amywrites256

[amywrites256]

music + stars

[amywrites256]

"haunting the narrative" is one of those phrases i wanna put up on a shelf. not all characters that are dead haunt the narrative. not all characters that are dead haunt the narrative. not all characters that haunt the narrative are dead.

[amywrites256]

ok last thing. but what people fundamentally need to get through their heads is the significance of gaza fundraisers not being the same as like mutual aid when you're helping someone get groceries, because it is a genocide. there is insane deliberate scarcity and prices are unmanageable, because there is nowhere nearly enough for everyone, so only people who can pay can eat. and what positioning individual fundraisers as the only course of action does is quite simply give a tiny percentage of random people whose fundraisers take off the ability to pay those prices while thousands of others can't. and every one of those thousands of people without a fundraiser is suffering through the same inconceivably horrific reality. it is giving a few completely desperate people out of hundreds of thousands a slightly more favorable position in a horrific war economy of imposed scarcity. and what grassroots community kitchens do is try to mitigate in some small way that inconceivable hierarchy of who can pay and who can't, by stretching ingredients as far as they can last to cook meals at large scale and give them out at no cost. and obviously people are still going to send money to their friends and families because this is hell what else are we supposed to do but please just think about that before promoting endless individual fundraisers as somehow the most ethical way to help

[amywrites256]

obsessed with mass market paperbacks. their pleasing rectangular proportions. how they fit badly in a hoodie pocket so you can drag them around everywhere with you like a temporary little buddy. the way they fit in your hand because they're MADE for human hands and not as bookshelf decoration. the way the pages feel when you riffle them gently with your thumb. How pristine and crisp they look when you get them and how creased and folded they look when you're done, even if you try to be nice to them. how that wear is okay, how that's correct actually, because they're made with the philosophy that books aren't meant to be PRETTY, they're meant to be read. that little ripple new ones get on the left side from where you hold them when you're reading, the way the ripple only goes as far as you've read, because u change stories by reading as they are changing you. how you can find thousands of these creased and folded and loved little dudes in every thrift store and used book shop and neighborhood library and you can instantly see the ones that someone carried around in a backpack for weeks or read to pieces or gave up on halfway through because they wear being read like fresh snow wears footprints. I love these poorly made, subpar little rectangles so much. truly the people's books.

[amywrites256]

Must a show be “good”? Is it not enough to be an alternative history that asks “what if instead of the Catholic-Protestant schism causing complications in Tudor England, it’s Animorphs?” that’s super horny on main, has the vibe of A Knight’s Tale, surprisingly pretty accurate historical costumes (with a few notable exceptions), and a bunch of British character actors acting absolutely wild?

[amywrites256]

Shoutout to My Lady Jane for having a young girl watch her sister get married to a horrible old man and her immediate solution was to murder the man. That’s absolutely the solution a baby sister would come to.

[amywrites256]

throwing children by Ross Gay

[amywrites256]

serving hunt

[amywrites256]

I simply cannot hate Taylor Swift, she is a fascinating psychological study to me. Being a never-satisfied, perpetually hungry striver who recklessly amasses riches and fame but perpetually yearns for love and who is somehow both extremely calculated and conniving and embarrassingly earnest and sincere is so compelling and Great American novel of her. She is Jay Gatsby to me.

[amywrites256]

i looooove seeing artists & writers proud of their work!!!!! i looooove captions & authors notes that say things like “i’m quite happy with this” “i love how this turned out” “i had so much fun making this”!!!!!! i loooooove when the act of creation is joyful & we take pride in what we make!!!!!!!!!!

[amywrites256]

- Dog star, burning through a vast black sky -

In memory of Laika: a greater friend to mankind than mankind was to her.

[amywrites256]

[amywrites256]

i think the problem with most widespread writing advice is that it's meant for writers just starting out and not meant to be applied to All Levels Of Writing.

like "show don't tell" is meant to encourage a new writer to think of different ways to describe something beside The Obvious and push them to observe how different uses of words can affect the reader. it does NOT mean "never outright state what is going on ever."

the common advice to cut out things that aren't essential to the story is to give new writers a better handle on how to PLOT a story-writers generally have to start out telling stories with Very Obvious conflicts and plot beats before they gain enough control of the form to tell more subtle ones. it doesn't mean characters talking to each other casually is evil.

"start in the middle" is a piece of advice meant for beginning writers who often have much bigger story ideas than they can feasibly put to paper. they don't have the writing experience to know which parts of their ideas they can execute well (or at all). starting in the middle then means writing the part with the most conflict and interesting things happening first (which is easier for a beginner) and, most importantly, gets them out of the planning stage and actually writing. it does not mean exposition is evil and your story should always start with something Big and Dramatic.

the thing with writing advice is that it's not one-size-fits-all, and writers should discard any advice that they've outgrown or doesn't serve them any more. the craft of storytelling is about learning how good stories are built and made from the smallest to the largest scale, not following a bunch of arbitrary rules to the letter.

[amywrites256]

[amywrites256]

You Marry a Mermaid

You marry a mermaid and the first month you spend on land, teaching her about citrus. Lemons. Limes. Grapefruits. But not grapes?

No, grapes are not citrus.

You love the way she says "grapefruit."

Grapes froot.

You marry a mermaid and the second month you spend under water, learning about coral, tides. How sound flows differently.

You marry a mermaid and you spend the third month on land teaching her about warm colors. Red, yellow. Pink. They exist underwater, of course, but they appear different here, this atmosphere (air) splitting the prism differently than that atmosphere (water).

You marry a mermaid and you spend the fourth month under water learning about heat. You have heat on land, of course, but here there are volcanoes, minuscule to what you think of as a volcano. She teaches you how to enjoy the liminal space between the scalding water and the icy ocean depths.

You marry a mermaid and you spend the fifth month on land teaching her about potatoes. She makes a delightful sound when she tries her first fried potato. The texture almost unbearably crispy. You spend three days on a boardwalk eating potatoes.

When she tries cheese...

...when she tries cheese... on potatoes...

The memory of that expression on her face is worth every jewel, every coin, ever to pass through your fingers, from birth to death.

You marry a mermaid and you spend the sixth month under water learning about the color blue. You think you know the color blue, you've seen the sky, you've seen birds.

You have seen art.

She cups your face with her webbed hands and stares at you with an intensity you did not realize could be experienced in mortal flesh and asks you to say Blue.

"Blooo."

She loves how you say the word, how your tongue

curls like a wave to craft the sound

like you were taught

on land

where speaking is so different

because your tongue is reacting to a throat full of air

not water filtered into something breathable

by magic that

you do not

understand.

You marry a mermaid.

You spend every other month on land, the opposing under water.

You live.

Happily beyond reason.

For years beyond memory.

You marry a mermaid.

"Blooo."

"Grapes fruit."

[amywrites256]

you know you’ve been writing too long when your fictional world feels more real than the one you’re living in

[amywrites256]

The Princess Bride is such a funny book to read after ONLY seeing the movie. Like Goldman made up a fake author from a fake country and proceeded to write the book as an abridged version of what the fake author wrote... and then he proceeds to add in notes to the "abridged version" mentioning all the boring world building stuff he skipped because it was boring.

Like shout out to William Goldman, man really did make an entire book that is just "the cool scenes you thought of in your head" and then made up a fake author to abridge so he doesn't have to connect them.

And it slaps