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thatinsufferablenerd · 7 months ago

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Stress

It has been…a week.

We’ve burned through our firewood and the weather can’t decide if it’s going to keep getting colder or warm up again. I’ve been bundling up inside with cozy sweaters and fuzzy socks. Our escape artist Cookie has discovered she can jump the fence even when it’s dark, so she isn’t allowed outside without being on her lead. Early in the morning, all day, and before bed, we play the in and out game with the dogs, and every time I have to clip her onto her lead to keep her out of our neighbors’ yards. She gets herself tangled in it too. So often I recognize the tone of barking she uses to tell us she needs help. It’s no different from learning the different kinds of cries kids make. Aki has been in heat too, so we have to keep her off the couch. It’s a constant fight. She doesn’t understand why and mopes like Eeyore every time.

I’m so tired. I’ve been busting my ass being social and being present, not letting the critique in my first full alpha read get to me. At least now I have proof that RP detrimentally affects my actual writing. I’ve decided to quit my DnD game as well. There are a lot of reasons. The main one is that it’s just not for me. I’m bad at live improv. The late hours are killing me. It’s more fun to listen than try to get a word in on a story I can’t control. I’m not great at the game and feel limited by the options and mechanics compared to my own imagination. So I’m working on getting my character out of the story.

The only thing I’ve read this week has been my own work and Lore Olympus. Webtoon has strict copyright rules so I can’t read the last 25 chapters, which is driving me up the wall. I know about all the DiscourseTM surrounding Lore Olympus, and I could not give a fuck less. Right now I just want something to retreat into that I like and that fits the bill. Not that I don’t engage with it critically, I do. But I like it. I could probably write several essays about it. If I had the money I’d buy the physical volumes. I’m looking forward to getting more done when I have the energy.

Imagine my shock when I was hit square in the face with the reality that rough drafts are inevitably garbage. To go from the high of prose compared to the highly lauded Robin Hobb and bluescreening over that to being in tears in the showers over reading ‘this is rough’ in a matter of hours. With how stressed I am, and how bad I am at taking critique as well as praise, it really threw me. In reality, the rough stuff is a 6 and my best work a 9. It can be fixed. That’s what editing is for. I know that. I’ve been aware of that fact for ages. It was just having someone else agree that made it so hard to comprehend.

I’ve been writing text RP posts for my DnD group for ages, sometimes just interlude stories and sometimes with a partner for scenes. There’s no editing or beta for that. I just do a half-assed clappity clap on my keyboard and hit enter. I don’t put much effort into it, not like I do my novels. And yet my friends have nothing but praise. They send me DMs that they love reading my posts even if they aren’t being asked to respond. That they feel too stupid to be in the same conversation. In my text RP group with other people who write fanfic and original content, they say similar things. All I say back is that writing is the job I don’t get paid for. I’ve been doing it for twenty years. I’ve worked my ass off to get to this place.

And still, my rough drafts are trash. Because rough drafts are messy and clunky by default. No one who has ever written anything has done it right on the first try. It’s a skill that takes effort and time to hone. And a lot of fucking editing. Sometimes in a panic.

If you haven’t already guessed, I’ve done a lot of writing this week. My overall word count is lower than it was last week, but that’s the nature of heavy edits. I’m a wordy bitch. Sometimes I end up with more, sometimes I end up with less. There’s a lot of work to do. I think I’ll be editing for the next couple weeks before I can move forward with the plot. I will not fucking rest until it’s done. And I need to do more notes. That will go hand in hand with my edits, I think. Being able to really overhaul properly will make the entire project better.

I have an appointment to look over a manuscript fresh from a professional editor on Monday. I’m excited. The last time anyone edited anything of mine, it was my AP Lit teacher in high school fifteen years ago. Learning what to expect and what to look for will be enlightening. I’m so glad to have found a mentor who’s been around the block with self-publishing. One that’s honest but encouraging.

If I’m going to get serious about writing again, I need to go on a YouTube diet. I can’t spend my life hitting refresh on my home tab spending hours a day watching videos when I have better shit to do. That being said, I did watch Mononoke the film last week. The art was fascinating. I watched in Japanese with subs. I didn’t get everything with it being so tied up in Japanese history and lore, but I liked it. Another watch would probably help. It was nice to watch something colorful with a lot of texture though. Movies these days are so drab, it seems.

Here’s some of the good food I watched this past week:

-BookTok and Anti-intellectualism (ft ‘the booktokers who don’t read’): According to Alina

-The 7 Deadly Sins of Black Politicians: Olurinatti

-AI Writing is Trash, But AI ‘Writers’ Will Never Notice: In The Thorns

-When Your Hero is a Monster: The Leftist Cooks

-How to Write Metaphors (That Don’t Suck!): Hello Future Me

-Why Storytelling Matters More Than Ever. An Answer to Brain Rot: The Lady of the Library

-The Secret History of (Women’s) Credit Cards is Not What You Think!: Nicole Rudolph

Stay safe out there y’all. You are loved and appreciated <3

#spilled thoughts #booklr #digital diary #writeblr #small talk #booktube

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thatinsufferablenerd · 7 months ago

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A Day Late and a Dollar Short

I know, I’m late. It’s been kind of a weird week. The kids have been home for Thanksgiving break so refereeing takes up more of my time. We’re using the fireplace to keep the house warm instead of the heater, and tending it takes a surprising and annoying amount of effort. The daily high temperature has taken a pretty sharp decline from 70 degrees (F) last weekend to 50F today. My husband has been working this week too, which is such a relief. I’m still casually job hunting and having nightmares about working. Everything is fine and dandy here. : )

Holidays haven’t been great for me since becoming an adult. At first it was my work schedule keeping me from those events, and then it was realizing my dad’s family is not fond of children combined with the stress of my realizing just how big my husband’s family is. And then I realized I hate crowds and most of my in-laws, and that my own family (barring my mother) doesn’t really like me. And then we moved out of state, away from both our families. Every time a holiday comes around I try not to wade into the mires of what could have been or what actually was. It’s better for my mental health, it’s better for everyone involved, really. But the inevitable dip in mood and staring into the middle-distance are familiar companions to the holidays I’ve come to despise.

I know that I’m bad at making and keeping friends. Finding things to talk about, getting past that boring fucking small talk, responding to messages, initiating conversation, sitting on the phone, all things that take energy, which I notoriously have very little of. I’m bad at it. I know that. I’ve also been traumatized by family and former friends being dismissive of or outright ignoring my interests, that I’m too much. I don’t want to bother anyone. I don’t want to answer the same three questions of ‘how are you?’, ‘how are your kids?’ and ‘how’s your husband?’ with the most bland variations of ‘doing well, thanks!’ forever. In spite of that, I’ve always wanted a close relationship with my brother and parents. I tried. I worked at it for ages. Inviting them out to do things, sending messages, making the time to call regularly and talk, trying to get into the hobbies they liked to spend time with them, to have something to talk about. Nothing worked. And it simply comes down to the fact that they don’t like me as a person. That I am undesirable company to them. Too different and unpalatable in comparison that only the most obligatory gestures are worth extending.

So I try to be grateful that I have excellent excuses not to go home for the holidays. I can’t be at any Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, I live a thousand miles away and too broke to travel, can’t leave my dogs even if I did. My kids are picky eaters anyway. One won’t eat meat (or anything else really), and the other is so sensitive to texture that convincing them to try anything new is a frustrating uphill battle. We didn’t even have Thanksgiving dinner here because it’s too much effort to go through for just my husband and I to get sick of the leftovers. We had mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie with our normal dinner (that my youngest didn’t eat anyway).

I got roped into a group chat with presumably family (half the numbers were family in my contacts but the other half was unfamiliar to me) to get the once a year ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ text and have nothing else directed at me or be engaged in conversation. Watching them talk about the normal expected plans from the outside opened up those old wounds yet again. It was a text chain, I couldn’t leave the chat and stop getting the notifications. It made me want to scream. I sent my mother a message, she told me their plans and what she had made, told me she would call me later. I still haven’t gotten that call. For a split second I imagined what it would be like to host my family or my in-laws at our house and literally started dry-heaving with the panic and revulsion I felt.

God, I fucking hate the holidays.

I wish I could tell you I finished my goals for November easily. That I got Bleach and Beowulf off my to-do list so I could move on to the impromptu picks in December. Unfortunately, I cannot do that. My entire month got derailed being caught up in reading the first two books in the Aurora Project series and being–ugh–social. I can’t say I’m that upset, however. I’ll just make Beowulf my classic pick for December and City of Last Chances my contemporary pick. When I finish Bleach, I’ll jump into Dan Da Dan. It’s such a popular series right now, and deservedly so. I want to read it week-to-week like I’m doing with One Piece, Spy x Family, and My Dress-up Darling.

I have read the first couple chapters of City of Last Chances. That’s about all I’ve read in the last week that isn’t something I wrote or Discord messages. I wish I had taken the chance to sit in front of my fireplace with my book and just read. No distractions, no shouting from the other room, no getting up to let the dogs in or out every ten minutes, not being chained to the desk so I can reach the hookah hose. I wish I could hide in my bedroom or in my swing and devour half the book in a day. Maybe more. This book was compared to Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, a book I read and loved in high school. I just want to enjoy Tchaikovsky’s book. I want to get lost in it, I want to put together all the worldbuilding crumbs and find characters to like. I’ve liked what I read so far.

I guess I can’t complain too much though. I’ve been very busy writing. It feels so nice to be productive again. In the interest of full disclosure, I write all the time. Yeah, Discord messages, but even though I’ve been slowly working on my project the last few months, I’ve been doing text RP instead. Probably more than one hundred thousand words over the last year, divided between me and the partner. And that’s ONE RP. I’ve been in others, too. But getting back to my project, adding about 6.5k in the last ten days, has been as strange as it has been satisfying. I kind of missed putting MS Word in the corner in a tiny window to work while I watch YouTube. I missed my process of reading and light editing in the morning, writing through the day and ending with a couple pages further than I started.

I finally got my white board time this week too. I updated my map and notes, something I’ve been needing to do for a while. There’s still a lot to do, honestly. I didn’t want to get bogged down in the worldbuilding and fall into that pit fall, but I need a lot more than I have. I’ll be working on that this coming week. When my brain isn’t so wrapped up on being a diplomat between kids that pretend they hate each other. It’s been a while since I’ve had whiteboard time and I did genuinely miss it. My brain is so full of ideas right now that I can’t help but wonder if it’s just backlogged from being depressed and otherwise occupied. It also remains to be seen if any of the shit I’ve come up with is any good.

The only thing I’ve been watching recently is the Dan Da Dan anime, which is fantastic and well worth the time. I could write an entire essay about it, and I probably will once I get into the manga. Until then, I’m starting to crave watching movies again. Ever After with Drew Barrymore and Shakespeare in Love with Gwyneth Paltrow are kind of my romance staples. Comfort watches I’ll put on when I’m needing brain stimulation or just want to turn my brain off. I want to watch the Spy x Family film since I haven’t yet. I want to watch Mononoke the Movie too. The art style alone has my interest before knowing that it’s derived from the television series of the same name (which I also might try to find to watch). I’m looking forward to spending a little time without headphones and on my couch instead of the desk.

Here’s a list of some of the good fucking food I watched on YouTube this week:

-The Chaotic Beauty of Momo and Okarun’s Love: Safeties on Rookie

-Is Our Obsession With Girlhood Infantilizing Us?: Shanspeare

-Are We Too Sensitive For Fiction?: Below the Fray

-Where is the Line Between Anti-Hero and Edgy: Savage Speaks

-How Tariffs Actually Work (ft Liz Dye): Legal Eagle

-How the F*ck Did Trump Actually Win?: FD Signifier

-matt walsh crosses another line: The Queer Kiwi

-The Magic System Paradox: Tale Foundry

-Fantasy vs Reality: five weapons fantasy gets wrong: blumineck

-How to Write Better Chemistry: The Closer Look

-Flyswatting; How to Keep Unfair Fights Interesting: Squampopulous

-You’re Writing Themes Wrong: The Closer Look

-How AI is Killing Our Ability to Dream: Jessie Gender

-Capitalist Necromancy: The Danger of Nostalgia as Merchandise: Final Girl Studios

-The Problem With Smart Characters: MediaRetrospective

-Fan Letter: One Piece’s Impact : MelonTeee

-The Paleogene Period (That We Know of) ft Ben G Thomas: Lindsay Nikole

Everything on this list specifically gave me something to think about and has stuck with me after watching. I watch more than just educational content, but I don’t include any of it in these lists not because I don’t think it’s good fucking food, I do, I just want to focus on the videos I watched that gave me food for thought.

Stay safe out there, y’all. You are loved and deserve the best.

#spilled thoughts #digital diary #booklr #writeblr #small talk #no beta we die like men #booktube

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thatinsufferablenerd · 7 months ago

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Sassy For Some Reason

It’s gotten cold at night. Like, hovering just above freezing while it’s dark out cold. It’s still sunny and fairly nice during the day, I like that. Our dogs have taken to sunning themselves on the back porch, laying on the vents or climbing into our laps to share body heat in our poorly insulated house. Our smallest dog is 40 pounds, but I don’t mind. The street dog we took in a couple months ago is thriving on spoiled couch time and the twins have always been like this. All that’s left of the bug I caught is the cough I can’t kick. My energy is back, my motivation, the aches gone, getting better sleep. Today I opened the box for the STEM advent calendar my mom sent to my kids, they’re over the moon at the idea.

We’re still fucking broke, though. My husband is just as stressed as I am, even if he’s not having literal nightmares about bussing tables for brunch on Mother’s Day. We’ve agreed that I’m going to try to look for remote work first, something part time just for supplementary income. If that fails, then I’ll look for something in person. I haven’t worked since 2015, so learning the modern job market and updating a resume is going to be…a trip. I hate all of this so much. I wish I didn’t feel my heartbeat pick up in pace every time I think about working or get an email from Linkedin. I wish I didn’t have stress-induced nightmares about a job I haven’t worked since before I moved out of my mother’s house.

Sometimes it feels like escape is all I have. Other than hitting ‘play’, anyway. Diving into a story puts some distance between me and the bullshit, so I do it. Whether I’m reading it, writing it, or watching it, it doesn’t matter. As long as it’s some form of distraction, something to take my mind off THIS. I know it’s not healthy. I know I spend way too much time on YouTube and I know this is not a great coping mechanism. What options do I have?

I’ve had Bleach on the back burner while I got through Aaron’s two published books. Now that I’ve finished both Ruins of Ivy and Forgotten Steel, I can pick that back up in the coming week. Forgotten Steel has some slightly different themes from the first and expands its world a lot. He set out to write an entertaining book, and I had a good time. By coincidence, his book touched on an idea that my series does, albeit in a very different way. Three of his main characters are called monsters and have to wrestle with whether or not that label is deserved, if they can go back from it. He’s not doing anything new with it, but in tandem with some other concepts he has juxtaposing that one, it’s keeping my attention.

I had to renew that Tchaikovsky book at my library this week, so I did that and picked up two more volumes (4 and 5) of Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe while I was there and finished them both in an afternoon. I’m aware of the criticisms of age-gap relationships and the slippery slope of depicting toxic relationships, as well as the ‘it’s not accurate’ detractors. I really could care less. I like it. I like the art, I like how every character feels like an individual that keeps moving and doing things when they aren’t on page, I like the leads and how they’re drawn to each other. I like that Persephone is allowed to be angry sometimes, and Hades isn’t exactly a model for morality either. Sue me, I’m going to read the whole series. I think I have pretty solid media literacy skills. Plenty good enough to tell that it’s a little weird for the eldest of the Olympians to have fallen head over heels for a twenty year old. Don’t care. I’m a sucker for sun and moon dynamics.

I’m hoping to get through Bleach by the end of the month. I might not make it, I’ve got about 240 chapters left (the Fullbringer Arc and the TYBW for anyone keeping score), but I am going to do my best. I’m really excited about reading the Dan Da Dan manga. I can’t do that if I’m still hung up on Bleach. I’ve been pretty busy with other stuff, so I might need to go back and read the last ten, twenty chapters just to refresh myself. We’ll see. My notes might be enough. I might post my ramblings here when I do finish. I’m looking forward to getting into the TYBW. The anime is so good and there’s a lot of hype to keep me trucking along.

I know I keep promising myself I’m going to spend time in front of my whiteboard and not doing that, but I did something better this week! I’ve been working out exactly what’s left to cover in this volume of the story. The exact chain of events that leads to the plot point I want to be at when I move on to volume three. Hitting the books is not going to be the most fun time, and some of this is just going to be me and a map making shit up. That’s just how this goes. But I am going to get to it. Now that I’ve finished those two books I have a little more breathing room to get some of my own work done.

I also slotted a pretty important piece into the overall puzzle that is my current project. Since I’ve been doing so much reading it back over while Aaron makes his way through what I have, I noticed a pretty consistent tic that my POV character remarks on her memories A LOT. So much that it feels more important than context or characterization, it’s getting into theme territory by accident. We’re going to run with that in conjunction with a decision I hoped I wouldn’t have to make. Aaron asked me if ghosts exist in this world based on a couple offhand comments POV characters makes. I wanted to keep it vague since I didn’t want to say anything about the afterlife or mortality, but it’s fine. It all fits together just fine with the connections I’ve been making with the other plot points and themes I’ve been doing.

Writing is both a romantic solo venture and a highly stressful collaborative effort. I can sit in front of my whiteboard for ages and not know if what I’m coming up with is any good. Then again, entire writer’s rooms have ended up with crap too. Sometimes we need someone else to bounce ideas off of, and sometimes it’s just too many cooks in the kitchen. Even though I am still very much going through my existential crisis, I’m glad he said that. It forced me to think it through, to make a decision, and that decision will ultimately benefit the story. He also told me that my rough draft is one of the top ten books he’s ever read.

I thought I was having a heart attack. I hyperventilated, felt like I was having palpitations, and it’s still such a surreal thing. In moments I’m flattered, in others I’m numb, and yet others I’m wondering what books he’s read that MINE could be considered that good. I’ve had so much trouble getting anyone else to give me a chance. I’ve handed out the link like it’s candy but no one who’s gotten the link has managed to get past the prologue. I don’t blame them, obviously. Everyone is busy and it’s a huge investment of time. I understand that. My biggest worries revolve around if I’m doing too much, if what I have makes sense, if it’s any good. That kind of thing can only be determined by readers. So without them, I just…panic. Forge on bravely, but still panic internally. My mom told me when I told her “I wish you believed in yourself as much as the rest of us do.” Bitch, WHAT? You don’t even like fantasy, you read five pages a year ago, so much has changed in that time. You’re my MOM, you can say whatever you want.

You see what my brain does when I get praise? Try living with this shit.

Here’s a list of some of the good shit I watched on YouTube this week:

-Why Accuracy is Overrated: Spinster’s Library

-Fashion Doesn’t Matter (like it used to): Nicole Rudolph

-Do Modern Writers Remember How to Write Fantasy?: dan doug

-Why is NCIS Obsessed With Israel?: Skip Intro

-The Twisted World of Dark Romance: Mina Le

-M.A.P Walsh is Hiding Something: Foreign Man in a Foreign Land

-How Potatoes Changed the World: Religion, Rebellion and the Industrial Revolution: OTR Food & History

-Edgar Allen Poe’s Obsession with Death: Lady of the Library

-Gendered Reading in Fantasy, the Decline of YA and More: Johanna Reads

-Can TV Change the Way We Speak?: Otherwords on Monstrum

-In Defense of Cozy Fiction: Tale Foundry

-Brat and the Culture of Addiction: Alexander Avila

-Girl Eats Boy: Cannibal Women in Horror (Raw, Yellowjackets, Bones and All): elle literacy

-How YouTube Dethroned MTV: Polyphonic

-Did the Coroner Make This Disaster Worse?: Caitlin Doughty

-Everything You Think You Know About Thanksgiving is Wrong: Abby Cox

-Sympathy for the Villains: Princess Weekes

I hope I have more good news next week and that my emotional crisis passes, because I’m tired. I hate being like this. Sitting around worrying and being flattered and trying to think but also stressed out of my mind at the same time. It’s exhausting. I only have so much RAM and I have other things to worry about. The world is about to get much worse. I have things to protect here. I just hope I’m the one worrying too much and it’s not warranted.

Stay safe out there <3

#spilled thoughts #digital diary #booklr #writeblr #small talk

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thatinsufferablenerd · 7 months ago

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Languishing in the Relentless Ache

The weather here is cool but cleared up from the rain we had last week. My husband started using our fireplace to keep our poorly insulated house warm without running up the gas bill. Our dogs like it. We all caught COVID again. Well, we’re not 100% sure it’s COVID since no one has gotten a test, but the symptoms line up and the misery is very, very real. It started setting in last weekend and has been kicking our asses since. My son spent three days home from school. All my energy has been focused on making sure he’s taken care of, that the bare minimum of housework is done, that our dogs go in and out and stay out of the litter boxes, things like that. My husband was affected differently and spent two days mostly asleep in bed. Between that and drumming up the courage to put out the call for a critique partner/writing buddy (and possibly finding one), I haven’t had the energy to do much. I don’t have the energy to be depressed about the election or worry about the actual nightmares I’m having at the decision to get a job.

That being said, I am in the final chapters of the Arrancar saga of Bleach. The Big Bad has been defeated along with the other major players. I’m a little behind on my update thoughts and haven’t read much in the last few days being busy with other things. I’ve enjoyed the experience so much more in page form. I think anime is obligated to drag out fights a lot longer than necessary because they have a run time to fill and used to run week to week rather than the season model we get these days. I’ve noticed it less in more recent adaptations. Combat just feels snappier on page. I’ve learned that there’s a difference between watching fight choreography and watching UFC or HEMA (shout out to Scenic Fights on YouTube). It’s kind of the same in anime. I like a big dumb anime fight as much as anyone else, don’t get me wrong. When they hit, they really hit. I could name a dozen off the top of my head that are iconic and incredible for multiple reasons. But when they miss, they REALLY miss. Limited page space and chapter length really does help keep it from overstaying its welcome.

Instead of reading anything else on my TBR, I made an author friend who generously let me read his books in exchange for my first draft. I’ve finished the first, barely started the second. Ruins of Ivy by Aaron Ramsby is book one in the Aurora Project series, Forgotten Steel is the second. Post-apocalyptic settings can offer quite a bit of material to explore. It’s a good opportunity for speculative biology, stories with themes of perseverance and the power of community, interrogating our relationship with the past or other institutions. Like other types of speculative fiction, it relies on worldbuilding and lore revealed throughout the story. Ruins of Ivy was a zippy read for me with approachable prose and some intriguing hooks that are keeping me engaged into book two.

Making a friend with someone who’s a published author is always a treat. Most authors (at least self-published ones, in my experience) are happy to lend a helping hand to newbies or other up-and-comers. I’ve had more than one offer me encouraging words, compliment my work, give me some really helpful advice about the writing process or the publishing industry. In several cases, it’s led to free books too. Not as many lasting networking opportunities or friendships, though, but I’ll admit that’s partially my fault. I’m as bad at keeping friends as I am making them. I’m hoping to keep this friend. Having someone else believe in you is such a confidence booster. Sitting around thinking you write like a middle schooler on Wattpad and then having a stranger say you have an elegant, high brow style that inspires them to up their game? I cried.

Aaron has been kind enough to look over my current project. While he’s currently not far into it, he has given me a lot to think about. That’s what’s taking up a lot of my time right now. Catching up on his books and talking nuts and bolts of prose to him. Well, that and being sick as a dog. It’s nerve wracking, of course. The constant critical questions and playing devil’s advocate. My knee-jerk reaction is panic and put up my boxing gloves, but I know he isn’t doing it to be an asshole. Critique is key to the editing process, and if I intend to publish, GoodReads reviewers will be way harsher than he could ever be. It’s easier now than it was at the beginning, and having reassurance helps. I wish I had more writing friends, though. Tolkien was lucky enough to have peers in two separate writing groups in his lifetime. That’s my dream.

I have done a little bit of writing. Not a lot, but enough to say I wrote. A page or two. I’m more disappointed that I keep saying I need white board time and not getting it. I did get out my little one and jot some things down, but I need REAL time, with my thinking cap on, with notes and documents and research, like the old days. It’s harder when I have sick kids to care for. Other things have been taking up my time. Like sleeping. And crying over the new Dan Da Dan episode.

Instead of rehashing in paragraph form all the good fucking good I watched YouTube this week, here’s a handy list: -Pop Culture Detective: “Human Nature, Hope and Ice Cream”

-FD Signifier: “Edgelord Movies Finally BROKE ME”

-Wrestling With Words: “If You’re Doing These 7 Things You’re Doing Worldbuilding Right”

-The Legendarium: “What Makes Prose Good” (parts 1-3)

-Tale Foundry: “The Kids’ Horror Spiral”

-Princess Weekes: “Main Character Syndrome and The Authenticity Trap”

-Curious Archive: “The Most Powerful Type of Worldbuilding”

I know this post is much shorter than the last two, but I am very tired and sick. I’m looking forward to being better next week.

Stay safe out there y’all. <3

#spilled thoughts #digital diary #writeblr #booklr #yallternative #booktube #small talk

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thatinsufferablenerd · 8 months ago

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Unexpected Feels

The weather has been rainy and as glum as I feel. My dogs don’t want to be outside when it’s this wet, and I’m still trying to house train the pup we took in off the streets a month or so ago. She’s fine when the weather is good. It’s just another thing on my plate to deal with.

I’m not in the best place. I can feel myself sinking into the numbness that comes with my depressive episodes, the desire to turn off my brain and scroll endlessly, hit play on something, ANYTHING to put something else in there before it morphs into despair. Anyone who’s dealt with mental health issues on a long term basis might be able to understand. Clocking the signs before it gets bad again, ya know? Self awareness grants me the insight to see the hole is getting deeper and even whether or not I’m the one holding the shovel, but what do you do when you aren’t the one doing the digging?

Of course I’m disappointed by the election results. Of course I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m still trying to process that THIS happened. I wish I could scream to every single person who contributed to this mess, “Don’t you understand what you’ve done?? The leopards are going to eat your face too!” But I can’t. All I have is this dread. It’s so heavy. I believe that we should be building community right now, standing in solidarity with and carving out our safe spaces with trustworthy people, and making preparations like we just heard the Waffle House is closing. I believe that. I do. But how do I do that? My community is overwhelmingly red. Most of the online places I’ve been forcing myself to try to be social in are staunchly apolitical. How am I supposed to know who’s safe like this? How am I supposed to breathe when all I can do is be scared for the people I know are going to be in more danger than ever?

My Twitter feed is full of pleas to stay alive. With all this bleakness closing in, I can’t believe how absurd yet poignant that small sentiment is. Stay alive. I must, I have children that need their mother and dogs that will end up shot by animal control if I don’t. I am scared because I don’t want to live, I want to thrive and I want that for everyone else, but I know it will be harder to do that. I must protect my children, my home, what meager comforts I’ve pried from the jaws of this capitalist hellscape. I’ve seen sentiments of ‘if you cannot sustain hope, then use spite instead.’ Is that enough? I don’t know.

I’ve tried to be productive. It helps with the depression and focuses the rage I feel brewing. My brain has been like Grand Central Station all week with how many trains of thought are running through it. Making art is one of the only ways I have to combat all of this. I want to make art that helps me get through this, and if that art can help even one other person, then I must make it. I have a voice, and I will use it to tell stories about love, community, stepping into your own power, fighting injustice no matter how impossible it feels, and persevering through adversity.

That doesn’t solve a more immediate issue, however. Reckoning with the fact that I will likely have to get a job for the first time in nearly a decade is hard. I had a hard time keeping a customer service job and I couldn’t get anything else despite my best efforts. My heart rate picks up at the idea of getting a job, my breathing shortens at the idea of having to go back to the grind. It’s terrifying. I don’t want to do this. I want to cry just thinking about it. My experience in work places has been so overwhelmingly negative that it’s driven me to agoraphobia. But we need a second, stable income. Something to supplement the sometimes inconsistent work my husband gets. This is unsustainable and too much stress for him. I must find it in myself to overcome my fear.

In the meantime, I have been making progress on my TBR. I’m over halfway through Bleach. My notes are getting lengthy as I’m hurtling towards the end of the Arrancar saga. This series has given me a lot to chew on in its themes and characters. I like its melancholy atmosphere, how internally focused the character writing is. The conflicts seem to be external representatives of the internal tribulations of the one fighting. It’s a nice layer to your usual big dumb anime fight scenes, which are admittedly beautiful in Kubo’s art style.

The last couple chapters of Spy x Family have given me a lot to think about too. While I think there are valid criticisms of the series and its writing choices, I do enjoy it and am invested in seeing how the premise develops towards eventual resolution. Twilight, the main character, is forced into the role of caring for a child. Shenanigans do ensure, but also the predictable yet profound realizations of what that responsibility entails. How caring for a child can force one to look back on their own childhood and adjust their priorities. Being a parent is a lot of work, especially to a child as precocious as Anya. The conviction of wanting to keep war from breaking out, to punish those who would hurl the citizenry into poverty and despair for their own ends, or want the next generation to not experience the horrors of war isn’t enough. Even the actions in service of that goal don’t have immediate effects on the children living in front of you, in your care even. Children who grow up too fast are robbed of something difficult to articulate. It’s a severance of self, of trying to wear a coat too large and heavy to move properly in. Meditating on that and the truly fucked dynamics going on in another family in that series (and how triggering the cold silence around their dinner table is for me) has taken up more of my time than I want to admit.

I finished A Hero of France by Alan Furst. I did not go in with any expectations and walked away with very little. I didn’t care about the main character nor like him much. The other characters were pretty flat, honestly. But I don’t think that was the point. If I’m interpreting the story ‘correctly’, the circumstances are the story. Everything revolves around the French Resistance efforts and the day to day of living under the occupation. It captured the resigned mundanity of it all. Espionage and intelligence work–according to most actual spies–is a lot more boring than James Bond would have us believe. It’s a lot of paperwork, a lot of listening and data analysis, requires excellent communication skills. ‘Knowledge is power’, after all, and intelligence is a game of reactions. I liked how this story depicts the occupation. I like how it shows the curfews, the increased police presence, the rationing and black market, black out curtains, air raid sirens, watching the Allied bomber squadrons overhead, listening to the BBC radio broadcasts from the Free French in England, how prized bicycles are. I like seeing the difficult judgment calls of who to trust, the consequences of those choices, how the combination of observation, experience, instinct and information coalesce into how those decisions are made. I like seeing the strange mix of small acts of defiance in solidarity with the Resistance on behalf of the French countered by the acts of survival of those who fall in line with the occupation government. I like how most of the Resistance’s efforts here were forging papers, stashing people, serving as escorts, letting people borrow trucks or dropping off messages. That’s the on-the-ground work all of us can do. If there’s one thing that baffled me into laughing, it’s that the author has maps of Paris, knows the street names and public transport, but still uses feet, miles, and pounds as units of measure over metric units.

I had to return my eldest’s overdue library book on Tuesday and snooped through the ‘new’ section near the check out. I picked up ‘House of Open Wounds’ by Adrian Tchaikovsky on a whim. His work is recommended across BookTube, from Dogs of War to Echoes of the Fall. I recognized the name, the premise grabbed me and the covers are beautiful. It wasn’t until I mentioned picking it up and adding it to my TBR this month that I learned it’s Book Two in the trilogy that’s wrapping up soon. I was furious for the next day. On top of everything else on my mind, the damn book had ZERO indication it was part of a series. Not on the spine, the blurb, the inner pages, nothing. I had to go back to the library and exchange it for City of Last Chances. And the worst part was that I saw on other series of his that they ARE clearly labeled. My impromptu TBR add became a whole ordeal.

I’ve had less time in front of my whiteboard than I wanted. I’ll survive, but it doesn’t help my cluttered, stressed brain. I did get some writing done, though. Without going into spoilers, I had some really strong ideas and frankly a stroke of brilliance that carried me for a few days. It happens sometimes. I’m more of a gardener than an architect as far as style goes, so those spur of the moment, lightning in a bottle turns of phrase or convergence of ideas are so magical. We’ll see if it holds up on re-reads or I’ll experience a hangover after being drunk on sublime mediocrity.

Unfortunately, I’ve had yet another crisis of faith in my own skill. This happens regularly. Constantly, it seems. The crushing weight of knowing how ambitious my plans are and how easy they are to completely fuck are a couple pieces of the imposter syndrome puzzle. Having a history of chronic anxiety and overthinking will do that. I went into this project hoping I could accomplish multiple character arcs and show how these people are living their lives off page without going into their individual perspectives. While I’ve wavered before, I’ve tried my best to stay the course. I want Adelaide to be a major (if reactive) player in her own story, to somehow balance the many moving parts of political conflict going on outside her office with the cataclysmic personal upheaval leading to her dramatic shift. I want it to feel like the world is so big out there, that all these big things are affecting and weighing on her while she is one woman doing her best, that this should be a small-scale personal conflict between two people but the walls are closing in from all sides. It’s just…so hard. How many times have I asked myself if it would be easier to switch perspectives for this chapter or if I understand the characters well enough to show that they’re making decisions, introspecting, changing, when Adelaide as the perspective character isn’t in the room? So many.

So I’ve come to a tentative compromise. My story is broken down into two and a half longer arcs. The first from mostly her perspective and the second mostly from O, the other protagonist’s. These arcs are further broken down into installments, like acts in a play. But between these volumes, I’m going to write chapters from the perspectives of characters that aren’t Adelaide or O. Even if they don’t end up as part of the final product, it will serve multiple purposes. 1) It will help cement how the inherent unreliability of the narrator works and how narrow of a focus the main narrator has. 2) It will make the world feel more lived in, as Adelaide is one woman and--despite being telepathic--cannot follow everyone's journey. 3) It will create a sense of dramatic irony in the reader. 4) It will help develop and push characters forward on their individual arcs without having to be in the same room as Adelaide. Even though it will be a giant pain in my ass, I think it will be good exercise for my brain.

If that’s the case, however, I am going to be spending A LOT of time in front of my whiteboard in the next week. Another drawback of gardening is the ‘make shit up as you go and then go back and make it look like it was on purpose’ of it all. I am going to need a lot more worldbuilding information. History and culture mainly, but culture is such a huge and complex beast. Politics, religion, social values, education, history, trends that become mainstays, fashion, art, slang, geography, industry, immigration patterns, etc., they all ebb and flow and intermingle. All the components are interdependent. I have a lot of basics already. I needed them before I jumped in, obviously. It’s become clear that I need a lot more in the last couple weeks. I’m going to be hitting the books, taking a lot of notes and refining ideas for a good while yet.

YouTube has given me some good fucking food, which I always appreciate. Michael Beveraggi, bennshouts, Steven in Stereo, and Chats and Reacts have all released their reactions to Halsey’s new album ‘The Great Impersonator’, which I watched. I know reaction content is controversial. I’m aware of the criticisms and I agree with some of them. When I watch reactors do music, shows, or movies, I watch it for the reactors, their personalities, their insight, their expressions, all of the things that come with sharing something you like with a friend–in the most non-parasocial way I can possibly say that. For the record, GOT Games is my favorite reactor of anything, followed closely by Danny Motta. Moreover, the album is viscerally vulnerable and musically dense, a work of performance art as much as a treat for the ears. Sharing the feelings I have about it with others helps spread the sting a little thinner.

A couple of essayists I watch have done pieces on Tim Burton. Broey Deschanel talked about him as an auteur, as she does, and Lola Sebastian did a full on autopsy of his Sweeney Todd adaptation, both of which are great. In honor of Spooky Season and to add to the discourse surrounding Burton’s successes and failures as an artist, Girl on Film released her video “Has Tim Burton Really Lost His Magic?”. Her analysis focuses mainly on horror and feminist films (and the intersection of the two). I’ve enjoyed everything of hers I’ve seen, but this installment I think adds to the discourse in a much needed way as well as being just good fucking food.

Dr. Philip Chase over at The Best of Fantasy released the next installment in his One Piece review series, “English Professor’s Thoughts on the Marineford and Post-War Arcs”. Obviously I know Dr. Chase is a good writer, his trilogy of fantasy novels are known for their prose. Hearing him describe his experience with this stretch of the story was emotional for me in a sympathetic sense, in that I understood how heavy the material is and could see how emotional it made him, but also sent me back to how I felt watching these episodes for the first time. I went into One Piece spoiled. I knew what islands the crew visits, the bad guys they beat up, the major players they meet along the way, the big twists, surprise appearances, and I knew all the memes. It didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the story, not in any meaningful way. I still felt all the things in the places I was supposed to feel them. It hit a little different this time, which is probably why I watch stuff like this. I am catching up on the anime too. I want to watch the Fan Letter special and get it off my list while the anime is on temporary hiatus.

I watched Mother’s Basement put another installment in their “What’s in an OP?” series with the Dan Da Dan opening song “Otonoke”, and absolute banger, by the way. As if I need another reason to like this series. I watch Insider’s “How Real is it?” series, and even if I’m not a fan of all their experts, I still learn something every time I do. This week they had a former Army DI talking about boot camps scenes in films/TV. Series like these are so cool for laymen like me, same as WIRED’s Tech Support series. Having an expert or professional in any number of fields review scenes or answer questions from the public are so insightful for incessantly curious people like me. Nerd Level Rosing hosted the first session of BookTube DnD, which was a lot of fun. I was watching live and had a good time. The replay is available on his channel.

I had someone recommend Super Eyepatch Wolf’s work to me, Zach the Storytelling Dragon, and I watched a few of his videos this week. One on each of the Big Three. We agree on some points, disagree on others. I got more out of Naruto and Bleach than SEW has, I’ll say that. He isn’t wrong as art is subjective and opinions on it are too, and it is worth pointing out that he took accountability for his previous mistakes in discussing Bleach in particular. I just find his analysis of both Bleach and Naruto to be fairly surface level and focusing too heavily on their faults. I think he misses some of what’s there because he’s not reading between the lines, even if I think plenty of his criticism is warranted. I would be happy to elaborate if prompted.

Trope Anatomy posted a video essay called “Why Women in Fiction Sacrifice Their Hair” a few days ago. The thesis of that comes down to ‘while it’s true that characters of all genders cut their hair in stories, there’s a pattern of female characters who do it as a form of sacrifice’. He points out instances of transformation in identity or of selfless acts on behalf of a loved one. This does exist, I’m not saying he’s wrong. I just wish he had done some more research. Someone who never disappoints with their research is Unnatural History Channel, who released an amazing resource called “Spec Evo long: How to Build a Herbivore”. It discusses the ecological role herbivores play, their impact, their digestive morphology, their evolutionary strategies, how our biases are shaped by exposure, and all sorts of other delicious points for animal nerds and speculative biology enthusiasts alike. I rarely put a video in my ‘Liked’ folder, but I did that one.

My mind has been a busy place. I have so many things going on, but I’m doing my best in this rock hurtling through space. Stay safe out there.

#spilled thoughts #booklr #digital diary #writeblr #writing

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thatinsufferablenerd · 8 months ago

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Post Spooky Update

The weather is slowly cooling off here finally. Spooky Season is over and another year has gone by without reading any scary books or movies like I say I’m gonna do every year. I’ve been enjoying all the festive content in my different social media feeds instead. Horror book recs from BookTube, video essays that analyze aspects of the horror genre, discussions of films or anime that set the mood. I probably should be more embarrassed of how much YouTube I watch, but seeing as I’m a housewife with a passion for learning and too many interests to succinctly sum up, I’m not going to lose too much sleep over it.

I wish I did have some mood appropriate reads to tell you about. I love books, I love storytelling, I love getting lost in a good book, but my ability to actually get into–let alone through–books has atrophied so much I’ve concluded it’s a Me ProblemTM. When I was young, in elementary and middle school, I could read a book a day. I DID for a long time, exchanging the one I just finished for something new during lunch. And then I got older. I got into movies and writing, I had a job, then I had longer hours, then I had kids that I stayed home with. The library was too far to walk to, we didn’t have money to buy books, and I was too tired to read them anyway. It was easier to focus on honing my craft of writing because it was simpler to hit the backspace button when a toddler smacked my keyboard than risk a library book.

And I regret that. The act of consuming story and pure, distilled joy I get from them is a core part of who I am. If I didn’t love reading, I would never have developed a love for writing. If I didn’t love the stories and characters I read in books, I would never have discovered the love I have for analyzing and discussing them. I would never have learned about the relationship between literature and culture, that I love learning about historical context, the art of interpretation, or linguistics, things like that. Ever since I stopped reading piles of books or trade paperbacks of comics from the library, I’ve said to myself every few months “I miss reading”, “I want to get back into reading”.

It’s not like I haven’t read anything since I was nineteen. Of course I have. I read all five books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series in the span of a year. I read monthly releases of DC comics for years, picked up pulpy romance novels ‘just as a palate cleanser!’, I tried starting book clubs with friends, promises of ‘I won’t buy or borrow any books until I read the ones I have’. And then I’d get through a few chapters of whatever I picked up only to put it down for the last time. I’ve made some progress! I read A Song of Achilles and Circe by Madelline Miller, Skyward by Brandon Sanderson, I accidentally read the sequel to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter? In the last year. And I’ve gotten further in a lot of the books I’ve picked up than before. I’ve been reading manga more than anything the last few years. My Hero Academia, Spy x Family, My Dress-up Darling, Dungeon Meshi, Demon Slayer, One Piece, all stories I’ve enjoyed and have a lot to say about! I re-read the last six volumes of Demon Slayer a few weeks ago and wrote an entire comment section dissertation about it, the latest installment in a series that serves as the quiet void I shout into.

The first step for me was probably accepting that I’m never going to be able to read like I did in middle school. That’s okay, right? I might not have a JOB, but I am a grown-up with grown-up things to do. And it’s not like I’ve been sitting on my ass the whole time. I’ve learned so much, like how to actually form opinions, how to interpret text, how to analyze properly, how to do research, how to really write, among so many other things. Things I had to teach myself. I know, they say ‘the best writers are also prolific readers’. I believe that, I really do. I would never claim that I’m some genius writer and better than people who have gone to school for this or are so well-read that it improves their prose by default. What I am saying is that…I want to get there. I miss reading.

So, I set a small goal for myself. There are so many books out there that I want to read. And sure, my little local library has a limited catalog, and Libby has at least two weeks’ waits on everything, and I can’t afford to buy books brand new, but we can only work with what we have, not what we don’t. I’ve decided to read one contemporary book, one classic, and one (ish) manga a month. Sure, there are going to be some blurred lines here, but I think we’re all mature enough to handle that. I’m going to define ‘classics’ as anything more than a century old. Slaughterhouse Five is newer than that but it is taught as a classic and on my TBR, so maybe it will count as a classic for that month. Who knows? We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. And if the manga is long, say, more than three hundred chapters, then I might split it into two months.

With that being said, my picks for November are: A Hero of France by Alan Furst, Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf, and for the manga, Bleach.

My local library had a book sale recently. I bought a hundred and thirty books for eighty-five dollars in two trips. Not all of them are novels! I’m very proud of the memoirs and other non-fiction books I got. But that should keep me occupied for a good while yet. Not to mention the books I already have. That Furst novel is one of the ones I picked up last year at the book sale. It’s historical fiction about an agent in the French Resistance. I like historical fiction, I think it’s a versatile genre for both readers and writers. I read about half of a book called Lion’s Blood that was alternate US History last year that I’m gonna have to go back to because I STILL think about it. Anyway, that Furst novel. I’m about halfway through and I’m going to finish it. I’m invested enough to see it through, and I’m enjoying the experience. When I finish it and have had some time to collect my thoughts, you’ll be hearing them.

While at that book sale, my almost nine-year-old became infatuated with a book. He liked the cover and title so much that he wanted me to buy it for him. I told him, “Buddy, this book would be a tough read for a grown-up.” He said he would figure it out, that he would ask for help when he needed it. The book was a dollar, so I bought it. I can’t say I’ve ever read Clive Cussler, but if I can help him understand it, I can be persuaded to read dry historical fiction. I know enough about WWII to explain what’s going on to him. It’s not on my list to get done by the end of November, but it is a high priority read.

I picked Beowulf (and this translation) specifically because A) I know how influential Beowulf is on western storytelling, B) I’m a fan of Tolkien as a writer as well as his love of and gift for languages, C) I watched Monstrum’s episode on Grendel’s Mother and the Cardinal West YouTube documentary on Tolkien in the last few months, both of which I enjoyed a lot, and finally D) I’m a fan of Dr. Chase from The Best of Fantasy. My friend was kind enough to surprise me with a shiny new copy. It’s probably going to be a difficult read for me. I plan on taking notes and going slow to really digest it. I’m also trying to talk my mom into a buddy read, but we’ll see how the cookie actually crumbles with that one.

Now, for how I landed on Bleach. I watched the entirety of Naruto and Shippuden (yes, even the filler) back in 2020, 2021, and then binged One Piece in 2023 into the early part of this year. So, of course, the insufferable nerd in me said ‘I want to be able to say I’ve seen the Big Three’. So I watched the anime. I wasn’t that impressed with it. Yes, certain characters stayed in my brain, yes I LOVE the Thousand Year Blood War (I’m currently behind), but it didn’t really hit me like Naruto and One Piece did. I thought the passion of the fandom might get me more into it. I tried art, lore videos, discussion, analysis, and that did help! But Bleach just…kinda fell by the wayside for me. A lot of fans say the anime isn’t as good as the manga, but it’s a long series. I didn’t have the time or energy to commit, especially when I had other series I was actually into to follow. I do follow One Piece, Spy x Family, and My Dress-up Darling on release. I followed MHA for more than three years week to week, only binging the last hundred or so chapters last month after its conclusion.

And then AJ dropped his video titled ‘The Hollow Melancholy of Bleach’. It brings up some of the feelings I had watching the Fullbringer Arc and the Thousand Year Blood War and expresses something the anime just…didn’t capture for me. But that video and Geoff Thew from Mother’s Basement’s video on Bleach finally sold me. It took me a couple weeks, according to the notes I’ve been taking I started on October fourteenth.

The manga is fantastic. I tried for thirty chapters a day and haven’t been as consistent as I’d like, but I’m in the two-sixties now. The art is beautiful, the character writing is great, the fights are intense, the vibes immaculate and the emotions are SO deep, so complex and resonant. I am so glad I jumped in, and I’m going to continue to take notes as I go.

Reading isn’t the only thing I do, obviously. My first love will always be writing. I took a bit of a break cough-BookTube-cough, but picking it back up is always a joy. I’ll probably be spending some time in front of my white board in the near future working out some world building details that were not super relevant till now. I watched Jake over at Nerd Level Rising talk to Christopher Ruocchio and was sent into a PANIC over idiolects and regional dialect features, which I’ve been doing all along, just not enough? I guess? I looked everything over and did some light edits, took some notes to make things more consistent. Culture is a complex web, all interconnected and inseparable from the individual parts. Building them is hard work, a job that never seems to end, even if the document of notes is for me, not the hypothetical reader.

You could say that I was too heavily influenced by long form stories with extended casts, because even though I’m closing in on a hundred and seventy thousand words, I’m in part two of…five? Maybe? In epic fantasy, there are so many moving parts to keep track of at any given moment aside from the nuts and bolts of prose and pacing. I worry all the time that everything I have is trash, and even if it isn’t, it would never get picked up by a trad publisher and I won’t be able to afford self-publishing. I’ve had some other sets of eyes on my prologue as alpha readers. Positive, encouraging feedback that I’m grateful for! It’s not the same thing as having someone who’s familiar with the story, who knows where my head is at, where I’m going. I don’t write to publish, I do it because I love it. But I’ve been writing for twenty years, and actively working to get better at it for fifteen of them. There’s just nothing to show for it. Everything I’ve finished has ended up in an old computer’s recycle bin or in a literal paper shredder, with abandoned works in progress along the way. As terrifying as it is to expose yourself to the light, it’s impossible to soak in the warmth of sunlight in the dark.

I’m going back to the grindstone when I’m done here. I won’t give up.

Other than all the YouTube distractions and trying to rightfully earn the title of bibliophile, I’ve been trying to watch shows again. Just a few things. I watched Kaguya-sama: Love is War and loved it, enough to put the manga on my TBR. I finally got around to watching Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End with the same result. I watched Dungeon Meshi twice, read the manga front to back. What a story! I’ve been meaning to write an essay on it, but I can’t imagine having anything to say that hasn’t already been said. I watched Mob Psycho 100 and can’t express enough how much it resonated with me. For the first time, I watched Over the Garden Wall. The kerfluffle on Twitter over it being removed and restored to Hulu recently had me digging that up. Quality Culture did a great essay on that series last year which I highly recommend. My friends have been obsessed with the new Interview With the Vampire series, enough to read the books, so I watched three episodes of season one and liked it a lot. I’ll get around to it. I watched Steven Universe: Future, which I’ve been wanting to for a while. We watched the main series with our kids and enjoyed it, and I thought the sequel series built on the themes and story well.

And like everyone else in the anime community right now, I’m watching Dandadan. It’s GREAT. The animation, the sound design and OST, the character writing, the action, all of it is just stunning. It’s funny and got a lot of heart to it. Momo and Okarun are so cute. I haven’t watched the new set of episodes in the Thousand Year Blood War yet, but I’ll catch up in the next week or so. I’ve been impressed with this adaptation, especially with the old series not really pulling me in until its final episodes. Not only is it visually enrapturing, it really hits on the atmosphere and emotions; not just in service to the story but truly elevates the material.

With all the things I take in, it’s probably no surprise that there’s no less than five trains of thought going on at any given time. That video Tale Foundry did last week about Weird Tales and pulp fantasy, and this comment arguing that the fanfic community has stepped in to fill that niche? Yeah, I’m still thinking about it. Zoe Bee’s most recent drop about how metaphor influences the way we think and how that relates to politics? Of course I’m thinking about it! Not just about how it affects rhetoric but how it affects diction in prose, which is more my wheelhouse. Princess Weekes’ follow up to her ‘Tall, Dark and Racially Ambiguous’ essay surrounding casting Heathcliff gave me food for thought, and Jess of the Shire’s fantastic essay ‘Monstrosity & the Vampire’ did too. Tim over at Hello Future Me did a video about ‘Arcology: The City in the Image of Man’ and I’m still chewing on that one too. How could I not? The ideas presented there are FASCINATING, big picture questions about structuring society and the growing subgenre of solarpunk. Broey Deschanel and Final Girl Studios both doing amazing videos on The Substance? Of course I’m over here thinking about them! Final Girl Studios’ essay is called ‘The Simulacrum of Feminine Performance’, how could I not sit here and think about that, and what that is, and what that means?? And on top of all that, I opted into a DnD one shot in a couple weeks! Gonna need a character for that, one that’s PG…man, I’ve been busy!

#spilled thoughts #small talk #digital diary #book tumblr #booklr #writeblr

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