#''oh no i meant way worse than that''

[keeps-ache]

awkward way to have a convo but okay

[plain inks below cut]

[lizhly-writes]

hey you know what completely different au of my own fucking original work my brain has occupied itself with now?

au where my girlboss female lead trips back in time and wakes up at age 16 and accidentally gets the interest of her villain fiance because her 10 extra years of life experience made her wayyyy less hostile and wayyy less likely to start a fight with him. it confuses him so much. what's jiang mingxi without constant anger and the desire to punch someone in the face. he doesn't know what to do with this. they have a sparring match for class that DOESN'T devolve into insults and clawing at each other and it throws him into shellshock.

[quietwingsinthesky]

I feel like much has been made about the fact that, if left unattended, Michael will put Adam on the pedestal God previously occupied and try to love him the same way, which makes things Worse for both of them. And not about Lucifer doing the same thing to Sam.

[pynkhues]

Oooh I’d absolutely love to listen if you’d ever want to share your experience with the differences in male and women writers 👀🤍

(x)

Hahaha, mm, look, I should disclaimer this with the fact that a lot of the men and women I spoke to at the writers centre weren't necessarily writers so much as they wanted to be writers?

The writers centre I worked at was a non-profit arts support service, so we were separate from the authors guild / union, but basically the organisation they'd refer people onto a lot for anything from people wanting to do creative writing workshops and masterclasses to people needing advice on preparing their novel manuscript for submission to legal advice on publishing contracts or even just connections to bookstores. It was a real mix of stuff, and our clientele ranged from absolute beginners and hobbyists to probably some of the most famous Australian authors working. I'd say most of the membership though was early career writers who had probably had a couple of short stories published, and were hoping to get a novel out.

I worked there for five and a half years and it really burnt me out. It was a pretty gruelling job, the pay was shit, and while a lot of people calling up were lovely, a lot were calling either to vent about rejection or were in a crisis mode usually because they'd just been preyed on by self-publishers and vanity presses and were now stuck in contracts that would financially ruin them.

But yes, haha, in my experience of working there and talking to writers literally all day, every day, from across the spectrum of experience:

Men will never sign up as a member (ergo pay their dues), donate or support the Centre, but WILL take advantage of the free advice line. I think we worked out at one point 92% of our paying members were women, yet I'd say over half the calls I took during the day were men.

Men consistently think they've written a hit. Quotes I've never forgotten include "This'll be bigger than Dan Brown and Robert Ludlum combined", "Now, is it you I should talk to when the bidding war starts?" and, my personal favourite: "I've written the greatest book since Federation."

They WILL send you their manuscript even though you are very clear that you do not read manuscripts at the centre. We are eight staff, we have 4k members, it is not possible.

Sometimes! Those manuscripts they send you will have capital I Images on the covers of them to 'catch your eye'. The worst one I ever saw was a woman stark naked spread eagle with a swastika photoshopped over her vagina.

Men do not think workshops will help them. They know enough and if you suggest a workshop on, say, writing fight scenes, or preparing your manuscript for publication, they will get audibly annoyed at you and usually wrap up the conversation.

Men will call to ask you why their self-published book isn't selling on Amazon like it's your fault.

Men will call to ask you why their traditionally published book isn't selling anywhere like it's your fault (I don't know, man! Probably because publishers have no marketing budgets anymore!)

Men are Never Wrong and also Always the Victim, which I guess is basically what you'd expect, haha.

[defender-of-jouvente]

Hey uh while Sif is helping Mira, have you seen Bonnie in while? Because something weird is happening.

I.... Haven't, no.

Crab, are they okay? What's going on? Everyone is- Is it the stress? I know we're close, but....

I'llllll go see if I can find them.

[He slips his phone into his pocket, trotting off at a brisk pace.]

[He will not find them. Not yet. Not now.]

[We were not invited to this particular game. We shouldn't interrupt.]

[bisexualmaedhros]

transfem furries hornyposting online about the relatively niche/"out there" things they're into have inadvertently helped me accept myself more than the body positivity movement of the 2010s ever did

[unproduciblesmackdown]

truly something that, amidst facing / going through a dramatic Life Change ft. unavoidable emotional effects of that, there are instances where i can't conceal any & all degrees of being distressed / upset, & repeatedly getting "it's hard for me too" as a Direct Response to that: really something & a half how the asserted theoretical Sympathy of [i feel similarly!] is invoked so as to, oh you know, preclude sympathetic Treatment. such as that what would be More sympathetic in these instances would be to say Nothing, "if there's nothing but dismissal / making it first & foremost about someone else's feelings to say, don't say it at all" style

[thethingything]

we are now awake way too late because we dissociated for a while after realising yesterday was the anniversary of a specific traumatic event, and then we had to make some phone calls to try and get an appointment because the symptoms we've got are apparently a lot more concerning than we realised and I left the most concerning ones out of the last post because they're kinda gross but like, I'm almost certain it's an ear infection because I don't know what the fuck else it could be, and unfortunately it's also in both fucking ears instead of just one

[ourceliumnetwork]

it is not slacking off to write or create it is not slacking off to do things that are fun i am not slacking off or procrastinating right now i'm allowed to do things i enjoy doing for fun including playing games and writing and such

[caffeinatedopossum]

Adults stop telling kids how much "adulthood sucks" challenge. You might be jealous and nostalgic but you never know which one of those kids *already* has an awful life and can't stand the thought of things getting any worse

Btw, if you are that kid, it doesn't get worse. Adulthood actually gets much better, don't let assholes scare you

[keebwee]

high school the home of hypocrisy

[irregodless]

the answer is yeah winston probably deserved all that but not everyone else

[love-my-self23333]

What are we going to do. It’s so much worse than we realize. I don’t think the average person, including myself, understands the extent of what we’ve done to this planet and all it’s inhabitants. I’m trying so hard not to lose hope but I just don’t see a light at the end of this tunnel.

I’m not saying that those working in conservation and sustainability, those actively working to change policies that effect the environment, those living as close to a low-waste lifestyle as they can with their position in this stupid, broken system aren’t making a difference and should give up. It’s imperative that we do not give up.

But I also fear that, this is such a widespread, deeply interconnected global crisis, that we as a species collectively will be not able to create the kind of unanimous upheaval needed to save the planet. The climate crisis is here and I don’t think anyone truly recognizes the complete extent of our impact on this plant as a species.

We are all lacking in ability to see this, as we cannot access that perspective. I believe that our planet and all its beings are suffering more than we can possibly comprehend or understand. We are all animals of this earth, despite our species-wide insistence that nature is somehow separate, is the Other. I think the true and full reality of what the planet as a whole is facing is a macrocosm we do not have the ability to comprehend.

We as a species are not omnipotent despite our science and knowledge and creativity and as the weird fucking animals we are, we simply do not have the capacity to recognize our situation in its full reality. We simply cannot. I don’t think our evolved brains and bodies are capable of fixing this.

And that scares me. I don’t know what we are going to do. Genuinely. What the fuck are we going to do.

There are so many beings that are suffering right now, humans and animals and plant-life alike. I don’t know how to hold all this grief. Where do you put it when it eclipses all you see and think and feel? We are losing so many lives every single day. We are losing precious species and ecosystems that we aren’t aware of. The few precious wild spaces and habitats are being destroyed every single day. We are losing human lives in more ways than we can comprehend. There is so much suffering and loss and pain and it is absolutely immense.

What the fuck are we going to do

[kavehayati]

I’ve been teaching my sister how to play Genshin for some of the past hours today and I hope she quits bc now I feel really guilty about it I don’t want her to waste all her time on it and Im thinking abt why she even wanted to start the game and now I feel even more horrible bc of some reasons that I kinda feel guilty explaining

[senseiwu]

In October, my dad got upset with me when I told him I wanted to try taking ADHD medication to see if it would help me.

"You're basically getting meth from a drug dealer!"

I didn't say anything else about it.

A couple months later, he said something about me doing a lot more lately, and how it was good.

....I started taking dexamphetamine in November.

[cesium-sheep]

it'll be fine. she'll reach her inflection point in a couple weeks and start moving forward in whatever direction she's moving and that will help her feel a lot better even if the initial news is not what she wants, and that will make him feel better too. and I think he loves us enough to be willing to consider working on his own emotional hangups if the argument given is that it makes him more able to take care of us, which he really wants to do, which is why it bothers him that we've both been struggling so much. he is unlikely to stop wanting to take care of us all of a sudden, and I am self-aware enough to know that I am scared because of things other people have done, and him telling me that it bothers him is a good thing not a threat.

typing this did not feel reassuring.