#write rant

[bakerstmel]

Today I went for “coffee” with my daughter’s best friend’s mom, who somehow manages to gently kick me in the ass every time I see her. She asked how my writing is going, and I answered honestly, it’s not. I have a relatively new job that is a ton of responsibility. I am always too tired to write at night, that’s been true for years, but I do a true commute now so my early getting up is for driving and not creation. I’m distressed by this, but I’m not in a position to move closer to work just yet, so I’m trying to figure out a way to make everything work in the meantime. She nodded and then said something very wise and also ass-kicky.

She said a friend of hers who is a systems analyst once told her that when you have a log jam like mine, you have to devote ALL OF YOUR RESOURCES to resolving it as soon as you recognize it. Like you can’t just think about the problem in your spare time, you have to make fixing it your primary goal. Otherwise, the bottle neck won’t clear itself, and eventually everything—your talent, drive, passion—will clog the opening and it will get harder and harder to unplug, to the point that your life will just begin flowing around it, making new paths that don’t use what you’ve left behind.

If this doesn’t ring true to you, then it probably doesn’t apply, but good Christ did it hit home with me. I’m not working on finding time to write at all, and I need to be, not out of obligation but because I fucking love to write. It’s when I’m most myself, when I feel most alive and connected. I love my job, but it’s what I do, not who I am. I think about writing, but it’s a distant kind of “yeah I should figure that out” kind of thought. Then the next day my alarm goes off at 5, I do Connections and the Wordle, throw on some work pajamas (scrubs) and roll out. I get home sometime around 7 or 8, maybe eat something, give the cats who don’t sleep with me some quality time, and crash. I already feel those new pathways forming, and you know, I had writer’s block for 25 long years while I was on SSRIs, and I do not want to go back.

So now I am going to figure this out.

[waywardsou2]

Some idiot: "Why are you reading your own fic, that's shallow and stupid"

All fanfic writers and writers everywhere: "Who the fuck do you think I wrote it for?!"

[catmask]

when u go to write a mentally ill person in ur story you are presented two options. the first option is to write your mental illness realistically as you actually experience it with all the ups and downs and people who are like you will resonate with it and feel seen. except every person who reads instagram infographics on mental health that uses the phrase narcicisst for anyone who does anything that crosses them and unironically call themself a dark empath will call you scary and tell you that youre demonizing mentally ill people

the second option is to lie and write inspiration porn for those people to get hard to

[emptyjunior]

Enough random notes that have a written story on them as environmental storytelling, explore the space, get crazier with it.

You move into a house and aw cute, it has the kids height on the walls but you notice there's a three foot difference in height between measurements, you check the date, they're a month apart. The final measurement is on the ceiling. It's dated two days ago.

You're part of a recovery team that have finally found a stranded ship, they were found too late and have all passed a long time ago. They all died of starvation. You enter their storeroom, it's filled with food. In the dining hall you find the tables laden with perfectly fine looking breads, cakes, cured meats, jams, candies. Your medic says all the people sitting at the table didn't eat a Thing.

You wake up in an apocalypse. You can't find anyone at all as you wander the streets but you do hear faint music playing from somewhere. You stumble into a supermarket, to see all the aisles still full, except for the shelf that was full of ear plugs, which look to be the only thing that was looted.

Like there's light, sound, props. Having a street where every house is decimated except for One. Landing on a planet known for having No Water and a plant is growing and you don't know where it could have possibly gotten moisture from but you can't find the citizens Anywhere.

I'm sorry, I'm just kinda over the "graffiti on the wall to show the bad guy is around". That's not environmental storytelling that's just normal story. Show me I'm in the villains territory by the rain suddenly cutting out above me as I'm driving, even though it's meant to be raining all night. I park the car and step out, and realise the constellations are Wrong, until I see they're Not constellations, they're the blinking lights of a massive ship-

I Will stop now because everytime I go to write a sentence it devolves into another prompt but I'm just saying we have a Lot of senses, engage them, show me the Environment in environmental storytelling.

[sleepgarden]

Pupa ✢ The writing reads:

Time envelops and keeps me Not awake / Not asleep In this chrysalis / In this shroud I am stillborn / I am buried alive Yet I change / I am changing / And I ache Held still

I started this over a year ago and came back to it periodically, but I decided to just finally finish it. It’s morphed, undone itself, and transformed many times in the process of illustrating it. Sincerely, I considered giving up on the piece. I am glad I didn’t despite its awkwardness; I admit that it doesn’t sit in the eye well. But somehow I feel that it suits the piece and what it means.

I am, if anything, relieved to have finished an illustration finally. It’s been nearly eight months since my last. Prints are available in my shop. (I also have mini prints for $5cad/$3.40usd!)

[doesnotloveyou]

i'm actually very okay with "there was no other way this could end" endings. if they gotta die, let them die. if they gotta break up or go the wrong way or lose something important, let'em. so long as it completes the story. only thing i dislike more than a forced happy ending is a forced bad ending

[acid-ixx]

a loving family, an unpalatable desire

reblogs and interactions are encouraged and appreciated.

a/n: would anyone hear me out if i ever wrote romantic yan! bruce (ft. platonic yan! batfam AND romantic yan clark kent alongside the superfam ofc) with a neglected spouse reader... because uhm, i've been thinking about it lately just yk... so anyways PLSPLSPLS send in asks about this, ive been thinking about it so much lately.

imagine wanting to raise a family so badly with a man who adopts problem children as a side hustle. you're not some invasive spouse, you've always been good, always been loving, so... so accepting, never questioned where or how he picked them up from the side of the streets, never once complaining about the hickeys on his neck or the once neat tussles of his hair now tangled accompanying lipstick stains on his white suit.

you love your children, you tell yourself all the time. you love them, you love bruce— even if he doesn't love you. you said it in your vows, despite it being scripted, despite your family finally sighing in relief in the sidelines at finally being able to sell you off to one of the wealthiest man in the world, rather than being wasting off under their care— your vows are real.

you wanted someone to love you, unconditionally, so viscerally eternal that it eats you up.

really, all you wanted was to play that fantasy life of trophy house spouses. all you wished for was a loving, healthy relationship. the american dream: the picture perfect family frames, your husband kissing you on the cheek as he leaves for work, your children bickering at the dining room, with the scent of homemade meals wafting about the vicinity. all you wanted was the warmth in your chest to flicker like candlelights. all you dreamed about was that domestic life, an escape from the abusive household you were raised in.

yet the manor is too cold, too unforgiving for a soul such as yours.

the longer you stay inside claustrophobic, yet oh-so large hallways, the quicker you drown in a neverending pool of self-hatred.

but you're not allowed to show them your sufferings. they've been through much worse, you tell yourself. they've suffered more, and as what good spouses do, as what you're taught, you stay silent, enabling them to turn you into their own emotional punching bag.

you only allow yourself to cry at the dead of the night, under the sheets of your too-cold blanket and your too-hot pillows. when the manor is filled with deathly silence and a looming sense of dread and ill fitting thoughts of ifs and when they'll come back in one piece, will you grant yourself temporary respite; worry for a family who never even called you their parent.

yet you've always been so considerate. despite the pang in your chest every time bruce flirts with anymore potential love interest at a gala, you chose to instead monitor your chaotic children, who have always never bat an eye on you despite you always gazing lovingly at them.

you know of their interests, they don't know yours, yet you still give them extravagant gifts on their birthdays, with tired, yet glinting eyes, and a silent excuse to return to your room; one separate from bruce.

you know of bruce's hardships, but you don't push too hard, don't force him to talk, only provide him your silence and an offer to serve him dinner; all the time he refuses without looking at you. you give him comfort only if he ever allows you, only if he allows his walls to crumble— but not even his spouse can amount to a warm, crackling fireplace. to him, you're probably only a matchstick under the deadbeat glaze of the snow in a winter night.

maybe that's why you're such a ghost in the manor, stalking through the hallways, looking out for any of your children in case they come across you with any injuries. maybe that's why eventually your resolve weakened.

and maybe the absence of familial love led you to find comfort in another man's arm.

''til death do us part,' is such a tragic saying in your case, because you know it in your fragile heart that bruce's love for you was never alive in the first place. and yet you allow him to play you like a fiddle, allow him to slowly allow you to slip away from his nonexistent grasp.

and now, you're a stand-in parent for clark's son, jon, after the tragic loss of his wife. now, your world seems a lot less bleaker, as you play the fantasy of a loving house spouse, fully abandoning the life you left behind, a life you've never been gifted with until now. you want to feel guilty, you want to feel absolutely terrible but the heartache of neglect has become too much and all you do was allow clark to warm you up each night, kissing away your tears and spooning your deep-seated anxieties away.

you don't let the past eat you up, not when the present is too perfect, too freeing, too delusionally beautiful.

your son, jon provides you every joy a parent could have. parent's day gifts, heartfelt letters at every nook and cranny of your shared bedroom with clark— even reading him bedtime stories, allowing him to sleep in your lap after he slowly nods off, with clark knocking softly on polished wooden doors, greeting you with a loving kiss on the lips and a bouquet of your favorite flowers in hand—

it's everything a parent wants, needs even.

and you're everything clark, and especially jon wants, needs in their life.

so it's such a stupid mistake, really. a slip of the tongue, a too-enthusiastic smile, incredibly bright, shining eyes. it's not jon's fault, you still love him either way. but it's an error still— one a complicated matter at hand, so dreadful for you, that jon accidentally, all-too-suddenly, mentions you as his parent to damian.

a loving, wonderful parent, he says, with a picture of you in his wallet shoved right in front of his friend's face.

[miedei]

Spencer obviously gets a little drunk everytime you let him into your bed, we've all known this. He gets overwhelmed with lust, and devotes his entire being to giving you pleasure.

But, being a little pussydrunk doesn't stop him from overflowing with affection, and he can't help himself from being all cutesy even while you're writhing against his light-green duvet.

Has your thighs slung over his shoulders, lower half of his face shining with slick. You can't help but whine at the sight of him, hips trying to buck under the weight of his right forearm slung over your stomach. He can't hold back, ready to dive back in, but not before cooing up at you sweetly, left hand snaking up the bed to intertwine your fingers with his.

Or you're straddling him, hips swivelling on autopilot as you're submerged in the rapture zapping up your spine. He's mesmerised by the sight, one hand smoothing up your side as the other trails up to smooth your hair back, cupping your face tenderly. Soft encouragements and declarations of devotion tumble from his lips, as if the two of you aren't on the brink of collapse.

Or you're being crowded into the sheets, your calves resting over his shoulders as he presses into you meanly. Your brain can't handle it, soft noises escaping your lips as your eyes flutter shut without your permission. That just won't do, he can't go without the eye contact he needs to make him feel even closer to you than he already is. Without moving his eyes from you, he turns his head, peppering soft kisses to the ankle hooked on his left shoulder, as he pleads for you to open your eyes in a low voice.

"Please, angel, just want to see your eyes. Love your eyes, love how you look at me, won't you look at me, honey?"

[rosvosektori]

fiery steps

[demigods-posts]

i'm one hundred percent certain that after percy and annabeth made out underwater. and he wanted to make their relationship official. the question was not "will you be my girlfriend?" but "can i be your boyfriend?" i don't care what the canon says. percy gave annabeth the space to take the lead in the relationship. because after a lifetime of being abandoned by everyone she dared to care for. and then watching her on the brink of a panic attack at the thought of losing him the last four years. he wanted to honor a new beginning between them by follow her lead and moving at her pace.

[morallysuperiorlips]

PLEASE Write Your Book!

I'm serious. Please write it. If you need a sign to start, continue, or whatever is inbetween, this is it. Go do it.

I spent the past couple weeks indulging myself in some BookTok recommendations. While some were indeed good (Kings of Sin, my beloved), some were just...I don't need to finish my sentence there.

I DNF'd some books for the first time since I read Lord of the Flies (sorry Golding, you put me to sleep with your descriptions) and I powered through others in hopes that they would eventually get better. The general consensus I ended up getting was that I could not understand for the fucking life of me how these books got published. The writing in some of them was no better than that of a 2010s teen writing Maximum Ride fic on Wattpad for the first time, with the characterization abysmal enough to match.

I don't want to knock any specific author or book here, because I will concede one thing: they finished their books. They got them published. They're successful. For that, I commend them, because I'm still on my way there myself and I can't take that away from them. Jolly good show.

But that brings me to my point: if they can do it, YOU absolutely can do it too.

If some of these Amazon and NYT bestsellers can have prose on a Wattpad level with characters that have enough poorly-written cognitive dissonance to make Deadpool or Walter White jealous, your fleshed out, deeply intuitive, and remarkably creative epic can sit right alongside them no problem. Whether you're writing the next GoT or a romantic slice-of-life, there is a not a goddamn thing on this planet stopping you from rolling up with the big dogs.

If these guys can do it, so can you.

So, stop telling yourself you can't. Stop letting other people tell you you can't. Stop comparing yourself to these authors who, respectfully and bluntly, can't write for shit (or at least need to fire their fucking editors, good lord).

WRITE YOUR DAMN BOOK. PLEASE. WE NEED IT.

(If you like my guides, prompts, writing, or art, consider supporting the blog today! All donations help me keep this thing up and running and all are appreciated <3)

[storycraftcafe]

Did I just unsubscribe from a writer I've been following for years because they advocated for using AI? You fucking bet.

They suggest it's use as a tool, citing writers who hesitated to jump on the internet being left behind and I think that displays a rather big misunderstanding of the nature of problem.

Their point was gen AI can "help us think" but there's growing studies show us that it does anything but. Here's one paper on skill atrophy from AI use. There's more than a few of them plus some articles like this one from Forbes. Essentially using AI for a particular skill shows degradation in thelat skill.

Fact is brainstorming, research, analysis. Planning, outlining, writing, editing are ALL skills writers need to develop and practise. Not offload to a machine and surrender critical thought.

These skills are vital and transferrable to other aspects of our lives. My ability to critically examine a body of text to parse meaning works in enjoying fiction and digging through mixed messages in news and on social media. My ability to research and develop ideas from multiple sources also helps me fact check misinformation online.

These skills are so important, too important to cast aside for convenience.

I'd rather use my brain and do the work. Maybe ai will shift and better tools will arise, but I have put too much work into developing my skills to be content with the half assed result of the plagiarism machine.

Fuck that.

[cockroachparty]

currently playing infinity nikki for the first time (as well as my first time playing any gacha game) and i am. so perplexed by this girl.

she is nonconsensually ripped from her home and sucked into some other universe. the annoying rat is taken with her and they end up in some dark souls esque world. she now has the powers of levitation (?!) and shooting objects from her hand (?!) that can only harm bad guys and completely miss everything else in the environment. are these powers conscious of who it can hit or does nikki just have really good aim? after she meets some lady who has been chained to the ceiling for who knows how many years, a "heart" of some sort is forced into nikki's chest which gives her weird pains (no shit) from time to time when she witnesses emotional or "whimsical" displays.

anyway, im traversing this new land, in shock that this poor girl opened a simple wardrobe and is now in what appears to be some alternate universe where clothes have magic powers. if that were me, i'd be freaking out and wondering where the hell i am, what planet im on, and if im dreaming

nikki, though?

nikki is having the time of her life

i mean, shes casually introducing herself to dada and giovanni like shes just some girl from the next town over; no! youre not supposed to be here!! youre essentially an alien and youre fooling everybody!!

this girl is catwalking miraland like stuff like this happens to her ALL. THE. TIME.

which, if it does...

is nikki ok??? should she be put down???

[autolenaphilia]

It's funny how clearly uninformed a lot of criticism of Mozilla and its browser Firefox is. Like people say "it's just another corporation, out to make profit, just like Google." And that ordinary users promoting Firefox are just giving them free advertising.

It's in basically any post criticizing Mozilla, including on this site. Like using tumblr search I quickly found a post that was largely positive, but argued that Mozilla operates "under capitalist incentives" And outside tumblr I found a blog post out on the interwebs that criticized Mozilla and outright wondered "I don't know if Mozilla's business model ever made sense, it makes a lot more sense if it's something closer to a nonprofit rather than a commercial entity."

Well, let's research the Mozilla Corporation, see what that business model actually is. Let's begin that research by going to the wikipedia article, and read the two introductory paragraphs. And it turns out that it's "a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation", which is a non-profit.

"The Mozilla Foundation will ultimately control the activities of the Mozilla Corporation and will retain its 100 percent ownership of the new subsidiary. Any profits made by the Mozilla Corporation will be invested back into the Mozilla project. There will be no shareholders, no stock options will be issued and no dividends will be paid. The Mozilla Corporation will not be floating on the stock market and it will be impossible for any company to take over or buy a stake in the subsidiary."

Turns out that it is not just "closer to a non-profit", it is literally a non-profit. Turns out you only needed two paragraphs on wikipedia to learn that, the most basic online research possible, which basically every post I found criticizing Mozilla failed to do.

This is entirely different from any other entity calling itself corporation, which is all about creating profit or money for its shareholders, the "capitalist incentives" spoken about earlier.

If you read further into that article, you will learn that the Mozilla corporation literally only exists separate from the foundation for tax and legal purposes, but it's still a non-profit operation.

This makes it reasonably immune from the enshittification process I've written about before. there is no incentive to fuck over the experience for end users for the sake of shareholder profits, like what tumblr is doing right now.

It means that Firefox is an exemption to the rule that "if something is free, you are the product", because there is no product to produce profits for shareholders, it's a charitable endeavour for a free and open internet, as laid out in the Mozilla manifesto.

This doesn't mean non-profits make corruption impossible, there is plenty of corruption in non-profit foundations. But unlike actual capitalist corporations, it doesn't have the greed and corruption built in. And if you are going to criticize Mozilla and Firefox, which it does sometimes deserve, you should have your basic facts straight before doing so, if you expect me to take you seriously.

[justhereforsomethingnice]

Danny is dead, which manifests as a ghost which falls under the anti ecto acts. Classified the same as insects, less rights then a corpse or a gun. Thing is, he discovered he’s also a meta. Sure, it wasn’t anything grand or amazing or something. His meta power was literally seeing through clouds if he wanted to. Which, is awesome, yay for star gazing and on misty morning drives he’s Jazz’s go to copilot but other then that? Not really much use (he’s not counting the times he was able to spot enemies hiding in cloud coverage or trying to use smoke machines).

However, now as he was visiting metropolis, the GIW had found him. Great? No.

So as Superman (who was told by official government agents that he was a dangerous criminal despite looking like a toddler in his eyes) grabbed him, agents in white creeping up on the sides, he said the first thing coming to mind. “I’m a meta, you can’t do shit to me.”

He snarled it to the GIW of course but now they’re kinda stumped at that reaction and if that would effect the anti ecto laws. Superman just thinks he has a self righteous, stuck up little prick in his hands.

Misunderstandings ensue.