wisebrokenwallflower

[wisebrokenwallflower]

the author's barely disguised open wound splattered livid and filthy across everything they create

[wisebrokenwallflower]

I see posts going "Okay, I'll vote for Kamala, I GUESS IF I HAVE TO" and "omg if that's the best we can do I suppose I'll support it" and I'm like...

What do you people fucking WANT?

Let's run down how she's rated politically by some organizations that we vibe with, kay?

ACLU = 93% on civil liberties

AFL-CIO = 100% on trade unions

Human Rights Campaign = 100% on queer rights

League of Conservation Voters = 91% on environmentalism

NARAL = 100% on reproductive rights

NRA Fund = 7% on gun rights (we LIKE a low score on this one)

NEA = 100% on education

Planned Parenthoos = 100% on reproductive rights

In addition, GovTrack (which is a nonpartisan tracker) places her in the MOST politically left-leaning categories of Senators. So we've got a very liberal, woman of color who's spent her career trying to mitigate draconian tough-on-crime laws to benefit the accused and keep black people out of prison and decrease recidivism and that's somehow...just barely tolerable.

So I ask again...what is that you're dissatisfied with? Is it Palestine? as recently as March she was calling for a ceasefire and demanding aid to Gaza. Keep in mind she's pretty constrained as to what's possible to do in this situation.

Is it just that she was a prosecutor? That is an important job that needs to be done and we WANT people doing it who aren't rah-rah tough-on-crime Gestapo types, which she is not. We need prosecutors who are addressing the root causes of crime and looking for ways to help people escape the cycle, which she has done to the point that she was often called SOFT on crime.

So what is your objection here? Is it that her politics aren't 100% aligned with a bunch of Tumblr socialists? I got news for you...we Tumblr socialists DO NOT REPRESENT THE ELECTORATE. If such a candidate existed, they would not win.

Democrats struggle sometimes because our tent is large. Republicans just want you if you're a straight white man and preferably rich. There's room for a lot more types in the lefty side, but sadly that means a lot of room also for dissention among the ranks. This is how they get us. Let's not let them, huh? Just a suggestion.

[wisebrokenwallflower]

my teeth were perfectly designed to tear abd rend the soft white flesh of the gentle beast known as the mozzarella

[wisebrokenwallflower]

the racism towards south asians is so normalized, that we grow up as children without the language to understand that when the white kid starts talking to you in a shoddy 'indian' accent and expects you to laugh, that's wrong and intolerable.

when the non-brown person on tv is wearing a kurta with no pants and a bindi and is holding their hands in prayer for a religion and culture they cannot pronounce the name of, that's wrong and intolerable.

it's not funny to imitate my grandparents accents or make mockery of my dance or stamp sanskrit on your ass or passive aggresively insult my mother's food. we are more than your comedic relief, it workers, and doctors. I am angry, but more than that, I am tired.

when the brown children are told that they are attractive ‘for a brown person,’ that’s wrong and intolerable.

harrassing south asians and calling them horrible names and saying shitty things when south asians call out people (especially celebrities) who make fun of south asian culture or appropriate south asian culture doesn’t make you a better person. it makes you look like an ignorant asshole. poc, you are not immune to this behavior. don’t act like you’re holier than thou just because you’re a poc if you defend people for making fun of south asian culture.

I’m past anger. I just want you to apologize, learn, grow, and change. you are better than your mistakes, but you need to apologize and work to do better.

[wisebrokenwallflower]

some notes on POV

I wanted to type up a little rundown of quick n dirty writing tips based on things I see a lot in fic/ amateur original manuscripts, and, uh, it turned out that they all revolved around POV. Nailing point of view in fiction writing is both crucial and one of the least intuitive building blocks of writing to learn: an understanding of POV has been the only useful thing i took from my college creative writing classes, and god knows how long I’d have stumbled along without it otherwise.

So! I am saving you, baby writer, the trouble of slogging through a miserable writing class with a professor who’s bitter as FUCK that genre fiction sells better than his “sad white man drinking” lit fic novels. Here are some assorted writing tips/ common mistakes and how to fix them, as relating to POV:

(this turned into a WALL OF TEXT so i will be using gifs to break it up)

> “I watched the ship tilt” “he saw the sky darken” “she noticed flowers growing on the rusted gate.” no. If the character who felt/saw/noticed etc is your POV character, whether in first or third, then this is called filtering and it takes the reader out of the story by subtly reminding them of the separation between the POV character and themselves. in most styles of writing, this is bad, not to mention it unnecessarily complicates your prose. try again: “the ship tilted.” “the sky darkened.” “flowers grew on the rusted gate.” Readers will instinctively understand that the POV character is witnessing the story happen, they don’t need to be told it.

I’m not telling you to never refer to your character “watching” something, of course: “I watched the birds dart around for hours,” isn’t filtering because watching is a notable activity, here, rather than an unnecessary obfuscation of the “real” thing happening. But understand how phrasing can jar readers momentarily apart from the character viewpoint, and use it with intention.

> Close Third Person POV still requires you to be mindful of your POV character. this is a rookie mistake i see allllllll the time. “Josh cried stupid tears at the beautiful display by the dancers,” is a sentence in Josh’s POV. “Stupid” tells us how he feels about the tears, “beautiful” tells us how he feels about the display. ok. all good so far. BUT.

“Josh cried stupid tears at the beautiful display by the dancers. It was everything he’d wanted from this production, from the lighting to the costumes to the exquisite choreography. Martha had to suppress a fond smile at his reaction; he was always so sweetly emotional after the curtain fell.”

Do you see what’s wrong with this paragraph? The first two sentences are Josh’s POV, and then the third one suddenly becomes Martha’s. A lot of amateur writers don’t even realize they’re doing this, which in its most egregious form is called “head-hopping,” but it’s disorienting and distracting for the reader, and makes it harder to connect with a single character. In multi-person close 3rd POV story, the POV should remain the same for an entire chapter (or at least, for an entire scene/ segment,) and change only between them. If you’re new to POV wrangling, watch your adjectives/ interiority (we’ll get to that in a second) and think “which character am I using as a lens right now, and am I being consistent" every once in a while until you get the hang of it.

> Related: let’s talk about interiority. Interiority is a more sophisticated way of thinking of a character’s “internal narration,” IE bits of prose whose job is not to advance the plot, set tone, or describe anything, (although it CAN do any of those things as well, and good prose will multitask) but to give us a specific sense of the character’s internal life, including backstory, likes, dislikes, fears, wants, and personality. In the above example paragraph, the middle sentence “It was everything he’d wanted from this production, from the lighting to the costumes to the exquisite choreography” Is interiority for Josh. It tells us that not only did he love the show, he’s very familiar with this art form and thus had expectations going in; likewise, listing the technical components is a way of emphasizing his enthusiasm while pointing out that it’s informed, implying that Josh himself is intellectually breaking down the performance even in appreciation.

“That’s a lot for a throwaway sentence you made up for an example.” Well, yeah, a little interiority goes a long way. Interiority is what creates the closeness we have to POV characters, the reason we understand them better than the non-POV characters they interact with. It’s particularly key in the first couple chapters of an original work, when we need to be sold on the character and understand the context they operate in.

If readers are having trouble connecting to or understanding the motivations of your character, you might need more interiority; if your story’s plot is agonizingly slow-moving (and you don’t want it to be) or your character is coming off as melodramatic, you might need less. It’s not something you should necessarily worry about; your amount of interiority in a WIP is probably fine, but being able to recognize it for what it is will help you be more mindful when you edit.

(Fanfic as a medium revels in interiority: that’s how you get 10k fics where nothing happens but two characters lying in bed talking and having Feelings. Or coffeeshop AUs that have literally no plot to speak of but are 100k+ long.)

> try not to describe the facial expression of a POV character, even in third person. rather like filtering, it turns us into a spectator of the character when they’re supposed to be our vessel, and since it’s *their* POV, there should be other ways available to communicate their emotion/ reactions. There are ways of circumventing this, (the example sentence where “Martha had to suppress a fond smile” is an example) where their expression is tied up in a physical action, or something done very deliberately by the character and therefore becomes something they would note to themselves, but generally, get rid of “[pov character’s] eye’s widened” and “[pov character] smiled.”

so that’s what i got! go forth and write with beautifully deliberate use of POV.

[wisebrokenwallflower]

I think midnight is considered to be the witching hour. but I’ve always felt that magic is the strongest at 4am. it’s the precipice where the sun meets the moon and much of the working world has been asleep for hours but there are the specific few who are so so alive and fiery and brimming with energy. I’ve been scraping the edges of my soul for so long, and I often can see the demons creeping in at 4am. right now, I fear their presence in the corners of my vision. but I think one day I will sit on the couch with them and we will drink tea and I’ll ask them, tell me a story. what are you afraid of? and I hope by then I will be able to tuck them in blankets and tell them stay as long as you need. you don’t need to be afraid here.

[wisebrokenwallflower]

[Image description: poem by wisebrokenwallflower that says: your rainbows are evidence of a crime scene, they are streaming down your face, the color of your blood spilled across this floor. how dare you rip apart these children, and make them feel like they don’t deserve to exist anymore? end image description]

[wisebrokenwallflower]

I have learned not to expect other people to fill the places scooped out of my skin

they will heal on their own with time

[wisebrokenwallflower]

I am a(n):

⚪ Male

⚪ Female

🔘 Writer

Looking for

⚪ Boyfriend

⚪ Girlfriend

🔘 An incredibly specific word that I can't remember

[wisebrokenwallflower]

One of the best writing tips I’ve encountered on this site is, when writing scenes with a lot of dialogue, to write said dialogue with no action until you’re done with the scene. Once the dialogue is all written, go back and add actions, details, dialogue tags, etc. it’s super helpful because it helps you ground yourself in two separate things - a good speaking flow and keeping track of what the characters are doing as they talk.

1000/10 would recommend

[wisebrokenwallflower]

everything in this house is rotting.

the fruit are going dark, oozing juices, flesh breaking at the slightest pressure.

the churros are fuzzy, a soft wispy sugar encrusted layer on the sweets.

the plant is gray, leaves hanging limply over the sides of the pot, the fight gone from its body.

the people, moving like ghosts through the house, clattering cupboards the only reminder of their presence.

[wisebrokenwallflower]

Give your characters traits that the reader has to pick up on, don’t announce them

Let me realize that Person A is a hugger after three chapters of them hugging folks they haven’t seen in a hot second, and casually putting their arm around their friends. Don’t introduce that fact to me by Person A saying “just so you know, I’m a hugger!”

Let me realize that Person B gets excited easily when they clap and bounce on the balls of their feet at really good news, then also for just good news, then just average news.

Make a character’s traits completely unlabeled to the character themselves. “You’re an old soul, aren’t you?” Shouldn’t be answered with “you know it.” It should be answered with “huh, I guess you could put it that way. Havent heard that phrase since X.”

[wisebrokenwallflower]

i.

I don’t know when the emptiness took root in my stomach and black roses bloomed in my lungs

ii.

I want to be scary and intimidating but also soft and friendly and loving and smart but say weird and kind of stupid things and write well and live well and love well

iii.

I can’t breathe anymore

[wisebrokenwallflower]

quick writing tip of the day

maybe it isn’t what happens that’s wrong in your scene, but why it happens. if a scene isn’t quite working, a good first step is to analyze what internal elements brought your characters to this point. the fix might be as easy as changing one line of internal dialogue.

[wisebrokenwallflower]

why is sharing clothes so intimate like.. bro…. are you cold… here…. borrow my sweatshirt… it smells like the brand of washing powder i use…. a little glimpse into the oddly private domesticity of my own life bro…. its still warm from where i knotted it around my waist (i dont feel the cold)… here bro… take it…

[wisebrokenwallflower]

why would i netflix and chill when i can ao3 and sin

[wisebrokenwallflower]

sometimes I forget that it is not normal to be intensely self-loathing