#comes off so distatesful

[angelic-charlie-kelly]

love newmann and pacrim but some of y’all be disrespecting tf out of charlie day when you write newt

[cicisbloghasgotitgoingon]

Preparing To Leave:

To start with, this adventure was something that took over a year to actually acomplish. I was still in my first year of law in September of 2023 when I had to complete the interview process for this opportunity to study abroad. They were simple questions. Questions I had practiced answering even before I got there. I knew what I wanted from this experience, it felt easy but I was still nervous that somehow I would mess up or come across so unlikeable or distatesful that they would reject me on the spot. Anxiety is a joy like that. They told me not to worry and that my interview went very well, that I should expect to recieve my approval to continue with the process later in the week. I still worried, overthought it all with each day. When I got the email saying I was good to go, it didn't quite feel real. They warned me that because i was leaving in my second semester of my second year that I wouldn't hear from them for around 8-10 months because they wouldn't have anything to give me. Safe to say all that time dragged out. It was a year and a month or so before I did get my study abroad info. During all that time, I was filled with academic trials and personal challenges. Friendships changed, some bloomed more than the ones I assumed would. The flowers set safely in my garden withering and growing, swaying and drooping. Some even reached out closer to each other, roots entangling below the dirt and I envied that in some cases. Others turned out to be harmful to the garden and I was sad to see them go. When it started to get closer to my departure, everything really began to pile up. I had less time for friends, I was overwhelmed with studies and academic pressure, my mental health was weighing me down and every interaction I participated in. Even my relationship took a hit, though it worked out in the end. I often have this thing where I get excited for trips or special days but it takes until the actual day or me arriving for the real emotions to set in, so it's been sort of a muted excitement and a disbelief that I would really get to come here. In my head, something would just happen and I wouldn't get to be here. It always feels like that before events really. As if I can't ever believe something cool would really happen to me. It's silly I suppose but it can't be helped. Christmas arrived and I got to spend my first Christmas s with my partner. We cuddled the dog and cozied up by the fire, we opened gifts and ate inordinate amounts of food. I received the first gift in 7 years from my mother and I was so happy, so full of love and a sort of melancholy. But so happy for the effort and thought this gift came with. I went and spent time with my Auntie for New Years, we took a polaroid at midnight, holding glasses of booze to start the New Year off bubbly and warm from the drink. It was a perfect way to start the New Year, even as the rain pelted hard outside and doused fireworks raging outside and lighting the sky. When I came home it was all about my assignments and final bits of paperwork to fill out. I had been to the embassy in london on the 27th and had almost completed my visa application entirely and was just waiting on one more payment and then the delivery of it all. The stress of my assignments was weighing more heavily, and still is as I'm left with two to complete.

It was a whole experience, preparing for this trip. It both dragged and came speeding towards me. My flight got booked, the 23rd of January at 12:10, a 7 hour flight to the place I'd be living in for the next four months. I got to have dinner with my family members, say goodbye and hug them before leaving, even though four months isn't so long, it felt and still feels like a long time, though now it also feels like nothing at all.

This blog may not be super well written or sound very elegant, most of this is written late at night when I am finally back in my dorm room. I hope it will be fun though and my writing will get better as I go on. It feels nice to do this so I hope others will enjoy it too.

Your Queen, Cecilia

[kestalsblog]

Sex & Violence in Writing

You might be surprised how similar writing a sex scene and a violent scene are. I'm not suggesting there is something inherently similar between the two, but rather that the craft of writing them can be remarkably alike

1.Subtlety. A strong sex scene and a war/battle/violent scene generally are more successful if they are subtle rather than over-the-top melodramatic. Why? Because both run the risk of sounding either absurd or funny if they're not carefully understated. A sex scene that goes into deep detail of all the anatomical processes can start to sound comedic or gross really fast. And a violent scene about "blood gushing everywhere, spraying like a fountain" or other hyperbolic descriptive language can quickly become gorey to the point of repulsion or humor. Better to leave out some details and focus on the physical only when necessary. Don't forget to utilize the power of the emotional for both kinds of scenes - characters' feelings & thought processes. Authors can get so caught up in the actions and movement of bodies, they forget the internal significance of scenes like this. And writing in a more subtle way usually helps with this problem.

2. Language: This goes off the last point. An author must be careful which words he/she chooses when writing a sex scene. Too formal and it'll sound to your readers like they are reading a surgery or anatomy book. Too in-depth and casual and it becomes prno/graphic or obscene. Also, some terms for genitalia can be offensive or read as hateful when that isn't the author's intention. I personally strongly dislike the c-word used to describe a woman’s vagina and will stop reading as soon as I confront it. (Let me interrupt myself here to say I am far more forgiving if a character uses a word like this in dialogue or thoughts. I expect characters to have different voices, some of them more grotesque. If you, the author, are using words like this, it can come off as very distatesful.) Regardless, make sure you know the different connotations of different words. Some are more vulgar than others. Same goes with fight/violent scenes. I've read too many scenes where the author dwells in the violence in an almost indulgent/romantic way. This feels sadistic and gratuitous. Also, please make sure you understand the correct anatomy for sex scenes AND fight scenes before you start. Many straight authors will portray gay sex incorrectly, for example. Or an author will write a battle scene where the weapons are not clear and/or the wounds don't align with the actual actions. You can get away with a lot by having an ignorant character, but if you're not informed as a writer, it is usually pretty apparent to more experienced readers. Do research if you need to, but choose your diction carefully.

3. Seriousness: This one is important to me personally. I've read so many stories where the authors go straight to the sex and violence without developing the plot/characters enough for me to understand the importance of either of those actions. Of course genre matters for your particular intentions, but I stand by the fact that for most fiction, authors want sex scenes and scenes of violent tragedy to mean something. And it can't mean much if you rush through the story to get to these points. These types of scenes require a certain kind of seriousness, an almost tender quality. (Yes, even for violence!) Because often these moments are life-altering for our characters, they need to be altering for readers as well.

[sageoftheages]

Danny Phantom headcanons pre-Phantom: Mansons and Foleys

1) Ida was considered a wild girl for her age. She was fully part of the Civil Rights movement and liked that child corrupting man, Elvis Presley. She met her husband when she crashed a dinner party on a dare; Izzy Manson and his son took an immediate liking to her nerve. Izzy’s wife had died the previous year from pnemonia.

2) Ida’s husband was named Richard or Rich for short. Ida always thought that was a bit on the nose and constantly made fun of him for it. He died when Sam was one years old and she has no memories of him, but wishes she did.

3) Ida and Richard married when they were 20 and had Jeremy three months later. Jeremy doesn’t like to think about it.

4) Ida and Rich were very hands off in their approach of raising Jeremy. Letting him do whatever he wants as long as it was either legal or illegal but for a good cause. Jeremy didn’t enjoy this, wanting more structure in his life. He eventually signed up for boarding school his second year of middle school to get that structure he sought.

5) Jeremy met Pamela in ninth grade at his boarding school at a protest meeting about kicking out the hippies on campus who were considered lazy and rule breakers. They immediately hit it off with their disdain for craziness and both of them having a surprising liking towards caculus.

6) The two married straight out of high school. Ida didn’t approve but held her tongue. Jeremy died his black hair blonde and Pamela died her brown hair red just before college.

7) Pamela had a miscarrage when she was 20. They wouldn’t try to have a child for two more years and Sam wouldn’t be born until they were 25.

8) Unfortunately, Jeremy and Pamela would go in the exact opposite direction of his mother - forcing too much structure on Sam. They would seek to be “normal” and wanted Sam to appear the same way.

9) Other than this, the one thing the entire Manson family had in common is their desire to not appear anything other than Middle Class. Izzy because he was more proud of his invention rather than the money it earned him, Ida and Rich because they found flaunting distatesful, Jeremy and Pamela because they wanted to appear “normal” to people, and Sam because she didn’t want people that sucked up to her for money.

10) Tucker’s mother‘s name is actually Honey. Tucker’s father, Maurice, likes to say “Honey, I’m home” all the time because of this. In their eighteen years of marriage, he has never gotten tired of it and she has never failed to roll her eyes.

11) Maurice met Honey at a coffee shop during his lunchbreak at the office he worked for. It turned out she worked for a rival company - neither cared because they were merely cubicle workers low in the food chain. The two bonded over how ridiculous their coworkers were for taking it so seriously.

12) Maurice would ask her out a year later, propose two years after that, and they’d marry one year later. Four years after their marriage they would have Tucker at thirty years old (Maurice) and thirty-two years old (Honey).

13) Of the Manson, Foleys, and Fentons, they are the oldest parents.

14) When the companies discovered their relationship - not that they tried to hide it - both overworked them making them miss a lot of Tucker’s early childhood. Eventually, Honey would leave to open her own small restaurant and Maurice would be promoted for “chasing” out one of their rival’s employees (in truth, Honey would inherit some money from her grandmother and open the restaurant she always dreamed of).

15) The Foleys and Fentons got along right away - mainly thanks to Danny helping Tucker out. They remained skeptical of ghosts, however. The Mansons and the Fentons went together like pizza and toenails - the Mansons hated their weird personality and the Fentons hated how stuck up and controlling they were. Maddie had told Sam she was free to come over whenever she wanted one day in private. Danny wouldn’t know this until his senior year of high school.

16) As for the Foleys and Mansons - neither really cared about the other. The Foleys were normal enough for the Mansons and the Mansons were just kind of there to the Foleys. As a result, the Foleys were always stuck being mediators between the three families.