#where such no longer rule us

[short-wooloo]

Why I Love the Jedi

Its something that i only recognize in hindsight

When I was a kid, I struggled at times with my self control, I'm on the spectrum, I had trouble at times in school, I got overwhelmed, I had meltdowns and breakdowns, I would get angry and upset I behaved in a way that was not ok, and afterwards I always remember feeling embarrassed and ashamed of how I acted

And the Jedi...

The Jedi were what I wanted to be

They had great self control, they had mastered themselves, they were not ruled by their emotions, they were what I wanted, they represented the ideal of what I wanted to be and to work towards

[swordmaid]

i am wide awake thinking about that post canon jb au again when I should be sleeping …!!! such is the nature of the jbrainrot…

[spotsupstuff]

here's a neat vid, go watch it if you haven't yet

there's Some things that i don't completely agree with personally, like attributing the Third sin to Materialism rather than Connection (i'd argue that the Ancients had no big issue with being materialistic, considering their golden attires and such- and that going with Connection overall better addresses both the core of Materialism and relationships overall) and then attributing the word Dynasty specifically to asian cultures but that's more history/word definition beef more than anything djgklsjlcgjkd

oh how i'd love to have a debate with this guy about Ancients...

[micamicster]

it only took 12 interviews i guess for somebody to bring up 9/11 to me

[wellthatschaotic]

coworker (derogatory)

[elizabethrobertajones]

🗝

Send 🗝️ to see them in private.

"What are you doing in here? Get out!"

Free Company houses are for politically neutral snuggles.

[bonestrouslingbones]

goddammit all that LV worldbuilding has lead me to creating a scene in my head that now has me wondering if i have to put a plot-important sex scene in what will be a main-storyline arc instead of a fade to black or disconnected easily-skippable oneshot

[lorisystem]

The nicest person in the world is the lady who helped me tie my shoes at 5ish years old so i could go play during recess. (I elaborated in the tags but theyre fairly long,,) -???

[dc-bitchin]

i pressed record on my phone because I wanted to really *quickly* summerize an episode for an animated Batman series I would LOVE to make and it ended up being 15 minutes long and makes references to shit only I know about... :|

[feyarcher]

I think my new personal youtube rule is going to be that I unfollow and stop watching anyone who says 'corn' instead of 'porn' or says 'shit' and then censors the back half of the word. I understand that this comes from tiktok and has been imported into youtube not wanting to promote/ put pricey ads on videos deemed "mature", but I'm a full grown adult and I feel like I'm losing my mind from this trash. And I just have to tap out of it at this point.

[enekorre]

I just made a little friend. I was watching someone repair a doll when I heard a loud flapping next to me. After chasing about the moth I caught it and put it outside. And when I return inside who do I see plastered to the kitchen window? My new fuzzy little friend, the moth!

[six-of-ravens]

I would really like a single office day where I don't come home and play an evening-long game of Am I The Asshole?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

wait, Derin how did your leaving make the hospital shut down?

I used to work as a live-in nanny for a pediatrician.

Now, the thing about hospitals in my country is that they are massively understaffed and massively underfunded. This is especially true outside the major cities. The staff are worked to the bone and receive little to no help in things like finding accommodation or childcare, making working in rural areas a very uninviting prospect; staff come out here, get lumped with the work of three people (because there's nobody else to do it), burn out under the workload and leave, meaning that those remaining have even more work because that person is gone. It's unsustainable and the medical staff are doing their best to sustain it, because people die if they don't, so to the higher-ups it looks like everything's getting done and therefore everything is fine.

My friend (and boss) worked one week on, one week off, swapping out with another pediatrician. This was necessary because it would not be physically possible for one person to handle the workload for longer periods of time. The one single pediatrician had to hold up the entire pediatrics ward, which was not only the only public hospital pediatrics ward in our town, but also the one that served all the towns around us for a few hours' drive in all directions. I regularly saw her go to work sick, aching, tired, or with a debilitating 'I can barely make words or see' level migraine, because if she took a day off, twenty children didn't get healthcare that day, and some of these kids' appointments were scheduled weeks in advance. She'd work long hours in the day and then be called in a couple of times overnight for an hour or two at a time (she was on-call at night too, because somebody had to be), and then go in the next day. Sometimes she would be forced to take a day off because she physically could not stay awake for longer than a few minutes at a time, meaning she couldn't drive to work.

Cue my niece's second birthday coming up in Melbourne. I'd been working for her for about 3 years, and she (and the hospital) had plenty of advance warning that I (and therefore she) needed one (1) Friday off. That's fine, we'll find someone to work that Friday, the hospital said. Right up until the last week where they're like "oh, we can't find a replacement; you can come in, can't you?"

No, she tells them; I don't have anyone to watch my kid that day.

Oh, surely you can hire a babysitter for this one day, they say. Think of the children! We really really need you to work that day. I know we said it'd be fine but we need you now, there's no one else to do it.

There are no other babysitters, she told them. Unless you can find one?

That's not our responsibility, they said.

But I'm not changing my plans, she's got plans by now as well, the hospital knew about this one day weeks in advance, and with absolutely no reserve staff they're forced to reschedule all pediatrics appointments for that Friday. Not a huge deal, it happens on the 'physically too overworked to get out of bed' days too. I go to Melbourne, she goes back to her home in Adelaide for her recovery week, all should be on track.

My niece gives me Covid.

This was way back in the first wave of the pandemic, and there were no Covid vaccines yet. The rules were isolate, mask up, hope. I had Covid in the house, and it would've been madness for my friend and her toddler to come back into the Covid house instead of staying in Adelaide. There was absolutely no way that a pediatrician could live with someone in quarantine due to Covid and go to work in the hospital with sick children every day. And no support existed for finding another babysitter, or temporary accommodation, so the hospital was down a pediatrician.

The other pediatrician wasn't available to do a three-week stint. They were also trapped in Adelaide on their well-earned week off.

Meaning that the only major pediatrics ward within a several-hour radius had no pediatricians. They had to shut down and send all urgent cases to Adelaide for the week. To the complete absence of surprise of any of the doctors or nurses; of course this would happen, this was bound to happen, it presumably keeps happening. But probably to the surprise of the higher-ups. After all, the hospital was doing fine, right? Of course all the staff were complaining of overwork and a lack of resources in every meeting, but they could always be fobbed off with the promise of more help sometime in the future; the work was mostly getting done, so the issue couldn't be too urgent.

It's not like some nanny who doesn't even work for the hospital could go out of town for a weekend for the first time in three years, and get the only public pediatrics ward in the area shut down for a week.

[pinkys-plan]

My housemate used up an entire roll of toilet paper after coming home drunk yesterday and I'm actually a little fucking mad about itttttt. Like I get that I was for cleaning up puke and stuff but y'all. This house has a very specific toilet paper system AND that was one of those big rolls that has waaay more sheets than the average roll and it was literally a new one so when I say the entire roll I mean actually literally the entire roll.

Not to be petty but that was a downstairs toilet roll and he is an upstairs housemate. And I'm not gonna be, like, seething quietly abt it or holding it against him (it's more of an 'aw man, seriously?' type situation) but I just need to get the annoyance out of my system with this post

[moe-broey]

Although I do want to add, if you're someone who relates to my feelings about "Winning at being a man" (or a similar sentiment!) and often copes/deflects/expresses themselves with humor, it's important to take a step back and remember Why "Winning at (an abstract concept)" is such a funny thing to say in the first place!

The joke is rooted in the same vein of, "Getting a good grade in therapy, something reasonable to want and possible to achieve".

It's an absurd premise, that entails you having an unrealistic goal and setting out to achieve an impossible task.

Using my example: You can be a good man. That is within your control. You cannot Win at being a man. Winning implies measuring yourself against and outdoing someone else. Which, on paper, you Can do. But in performance, you're measured Not Only by yourself, and your own standards of manhood -- you're also measured by forces outside of and beyond yourself, of which you have no control over (see: no control over whether or not you Do "Win". You're subjected to whatever standards these forces Have, which again, goes back to it being an unrealistic goal and impossible task).

And, the most important takeaway, even if it sounds cliché -- the people who will see you as you are, just do. They respect you. They love you. They Know You. You didn't have to earn that. You didn't have to win it.

[physalian]

How to make your writing sound less stiff

Just a few suggestions. You shouldn’t have to compromise your writing style and voice with any of these, and some situations and scenes might demand some stiff or jerky writing to better convey emotion and immersion. I am not the first to come up with these, just circulating them again.

1. Vary sentence structure.

This is an example paragraph. You might see this generated from AI. I can’t help but read this in a robotic voice. It’s very flat and undynamic. No matter what the words are, it will be boring. It’s boring because you don’t think in stiff sentences. Comedians don’t tell jokes in stiff sentences. We don’t tell campfire stories in stiff sentences. These often lack flow between points, too.

So funnily enough, I had to sit through 87k words of a “romance” written just like this. It was stiff, janky, and very unpoetic. Which is fine, the author didn’t tell me it was erotica. It just felt like an old lady narrator, like Old Rose from Titanic telling the audience decades after the fact instead of living it right in the moment. It was in first person pov, too, which just made it worse. To be able to write something so explicit and yet so un-titillating was a talent. Like, beginner fanfic smut writers at least do it with enthusiasm.

2. Vary dialogue tag placement

You got three options, pre-, mid-, and post-tags.

Leader said, “this is a pre-dialogue tag.”

“This,” Lancer said, “is a mid-dialogue tag.”

“This is a post-dialogue tag,” Heart said.

Pre and Post have about the same effect but mid-tags do a lot of heavy lifting.

They help break up long paragraphs of dialogue that are jank to look at

They give you pauses for ~dramatic effect~

They prompt you to provide some other action, introspection, or scene descriptor with the tag. *don't forget that if you're continuing the sentence as if the tag wasn't there, not to capitalize the first word after the tag. Capitalize if the tag breaks up two complete sentences, not if it interrupts a single sentence.

It also looks better along the lefthand margin when you don’t start every paragraph with either the same character name, the same pronouns, or the same “ as it reads more natural and organic.

3. When the scene demands, get dynamic

General rule of thumb is that action scenes demand quick exchanges, short paragraphs, and very lean descriptors. Action scenes are where you put your juicy verbs to use and cut as many adverbs as you can. But regardless of if you’re in first person, second person, or third person limited, you can let the mood of the narrator bleed out into their narration.

Like, in horror, you can use a lot of onomatopoeia.

Drip Drip Drip

Or let the narration become jerky and unfocused and less strict in punctuation and maybe even a couple run-on sentences as your character struggles to think or catch their breath and is getting very overwhelmed.

You can toss out some grammar rules, too and get more poetic.

Warm breath tickles the back of her neck. It rattles, a quiet, soggy, rasp. She shivers. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. Sweat beads at her temple. Her heart thunders in her chest. Ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba- It moves on, leaving a void of cold behind. She uncurls her fists, fingers achy and palms stinging from her nails. It’s gone.

4. Remember to balance dialogue, monologue, introspection, action, and descriptors.

The amount of times I have been faced with giant blocks of dialogue with zero tags, zero emotions, just speech on a page like they’re notecards to be read on a stage is higher than I expected. Don’t forget that though you may know exactly how your dialogue sounds in your head, your readers don’t. They need dialogue tags to pick up on things like tone, specifically for sarcasm and sincerity, whether a character is joking or hurt or happy.

If you’ve written a block of text (usually exposition or backstory stuff) that’s longer than 50 words, figure out a way to trim it. No matter what, break it up into multiple sections and fill in those breaks with important narrative that reflects the narrator’s feelings on what they’re saying and whoever they’re speaking to’s reaction to the words being said. Otherwise it’s meaningless.

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Hope this helps anyone struggling! Now get writing.