#(I was aiming for short story)

[gintrinsic-writing]

Mirror vs Open Closet Door: Fight!

When Sky volunteered to share a room with Time and Four, he did so with the anticipation of a peaceful evening. Part of him even imagined how nice it would be to doze off to the quiet notes of an ocarina, or to the steady, soothing rasp of a whetstone. In no way did he anticipate an open closet door. 

“Uh,” he began eloquently, wiggling his chilled toes beneath the covers. “What’s up?”

Time turned away from the now-open closet like it was the most normal thing in the world. He hadn’t even retrieved anything; he’d simply taken one look at the closet, frowned, gotten up, and opened the door all the way. Behind him, the dark closet now loomed ominously, its many hangers like a row of teeth. “Mirror’s on the outside of the door,” Time answered, throwing back his side of the sheets. 

“Ah, that makes sense,” Four said from the end of the bed. He fit perfectly lengthwise, which was something Sky had been trying very hard not to joke about. Now, he had other things to focus on. Namely—

“No it doesn’t?” He glanced between the two of them. “Now the closet’s open.”

Time pinched the room’s single candle between his fingers, plunging the room into darkness. “It’s fine. There’s no draft.”

No draft? Sky mouthed in disbelief. For a moment, that was it. Time settled on his side, apparently comfortable, and Four sighed in contentment. A chime could be heard from the grandfather clock in the common room. Sky counted to ten before he finally balked. “Okay, no, absolutely not.”

Time blinked at him, his eyes barely visible. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Sky repeated incredulously. “You left the closet door open on purpose!”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Sky,” Four said in his most mature (read: annoying) tone. “It’s just a closet.”

Sky forced himself not to grind his teeth in frustration. “If there’s nothing to be afraid of,” he began slowly, “then there shouldn’t be any problem with the mirror.”

“That’s completely different,” Time answered in an even more mature (read: more annoying) tone. 

“No, it’s not! You’re telling me that that—” Sky waved a hand in the general direction of the closet. “—is less creepy than a mirror?”

“Yes,” Time said immediately. 

“No, it’s not.”

“Is too.”

Sky rubbed both hands down his face. “You sound like a child.”

“I am a child,” Time sighed. 

What? Sky thought, frowning open-mouthed. Before he could reply, Four finally sat up, his extra blanket pooling around him. 

“It's not completely scary. There’s plenty of moonlight in here.”

“Yeah, that makes it worse,” Sky muttered. “It’s easier to see.” He risked a glance at the closet, then did a double-take. “Sweet Hylia, I swear it’s bigger than it was before.”

Four’s head whipped around to look. “What? No, it’s not.”

“It is!” He was pretty sure. Like, seventy percent sure.

Suddenly, inspiration struck with a self-satisfied jolt. Sky could be the bigger person here; he could compromise! “Why can’t we just take the mirror down?”

“Tried,” Time said. “It’s glued to the door.”

Sky crossed his arms. “Okay, then how about… I switch rooms. I bet Wind would switch with me.”

“Then the sleeping arrangements won’t work as well,” Four explained. “We split up rooms based on an even Link-per-room ratio.”

“Then I’ll switch with someone close to my size. Warriors.” 

Time snorted. “Won’t work. He’s rooming with Legend; fifty rupees says their closet door is open, too.”

“Then I’ll switch with Legend,” Sky said brightly. It took him a second to realize he’d messed up. “Wait, no, Warriors kicks in his sleep.”

“Mmmhm,” Four answered. They’d all been victims of that unfortunate kind of abuse before. 

“Fine. Twilight’s got a weird thing about mirrors, right? I’ll switch with him.”

“Enjoy Wind’s and Wild’s snoring,” Time said wryly. 

Sky groaned. Time was right, there was no way he could sleep through their combined snores. “This sucks.”

Time snuggled further into the covers. “Too bad.”

“You’re an ass sometimes.”

“I’m so wounded,” Time said around a yawn, and Sky huffed. 

Minutes passed. The closet continued to loom. Sky was afraid he’d see a face if he kept staring inside, but he was also afraid of looking away. Goosebumps broke out across his skin. Maybe, if he was brave enough to leave the bed, he’d wait until they fell asleep and simply close the door. Maybe. 

“Four?” he whispered when he couldn’t take it anymore. “You awake?”

Four sighed. “I am now.”

The question wouldn’t leave him. It was a welcome distraction at this point. “What do you think Time meant when he called himself a child?”

“Dude, I never try to figure him out anymore.”

“...Yeah, fair.”

More minutes. More looming. Sky contemplated the worth of the Triforce of Courage in the face of mundane things. 

Somehow, he fell asleep. 

[b4kuch1n]

crumbs in your bed

transcript

[tetzoro]

eeee happy wednesday & good day my friendz ! ! wishing you all the bestest day and i hope you find something that makes you smile :3 !

love this gif sm bc he dances to the beat of almost every song i’ve put on in the last little while lmfaooo

[abirdie]

Gael García Bernal in Déficit (2007, dir. Gael García Bernal)

(these gifs also feature Luz Cipriota and Camila Sodi)

Gifs are all 540px wide so you can click to see larger.

[other gael filmography gifsets]

[ludwigfanfunkoven]

crow country was a pretty sick little game

felt a bit like something that would've been released on the dreamcast early on, like around blue stinger's release or something

aiming was a bit wonky tho

[mycological-mariner]

There’s a writing workshop I go to every two months where we write short pieces and read them out. I think I’ve just come up with the most horrible, hilarious, devastating, embarrassing and bitterly hopeful story and I’m writing it right now, it’s making me emotional

[proto-language]

2023 faves

albums

full moon fever (1989) - tom petty bridge over troubled water (1970) - simon & garfunkel the traveling wilburys, vol. 1 (1988) - the traveling wilburys electric warrior (1971) - t.rex help! (1965) - the beatles

books

the lantern bearers - rosemary sutcliff penric's demon - lois mcmaster bujold a conspiracy of kings - megan whalen turner the mysterious affair at styles - agatha christie (reread) living on a thin line - dave davies

movies

top gun (1986) butch cassidy and the sundance kid (1969) back to the future (1985) airplane! (1980) dog day afternoon (1975)

tagged by the lovely @sapokanikan (who is much cooler than me) - i'll tag @gerardwaysmicrowave @unhingedlesbianvampire @margridarnauds and @chiropteracupola!

[bookshelf-in-progress]

A woman from the 1940s fell out of time and fell in with a group of time travelers. She's been time-traveling for several years and parters with a guy from somewhere within a spacefaring future. The two of them happen to travel somewhere within a Christmas season similar to what she remembers, and she gets extremely nostalgic for Christmastime and the family she left behind. She wants to visit them, but the thing is, according to history she died in the Blitz, and the rules of time travel don't allow her to interact with anyone from the timeline of her lifespan. They can jury-rig a way for her to see the proceedings, but she'll be outside the normal flow of time, unseen, unheard and undetected by anyone around her. A Christmas ghost. She decides the risk is worth it and goes to see them. Heartstring-tugging sentiment ensues.

[the-song-that-wanders]

Reblog if you play Final Fantasy XIV or you want a woman to choke slam you on accident when she tries to push you against a wall.

Don't worry. Nobody will know which.

[adara-writer]

Writing update time!

First of all, I started a new job on Tuesday and that’s been sucking a ton of my time unfortunately. However, I’ve been ramping back up on writing. I have mainly been working on my grishaverse Big Bang fic, which is already at 7k words and I haven’t even been assigned artists or a beta yet (current estimated final word count is 50k to give an idea on how that’s going).

I’ve gotten into a routine with that, so now I’m also starting to work on Paper Rings, the sequel to silver shackles! I know I promised either a Kaz or Jesper POV short fic, but I don’t know when that will be coming. My goal is to start posting Paper Rings at some point in July, but due to the nature of the fic and how much writing I’m going to be doing in the next few months, I want to have at least a few chapters pre written before I start posting. Once I do start posting, I will likely stick to a once a week upload schedule, probably Saturday or Sunday, of chapters in the 2-3k word range. I unfortunately can’t make any promises at the moment, but I am excited about it and I really want to keep working in this universe and start posting again.

[clover-the-awesomest]

Well now I just feel like a freeloader 😐

i needed to read this today so im sharing it to all of you!!

[peresephoknee]

dug up a wip about G1deon being the one to train Harrow in planet murdering and I might try and flesh it out a bit

[derinwrites]

The Three Commandments

The thing about writing is this: you gotta start in medias res, to hook your readers with action immediately. But readers aren’t invested in people they know nothing about, so start with a framing scene that instead describes the characters and the stakes. But those scenes are boring, so cut straight to the action, after opening with a clever quip, but open in the style of the story, and try not to be too clever in the opener, it looks tacky. One shouldn’t use too many dialogue tags, it’s distracting; but you can use ‘said’ a lot, because ‘said’ is invisible, but don’t use ‘said’ too much because it’s boring and uninformative – make sure to vary your dialogue tags to be as descriptive as possible, except don’t do that because it’s distracting, and instead rely mostly on ‘said’ and only use others when you need them. But don’t use ‘said’ too often; you should avoid dialogue tags as much as you possibly can and indicate speakers through describing their reactions. But don’t do that, it’s distracting.

Having a viewpoint character describe themselves is amateurish, so avoid that. But also be sure to describe your viewpoint character so that the reader can picture them. And include a lot of introspection, so we can see their mindset, but don’t include too much introspection, because it’s boring and takes away from the action and really bogs down the story, but also remember to include plenty of introspection so your character doesn’t feel like a robot. And adverbs are great action descriptors; you should have a lot of them, but don’t use a lot of adverbs; they’re amateurish and bog down the story. And

The reason new writers are bombarded with so much outright contradictory writing advice is that these tips are conditional. It depends on your style, your genre, your audience, your level of skill, and what problems in your writing you’re trying to fix. Which is why, when I’m writing, I tend to focus on what I call my Three Commandments of Writing. These are the overall rules; before accepting any writing advice, I check whether it reinforces one of these rules or not. If not, I ditch it.

1: Thou Shalt Have Something To Say

What’s your book about?

I don’t mean, describe to me the plot. I mean, why should anybody read this? What’s its thesis? What’s its reason for existence, from the reader’s perspective? People write stories for all kinds of reasons, but things like ‘I just wanted to get it out of my head’ are meaningless from a reader perspective. The greatest piece of writing advice I ever received was you putting words on a page does not obligate anybody to read them. So why are the words there? What point are you trying to make?

The purpose of your story can vary wildly. Usually, you’ll be exploring some kind of thesis, especially if you write genre fiction. Curse Words, for example, is an exploration of self-perpetuating power structures and how aiming for short-term stability and safety can cause long-term problems, as well as the responsibilities of an agitator when seeking to do the necessary work of dismantling those power structures. Most of the things in Curse Words eventually fold back into exploring this question. Alternately, you might just have a really cool idea for a society or alien species or something and want to show it off (note: it can be VERY VERY HARD to carry a story on a ‘cool original concept’ by itself. You think your sky society where they fly above the clouds and have no rainfall and have to harvest water from the clouds below is a cool enough idea to carry a story: You’re almost certainly wrong. These cool concept stories work best when they are either very short, or working in conjunction with exploring a theme). You might be writing a mystery series where each story is a standalone mystery and the point is to present a puzzle and solve a fun mystery each book. Maybe you’re just here to make the reader laugh, and will throw in anything you can find that’ll act as framing for better jokes. In some genres, readers know exactly what they want and have gotten it a hundred times before and want that story again but with different character names – maybe you’re writing one of those. (These stories are popular in romance, pulp fantasy, some action genres, and rather a lot of types of fanfiction).

Whatever the main point of your story is, you should know it by the time you finish the first draft, because you simply cannot write the second draft if you don’t know what the point of the story is. (If you write web serials and are publishing the first draft, you’ll need to figure it out a lot faster.)

Once you know what the point of your story is, you can assess all writing decisions through this lens – does this help or hurt the point of my story?

2: Thou Shalt Respect Thy Reader’s Investment

Readers invest a lot in a story. Sometimes it’s money, if they bought your book, but even if your story is free, they invest time, attention, and emotional investment. The vast majority of your job is making that investment worth it. There are two factors to this – lowering the investment, and increasing the payoff. If you can lower your audience’s suspension of disbelief through consistent characterisation, realistic (for your genre – this may deviate from real realism) worldbuilding, and appropriately foreshadowing and forewarning any unexpected rules of your world. You can lower the amount of effort or attention your audience need to put into getting into your story by writing in a clear manner, using an entertaining tone, and relying on cultural touchpoints they understand already instead of pushing them in the deep end into a completely unfamiliar situation. The lower their initial investment, the easier it is to make the payoff worth it.

Two important notes here: one, not all audiences view investment in the same way. Your average reader views time as a major investment, but readers of long fiction (epic fantasies, web serials, et cetera) often view length as part of the payoff. Brandon Sanderson fans don’t grab his latest book and think “Uuuugh, why does it have to be so looong!” Similarly, some people like being thrown in the deep end and having to put a lot of work into figuring out what the fuck is going on with no onboarding. This is one of science fiction’s main tactics for forcibly immersing you in a future world. So the valuation of what counts as too much investment varies drastically between readers.

Two, it’s not always the best idea to minimise the necessary investment at all costs. Generally, engagement with art asks something of us, and that’s part of the appeal. Minimum-effort books do have their appeal and their place, in the same way that idle games or repetitive sitcoms have their appeal and their place, but the memorable stories, the ones that have staying power and provide real value, are the ones that ask something of the reader. If they’re not investing anything, they have no incentive to engage, and you’re just filling in time. This commandment does not exist to tell you to try to ask nothing of your audience – you should be asking something of your audience. It exists to tell you to respect that investment. Know what you’re asking of your audience, and make sure that the ask is less than the payoff.

The other way to respect the investment is of course to focus on a great payoff. Make those characters socially fascinating, make that sacrifice emotionally rending, make the answer to that mystery intellectually fulfilling. If you can make the investment worth it, they’ll enjoy your story. And if you consistently make their investment worth it, you build trust, and they’ll be willing to invest more next time, which means you can ask more of them and give them an even better payoff. Audience trust is a very precious currency and this is how you build it – be worth their time.

But how do you know what your audience does and doesn’t consider an onerous investment? And how do you know what kinds of payoff they’ll find rewarding? Easy – they self-sort. Part of your job is telling your audience what to expect from you as soon as you can, so that if it’s not for them, they’ll leave, and if it is, they’ll invest and appreciate the return. (“Oh but I want as many people reading my story as possible!” No, you don’t. If you want that, you can write paint-by-numbers common denominator mass appeal fic. What you want is the audience who will enjoy your story; everyone else is a waste of time, and is in fact, detrimental to your success, because if they don’t like your story then they’re likely to be bad marketing. You want these people to bounce off and leave before you disappoint them. Don’t try to trick them into staying around.) Your audience should know, very early on, what kind of an experience they’re in for, what the tone will be, the genre and character(s) they’re going to follow, that sort of thing. The first couple of chapters of Time to Orbit: Unknown, for example, are a micro-example of the sorts of mysteries that Aspen will be dealing with for most of the book, as well as a sample of their character voice, the way they approach problems, and enough of their background, world and behaviour for the reader to decide if this sort of story is for them. We also start the story with some mildly graphic medical stuff, enough physics for the reader to determine the ‘hardness’ of the scifi, and about the level of physical risk that Aspen will be putting themselves at for most of the book. This is all important information for a reader to have.

If you are mindful of the investment your readers are making, mindful of the value of the payoff, and honest with them about both from the start so that they can decide whether the story is for them, you can respect their investment and make sure they have a good time.

3: Thou Shalt Not Make Thy World Less Interesting

This one’s really about payoff, but it’s important enough to be its own commandment. It relates primarily to twists, reveals, worldbuilding, and killing off storylines or characters. One mistake that I see new writers make all the time is that they tank the engagement of their story by introducing a cool fun twist that seems so awesome in the moment and then… is a major letdown, because the implications make the world less interesting.

“It was all a dream” twists often fall into this trap. Contrary to popular opinion, I think these twists can be done extremely well. I’ve seen them done extremely well. The vast majority of the time, they’re very bad. They’re bad because they take an interesting world and make it boring. The same is true of poorly thought out, shocking character deaths – when you kill a character, you kill their potential, and if they’re a character worth killing in a high impact way then this is always a huge sacrifice on your part. Is it worth it? Will it make the story more interesting? Similarly, if your bad guy is going to get up and gloat ‘Aha, your quest was all planned by me, I was working in the shadows to get you to acquire the Mystery Object since I could not! You have fallen into my trap! Now give me the Mystery Object!’, is this a more interesting story than if the protagonist’s journey had actually been their own unmanipulated adventure? It makes your bad guy look clever and can be a cool twist, but does it mean that all those times your protagonist escaped the bad guy’s men by the skin of his teeth, he was being allowed to escape? Are they retroactively less interesting now?

Whether these twists work or not will depend on how you’ve constructed the rest of your story. Do they make your world more or less interesting?

If you have the audience’s trust, it’s permissible to make your world temporarily less interesting. You can kill off the cool guy with the awesome plan, or make it so that the Chosen One wasn’t actually the Chosen One, or even have the main character wake up and find out it was all a dream, and let the reader marinate in disappointment for a little while before you pick it up again and turn things around so that actually, that twist does lead to a more interesting story! But you have to pick it up again. Don’t leave them with the version that’s less interesting than the story you tanked for the twist. The general slop of interest must trend upward, and your sacrifices need to all lead into the more interesting world. Otherwise, your readers will be disappointed, and their experience will be tainted.

Whenever I’m looking at a new piece of writing advice, I view it through these three rules. Is this plot still delivering on the book’s purpose, or have I gone off the rails somewhere and just stared writing random stuff? Does making this character ‘more relateable’ help or hinder that goal? Does this argument with the protagonists’ mother tell the reader anything or lead to any useful payoff; is it respectful of their time? Will starting in medias res give the audience an accurate view of the story and help them decide whether to invest? Does this big twist that challenges all the assumptions we’ve made so far imply a world that is more or less interesting than the world previously implied?

Hopefully these can help you, too.

[fairymint]

i have gotten 2 asks for The Shake. i have not had the shake. oh i need to try da shake and especially before doing these- maybe i'll just have breakfast there before work one of these days- i don't eat fast food often

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Fun fact: The fairy tale flash fiction has now passed 4,000 words.

[moondust-sickness]

Farside Loneliness

The Cosmonaut squinted through the small window on the LK, the lunar surface was incredibly near, maybe only 500 meters away. Block E was preforming well, he smiled seeing that he was well within margin. He tried to maintain his nerve remembering the mission. No one had ever been here, the far side of the moon. The Soviet government demanded a mission to one up the Americans after they landed on the moon six months before Alexei Leonov, but even so, a far side landing was a challenge.

The lunar surface slowly approached, he throttled the engine down for final descent, dust kicked up in a heavy plume. The contact light blares and he shuts down the engine, theres an odd sound as the engines shut down, but that was expected, Alexei heard the same thing.

He signals to ground control that he had reached the surface, a garbled radio replied with a congratulatory message, several words were unintelligible, the relay quality from Luna-28 was poor, but even so, he understood the message. He looked out the small window, his soul swelling as he starred at the flat area, only a few small boulders around the lander.

The pre-moonwalk checklist seemed to drag on forever, triple then quadruple checking the seal on his spacesuit, waiting an hour for the relay to be in the most optimal position, checking and rechecking the lander pressurization, making sure the TV signal was as strong as it could be. But eventually that final step was reached, depressurizing the LK and opening the hatch.

Theres a silence as the hatch opens, all he hears is his own breathing, and he feels light, he has to try not to stumble in the low gravity as he steps out of the LK and on to the ladder, he looks and sees the camera staring at him, he smiles, knowing that millions of people are watching him become the first human on the far side of the moon. He steps down and on to the regolith, says his famous words and plants the red flag of his nation. Its a hell of a sight, the strange craft a few dozen feet away, the flag standing utterly still, the grey empty landscape and the black void of space around him. Its just a black void, with only the sun floating above him.

He takes a deep breath, he’s been trained for this, trained for over a year, but its an incredibly unnerving sight, even as a static garbled message plays through his helmet, he feels alone. The messages just tell him to complete the experiments he was provided with, collect no more than ten kilos of lunar samples, deploy the small surface experiment package, and study the use of tools on the lunar surface by digging then filling in a small hole.

As he preformed his tasks, he felt unnerved, like uncanny valley from the area around him, the grey dust, the sheer emptiness and lifelessness of the lunar surface. He tries to keep more in contact with the cosmonaut aboard the orbiting LOK Soyuz, he talks almost constantly to him to keep his mind sound.

As his uses the lightweight spade to fill the small hole in, he gets back up and looks at his work, its barely filled and he’s already exhausted, he requests to stop preforming the experiment and take a break to rest. They allow it. He stands up and slowly walks back to the lander, when suddenly his foot clips the edge of the hole he dug. He had already tripped before, but now exhausted, he failed to catch himself, and stumbles face first into the regolith.

He shuts his eyes and prepares for his visor to shatter, but instead of the silence of vacuum, he hears and crunch and then static. He quickly pushes himself up and on to his feet, trying to figure out what had broken. He tries to talk to his comrades back on earth.

“Something broke in the suit, I’m going to get back in the LK.”

“……….”

“I’m reentering the LK, do your hear me?”

“……………”

“Hello?”

He hears static in return. He feels panic swell as he realizes that he had broken his communication hardware, but takes a deep breath as he heads towards the LK, he could communicate via the lander. He shuts the hatch and repressurizes the small cabin before exiting the suit, he takes a deep breath of the fresh cold air in the lander, and tries to reestablish signal with the LOK or ground teams via a relay. He attempts to fully power up the small craft when a loud BANG rattles the cabin, the internal lights shut off and all electrical parts fail for a brief moment, before the master alarm buzzes.

The lander has short circuited, crippling the electrical signals. He stares blankly as he tries to reactivate coms, again, and again, and again. He doesn’t get a signal.

He feels panic switch to a hollow empty feeling. He goes through his options. He has life support on, but no coms. He decides to pull the master reset on the lander, but just in case, he enters his suit before doing so.

BA—

The hatch from the cabin slams open, as the air in the lander rapidly flows out, the sudden force knocks him down in the cabin. As he stumbles to his feet, he feels that hollow feeling turn to dread. Looking as the master alarm doesn’t even glow. He quickly shuts the hatch and locks it shut. It slowly opens, he slams it shut, and reattempts to lock it. As it slowly opens again, he notices the bar meant to hold it shut, ripped out of place and several feet away, half buried in lunar regolith. He turns to the main control panel and begins attempting to turn on the landers systems, if he can just get propulsion on, he can lift of and attempt to rendezvous with the LOK. He just needs propulsion.

He flicks the master reset and starts going through the ascent checklist, he arms the engines and signals to ground teams that he is preparing to fire block E again. He attempts to ignite the engines. Theres no response. He tries again, master reset, arm engine, arm backup engine, arm reaction control system, signal ground control, ignite. No response. He tries again. And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

He runs through the same actions over and over. Its all he can think about, to get off this rock and back to orbit, he could get coms from orbit, he could relay off of a probe and rendezvous then. He knows it’ll work, he knows it will. Even as hours pass, he knows it will work. If he can just fire the engines he can go home. Even as the alarm in his suit tells him the oxygen is low and c02 levels are too high. He knows it’ll work.

He’s lightheaded as he attempts to fire the engine again, he feels odd, but he can still get home, hope isn’t lost, he can make it. He runs through the checklist, as he fires the engines, he feels a sudden thrust, he’s up! He pilots the lander up away from the moon, it’s hard with how lightheaded he feels… he thinks he forgot something on the moon… but its okay… he is going home.. he looks at the fuel gage, he has margin… why not just go directly home…

He fires the engines towards earth… he losses track of time for a moment when suddenly he is plummeting through the atmosphere, he points the lander around and begins to fire the engine to land back at earth, he watches grass fill his vision as the landing legs touchdown on the soft soil, he slowly steps out of the lander and on to the grass… his suit is heavy.. he wants to touch the grass… he unzips the back and tries to step out… he tries to breathe in.. he doesn’t get anything.. but it doesn’t matter.. as he steps out of his suit and onto the grass, everything hurts… like he’s burning up… and the grass is cutting his feet like glass… he stumbles and falls on to the grass… it feels course and light… he closes his eyes to think….

He wonders why the grass was grey, but he ignores it, he’s home, and he will never leave again…