#but that is a problem

[faejilly]

jilly's week in review?

I guess or something. Idek y'all, I was gonna try and do reviews but then I just rambled about what I did instead, so this is clearly gonna need a format revamp next week

anyway

READING

Finished Daughter of Witches

and also St. Peter's Fair, which I had started AGES ago and sort of lost track of, but I'm doing the January Challenge on TheStoryGraph and couldn't decide what to read next but needed to get my pages in, so I went digging for random shit and I have read it before and watched all the Cadfael mysteries so it's not like it was hard to get into to finish it so I could save my streak.😅

Read A House with Good Bones (on purpose from start to finish in one day!) because T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon is absofuckinglutely one of my favorites. (There's a thought here about my occasional forays into the horror genre, and how some horror is almost kind of cozy because it's about protecting what we love from what we fear, and that is very much a Kingfisher kind of thing, but that might need a new post and a more functional brain to figure out where I'm going with that.)

Listened to a little bit more of IT while doing housework; I'm not great at audio books except when I'm driving, but sometimes I can manage a little (and I didn't want to distract myself from dishes by picking up a new book instead). Stephen Weber is an excellent narrator btw, for anyone who's curious.

WATCHING

The husband was sick last week, and I was only sort of doing shit either, so he kind of just put the TV on and let it go and I definitely will not manage a nice list with links like I did with books. There was some M*A*S*H, (oh, I did finally watch the special that recently came out on Hulu), and RoboCop (largely because Thing 1 gave the husband the new game for Christmas) and several different Predator movies of various quality, and a bunch of other stuff I am not thinking of at the moment. I know I picked a couple and watched them myself but with everything else I can't remember what?

Also some Mythbusters when Thing 2 picked something to watch for awhile, which is pretty much always entertaining even when we're like: your sample size is nonexistent and just because you can't do it doesn't mean someone who knows what they're doing couldn't have done it so are you SURE you should have busted that? 😅

PLAYING

I got Garden Story for Christmas and got through the quest-lines and realized I was quite far away from all the upgrades, so I've been periodically poking at it and trying to get my villages/tools better before trying the Final Boss. I have had a good time with Concord though, it's fun, I'm just not sure the leveling functions, such as they are, are paced/balanced quite right? 😅 (Or perhaps I'm just Bad At Fighting In Cozy Games? This does seem to be a bit of a trend tbqh, probably why I liked Wylde Flowers' lack of combat so much.) I also have found VERY FEW of the memories/weird achievements so that's a thing I'm probably going to have to look up hints for soon-ish...

(I did finish Potion Permit last year, which is great, I recommend it whole-heartedly: the potion building mechanic is usually pretty solid, it has good characters, a nice aesthetic, I did actually mostly have fun rolling around and fighting things/gathering stuff, but I did reach the end of the main quest and then go... huh, is that it? just because it, yk, kept going after the finale but there didn't seem to be anything there beyond like, a couple personal quests that needed materials I couldn't unlock until the end.)

MORE ENTERTAININGLY I THINK, we did also play some board games

Paint The Roses is QUITE HARD with only two people even if you stick to the medium level whims; or maybe I'm just not that smart?!? We did in fact survive without getting our heads' chopped off by the Queen of Hearts, but we legit guessed the last two puzzles so. Dumb Luck™️ is not nearly as reliable as actually figuring out how to plot your plants better.

We did Escape the Dark Sector (with more people this time, tbf) on our first try though! That was pretty delightful. It is atmospheric and potentially almost deadly without feeling too awful at any point! Also I got to punch a tentacle monster!

Mice & Mystics can go dramatically bad if your dice aren't on your side and you do like, one stupid thing to compound that, and then if you're invested enough to start over you can suddenly realize you've been moving tiny plastic mice and bugs around the table for like four hours and still only got through the first chapter... but not regret it at all because you like your mice and are very proud of them for finally making it!

Can you tell we like co-op games? 🤣🤣🤣

(I did also do some rearranging so the game room was comfier, so like, win/win I adulted and played!)

THERE WAS NO WRITING OR CROSS-STITCHING OR PAINTING OR ANYTHING ELSE THIS WEEK, so uh. Clearly my balance of activities is bonkers and I should maybe get off the couch/game chair(s) a bit more often.

[rudamaruda520]

me as a writer

[donnieisaprettyboy]

“what if kids identify with something and it ends up just being a phase-?” good. stop teaching and expecting kids (and adults honestly) to formulate permanent traits and ideas of themselves. everything in life is a phase. that doesn’t make it any less legitimate while you experience it. let people explore themselves and know it’s okay if what you think about yourself changes.

[vilea777]

sorry i cant hang out i forgot how to mimic human like behaviour

[victusinveritas]

[bipolarmango]

My doctor and therapist: now with this autism + ADHD diagnosis you need to learn to unmask because masking all the time will make you burn out again and feel like shit

Other people: well it's just interesting how after getting the diagnosis you suddenly start behaving like that I mean I'm not saying you're faking it's just funny how you suddenly cannot be normal like you were before

[inkskinned]

please i love you i'm begging you bring back suspension of disbelief bring back trusting the audience like. i cannot handle any more dialogue that sounds like a legal document. "hello, i am here to talk to you about the incident from a few minutes ago, because i feel you might be unwell, and i am invested in your personal wellbeing." "thank you, i am unwell because the incident was hurtful to me due to my childhood, which was bad." I CANT!!!!

do you know how many people are mad that authors use "growled" as a word for "said"? it's just poetics! they do not literally mean "growled," it's just a common replacement for "said with force but in a low tone." it's normal! do you hear me!! help me i love you please let me out of here!!!

[kenapiece-main]

Can you believe I'm having to make this meme even after successfully finishing up taxes and applying to job

[sailing-ever-west]

the trolley problem vs. systemic oppression: a comic.

[so-many-ocs]

revising your writing is just like "is this weird. is this a weird sentence. is this the weirdest most poorly-worded sentence ever written by anyone" and the sentence in question is "he walked across the room"

[snowstories]

My biggest tip for fanfic writers is this: if you get a character's mannerisms and speech pattern down, you can make them do pretty much whatever you want and it'll feel in character.

Logic: Characters, just like real people, are mallable. There is typically very little that's so truly, heinously out of character that you absolutely cannot make it work under any circumstance. In addition, most fans are also willing to accept characterization stretches if it makes the fic work. Yeah, we all know the villain and the hero wouldn't cuddle for warmth in canon. But if they did do that, how would they do it?

What counts is often not so much 'would the character do this?' and more 'if the character did do this, how would they do it?' If you get 'how' part right, your readers will probably be willing to buy the rest, because it will still feel like their favourite character. But if it doesn't feel like the character anymore, why are they even reading the fic?

Worry less about whether a character would do something, and more about how they'd sound while doing it.

[incandescent-creativity]

Do you ever write a sentence and then realize “Nah, that’s too self aware for you” and backspace a bunch of times.

[dikdikpronouncedxylophone]

The most terrifying part of having memory issues is when you can feel something from 5 seconds ago be thrown out the window and there's an empty hole where it once was. You remember that you forgot something.

[scribefindegil]

being a writer leads to a genuinely helpful but also very stupid kind of mindfulness where you'll be having a sobbing breakdown or the worst anxiety attack of your life and think "okay, I really need to pay attention to how this feels. so I can incorporate it into my fanfiction."

[vilea777]

sorry i overreacted i had no idea everything would be fine