#imposter syndrome is bad today

[savage-rhi]

Magenta 😥

[bethanydelleman]

A story about a king who is not well-suited for the job, but it's not like he's a tyrant, despot, womanizer, or squandering the country's wealth, he's just unhappy. He fully believes that he was divinely chosen by birth to be king, so why does he always feel like he isn't meant to do this? His only hope through each day and year is that he can eventually abdicate in favour of his son, but it will be at least twenty years before that's even possible.

He isn't good at court politics, he's not bad either, just not the sort of clever person who can stop the squabbling and get people easily on his side. He is haunted by a constant awareness that everyone near him wants something from him. He wonders if any relationship in his life is genuine. He longs for someone to call him by his real name instead of a title. His wife is a good partner, but it's no romance and she's still struggling to learn his language. He loves his children, but he chafes against the thousand unwritten rules and protocols that keep him from really feeling that he has a family.

Years pass and it never gets easier. Duty leads him on, because nothing else could keep him going for so long. His son seems intelligent and savvy, he only has to hold on a little longer. He's fully accepted that he'll never be remembered by history. He's no great king, just a placeholder for someone better.

He is on his deathbed when his eldest is twenty-five. He never had a chance to be free of the terrible burden that was the crown. He's never seen his wife cry so much, did she really love him all this time? His son tells him, "How can I ever measure up to your example?" What example? He was never a good king. Was he?

If only he could have known that he was

[hugmekenobi]

Sorry, I am seeking help again because for some reason writing a wedding when I'm not married is much harder than writing all the other things I've never experienced. Plus, writing happy emotions is not my strong suit lol cause I always worry I make it sound cringy and weird so...

[drumlincountry]

Having self worth issues about the stupidest shit possible so lets focus instead on my courgette plants that are now FLOWERING

[that-was-anticlimactic]

one of the worst feelings ever is wanting to write but your hands hurt too much or the words just don’t want to work so you just sit there staring at a half finished doc with tears in your eyes bc you want to write and you need to write but everything is telling you that you can’t

[fallingsatellive]

Capgras in color negative

[howdoyousleep3]

am i going to make a big bowl of chicken nuggies and sweet potato fries to eat in bed because i’m sad, followed by tucking myself further under the covers to work my way through a big bag of hi-chews? yes

[bucketofchum]

Been dealing with some really bad self esteem shit lately...

[ivypond11]

apparently today is being on edge and hating everything i do day! really fun thank you brain i don't know what i would do without you ♥️

[coldbloodace]

Reminding myself that it's okay to write badly even during the thirtieth draft because it's a hobby I do for fun and I wasn't put on earth to live up to some invisible impossible standards

[zukkaoru]

sometimes i will be like. what if i don't actually have allergies and i'm just claiming i do bc my mom told me i did when i was little even though i don't ever remember getting tested? and then i go to goodwill and start sneezing bc something triggered my allergies so bad i'm still having problems 9 hours later

[tarnera-blog]

Sometimes I feel like just dropping all my social media and never looking back, but then who will validate my existence by replying to/commenting on my posts?

[0rchidm4ntis]

i want to skip classes tomorrow bc i need to go get groceries but also i skipped the entirety of last week mhhhh

[goldengodcannibal]

,

[cloudd-nyne]

Bleh

Dysphoria is evil, and whatever being created it i hope you step on legos for all eternity

[lauraroselam]

(sorry cemetarything, please allow me a tiny promo). SO if you'd like to read an epic fantasy in this vein...Dragonfall by me, L.R. Lam, came out in May for all your weird, queer dragon needs. It came out the same day as Fourth Wing so it got buried.

I very deliberately went away from a huge age gap--there's only about 5 years between the two protags. But basically: all-powerful dragon prince gets trapped in human world in a mostly-human form and promptly finds out he's half-bonded to a human thief. Both the human and dragon's magic are constrained by this bond and they're both Big Mad about it and proceed to spend 400 pages trying and failing not to fall in love with each other even though the dragon is supposed to kill the human (the human doesn't know he's a dragon prince and the whole murder thing). Themes of power/consent is a big focus and it's my deconstruction of the soulmate or dragon/rider bond, as well as the chosen one trope. If the human touches the dragon, it causes him pain. Yes, it took me an embarrassingly long time before I realised how kinky that was. Spoiler: the dragon also hasn't eaten anyone (yet), but the *humans* might if they use too much magic without fuelling it properly. Hilariously, I originally tried to write a straightforward book, but then I added cannibalism, so much lore, created a working conlang, used 3 different narrative positions, and just....got strange. Anyway. It exists, and this original post made me chuckle.

if dragons were real there'd be so much discourse about whether being in a relationship with one, assuming they were intelligent enough to be able to consent, is a "predatory power dynamic", to which someone in the thread would inevitably reply "of course it's a predatory power dynamic why do you think i'm fucking them"