sorrowfulnow

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[OCs Cotton & Puppy]

wife sad? just sit on her lap <3

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Spicy vs Sweet vs Sour Splatfest

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SPLATFEST 2023

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A recurring theme in "books that will explain to you how you can write", lets call them 'educational' or 'instructional' is the intensity of vagueness that comes as a result of what can only really end up being defined as intuition.

These books are definitely not self-help style books, they aren't making grand sweeping statements about how you can fix your life, as they are very much in the game of trying to get you to understand elements of an artistic process - like books about how to draw for instance.

The issue being, most people know how to do the writer's equivalent of drawing a straight line or a circle, so these books focus on telling you how to construct things - akin to how a book on drawing will teach you how to do construction lines.

The flaw in this is, unlike sketching lines on paper, the composition of writing is highly flexible and doesn't really come about from how you construct a scene but rather how you imbibe meaning into it. It ends up being kind of like teaching an artist how to draw a box and then saying "and the way you orient your box in three dimensional space shall symbolise the mood of the scene." then being unable to explain why.

I genuinely think it is just because they are overthinking it.

It isn't that hard.

At the most basic level.

A story is a PLOT, and a PLOT is made up of EVENTS, which are themselves composed of ACTIONS. The PLOT is driven by a NEED, and the PLOT will be about fulfilling that NEED while dealing with OBSTACLES which prevent that fulfilment. Each EVENT is thus about a conflict between the desire to fulfil the NEED and an OBSTACLE standing in the way of that fulfilment.

The process of writing the story centres around SCENES which are moments in the story which describe the ACTIONS of an EVENT, either encountering or creating an OBSTACLE, dealing with or overcoming the OBSTACLE, or how the OBSTACLE is hindering the desire to fulfil the NEED. Between SCENES is EXPOSITION, which is summary text which expands on the PLOT between SCENES, and provides both link between different ACTIONS and EVENTS, and further context for how they are impacting the overall PLOT.

There are two major forms of PLOT, character driven and event driven (often called 'plot driven). Character driven plots follow the NEED of a character, event driven plots follow the NEED of an event.

After this basic shit, you learn like three act structure and the hero's journey, and whatever else but it's all extra framework about "how do I want it to be structured" rather than "how do I do it?" and slots in super easily based on personal preference.

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I have been thinking about the nature of my situation a lot lately, and the unfortunate reality of my mental illness is that 1) the only thing I truly want is to be more than a peripheral part in people's lives, and 2) without an act of god it is unlikely I will ever be anything more than a peripheral part in people's lives for an array of reasons that are too depressing to get into but one of which includes my depression.

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another thing I never see spoken about in regards to social anxiety and mental health is the concept of silence, I’ve kind of touched on it before, but a big thing with social anxieties is the compulsive need to never allow silence to happen.

A conversation that slows or stops, well it must be because you did something wrong.

If you don’t have people talking to you, it must be because they don’t like you, or they forgot about you.

Silence is dead space that needs to be filled.

This is why you talk on and on and on when you’re nervous. Why them not responding after a minute, or five, or ten, feels like you’re being rejected.

It is why when you haven’t talked to someone in a few days, that ends up a few weeks, then a few months, because that silence has become too loud to break - they must not want to talk to you.

It has taken a lot for me to become accepting of the fact that - if someone wants to talk to me they’ll talk to me, otherwise don’t worry about it.

And it takes a lot out of me to stick to that. But I try my best - silence is anxiety inducing, but if they want to talk they’ll talk.

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ever think about when a man gets rejected by a woman strangers will give them sympathy and say the woman was no good - the immediate reaction is always to assume the woman is at fault.

I dunno, always feels like hollow ego padding, rejection always gets treated like the worst thing that can happen to a man

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I'm autistic.

That makes me extremely hot.

I also have ADHD.

That makes me even hotter.

I'm also trans.

That makes me so unbelievably hot.

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the thing a lot of people don’t tell you about mental illnesses is that almost all of them come with compulsive behaviour, often something you don’t notice you’re doing. and a big one common to a lot of mental illnesses is compulsive self-sabotage.

it’s particularly common in social anxieties, and pops up a lot when you get a vibe you’ve done something wrong. like have you ever been in a situation where you say something and people don’t react to it how you’d expect and then you just keep going and going unable to stop?

yeah, compulsion. sometimes you start digging a grave and can’t help but keep going. sometimes your fuck up turns into an argument, one where you end up screaming at people you’re scared to lose but can’t stop yourself. compulsive self-sabotage.

I’ve lost so many friends and potential friends to dumb shit like this - not the screaming part, just the inability to stop doubling and tripling down on stuff I say in this weird eternal fear that once I stop talking they’ll forget I ever existed. so many incredible people gone

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Citrus

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this tracks with his MO tbh, given that his main schtick was pretending to know about medieval history and HEMA and then espousing reactionary opinions as if they're fact to an audience of kids who didn't know enough to recognise he was a grifter the entire time.

If anyone still respected anything this buffoon said, well here you go.

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The year has almost come to an end, 2022 is in its dying hours.

I have had a lot to think about this year, and begun a process of transmutation that cannot be revoked. In the wake of this new beginning, I have purged from myself a lot of evils and re-evaluated a lot of what I held as inerrant truths.

I have turned my soul outwards, and looking back at myself I have learned that five years is an eternity to spend picking at your own wounds and cultivating scar tissue. My fingers are calcified from the barbs I pressed into my body. Five years is an eternity to spend turning yourself into a tapestry of the grotesque, a monument to your own suffering and trauma.

Deep down I knew it was wrong to treat myself that way, but it took meeting new people for me to accept it. Most of what they told me I knew, but had refused to accept. Ignorance is a form of self harm, and it was my main form. Being pulled from that broke me in a thousand small ways that grew into tidal waves, the after effects of which I still feel.

Yet once you step across the threshold, there is no going back.

I did that early this year, and as much as it made me suffer, I could not go back. Five years is a eternity to spend living numb, and after that long feeling nothing even the smallest fragment of emotion can cause agony or ecstasy. That feeling is a trauma of its own, a trauma born out of deprivation, a trauma of realising your deprivation.

Yet once you step across the threshold, there is no going back.

So as hard a year as it has been for me, and as hard as the coming year will be for me, I have faith that this is the beginning of a great journey. I have faith that this is the beginning of a new era in my being. I have faith that this shall be the beginning of something beautiful.

Whatever my destiny is, it now lays at my feet.

The year to come shall be a great forge; I have an endless list of plans for it, and it will be existing to see what it produced.

2023 is on the verge of becoming.

May your world be spun of gold and majesty.

May you be as the spring rain, and the blooming flowers.

May you know love and happiness.

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once you cross the threshold, there is no coming back.

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Really beginning to prefer Tumblr to Twitter purely on the basis that when I say something like, for example:

We should feed every frame of Disney into AI art generators

Most people on Tumblr will immediately understand that I am not suggesting it as some sort of actual, workable long-term solution to the problem of independent artists' work being stolen

I am suggesting it as a goblin curse to make the lives of both the talentless artist-disrespecting AI art scumbags and the soulless corporate parasites at Disney very difficult and miserable, and people on Tumblr immediately get that

Posted the same thing to Twitter and I almost immediately got someone dissecting the tweet as "being indicative of how left-wing creatives will try to side with corporations when the subject of copyright comes up"

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addendum: if a woman asks you to let her in, definitely don't open the doors or windows. in fact, you should probably go check all of them are locked - particularly if you have them upstairs.

maybe draw the curtains or close the blinds just to be safe. but whatever you do, don't turn off the lights.

PSA: if you wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of a child crying, don't open your front door.

[sorrowfulnow]

PSA: if you wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of a child crying, don't open your front door.