tate-lin - Tumblr blog

[tate-lin]

you’re going to love again, find a job again, create art again, do what you love again, feel powerful again. you’re going to be back on track. i don’t know when, but you are going to feel like yourself again, eventually. this isn’t the end. hang in there.

[tate-lin]

im trying to remind myself lately that writing doesn't have to just mean writing a book. i can write random stuff that i never have to look at again !! i can make up characters and abandon them without feeling guilty !! i do not need to be creating an 'end result' to enjoy this hobby !!!!!!!!!!

[tate-lin]

Y’ALL I JUST HAD IDEAS FOR A WIP I HAVEN’T WORKED ON IN FOREVER AND THEN I SAT DOWN AND WROTE THOSE IDEAS INTO A MAJOR SCENE AND I HAVE A PLAN FOR WRITING THE SCENES LEADING UP TO IT

THIS IS

Magical

IF YOU SEE THIS POST I AM BOOPING YOU WITH INSPIRATION IN MY HEART AND MIND AND PAWS

WRITER’S AND ARTIST’S BLOCK BEGONE

[tate-lin]

*takes your hand* rapists don’t get punished in this country; most of the Terrible People you think should be “Locked Away Forever” won’t be. Prisons are stuffed with desperate poor people and people of color for things like Having Weed and Robbing a Gas Station Because They Were Desperate for Money or Being an Addict or, and this one’s my favorite, Being Black and at the Wrong Place and at the Wrong Time. Prison is a Farce; you’re not being protected from Bad People like the government wants you to believe, like use your brain and think about all the free labor prisons are getting out of these Black and brown men …

[tate-lin]

- Silas Denver Melvin @sweatermuppet, Grit Poetry Collection

[tate-lin]

[tate-lin]

!!EMERGENCY FUNDS!!

Recently I have been very sick from spending a lot of time on the streets, enduring cold and this worsened my health, I was afraid this would happen, and it did. I have to be with oxygen cylinders to be able to breathe better when I got agitated, I am lacking a lot of air, and I am left without breathing, I am going to be discharged but I need to be in a cool, warm place, without humidity, and they ask me to take care of me a lot.

Unfortunately I do not have all the resources to keep me safe, that is why I need your help, whatever you can contribute to me will be of great help.

Fundraiser link

Goal:$519/$1900

Thanks and be blessed ❤️

[tate-lin]

"is this too cliche?" who cares? bro, write what you have fun writing. stuff your manuscript full of your favourite tropes. the same themes you love. all inspired by things you grew up with. do it all. go off. load. it. up. be freeeee

[tate-lin]

[tate-lin]

[tate-lin]

It's a lot healthier to go for a daily walk than to sign up for a gym membership you won't be using because you hate that kind of exercise. It's a lot healthier to eat a frozen meal than to skip a meal because you were too tired to cook something healthy. It's a lot healthier to take a quick shower than to procrastinate an elaborate routine for days. Don't aim so high that you won't be hitting anything!

[tate-lin]

It's so interesting to see what kind of stories and concepts really make you excited!! Is there any particular reason you can think of that makes you love them so? 👀

Hiii Cee happy Storyteller Saturday!! 🥳

I just saw an interesting question on twitter asking people what are their favourite concepts in fiction (stuff that they find fascinating/really moved them) and wondered what yours was 👀

hey Tate!! thanks for the ask<3

oh gosh, that's a tough one haha. I think... okay, I really fuck with unreliable narrators. that's a vague one, but, y'know. give me a story where I can't trust it!! please<3 this one's a bit more controversial, but I really really like time-travel. and alternate realities. it's really cool if it has a solid logic behind it, but I'll probably like it even if it doesn't lol. I'm also just... sooo fascinated by necromancy. like, that's a very reliable way to get me hooked on any story lol. 'this has necromancy' I am Seated. the more fucked up, the better. I don't want necromancy with no consequences, no thank youu. (I want any kind of magic with consequences, but that's a whole other topic lol.) on the topic of necromancy - the personification of Death. a million times yes. and if you have both Death and Life?? I am so sold. something about Death being something tangible just gets to me, idk.

I've got more, but this is already getting long lmaoo, so yea, guess those would be the main ones?

[tate-lin]

I think the Hunger Games series sits in a similar literary position to The Lord of the Rings, as a piece of literature (by a Catholic author) that sparked a whole new subgenre and then gets blamed for flaws that exist in the copycat books and aren’t actually part of the original.

Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”.  The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA. 

The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.

There’s a reason these books became a literary phenomenon. There’s a reason that dozens upon dozens of authors attempted to imitate them. But these imitators can’t capture that same genius, largely because they’re trying to imitate the trappings of another book, and failing to capture the larger and more meaningful message underneath. Make a copy of a copy of a copy, and you’ll wind up with something far removed from the original masterpiece. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of blaming those flaws on the original work.

[tate-lin]

Just create the thing you want to create. Because who's going to stop you? Oh, it's you yourself? Well you can't let that bastard win, can you?

[tate-lin]

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, to listen to doctors and get my flu vaccine and any shots i could because they remembered Before.

then they started fighting Covid precautions.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that the ozone was disappearing and the earth was dying and we needed to recycle and save the planet.

now my parents think climate change is a myth.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that racism was a plague, that we had to love and accept everyone, that we should never judge before walking a mile in their shoes.

then they told me that protesting for my Black siblings was wrong.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that we needed to give to the poor. working at soup kitchens. making quilts. collecting food and money and supplies. building houses. because it was the christian and just plain right thing to do.

now they look at me, on food stamps with their grandchildren, and lament the "welfare state".

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that any rich man, especially an immoral one, should never run our country.

you can guess who they voted for.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, so very much.

when did they forget?

[tate-lin]

I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.

[tate-lin]

I'm late to the aro positivity party but thought I could shout out a manga I read this year, I Want to be a Wall!

It's about an aroace woman (who is really into BL) and a gay man being arranged into a marriage and how they navigate that, growing closer and kind of becoming a QPR.

The stuff that really got to me was the discussion of the woman's experience with her asexuality (and aromanticism though that isn't explicitly labeled), how it connects to her media tastes and the way people have hurt her in the past. It was all absolutely heartbreaking.

A fun detail I also like is how the pair act out romantic tropes (Gift of Magi style misunderstanding, paranoia about "cheating,"), but they are all done through a platonic context.

(Ex. Even though they're not in romantic love, he still feels upset at the idea of losing their bond, or her getting hurt by someone he doesn't know.)

There's not too many chapters of it out, unfortunately (only like two volumes), but the ones I read are very enjoyable and I'd love to put this on other people's radar!

(btw, I got this manga rec from this video, and there's more in it!)

Asexual Manga and their Powerful Visibility

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=urXrwYmMdgA