes with our therapist)

This is mainly aimed at systems who are considering doing EMDR or planning on it, but want to know what the process is like and what to look out for, with some personal experiences sprinkled in.

Under the cut, because I talk a lot:

General Concept

I think the big picture in our experience is that EMDR is/was like…an intensifier for the kind of headspace/internal system interaction processing work that a lot of systems do naturally, at least a little, especially if they have decent internal communication. This has both upsides and downsides/areas to be cautious about.

A lot of EMDR pre-work (often called “resourcing”) is about making sure you have a good toolbox of “mental tricks/techniques” to be able to handle unexpected intense emotions, feelings, and/or imagery etc that often comes up when you get into trying to work with traumatic stuff. This is in my opinion very important, and something your therapist should take at least a few sessions to talk with you about even if you already have good tools for it already, just to make sure they know your strategies and you’re all on the same page. Also super common and normal to spend some time developing extra ones if needed—stuff like “the box” for temporarily containing crisis emotions when needed, having a mental “safe space” that you can come back to, etc. Also, EMDR specifically tends to often be a little rigid/scripted in the types of visualizations and metaphors you’re “supposed” to use, but in my opinion a good therapist should be flexible enough to adapt to equivalent images/techniques you may already have (like, “imagine you’re viewing the traumatic memory on a movie screen, or out the window of a train going through a tunnel” is a common instruction; if, say, your headspace has a lot of fantasy elements and it makes more internal sense to be viewing the memory via…scrying in a dish or something, your therapist should be down with you doing that instead, if you want to).

As for the sessions themselves, a big thing we don’t hear articulated a lot is that, in our experience  and that of some other folks we know, EMDR has a tendency of being…like, sneakily intense: It doesn’t necessarily hit you all at once in the session, which may just feel like “ok, that was Some Therapy Work but I’m chill”, but then over the rest of the day and maybe even the next few days, it’s not uncommon to keep feeling a lot of emotional intensity/vulnerability, having more intense “internal conversations and/or realizations”, etc. For this reason, EMDR is generally supposed to start with a very mild memory-to-process, like 4-5 out of 10 max.

Notes of Caution and Stuff to Keep In Mind

Especially for folks who already heavily dissociate from emotional trauma, it’s super easy to think you’re “going too easy” only to find that the memory has a lot more emotional baggage than you realized—really go easy on yourself when you start, EMDR is like psychology power tools and you absolutely can hurt yourself. (We’ve heard from plenty of systems who had bad therapists who did not adequately support them in doing EMDR, and absolutely fucked them over by starting too big and retraumatizing the hell out of them— this isn’t meant as fear-mongering, especially if you really like and trust your therapist, but just genuine “hey, EMDR can be very volatile stuff, which is part of why it can be so helpful, but also means that it’s important to not skip out on the safety precautions and self-care”.) What this means in practice is often stuff like: (our recommendations at least) - trying to schedule breaks/easy days immediately after - possibly getting someone to drive you home, especially if you know you’re going after a Big Thing, because the dissociation hangover immediately after can be pretty real - start with a memory that feels "too easy", and scale up if a week later it still felt trivial/like you’re fully over it, because it’s way easier to ramp up than try to do damage control.

Our personal experience, in tl:dr form, was that it felt like the core of the technique was really useful for us, and mirrored some of the most useful instances of self-processing we’d had before while also kind of serving as a “shortcut” to it—but, it was pretty intense and we didn’t really like/fit well with the therapists who we were working with at the time, which is why we stopped (didn’t want to keep doing an emotionally intense thing with folks we didn’t trust).

Finally, a bit about EMDR and "maybe I'm plural but I'm not sure, and/or may not have great in-system communication": yeah, this is a case to be especially slow and careful, for all the aforementioned reasons; what my instinct/recommendation would be in those cases is to: 1) make sure you learn a lot of resourcing techniques 2) try to check in with yourself(s) frequently and with compassion/intent-to-collaborate, "ask the inside of your head how it's feeling" and even if you're not sure whether the "reply" was just your own thoughts or a headmate, listen and try to engage with/respect those responses and emotions 3) if you start getting warning signs/back-off signals/sudden intense feelings, listen to them and lighten up, pause the session if you need to, do some self care etc, even (especially) if you don't know why you felt that way and it seems 'odd/random', and really you're super curious about what's going on and just want to figure it out. Like...you and the inside of your head and/or other system members are trying to navigate a complicated D&D maze together, in the dark, and you each only have part of the map--so you have to work together and trust each other, especially listening to warning signals even when your "part of the map" doesn't show anything to worry about there. And the more you work together and trust each other, the better everything gets, including therapy work.

When it's "Death By A Thousand Papercuts"-type Trauma Instead

If you're not sure where to start because there aren't a lot of obvious "Big Bad Memories" that feel like they adequately explain the issues you're having, some recommendations:

-> First, note that "no Big Bad Memories are immediately coming to mind, idk" is super common in systems and also in CPTSD, way more than I think most folks realize, so know that you're not alone and also that it doesn't mean you don't necessarily have stuff deserving of help and support.

-> So yeah, there's kinda two things imo you can try. The first is, if your therapist is on the more flexible side, you can try doing EMDR with either "this specific memory wasn't too bad, but it's representative of an ongoing pattern or theme that wasn't great" (say, loneliness at school or something, and you pick a specific lunchtime memory, which wasn't really That Bad in the moment, but you were kinda sad and/or upset about it and it feels representative of the overall trend you're trying to process/heal). Or you can try just doing the EMDR process on the theme itself, at the abstract level, and see what comes up--again, I'd really recommend starting with a much lower-stakes issue/theme than you think you need, just because it's really easy to underestimate, especially for systems and other folks whose brains dissociate a lot. (And especially if you know your system has episodic amnesia--e.g. event-amnesia/blackout amnesia--as well as emotional amnesia.)

The second is, there are other "more flexible" types of similar somatic therapy techniques (brainspotting is the name of another one, and there's more I can't think of rn) that might fit better instead-- tldr, totally worth asking your therapist about the whole situation, and asking what they'd feel most qualified for/comfortable with, in my opinion. You don't need to be doing Specifically Exactly EMDR to do somatic trauma therapy, even though EMDR is one of the more well-known modalities for it, and finding a version that feels right and not like you're forcing anything is really valuable (and you're not 'being picky' if it takes a while to find one; you're allowed to want to find one that feels right).

[bao3bei4]

ON THE TSHIRT METHOD TO WRITING ESSAYS IN YOUR OWN TIME: 

i have had a couple people mention to me that they would like to write essays too, but they are a little out of practice. so i thought i should gather some scattered thoughts into one place. this is not a systematic guide. i am young and inexperienced and still working out things for myself, but this is my basic process and some things that have helped me, summarized. 

my biggest single piece of advice is to write with your proverbial pussy. you are not writing for a grade so don't act like it. forget rigor, forget academic style, etc. read what you're interested in, and write following up on the threads that you're interested in. don’t sweat the details. just do you.

if you still need more advice..... here’s a long winded post. 

step zero: if you have no clue what you want to say yet 

read. and read a lot.

but be realistic. be kind to yourself. your attention is a precious resource, and it is getting eaten up by shit out of your control all the time. if you’ve had a busy day, you may still have the brain power left to read. i almost never do. lol. so make sure to carve out time on a day off, if possible. otherwise you might end up completely fried, reading the same sentence over and over, and ending up scrolling on your phone LMAO. <-- painful lesson also to this end, if you haven’t picked up a denser book in a while, start with shorter articles, especially ones written more recently. if your attention wanders, try getting a physical book instead. the most important thing is just starting things you’ll actually read.  i’ve seen a lot of people (and been that person) who was like. “oh i’m going to start with THE canonical text in a subject i’m interested in” which makes sense right? but that book is inevitably long and dense and convoluted and boring. you can come back to it later. this shouldn’t feel like a chore! 

genuinely this is the most helpful thing you can do is just. read anything. it may be difficult at first (or always), but it is still the easiest way to engage with the foremost experts from around the world and the entirety of written history on any subject you are interested in. there’s not really a substitute to this. 

note: you may say that people can and do come up with brilliant ideas independently of their access to written works. this is true! but if you are one of them, you should skip this section/post, because you already know what you want to say.  okay that was a little too facetious. let me revise: when i say that, without reading, it will be hard to come up with more complex ideas than what you have now, that isn’t necessarily pejorative. maybe your current ideas and impulses are original and meaningful and complex. if they aren’t, however, you don’t have to resign yourself to it.  your experiences in real life are the most valuable thing you can bring to the table, but it can be very difficult to articulate and contextualize them without community—whether that be irl, or the simple textual company of other writers. you can let other people help you and teach you.  basically, this is a long winded way of saying something extremely simple: reading is not the only way to gain knowledge, or even the best. but it is an extremely consistent and relatively egalitarian way.** **scihub and libgen and sometimes the public library are your friends. (my local library’s book coverage is spotty) who cares about piracy. LMAO. 

you may surprise yourself by how nicely you fall into little spirals. you read one thing. and you are enamored with the way the author approaches their subject. so you end up reading everything else they’ve written, and then you start on the authors they list that inspire them in their interviews. maybe you just read one article that’s a little dry but it cites something else that seems far more interesting. read that next. and so on. 

if you are struggling to read that’s okay. you have options. start a book club (or just get a friend who also wants to read more). if that sounds like too much work, pick a friend to keep updated on all your new facts. you just want to get used to reading something, and telling someone your favorite parts again. skim books. skip the boring parts. drop them entirely and find a more interesting one. no one’s going to quiz you. this is for your own enjoyment. 

also important here: read books that make you want to write. sometimes this is because the methods and/or prose of the author are so exciting, you want to do something just like that. sometimes it’s because the content is so exciting, you want to say something about that too. sometimes they speak so powerfully to your own life, you want to tell people this is me!! i see this!! there are books i just enjoy reading, sure, and i do read them. but you know how, like, a good movie makes you want to tell stories too? good theory should do that too, in my opinion. 

step one: you have some ideas now. 

these ideas don’t have to be set in stone. but you should have an idea now of what you might talk about. personally, for me, i have two interconnected types of essay ideas. 

interventions. this is like [tumblr voice] Why Is Nobody Talking About This. i see some sort of hole. maybe i know how to fill it, maybe i don’t. 

free associations. basically i read one thing, or some analysis of one thing. and then it reminded me of another thing. and i’m like. i want to tease apart their connections, their similarities, and their differences. 

there are more types of ideas, i’m sure. but these are the ones i consistently have. with me, the second kind is more common. very rarely do i find that my thoughts are that original. rather, i’ve found that one of my strengths as a writer is being able to make connections that other people haven’t made, or haven’t made in depth before. IN MY OPINION. 

so i find it quite flexible. maybe i watch a movie, and it reminds me of my own life, because i think two women in the movie could be sad queer freaks. and i’m a sad queer freak. or it could be that i think scum villain could be analyzed through the framework of freudian psychoanalysis. you get the idea. 

at this stage of the process, i don’t have a thesis, necessarily. but i have a couple phrases i’m drawn to. i have a bullet point or two. i have vibes. 

to use an example from this blog, one of my friends hui once mentioned that that one fan image was going around again. we were going ughhh it’s victorian not chinese! together and they said “you should write a meta on it.” i wasn’t sure quite yet what i had to say. but i knew a couple things. 

this is, incidentally, because i had done some research into chinoiserie before, because i had cited the zuroski book for a paper i had to write for an english class some years before on pride and prejudice and its use of descriptions of material culture, an essay that in turn was inspired by my random yet deeply felt conviction that jane austen hated me personally and wanted to kill me.  this is why i encourage reading a lot. i think. 

to work on this stage, make lists. lots of them. i have a .txt file where i keep every essay idea i have. a lot of them are a sentence. or they're lists of books or theorists i think i could make something out of. or they're theses that feel true, but i’m not sure why yet. 

it took me a while to get to this point. just like with writing fic, there was a period when i first started where i was like. i only have one idea. i’m going to write it, and then i’m never going to write again. and then i had just one more idea. after a while. eventually you will find you have so many ideas and the world is full of possibilities. it’s a muscle you have to flex. like reading. and telling people about what you’re reading. 

actually, i feel like there was a step 0.5 here that i completely skipped. 

step zero point five that i skipped: how to generate ideas

my very truly complete “first time writing something semi-academic that was original” (with a loose definition of the word original) was literally just me reading literary criticism of one book, and saying “i think this author’s thoughts can be applied to this other book” and found some textual evidence that supported that the process could be replicated. 

this is like, writing with training wheels on. eventually i got better at it (see aforementioned chinoiserie essay. i hope you agree.). but that was a good place to start for me. it made the proverbial blank page less intimidating, knowing i had a scaffolding. 

i suggest trying this. see how it goes for you. read around until you find some piece of criticism, or just some theory about how something works, that you like. and using your newfound hammer, go look for some nails. 

note: i know this expression is meant to like. be a negative thing. but you do have to start somewhere. it’s okay if it sucks. it’s just for your practice and your enjoyment. 

be cautious of stances. weak writing (in my OPINIONNNN) tries to unilaterally defend or condemn a behavior. what you need to do is treat your writing as a bit. and then you need to run with it. you need to take it farther than what is reasonable. if this bit is truly actually deeply true, then what does it mean about yourself? it’s like using a new set of pronouns as a joke or something. you know what i mean? (that was an example of what i’m trying to communicate here)

what else is key to look out for... look for oppositional pairs or tensions. look for perverse incentives and vicious circles. look for embarrassing ideas. that is, what would be extremely embarrassing if it was true? (or to admit that it was true) you may go—tshirt, here you’re just describing things that are sexy. yes, exactly, that’s the point. you want things that thrill. 

just keep reading and making notes until everything echoes with something else. now you’re ready for step two. 

step two: refine your ideas further. 

let me do this by demonstration. once more extending my earlier example of my chinoiserie essay, i knew that i really wanted to take zuroski’s points and basically... steal them. this is called “citation,” i guess. but i thought the following insights were useful to me: 

british women were invested in chinese material objects 

they incorporated them into their own subjectivity

past a certain point, they no longer “consumed” these signifiers, but these signifers became theirs 

critique of one was able to stand in for critique of the other

and from being on fandom twitter, i already had the following insights: 

people deliberately blurred the lines between china and england when it came to fans and tea

people also liked talking about victorian modesty when it came to china 

so it seemed like victorian england and china had a privileged relationship, in a lot of people’s minds in fandom. 

so it didn’t really seem a stretch to say... how can we look at one history, and apply it to our present? 

it was a bit of the combo of the two: i saw something i didn’t see people were talking about, and it reminded me of something else i’d read before. 

something that helps me a lot is tweeting about my essay ideas. if you have me on my private account, you already know this. it forces me to explain myself to someone who doesn’t know what i’m talking about in a very succinct way. oftentimes, i tweet something out while i’m brainstorming, and then i steal the phrasing back into my essay. see? tweets can be writing too. 

this is microdosing on step zero’s “read something and practice telling a friend about it.” now you’re writing something and telling a friend about it. 

step three: okay now you can like. open a google doc 

make an outline. i know i know i know. i’m sorry. you can start just barfing thoughts if you want, but eventually everything that was on the top of your head will be out. and now you can start thinking about structure. the reason the outline is important is because it makes clear the logical progression from one idea to the next. 

i know i usually bounce around in my writing (a tendency which has been magnified here because this is so casual LMAO), but i always want to make sure that my points are substantiated. if we want to talk about how a causes b, we should prove a, we should prove the causal link, and only then can we infer b, for instance. it doesn’t really matter what order that happens in (or even that we set about it that way), but the more complicated your idea is, the longer checklist you need. it’s just a checklist. that’s all. 

as you start writing, you’ll probably need to read some more. you’re going to want to say something you think is true, but you’re going to realize that you haven’t proved it (or you can’t). go look to see if someone else has proved it. 

maybe you’re right. add that evidence in. maybe you’re wrong. now your essay has a new direction. there is a living thing beneath you. actually, on that idea— 

i tend to structure my outlines (if i’m not sure yet what my point is) by pasting a bunch of quotes in a document, and reorganizing them until they make sense, they seem to flow. and then i start explaining why, until i realized i have begun to walk off in a new direction. always embrace that new direction. eventually you will find that you have not been taking twists and turns, but actually you were dizzily walking along a straight path. (unless you have been unfocused and you are trying to say too many things at once. ask a friend to read your essay if you’re not sure which is the case.) 

quotes are the smallest unit of your analysis. work with evidence. or, at least, i do. it makes writing an essay like solving a mystery. the idea of just spontaneously generating something new fills me with terror. rather, i want to autopsy something, trace its steps, and then discover how it came to be dead. this may not be true for you. but it’s true for meeeee and this is my post. 

tl;dr

0. read something and tell someone about it/post it out

0.5. come up with a bit and run with it

1. think "why is no one talking about this" or start free associating

2. come up with weird connections and tell someone about it/post it out

3. collect all of your posts and ideas into a gdoc and organize them.

anyway i like reading posts like this because i’m incredibly nosy. so i tried to write out the sort of thing i like to read from other people. i don’t suggest you actually try to replicate it (if anyone would even want to.) practically basically i just encourage you to try any single part of this that you think was interesting or relatable or helpful. personally, i suggest reading a book and posting your favorite lines from it. if you do this a couple times, i think you will find the seeds of an essay waiting for you in your own posts. 

[the-house-of-auditore-frye]

We need to talk about the men in MK1

Wow.

WOW.

I really don't understand how they managed to make everybody SO BLOODY ATTRACTIVE?!

Even characters like Reptile were made into Boyfriend material.

Kenshi is a babe. That's it. That's the statement - he's a babe. His attractiveness ascends my language abilities to articulate how attracted I am to him in this game.

And Johnny - SO DAMN FINE! They struck the perfect balance of all Johnny's qualities with the features of a young Harrison Ford (which my followers will know has a certain power over me). Also I love that they made Johnny a hot nerd - who doesn't love a man that was ready to just dive into ancient Japanese history during a conversation.

And of course my dear Kuai Liang SERVED LOOKS in this game - I could cut my hand on his jawline...

This game has made me PRIMAL in ways that are dangerous to my psyche... but am I going to stop panting over the thirst traps that are Kenshi Takahashi and Johnny Cage? No.

Under the cut, I'm going to put more details reason's about why and how I want these fictional men to rail me which will probably make more sense to me followers but by all means, feel free to read! (But I will warn, it gets explicit so reader discretion is advised)

The amount I desire these men to dominate me is just unhealthy but let's get back to basics.

So those of you who have followed me for a bit (or I guess just looked at my page) will know that I have loved Kuai Liang and Hanzo since MKX. In MKX, I also had the hots for Kenshi and Johnny but not to the same degree. Then MK11 came out, obviously Kenshi isn't in it. I liked Older Johnny but not younger Johnny. As for Liang and Hanzo, I liked them a lot but not as much as MKX.

Then this DAMN game was released and like the timeline, the whole playing field was reset.

Don't get me wrong, I still love Kuai Liang in this game: he gives off such tender Lover vibes that I just want to stay in his arms ALL DAY. I mentioned that jawline right? I loved him and I love what they did with the familial relationships between him, Bihan and Tomas. When it was first announced that Kuai Liang was going to be Scorpion, I wasn't thrilled since, in my heart, that will always belong to Hanzo. They landed it tastefully but I still miss him as Sub Zero. Overall, I loved Kuai Liang in this game but Kenshi and Johnny were on another level.

Kenshi. KENSHI. The hold this man has over me. I can't tell if I want to be tender with him or animalistic: I genuinely go from "I want to remove his blindfold and kiss his scarred eyes, reminding him how much I love him while softly running my fingers through his hair" to "I want Kenshi to remove his blindfold and tie me to the bed, reminding me that I'm his toy to play with in any way he sees fit while fingering me with his tattooed hands- OH. HIS HANDS. I CAN'T EVEN BEGIN TO EXPLAIN HOW MUCH I WANT TO SUCH ON HIS FINGERS WHILE HE CALLS ME A GOOD GIRL. I AM SO SUBMISSIVE TO THIS MAN THAT IT'S NOT HEALTHY.

I think out of all the characters, I was most impressed by the characterisation of Johnny. Don't get me wrong, Mileena, Sindel, Baraka, Syzoth all got the storylines and re-characterisation they deserve but with Johnny I was more impressed because less changed about him. Like I said, I've always been a bit hit-or-miss with Johnny but this Johnny was perfection. Immediately making him a hot history nerd rather than an airhead was brilliant, it gave a depth to Johnny that I've never seen and it played off Kenshi perfectly. It's kind of like when you're with a group of people and a random topic you love comes up and suddenly you go on a 10 minute rant about why it's fascinating before realising everyone is just staring at you in confusion: it made Johnny so much more relatable. Also I love the sense of humour they went for in this game with Johnny. In prior games, I sometimes felt like Johnny was trying too hard to be funny for other people but in this game, Johnny is unintentionally hilarious and his jokes are mostly for himself and I love it. The first time I saw "Ripley!" I genuinely couldn't stop laughing for like 5 minutes. Also his beloved Hichulli, peak comedy. But let's get to the juicy stuff: HIS DESIGN. YES PLEASE, SIGN ME THE HELL UP FOR IT. I want to just cover his face in kisses. I want him to cover my face is kisses. Also his nose... I mean, I'm sure you guys have noticed that I like prominent noses and Johnny's when I saw his made me go red. MK1 Johnny going down on someone would be an ethereal experience (especially since he never stops talking which I might request a fic for) and part of that experience would be the nose. Just general though, the facial shape, the hair, the nose, the jawline: it all slays, just like Johnny.

So now having read all this, you can see why I don't let myself talk about the men of MK1: I just become a whore. This game opened my eyes to kinks I have NEVER been into cough cough threesome with Johnny and Kenshi cough cough blade play using Sento with Kenshi cough cough recorded sex with Johnny cough cough... In summation: this game has reduced me from a somewhat mentally adjusted young woman to a neanderthal that wants to be breeded by two fictional men called Kenshi Takahashi and Johnny Cage.

[avonne-writes]

hm I think its very interesting that although u think buck bottoms more, they're still willing to switch (I really agree with this take and I actually think it makes the most sense). how do u think sex changes when who tops/bottoms changes and why do u think they each prefer both (basically what im saying is what is it about bottoming and topping that's each of their favourite parts)!

It's always interesting to talk about these intimacy headcanons! These can differ vastly based on how you interpret the characters, but this is my take on it.

Headcanons under the cut:

In general, how sex changes for them

If Bucky bottoms, it's rougher, which is what he wants. He knows he shouldn't be rough the other way around.

On normal days, regardless of who tops or bottoms, Gale helps calm Bucky's excitable energy. He's more in control of the situation.

On Gale's vulnerable days, he’s going to bottom and will put everything into Bucky's hands.

Buck's personal preferences

When he bottoms, it feels like an affirmation of trust to him, and it's something he likes to give to Bucky.

As a bottom, he likes not having to wonder if it's good enough because it's obvious from how hard Bucky is.

He likes the weight of Bucky's body on him, of Bucky manhandling him and holding him in the position they want. It makes him feel so safe and loved. Usually, he's still calling the shots but if he’s having one of those submissive nights all of this is amplified. (you will see in detail in the subspace fic)

This isn’t something conscious but he also just enjoys being given things, and yes, that includes a certain part of Bucky's body.

Finally, just something as simple as the physical sensation - he just loves that kind of deep, slowly building pleasure you get from prostate stimulation more than the faster but shallower sensation of topping.

Topping is nice too, and he especially likes how he can basically fuck the restlessness out of Bucky if he does it well.

That said, he’s flexible about top-bottom roles and quite inflexible about submission and dominance. He’ll keep the reins in his hands for the most part on normal days and submit completely on difficult days. By this I mean on normal days, he doesn’t mind or even likes that Bucky doesn’t submit to him and there's always this playful push back, but he won't relinquish the final say. He'll keep the control. But on submissive days, he doesn’t make any decisions and can’t be provoked to take back control. He'd just end the encounter if Bucky tried.

Obviously, his submission is a bit of a whiplash at first but it all starts to make sense to Bucky when he realizes it comes from a combination of deep trust + emotional distress + inability to articulate a need for comfort + inability to accept comfort unless he’s made to take it.

Bucky's personal preferences

It's likely that the only person he has ever bottomed for is Gale. Even if he had other sexual contact with men before, he’s too big and doesn’t have the personality to draw attention from tops. He was a womanizer too, so being on the receiving end is something way less familiar to him.

He loves bottoming the most when it hurts just right. He has masochistic tendencies so the pain of that stretch makes him rock hard. He always tries to goad or urge Gale into putting it in after only the slightest prep.

He also likes play-fighting and wrestling, and if Gale tops, he’ll constantly try to move and squirm and buck against him just to make Gale put him harder in his place. (He's a brat)

He prefers topping because of 1) the visuals(!!), 2) the sensations - yes, he prefers something tight squeezing around him to something hard pushing into him, 3) he loves giving things, including that certain body part 😉, 4) he loves the idea that he’s of service as a man.

He likes putting his entire body weight on Gale even in a non-sexual way, but even more so when they're making love. He had to be more careful with the women he slept with, but not with Gale.

Gale's submissive nights are a challenge to him but they’re also the most rewarding.

These are the headcanons that came to my mind at the moment but I feel like there are more things that can be said about this. What do you guys think?

[candlewaxandp0lar0ids]

Hi all, so, basically I've been having a lot of thoughts and feelings about the state of fanfiction these days. Specifically, I've been thinking about the relationship and interactions between writers and their readers within the fandom (talking about my fandoms in particular, but I know that similar things seem to be happening across the board). I know that authors have been talking about how they've been getting less and less comments and feedback in general on their work. I haven't said much about it because I don't want to appear ungrateful to the people who take the time to leave detailed feedback — I'm incredibly grateful to them and they've played a huge part in keeping me going for this long. If you've left a comment on any of my works and see this and wonder if you haven't done enough, trust me, you have.

Still, if I'm being honest, the amount of silent readers is starting to take its toll on me. It's gotten to the point where when I write something, if it's a decently long piece (let's say over 4k), I'm likely to get less comments on the work than I've put hours into writing it. It sometimes feels like I have to beg for comments and that is not a nice feeling. As an author, it's hard to see that and not think that it says something about the quality of the work you've put out.

I've been trying to think of things that could help, I have a bunch of thoughts that I'll probably try to organize at some point (namely i think a network for writers to have constructive feedback, which doesn’t always mean negative feedback btw, could have a positive impact — feel free to let me know if you’d be interested but also i’ll probably make another poll for that). For now, I wanted to ask: as readers, if you don't leave comments, is it because you're not sure of what to say or how to articulate it? If so, would it help if I made a post detailing things you can tell writers in the comments (other than the classic, but always good 'I loved it')? In general I'd love to know more about why people don't leave comments.

Expect a couple more posts on the subject once I've collected my thoughts and in the meanwhile, here's a poll to let me know if it would help. Reblog to increase visibility/sample size, etc.

[sea-you-in-paradise]

a o t   m e n   x   h e a d a c h e   r i d d e n   s / o

summary - how the aot men make their s/o feel better when they have a headache :(

word count - 643

setting - any (canonverse, modern au, etc)

features - armin, connie, eren, jean, levi, & reiner

genderneutral!reader

warnings - none

a r m i n

tries to keep you entertained. something he hates about headaches is how they always seem to derail your entire day, so when you’re not sleeping, he does his best to make you feel like you’ve accomplished a little something. this is mainly by reading to you in a very quiet voice in a very dark room. he just wants to distract you from the pain and make your day feel a little bit more useful :)) he will also make you drink a shit ton of water, which can be both annoying and effective, but he’s just trying to help and he’ll do whatever else you want as well!

c o n n i e

waits on you hand and foot. frankly, connie has no idea how to help, when he gets headaches, it’s usually because of an injury and he just whines about it until it goes away, but he will do literally anything you ask to make you feel better. he probably asks you a lot how you are feeling or if something is working (he probably asks at inconvenient times, like it might have worked if you had been quiet ;-;) he asks for jean’s advice for sure. he tries to whisper, but his whisper is so loud. you can really tell he’s doing his best though, and 3/5 times he does something super helpful thanks to your instruction!

e r e n

leaves you alone. unlike connie, eren does know how to help (at least he thinks he does) and that is by not interacting with you. you tell this man you have a headache and he’s like:

it’s not that he’s trying to avoid you, he just figures that there is no better treatment than silence and solitude. he will definitely stay if you want him to, assuming you just want to lay next to him. other than that, he doesn’t really know what to do. if you ask him for a massage, he’d probably be like “am i getting one too??”

j e a n

provides the essential relief package. need to get rid of tension? he’s there to give you a massage or draw you a hot bath (and you better believe he’ll make it a fancy one, he’s got bath salts for you bb). feeling warm already? he’s there with a cool cloth to dab your forehead. whether you want a cuddle buddy or something to eat that’s easy to chew, you better believe jean is on the case. can’t articulate what you need? he boils it down to basics and still manages to help. this man is so whipped, he would punch mikasa if it meant making you feel better. 

l e v i

makes tea. he literally doesn’t know what else to do! though he wouldn’t admit it, levi feels uncharacteristically terrible when you have a headache, like he’s completely useless in the situation. what good is he if he can’t even make his partner feel better when their own body is betraying them? so, he would make you tea, specifically chamomile to help with inflammation and make you sleepy (regardless of your fondness of chamomile), and he would sit in the same room with you silently in case you need anything else. 

r e i n e r

he gets headaches a lot too because he doesn’t sleep well, so he’s definitely good in this situation all around, but his strongest asset is his scalp massages. where he learned his technique, the world may never know, but this man carries the cure in his bare hands. he’ll let you rest in his arms in bed while his fingers gently draw circles over your head, somehow making the pain more manageable. it’s always a very tender moment and you feel better in half the time you usually do.

[cannellee]

how did you get so good at writing? i'm so deprived of Tokyo Rev content (not that there isn't alot but I read so much that I basically refresh AO3 and tumblrs tags every day to see if anything new has been posted), that i'm almost to the breaking point of a Thanos "fine i'll do it myself" and starting up writing again Is it just practice? Is it better to post cringey writing that isn't that good ;-; I think I fall into the trap of making any OC or y/n Mary Sue and some authors write with such prose and emotion that i'm like dang how can I write like that love your work!!!! always re-reading <3

first of all thank you so much for all of your kind messages!!! you're literally so sweet😭

(I really tried to be useful and concise, I hope it's not too messy/long : i'm definitely not a real author so my tips might be really bad and specific too😭)

I actually started writing tokyorev abo content precisely because of that reason, I felt like I read everything about it and I couldn't find anything more, especially one with scenarios I actually like. this is why I started my blog!

I honestly wasn't so sure about opening my own blog on tumblr. of course you're bound to compare your work to other authors out there who are definitely wayyy better at writing than you, which is why I hesitated a lot.

but! I already had an account on wattpad where I posted fics, so I felt like my cringey era was behind me (it was easier for me to start here because i knew what my mistakes were when writing and what i struggled with. whereas, when i just started on wattpad, i really felt unsure if i was doing correctly + i was younger, so less sure of myself). but wattpad really helped me see what made my work cringey, what parts were unnecessary and stuff like that.

but what is so frustrating is how bad my writing is in english compared to how I'm able to write in my maternal language. like, when I read other posts and everything with better vocabulary, grammar, who know how to articulate sentences and words, you can tell it's something you can only achieve by being reallyyy comfortable with english. I'm not saying I struggle with english or anything, but the language barrier was one of my biggest doubts when I thought about starting posting fics here on tumblr.

also! when I write something and think it's cringey, I let it marinate for a few days and read it again. it's easier to judge my writing when I put some distance with it, then I correct my mistakes and stuff like that. but really, writing and writing is the only way you'll be able to improve, so it should really not stop you!

but in the end, I don't think anybody ever started writing fics and was automatically good at it. you really have to try and see what works and what doesn't. youre able to see what post gets more attention than the other and try and understand why : is it because of a character or the scenario was better or is it your writing ? feedbacks on your work really help actually, so don't be afraid to try even if youre not fully convinced and confident! I posted cringey stuff too and I still do sometimes😭 I know people do a wayy better job than me, but I really like to write so I don't let it stop me from posting.

and for the y/n character, I try to make her and her reactions as neutral as possible and make her do stuff anyone would do in those situations. but I honestly can't deny that I sometimes fall into those stereotypical y/n writing, which I actually enjoy☠️. but I really try to have her say normal stuff, not describe her too much and basically just think of her as the most basic girl you could meet (generic ahh traits : kind, sweet, bubbly, soft spoken...). some people hate that and some don't, I just write what I'm most comfortable with.

same, if you to start writing you should start by doing stuff and scenarios which you really like and inspire you. don't go and try to write something you know people will like, but rather something you're confident in writing because that's a character you like and know how to describe, and because you have so much ideas which would really fit him etc.

and what helped me are the headcanons with the lists. maybe you noticed, maybe you didn't, but I used to list stuff when I started posting. it's just easier to structure my ideas, to see them more clearly. writing huge paragraphs are actually more of a hardwork I think, because everything has to follow the precedent idea and it has to be comprehensible, linked to what you're gonna say next etc. if you list what you wanna say, you can talk about how a character's personality is like and then change the subject radically without having to think and care about the transitions and overall plan (of course if it's too out of pocket it looks weird, but I hope you understand what I mean)

and if you want to write stories and not do little headcanons, what I do when I'm stuck and don't know what to write is that I also sometimes only write a part I really like and leave the beginning (or any other part) for another time when I'll be more inspired. I really don't have any hierarchy when I'm trying to find ideas, I wait for them to come naturally. I don't know what else I could say, it's really messy lmao😭

I hope you found it useful! you definitely will find people who write way better than me and who can help and guide you better than that, with better tips... that was more like my experience on tumblr than anything else, but I hope it could help you!!

[sleepynegress]

On Challengers...

Okay.

So, here's the thing. It's decent.

It's sassy, catfighty, but with dudes using rackets and tongue-wrestling, and the tennis scenes are tense, but... it wasn't at all confidently scandalous like I would've expected.

....Like I feel like they didn't push it far enough, somehow? And not even in the way you might think, with dicks a-swingin and thrusts abundant. Remember, the movie Closer? -I think that came out in 2007ish and was rated PG-13??? Or could have been if not for the language.

Natalie Portman has a similar nudity clause to her contract and *STILL* had the absolute sexiest scene with Clive Owen.... .....Which I'll put in this post to demonstrate what I mean. This felt like it held back at moments... When it came to pushing desire, between the men and/or with Zendaya, with one or the other. It just felt so tame to me given the hype. I was hoping for a return to artistic sensuality in film again, instead of this weird sort of by-rote-feeling purity culture we're having rn. (I'm watching Love Lies Bleeding tonight and I BET that delivers. Lesbians, salude!) I was hoping for Cruel Intentions' lush cut with The Dreamers' sensuality..if that makes sense?? AND some good-good tennis. THAT did deliver. WOW, some of the shots for that were eye-popping. A critic I follow noted that her issue (she always has the best takes I don't agree with all of them but they are always well-articulated) was that Zendaya was not fleshed out as a central figure, especially as a BLACK WOMAN. It was yet again another case of a Black woman dropped down from the moon coming from no people of her own, but just somehow existing in a sea of white people with not a hint of Black friends or loved ones.

Hell, they could've even laid out *her people* like the brilliantly underrated Beyond The Lights with Minnie Driver playing the stage manager mom to Gugu Mbatha Raw's biracial pop star. But that comes down to the white male gaze fucking it up, yet again. I looked up the screenwriter and just kind of nodded knowingly with an 'oh, yeah that's what I expected, that explains it...' He simply didn't have the range beyond a sort of vague tennis fetish for brown girls in short skirts grunting and swinging and wanting to do something with that. He admitted that Naomi and another Black woman player's interaction on the court *inspired* this...

Perception of Black women doing ANYTHING can be so heavy with a weirdly asexual gaze from white women and hyper-sexualized by white men. And if desire/centering tips in the "wrong" direction deemed by prejudice and our assumed place....*yeesh* we catch hell. You're either bafflingly too ugly to be treated with desire (whew the incel bigots are big mad that it's Zendaya and not a Sweeney-type) or only deemed good enough for it, because of that white gaze. And resented regardless.

*sigh* Can't win for losing. But I digress. Zendaya's co-stars are the oddest looking mystical-dwarf-head ass forest creature white boys with big ears, but they GAVE in the acting department. Mike Faist is a STAR. He has a sort of laidback sweetly confident rizz. But he definitely is the lovechild of a young Scott Glenn and DJ Qualls. I want to put him in a western immediately because he has Civil War photo face.

Mike O'Connor has that desperate dirty hairy scruffy thing like dude from The Bear. Like you KNOW he has a scratch tat somewhere and would do the dirty with his partner in the toilet stalls or anywhere else. Hollyweird is strange about beauty standards man. Back in the day, they used to pretend old white men, who looked like they smelled like Barbasol mixed w/ urine would somehow be sexy to a twentysomething. Now, we have this dichotomy of thankfully a little more of a diverse gaze for the centered "bombshell" other than blonde with large breasts number 32637263872.... but we also have some actresses cutting fat out their cheeks and being Ozempic thin. *sigh* ...While the "basic" hot boys are punching the air rn because they are also passé. Got to have something interesting going on in the face for everyone now, I think. Can't just be AI "pretty" anymore. Thankfully.

....Anyway. It is good, but with those caveats I laid out.

P.S. ICONIC for me is seeing Zendaya's Black-ass nose bridge drawn large on that poster. P.P.S Thank LUCA for doing the queer elements well... I personally don't think it went far enough, tho...

Mike bottoming for all, including getting pegged by Zendaya would've happened in my version of this... at least implied, come on (ficwriters?) Oh! and here are the clips from Closer, but then it was a successful play first, so the script is more substantial in that.

This is how filthy I expected Challengers to be, and it's just. not. Nothing in The Challengers touches the heavy heady nastiness in this scene IMO, but something in that movie should have, dammit! Note they never even touch each other.

[nucifraga]

big day for my thoughts of things other than mike crew.

only listened to his statement 3 times today. as a treat i'm going to ramble on about his cadence; it's one of the reasons i've been able to listen to it *checks notes* at least 30 times in the last week.

it always catches me off-guard, because he makes pauses at places i don't expect him to. normally, when people speak, they pause at joining or connecting words, but mike constantly, throughout his statement, stops at odd places, like:

"exists in my mind... completely detached"

"dreamed that night of... shifting, branching"

they're not indicated in the transcript, because they're too short to really count, but it happens multiple times throughout his statement, like he's struggling for words, having difficulty either recalling or articulating what had happened. i adore either possibility, or both at the same time, because for the former you have his self-admitted "sometimes it's hard to keep track" & for the latter you have the obviously traumatic childhood and his "i'm not usually the sort for speeches".

i think when i first listened to his statement back in 2020, it kind of annoyed? me? because i was so used to mr. j. sims, oxford graduate, and his smooth posh voice, but now that my eyes have been opened it's just part of his charm.

it's got to be something about the dopamine expectation vs. actuality thing; if you know something too well it gets tiring, which is how i get sick of songs when i loop them. but even though i know basically every word of those 14 mins where mike crew speaks, i don't know the way he says it with 100% certainty, so each time i listen i'm treated to several surprises along the way and my brain loves it!!

(also tangentially related -- i always expect him to say 'decade' when he talks about the first 'real' storm in 10 years, because of course 10 years is a decade,, but maybe that's my literature-brain speaking? which is interesting because i'd thought with the amount of book-hunting mike's done he'd be more used to fancier terminology. or maybe he's just more utilitarian in his speech. or i'm just reading too much into a single word choice in a 1.5k+ word statement, which is far more likely)

[derangedhyena-zoids]

Hello, back with more disturbing, fucked up Zi biology facts re: Organoids. I'M SURE EVERYONE IS VERY EXCITED (or running away, idk) It always has bothered me I didn't have a solid behavioral bead on how Organoids went from hunting Zoids to teleporting/fusing with cores. Apparently my brain has been thinking about it on some secret extra backburner because I just thought of this all suddenly the other day:

Zoids in general have something like this as a "nervous system" of sorts as relates to their cores. wild and zoidian zoids were more organic-ish while modern zoids' are basically purpose-built

this is sort of how the conduit stuff grows (top) vs is is "populated" (bottom), but the end result is basically the same. You have a core "nerve" suspended in matter in a tube. this blueprint of internal conduit is true for all Zoids, including, Organoids. Except with Organoids the concept just went utterly batshit. so while a huge amount of Organoids' evolutionbeing so conduit-heavy had to do with reproduction (re: adding a whole new step to encase core buds in protective eggs) it also had to do with a heavily-utilised feeding strategy. As I've talked about before, Organoid colonies are hypersocial - they maintain individuality but are all attached to their colony's hivemind. This made them really distressing predators - because while they were smaller than much of the Zoid megafauna they hunted, they did so in groups ranging from a pack to a swarm. One that could perfectly coordinate at all times.

If you're familiar with how wild dogs/hyenas/etc tend to go after their prey you might see where this is headed. I'd post a picture but that'd be kinda rude on random folks' timelines, so if you really don't know google youtube videos of african wild dogs killing large herbivores. basically pack carnivores usually go for weak points like orifices to start ripping into things. which works great when the whole prey is made of food... but Zoids are encased in a lot of armor and the best parts are very difficult to get to. which would actually lead to extremely protracted and dangerous hunts because it takes so long to destroy enough of the Zoid to actually immobilize it

SO the genesis of the whole fusion concept actually lies in the strategy Organoids as a species tried to solve this with - attacks that could directly target the core. Basically a swarm of Organoids overwhelming something, chewing holes in it to access the "conduit" - then, while the Zoid is being overwhelmed by a bunch of Organoids still attacking it, a number of them cling on and shove their own, much smaller cablings up through these 'conduit veins', damaging things and eventually getting access to the core chamber. refresher from my organoid anatomy bullshit - there's three types of this cabling:

one of these is GI - these type usually connect to the craw/stomach but they don't have to (I realized in writing this last night/today that there's some function "rules"/descriptions for these cables I've never articulated, but I've had those in mind for a long time, I'll write them down sometime soon I guess) but re: everything above, In what's basically a starfish move Organoids shove their own fucking guts up directly into a Core to start feeding on it. It's very miniscule individually, but multiplied it'll rapidly damage and collapse the Zoid's core, stopping (and killing) the prey for Everyone

When Organoids became more benign, and Zoids weren't hostile to their presence, they found they could accomplish this same basic thing individually without, yanno, all the Horrifying and Death, so. everyone was happier the end

thanks for coming to my fucked up ted talk. that's why you follow this blog right? lmao

[randomgooberness]

👀 Gordon amputation HCs? (If you don't mind talking about them!)

Y;HES

ok disclaimer: I am not an amputee! I am not a medical professional! I am not a prosthetic maker! I am not an engineer! I am simply an autistic writer and artist who has had a webcomic with an amputee character for 5+ years and I have done my research- but PLEASE if you like these headcanons and use it as advice for writing amputees I would also suggest listening to other sources, too!

The prosthetic:

-the arm ends about maybe like five inches under the wrist- which makes it just enough to get basic prosthetics going. Something a LOT of people don't consider is how much space you need to get robotics in there!

-This is the case for everyones(?i have yet to see otherwise) headcanons whether they know it or not but he specifically has a myoelectric prosthetic- which in itself is an EXTREMELY high-tech one! What it does is it detects electricity(YES! YOUR MUSCLES HAVE ELECTRICITY IN THEM!) from the muscles under your skin and amplifies them to be movement!

I would actually HIGHLY suggest people do research into these prosthetics because they are SUPER cool but also not as good as you think they are! That being said:

-He cannot feel with it and has to guess how hard he has to grip something! There's research for prosthetics like this, but they're extremely faulty and- if anyone wants to correct me on this that's fine but I'm pretty sure- it would need Constant upkeep and repairs, ESPECIALLY if it could feel like a normal hand.

-at first he only used it when he went out and when he was doing something that might need two hands Because of this- he didn't really wear it much around the house. Not to mention like...he went from losing it, to an immediate gun arm, to suddenly having a prosthetic- whiiiich. Isn't good for the psychological part of a traumatic amputation! So yeah he didn't really like it all too much at first. Don't get me wrong it was a great tool and he appreciated it over no hand especially because he could actually properly articulate the fingers but...it also just. Was jarring.

-eventually, he and Dr. Coomer teamed up to make it more adaptable, and by that I mean a fucking pirate-ass thing where he could swap out his hand for other things like forks or electric screwdrivers or like. Anything. They like to get together to make new hands on the weekend. It's enrichment. With these add-ons he wore the prosthetic more, but sometimes he just. prefers taping a fork to his limb and calling it a day.

-^this hc is based off of adaptive devices that people make to work with whats left of the limb instead of trying to replace it! They range from other robotics to something plastic and/or 3d printed that just holds a pencil in place. From what I've researched they tend to be more liked than clunky fingers you cant feel lol

-IF THERE IS ANY ADVICE YOU GLEEN FROM THIS: please please please he doesn't sleep with his prosthetic on he SHOULD NOT SLEEP WITH HIS PROSTHETIC ON. DO NOT SLEEP WEARING YOUR PROSTHETIC- this also goes for just chilling out ect. Do you "chill out" in your jeans with a belt on?

-I've said it a few times already but I DO want to encourage other people who draw art or write fics that it's OKAY if his prosthetic doesn't work like a perfect, new hand and in fact is more realistic and something that should be done more often! It's very common to want to write off an amputees disability with "ok now they have a prosthetic they're all better <3" which isn't true at all and it really IS worth it to do some extra research- I might just have an engineering and medical special interest so it might just be me but its SUPER fun to learn things and it makes it more interesting writing how a character interacts with their disability!

The amputation/specifics(WARNING FOR TALK ABOUT GORE, OBVIOUSLY):

-I usually write/draw it being a combat knife because that's specifically what he mentions was used, but realistically it would've been something that could get through the suit itself. Either way, it was a really slow and painful process. Fun fact- while this is like...a debate in the medical field, the forearm is one of the most painful things in the body to break!

-Continuing from that last part, there ARE a lot of nerves in your forearm(ever hit your funnybone? yeah. yowch), as well as TWO bones. Arms and hands are SUPER complex so injuries are...just As complex!

-In the full VOD in act 3, Gordon mentions his suit cauterized it- which if you dont know what that is- it's basically Burning A Wound Shut. I can see this being the case, actually- seeing as the suit itself detects specific things in the body being injured- electricity IS a way to cauterize something. I want to point out that cauterization, however, is AGONIZINGLY PAINFUL and is SUPER DANGEROUS, even when controlled! He's SUPER lucky he didn't go into shock and die in his sleep lmao.

-Oh speaking of sleep. I said this in another post but it was sunset when they betrayed him- and daytime when he woke up. So he was asleep in the garbage compactor for hours.

-It's implied because he keeps talking about how he's still bleeding, but yeah even with the suit cauterizing the wound it wouldn't be fully shut. So he'd be bleeding a lot- ESPECIALLY if it didn't want to kill the nerves in his arm(which makes prosthesis easier in the future, via the myoelectric method I mentioned earlier).

-Because of this Tommy(and later Dr. Coomer and Bubby) had to make him make-shift wrappings and have him lean on them a lot. He lost a Lot of blood and by the time they found a fully functioning medical station it wasn't able to just...give him more. It could give him iron and such but yeah this guy has anemia.

-this is just a really funny note but in act 4 when he's leaving Darnolds lab in the VOD he goes "well I guess I'm able-bodied again!" NO YOU ARE NOT THAT IS GUNHAND. But anyways because of this statement, I think for the first few days after being without his arm hes like. oh im not really disabled though even though he is like. stereotypically disabled. sir

-Phantom pains and nightmares are. A nearly nightly combo.

-Whether they're triggered by something or not, phantom pains in general suck so so so so much. Just so much.

-He actually took a Long time to go to a doctor for his issues. Gordon. Buddy. Look Me In The Eyes. you can get medicine for your pain. you can take physical therapy. please . He wasnt even trying to like...tough it out like part of him was but it was mostly that he just. didnt know and forgot.

-it took him a really long time to trust Benrey touching where his hand used to be, but once they grew close post-rescas him and Tommy became Gordons go-to for phantom pain/itch help. slap my dumb arm thank you

Aaaand thats all I can think of at the moment! I might add on if I have any like. Sudden crushing things I need to say about him and my amputation hcs!

[longing-for-rain]

What incident are you talking about that makes zk mad and have personal beef with you?

Actually now that I’ve done some investigating it’s unclear exactly who is mad at me because there are two cliques mad at me for opposite reasons.

Basically, I hold what I used to think was a very simple and uncontroversial opinion, which is that fiction is a great way to explore dark themes and topics, but at the same time, can spread harmful and insulting messages if these topics aren’t treated respectfully. Too much nuance for tumblr, apparently. Some people called me a terf for saying rape is bad and some people called me a pedo for so much as mentioning sexual themes in my writing. So we’ve got polar opposites here.

As for “incidents” I’ll give a brief overview under a cut because (warning) it involves sexual abuse and suicidal ideation.

To summarize:

I became active in the Zutara fandom during mid-late 2020 as a result of being online due to the pandemic. Just before the pandemic, I suffered a sexual assault and Zutara (ship and community) became a source of escapism and comfort for me

Shortly after becoming active on tumblr, I joined a fandom event and was paired up with a beta reader. This person proceeded to groom and sexually abuse me over the course of about a year. To put it in perspective, this occurred during the height of the pandemic and we were often on discord calls for hours every day. It was a very involved and predatory “friendship”. And I want to make this extremely clear—do not try to find this person. I’ll only answer questions about this in DMs if you legitimately have personal safety concerns. I don’t think they’re even active anymore and I’ve made peace with the fact I’ll never get proper closure or justice and any attempt will only result in more victim blaming and abuse. So please don’t bother. I’ve been over it

I didn’t realize what was happening to me was sexual abuse at the time, only that it hurt and that something was wrong. Due to the sort of culture I’d been sucked into, I wasn’t allowed to properly express my discomfort and had difficulty articulating what was wrong (being autistic doesn’t help there either). So every time I tried voicing discomfort, I was shamed into silence until it reached a breaking point

As I gradually started waking up to the fact I was being abused, I also, as a result, started unpacking some of the harmful ideas that were directly enabling my abuse and questioning them. This made my abuser angry; they felt their control slipping I imagine. I started exploring these ideas through my writing and asking questions about things. That made people angry

My abuser knew what they were doing. They were a self proclaimed “fandom old” and knew how these communities operate much better than I did at the time. So they got a notoriously loud and stupid Zutara stan angry with me, who proceeded to (predictably) write a bunch of unhinged tumblr rants and dogpile on me over discord. As a result, everyone in her clique also decided I was evil and scapegoated some other bullshit (at this point I don’t even remember everything I’ve been accused of) onto me. She also used sexually degrading language (I don’t think she knew this but it was word-for-word things that had been said to me by men who abused me in real life) and this resulted in me being triggered, suicidal, and it was a whole mess. Lots of people were fighting and there was even a rumor (I have no way of confirming this) that anti-Zutara people got in the mix because they enjoyed watching the infighting

I actually did attempt suicide once, and seriously considered it on a few other occasions. These people only used this as further evidence that I was crazy and couldn’t be trusted or believed

Then, as I stated increasingly using writing to vent about what I experienced, people got mad at me for that too. Even called me a pedo. I think that’s the worst part—that the message from all this is that women’s sexual assault and torture is meant for titillation and entertainment, but serious and meaningful exploration of it is forbidden

Currently, people still share out of context pieces of this story and act like I’m some horrible prude and/or pervert. People who don’t even know me spread rumors without asking me a single thing. They’re spineless and believe whatever their respective clique does. So that’s where I’m at

At this point I more or less keep to myself and focus on writing. I do really love writing and Zutara, and despite everything, it still did/does bring me comfort while dealing with the worst few years of my life. I also have received so much positive feedback about my writing—people telling me it helped them, it resonated, it made them see things in a new light. That’s meaningful to me so I continue doing it.

And I try not to take what happened too personally either. Over time I realized I’m not the first person they treated like this and I won’t be the last. That’s just how cliques work, and how people who are different are treated. Tale as old as time: once they’ve decided you’re a witch, they’ll burn you no matter what you say.