#follow up to yesterday's post

[danpuff-ao3]

Fiction Works 2/2: Storytelling, not Teaching or Preaching

See also: Fiction Works 1: Different Strokes for Different Folks

In part 1 I talked about exploring real experiences and potential in fiction. Here in part 2 we are going to remember that, while fiction can be a useful tool for exploration, it is not, in fact, real.

Writing gay Harry Potter fanfic does not make me a gay man (I am actually an asexual lady), nor does it make me a wizard (though c'mon, I wish!) By that same token, writing underage does not make me a pedophile.

Thomas Harris is not guilty of cannibalism, even though he wrote about a cannibal named Hannibal. Vladimir Nabokov is not a pedophile because he wrote Lolita. Bram Stoker is not a vampire because he wrote Dracula. We aren't arresting authors by the truckload for the spilling of fictional blood.

What we need to remember is this:

Fiction (noun) 1.literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people. 2. something that is invented or untrue.

To sum it up: fiction is not reality.

I'm a Storyteller. Not a Teacher, or a Preacher. You shouldn't trust my use of em-dashes, let alone take an infidelity story as a how-to guide.

Stories can be a tool for so many things. Maybe it's catharsis. Maybe it's distraction. Maybe it's curiosity, philosophy, entertainment, exploration. Fiction is a safe avenue to learn, and think, and feel.

Creators are inspired by the world around them, and their own experiences. They're inspired by rainbows, and sunsets, and wildflowers. They're inspired by wildfires, hurricanes, and tornadoes. They're inspired by mythology, religion, folklore, and history. All that is beautiful and ugly and wonderful and terrible in the world.

Creators are shaped by their own lives. And, as stated in Part 1, we are all different. We come from different places, and are raised different ways, and we turn into different people. We have our own histories, our own stories, our own thoughts and opinions and preferences and feelings.

Throw it all in a blender, and maybe the tulip becomes a rose. Maybe the wildfire becomes an earthquake. Maybe the sunset is an inferno, and the night sky is the abyss. Maybe the those old ruins are the path to Heaven.

The reality of the materials used and the methods used aren't always evident in the final work. Our stories come from somewhere, sure, but it's never as cut and dry as people think.

Can stories hurt you? Sure. The way anything can hurt you. The world isn't a safe space, after all.

It's valid if a story hurts you. If you're triggered by it, or upset by it, or don't like it. Not all negative reactions are triggers, but they don't have to be. You're allowed your own feelings. But the existence of a work that upsets you is not a crime against you. A story that depicts evil deeds is not, itself, evil.

In real life, I have a zero tolerance policy for cheating. I have very strong feelings about it.

Do you know what I love to read and write? You guessed it! Cheating! It goes hand in hand with my other great love: toxic/dysfunctional relationships!

In real life, I'd never have a relationship with a person who cheated ever, even in the past. I'd not stay with someone who cheated on me. I have a very stable, happy, boring relationship. I have a good life now, because I built it from the wreckage of a chaotic upbringing.

My father cheated on my mother and left her for his mistress. He dragged his children through the middle of his dysfunctional relationship, which lasted a decade. We suffered the consequences of his choices. It's a pretty long and fucked up story, and I won't get that personal here, but the point is:

I never, ever want to experience any of that in my real world again. However, exploring those events in a fictional scenario is safe for me. There's an odd comfort in the familiarity of it. Seeing that one awful thing through different lenses, and playing out so many ways, helps me process what I went through. It soothes me now as it soothed me then, right in the thick of it, being able to explore it all in a way that was safe and that I could control. I could get off the ride at any point. I could close the word document, or close the tab. I could close the book, or turn off the TV.

My Real Father in the Real World hurt Real People with his Real Actions. That was my Real Life, and it Really Sucked.

Fictional People in a Fictional World who hurt Fictional People with their Fictional Actions...that is a story.

Real People in the Real World who hurt Real People and blame Fictional Stories...those Real People are to blame for Real Harm.

The Real Person who blames a movie for the Real Crime they committed...that Real Person is to blame. 100%.

And the Real Person who attacks Real People in defense of Fictional People...Real People who hurt Real People and use Fictional Stories as an excuse...those Real People are the villains.

[wigglebox]

Sad Bois’ Story Time

Bonus:

[yaoiconnoisseur]

Happy Hatchday, Yuuri!

[agenericplaceholdername]

Very funny to me that not only does Ras' team know to come over even before he says anything, but of the Elemental Masters who arrive, one is an ancient warlord with no clear elemental power, one is a teenager with no elemental powers (secretly possessed by another ancient warlord with no clear elemental power), and the third is Cinder. Meanwhile he has two other elemental masters working for him (one who's also at the banquet!) who don't show up.

Okay obviously he wasn't gonna tip his hand with Jay but from Ras' perspective, Jordana just showed up to be part of the crew (and also it would be less impressive if he just had two people behind him).

[tokyonymph]

THERE WAS A HOLE HERE: a playlist for james sunderland (silent hill 2).

"...it's gone now."

listen on spotify.

cover art belongs to @bridegroom on tumblr.

disclaimer: the songs featured in this playlist contain themes of guilt, grief, and death.

the full tracklist and selected lyrics are below the cut:

I. PROMISE (REPRISE) - akira yamaoka [instrumental]

II. GONE AWAY (STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS) - my brightest diamond 'cause you've gone away / where there isn't a telephone wire / still, i wait by the phone / you don't even write to say goodbye

III. ILL AND GETTING WORSE - rosegarden funeral party i know sometimes i think that / this must be wrong, and that i must be going insane / but if i so much as let my mind wander / i come crawling back to your face

IV. THERE'S A GIRL IN THE CORNER - the twilight sad you said you'd leave me and i won't forget / i'm holding on and i'll see how far / you thought you loved me, but you'll just forget / you're holding on but not too far

V. WALK WITH THE NOISE - iamx i walk with the noise, it’s reaching out to me / i talk to the walls, face my devils

VI. HOLE IN THE EARTH - deftones it's too late for me now / there's a hole in the earth (a hole in the earth) / i'm out

VII. IN THE WOODS SOMEWHERE - hozier my dearest love, i'm not done yet / how many years? I know i'll bear / i found something in the woods somewhere

VIII. PYRAMID SONG - radiohead i jumped in the river and what did i see? / black-eyed angels swam with me / a moon full of stars and astral cars / and all the figures i used to see

IX. SLEEP AWAKE - mother mother protecting you, protecting me / i throw the evidence into a trunk and drop it in the sea / lie awake, i sleep awake / i sleep with one eye on the bedroom door, the other on the cake

X. MAP OF THE PROBLEMATIQUE - muse fear and panic in the air / i want to be free from desolation and despair / and i feel like everything I sow / is being swept away / well, i refuse to let you go

XI. ALL THAT I AM LIVING FOR - evanescence should it hurt to love you? / should i feel like i do? / should i lock the last open door? / my ghosts are gaining on me

XII. WITHOUT YOU I'M NOTHING - placebo without you, i'm nothing at all

XIII. HURT - nine inch nails what have i become? / my sweetest friend / everyone i know / goes away in the end

XIV. THE WAVES HAVE COME - chelsea wolfe the sun goes down / and everything begins to fade away / the waves have come and taken you to sea / never to return to me

XV. EPILOGUE - the antlers i've woken up, i'm in our bed, but there's no breathing body there beside me / someone must have taken you while i was stuck asleep / but i know better as my eyes adjust, you've been gone for quite a while now

[kayawolfhorse]

Day 2 — On the Edge of a Knife

—☾—

Etho idly paces around the froglight shop’s lobby; the day as sweet and slow as molasses as each hour trudges by in an uninspired march.

There’s plenty he could be doing, sure—the shop’s exterior is begging to be built, though the glory in an inside-out base is that the outside is merely a suggestion.

He could rework Ravager Rush’s wiring to accommodate four-digit scores, or he could build the farm that’s been itching at the back of his mind ever since he finished the game. He could even work on his base to appease the endless teasing over his (perfectly adequate) roof.

His mind churns with ideas but his motivation to act upon any of them lulls. He counts the lily pads as he steps over them and fidgets with a zipper on his vest.

Eventually, after a tick or a minute or a day, the unmistakable sound of someone taking a landing too steep against the grass outside cuts through the silence.

“Etho! Etho-ooooo!” Gem’s voice, even less mistakable than the tumble Etho assumes she took, rings out.

“In here,” Etho says, and Gem meets him at the top step of the right wing. Her hair is messy around the edges of her bandanna, and there are fresh grass stains on her knees, almost invisible against the dark fabric.

“Etho! Wonderful, yes,” Gem says, with an odd expression that smooths itself away almost immediately. “Are you busy?”

“Nah, did you need something?” he asks, scuffing his sandal against the copper stair.

“Up for some sparring?”

Usually, they spar in the evenings, swords glinting in the reflected sunset until the bugs that gather around the edges of Gem’s river become unbearable.

Etho considers his productive day leading up to this point. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

—☾—

Gem dumps Etho’s sword into his outstretched arms after he respawns for the third time with a grin that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Five hearts,” she informs him, and Etho groans.

“You’re too fast! It’s hard to get hits on you,” Etho complains, but beneath his mask, he’s smiling too.

“Looks like you’ll just have to try harder,” Gem says, before widening her stance and steadying her blade. Etho mirrors her, and a slight shift of Gem’s boot against the sandstone of the beach is the only warning Etho gets before she’s racing up on the offense.

Etho parries her first blow; her second. Her third swing slices through the fabric of Etho’s left sleeve, and the gash stings, but not enough to stop him from lunging forward, closing the opening Gem leaves by lifting her arms too high and catching her in the side.

Gem grunts, but leverages ahead, pushing into Etho’s space in a furious whirl of movement that has Etho stumbling back a step. He snakes in more hits than he had in their previous round, but has no time or space to get in crits; most of his efforts are concentrated in avoiding Gem’s blade.

It’s over in a second. Etho’s vision goes black, and then he’s sitting up in the respawn bed nestled within a faux-shipwreck.

“Again?” Gem asks when Etho’s sword is back in hands.

Etho shrugs. “Sure.”

Gem’s fighting style is quick, cutting, and brutal; her movements leave no room for hesitation and her strikes land true a considerable amount of the time. Despite that, she maintains a fluidity that twines through her limbs like how waves break apart the sea’s surface, and she’s smooth as she transitions from one move to the next.

Tension strings across her frame now, in the tilt to her shoulders and line of her mouth and too-tight grip on her sword. Her swings are sloppier than usual and she brings them down harshly, almost desperately.

Sweat beads on Etho’s brow; he can see how it similarly runs down Gem’s face. An aching tiredness seeps into his limbs, but he’s not about to call it quits; Gem needs the company at least.

In a twist of sheer luck, Etho gains the upper hand, and he uses it to crit, before slashing again and driving Gem back. In a flash, she’s pushing ahead and twisting to the side with the ferocity of a cornered animal, and the set of teeth she bares is the edge of her blade suddenly pressed against Etho’s throat.

They both freeze. Gem’s hardly one for headshots.

The cool press of metal is gone before Etho has the chance to speak against it. Gem sheaths it at her side, looking troubled.

“You okay?” Etho asks, putting away his own sword.

“Yeah, I’m just… suddenly really tired,” Gem says, and her voice is pinched in all of the wrong places. “Thanks for sparring with me.”

Etho waits a couple ticks to see if she’ll continue. He wonders if he should press further, but she doesn’t look like she wants to talk. Gem turns to collect her stuff.

“It was a good session,” he says.

Gem tugs on her armor and equips her elytra. She offers him a tight-lipped smile before taking off.

He touches a hand to his neck. The blood there has already started to crust. Etho stands alone on the beach and watches Gem’s figure disappear over the horizon.

[mittysins]

Satyr having an orgasmic birth?

What if Asper had a friend :)

ABSOLUTELY going to be revisting this. Meet Weevil! (They/She)

[mamawasatesttube]

i wish it wasn't so normal for people to complain about unfinished wips or fics that take a long time to update. because sometimes i think i have a really fun idea for a fic but it'd take a while for me to write, and i like talking about my work as i do it and i don't like writing entire fics over like 20k without sharing, because i lose steam. so if i were to write and post that cool fic idea, it'd be as a wip. and then i think about all the people who just refuse to engage with wips, or all the other people who would just go "update pls" all the time, and of how people only really comment in the first 24 hours something is posted and then it's lost to obscurity, and then i just go "actually whats the point in going through the effort writing this out? i'll just daydream about it now and then and be done with it." and then i don't write it. alas!

[disdaidal]

Someone who constantly embarks on ship wars and fandom wank... doesn't sound too mentally stable. It's sad, really.

Dedicating all that energy and free time to arguing about fictional characters and their relationships, instead of channeling it into something more relaxing or creative, sounds destructive.

Seek help, please. Before it devours you completely.

[onesnoopyaday]

snoopy school bus

Snoopy #66

6/12/2024

[theflyingfeeling]

I think today I will cry about BC not making tour vlogs anymore 😔

[meownotgood]

bad news: I am very sick right now and these cough drops I have to take every few minutes taste like shit

good news: under the influence chapter two on saturday (probably) (unless I spontaneously get even sicker) (pray for me)

[demelzathemer]

I'll post the next instalment of My heart is a haunted house in a minute, and it's gonna be SO GOOD you don't know how excited I've been writing it (the CK will be there!!)

[morphemeta]

dracula's coffin club, early october / @anchoragestarters

October. Halloween. Harvest time for the owners of businesses dealing with occult, the spooky, the dark and dreary and whatever other haunting things of which you might think. For Dracula's Coffin Club, this was peak season (and, indeed, Halloween may as well have been Christmas) and, almost as soon as the sun had first dawned on the tenth month, Kaz had set to work on getting the place decorated. Some of this would have been done by hand, other parts handled by the kinds of professionals who specialised in dressing shop windows. There was little doubt he likely had more important work to be doing with regards to the City Council but he would always carve time out at this time of year to focus on the Coffin Club. If there had been any objections to this early on, they had fallen on death ears. Kaz was the sort of man who followed through with his plans.

For now, he was stood just outside the shop itself, clad in a thick black furry coat and frowning at its facade; although he'd spend twenty-odd years in Anchorage, he'd never quite acclimated to the weather. By now, the people of Rabbit Creek had likely gotten used to the shop's annual makeover but Kaz was never quite satisfied with his work. It wasn't quite perfect, it needed to be better. Yet he was at a loss. As loathe as he was to admit, nothing new was coming to him but the simple relief was that it would be easy enough to find outside help. After all, it only took a few short minutes of waiting before someone stopped in their tracks to take in the store's Halloween display.

"You," said Kaz with a snap of his fingers, addressing the passerby without a hint of hesitation or self-reservation. When you were very good at commanding attention, those were not the kind of worries you had to nurture. "This display. It feels incomplete somehow." He crossed his arms over his chest and pressed a finger against pursed lips. "What's missing?" Although it was not directly said, it was clear that this was his way of opening the floor to suggestions.

[pretentiouswreckingball]

As warm as the Calabrian sun part2 is up now!!

Regulus feels his throat is on fire. “Yeah?” he croaks out. “Yes, he said he likes the way they shine.” James turns to Regulus, eyes bright, “I told him these will never die, but just like the ones in the sky, they’re shining just for him,” Regulus' heart aches for them, he then moves his hand, covering James' whole palm and interlacing their fingers, squeezing them. “They’re shining for you too,”

[grailknightmonty]

can i offer you a galactic avian/star-canaryborne Jimmy in these trying times

something about the vastness of the space in the Aether lends itself well to the idea that there are a wide variety of subspecies of starborne the farther you travel, made from stars of all different compositions, that their appearences start to become reminiscent of the creatures of the Overworld, if not maybe even other realms entirely