lapislantern

[lapislantern]

how much sorrow can i take / blackbird on my shoulder?

[lapislantern]

my hot magnus archive take is that the broader fandom only likes Sasha bcus she wasn’t alive long enough to start disagreeing/arguing with Jon

[lapislantern]

Alexis Hanzen - "Sail Boats at Sea"

[lapislantern]

everyone talks about one-hit wonders, but no one seems to think about two-hit wonders. neon trees released “everybody talks” and “animals” and then fucked off forever. LMFAO released “party rock” and “sexy and i know it” and then apologized and left the radio. many such cases, all of which are deeply fascinating to me

[lapislantern]

I hired those crumbs to go in your bed

[lapislantern]

There was a lot of stuff I was supposed to do today, but instead I've made this:

[lapislantern]

Was staring at a piece of infrastructure, pondering on the strangeness that, as sturdy as it was, it required maintenance and eventually replacement. That everything was like this – except for biological constructs that could perpetuate themselves. But they mutate. So – what if we could build everything out of biology? Our sinks and bridges become immortal – yet destined to become eerie, shifted, unrecognizable things within thousands of years.

[lapislantern]

wise words

[lapislantern]

CELL DIVISION

my next comic will be debuting this year at the @shortboxcomicsfair on October 1st! BE THERE

[lapislantern]

just a guy out having a bang up time

[lapislantern]

[lapislantern]

Steve Harvey is the only host of anything that I can appreciate

[lapislantern]

People really underestimate the power of just telling someone you like them. romantically obviously but hell even just platonically too. You can admit you enjoy peoples presence it doesn’t have to be mind games it’s okay to just be sincere and true with your thoughts and intentions btw

[lapislantern]

[lapislantern]

some of the best writing advice I’ve ever received: always put the punch line at the end of the sentence.

it doesn’t have to be a “punch line” as in the end of a joke. It could be the part that punches you in the gut. The most exciting, juicy, shocking info goes at the end of the sentence. Two different examples that show the difference it makes:

doing it wrong:

She saw her brother’s dead body when she caught the smell of something rotting, thought it was coming from the fridge, and followed it into the kitchen.

doing it right:

Catching the smell of something rotten wafting from the kitchen—probably from the fridge, she thought—she followed the smell into the kitchen, and saw her brother’s dead body.

Periods are where you stop to process the sentence. Put the dead body at the start of the sentence and by the time you reach the end of the sentence, you’ve piled a whole kitchen and a weird fridge smell on top of it, and THEN you have to process the body, and it’s buried so much it barely has an impact. Put the dead body at the end, and it’s like an emotional exclamation point. Everything’s normal and then BAM, her brother’s dead.

This rule doesn’t just apply to sentences: structuring lists or paragraphs like this, by putting the important info at the end, increases their punch too. It’s why in tropes like Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking or Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick, the odd item out comes at the end of the list.

Subverting this rule can also be used to manipulate reader’s emotional reactions or tell them how shocking they SHOULD find a piece of information in the context of a story. For example, a more conventional sentence that follows this rule:

She opened the pantry door, looking for a jar of grape jelly, but the view of the shelves was blocked by a ghost.

Oh! There’s a ghost! That’s shocking! Probably the character in our sentence doesn’t even care about the jelly anymore because the spirit of a dead person has suddenly appeared inside her pantry, and that’s obviously a much higher priority. But, subvert the rule:

She opened the pantry door, found a ghost blocking her view of the shelves, and couldn’t see past it to where the grape jelly was supposed to be.

Because the ghost is in the middle of the sentence, it’s presented like it’s a mere shelf-blocking pest, and thus less important than the REAL goal of this sentence: the grape jelly. The ghost is diminished, and now you get the impression that the character is probably not too surprised by ghosts in her pantry. Maybe it lives there. Maybe she sees a dozen ghosts a day. In any case, it’s not a big deal. Even though both sentences convey the exact same information, they set up the reader to regard the presence of ghosts very differently in this story.

[lapislantern]

I never saw people say stuff like this enough when I was a teenager, so I’m saying it now.

I’m in my mid-thirties and I have never had sex. I’ve thought about it and could have had one or two opportunities if I put in more effort, but I always decided against it because I just wasn’t into it at the time.

I can safely say that I do not feel I have missed out on anything. I was perfectly capable, by myself, of learning about my own body and boundaries without anyone else there to muddy the waters. The immense pressure that was there in my teens/twenties to Have Sex Just Do It is basically gone. I’m vibing. I’ve got my routine by myself in bed that I enjoy, and that’s enough for me.

And in the unlikely event that I ever decide to have sex with someone in the future, I don’t feel at all like I’m lacking some essential Knowledge or Skill that would “make it good” for someone else. I fully expect to ask my partner out loud what they like and to receive an answer clearly communicated and to relax and have fun. And if it’s a disappointing experience, I’m fine with that too. It is what it is.

Sex is just not that big of a deal. I suspected it as a teen, and I’m more sure of it now. It’s fine to have it or not have it. It’s whatever.

[lapislantern]

a secret they dont tell you is that you dont need to have a set time and place for exercise. sure going to the gym is gonna give you a more dedicated workout but like if you're physically able to you can just jog on the spot while your food is cooking. brushing your teeth? do a couple of squats. sometimes i drop to the floor and plank until my arms hurt and then go on with my day. if you live a sedentary lifestyle its better than nothing.