#learning from

[whenmemoriesfrost]

learning from donna tartt's the goldfinch chapter one: boy with a skull

i spent some time today with the first chapter of donna tartt’s the goldfinch, and thought i could write a series of blog posts about reading this novel for the first time, and discovering how it can inform my own writing. 

what i immediately love about tartt's writing is the commitment to detail. she doesn't leave a stone unturned in the narrative - everything is specific and vivid, which allows for very tangible characterisation. i felt as though i really saw her descriptions, particularly of the streets of new york in the rain, and the met in ruins.

i highlighted this passage because i was impressed by how much movement, tension, mood, and character study tartt can fit in a single sentence. it's a real skill to be able to pull a reader into the narrative like that and imo can only be achieved through the perfect balance of detail and pacing.

everything, from theo's youth and guilt, to his mother’s whimsy and intelligence, and the beauty of art and architecture and space, is painted with a tragic light. i'm already connecting to theo as a character. i see myself in him, i find him believable and a compelling narrator. since i'm writing my current wip in first person for the first time, the goldfinch is already making me think about how i can use visual detail in my stories in a way that characterises my narrator, in a way that brings his flaws outside of himself and makes them visible.

[oceangenasi]

I'm absolutely obsessed with Laios' logic that the other shapeshifters made mistakes the real party members were too knowledgeable/careful/wise to make

but for Marcille he's like "only the real Marcille would do something that fucking stupid"

[thisshadowwrites]

i have seen gay porn less homoerotically charged than whatever the fuck they were doing in that hyundai civic

[werewolf-transgenderism]

keep seeing undergrads on social media saying “oh if a prof has a strict no-AI academic integrity policy that’s a red flag for me because that means they don’t know how to design assignments” like sorry girl but that just sounds like you’ve got a case of sour grapes about not being allowed to cheat with the plagiarism machine that doesn’t know how to evaluate sources and kills the environment! I have a strict no-AI policy because if you use AI to write your essays for a writing course it’s literally plagiarism because you didn’t write it and you’re not learning any of the things the course teaches if you just plug a prompt into the plagiarism generator that kills the environment, hope this helps!

[0sbrain]

alternatives for ai to design ocs

hero forge

picrew

the fucking sims 4

your local furry artist

bitmoji

shitty photoshoped collage

DeviantArt bases

zepeto

making edits of your favorite character

searching "dress up game" on the app store

learning how to draw

[apollos-boyfriend]

every time some jerk complains about the new minecraft update “not adding any value to the game” i think about that one jschlatt clip where he discovers a lush cave for the first time and is genuinely rendered speechless by its beauty. so much of minecraft’s charm and beauty is exploring and discovering new lands and generation and falling in love with a world that was made for you and to love you

who give a shit if the pale garden doesn’t “add” anything game breaking. it will be worth it for the hundreds of thousands of players who stumble upon it by chance. only a few people will be able to relate to being handed a new op block/mechanism on a platter but everyone remembers the feeling of still being new to minecraft and the wonder of uncovering all its quirks. it’s about the loving the universe for its smallest of features and creatures as the love letters tho humanity that they are not exploiting the universe for all that its worth jackass ‼️‼️‼️

[nonebinary-leftbeef]

DEVASTATING the lyric you've been mishearing is better than the real one

[inkiedraws]

Luffy's not used to being the big brother.

[kazieka]

hold up im reading more about the lionfish thing and this one island in Honduras has had such a huge problem with lionfish that the measures they have taken include

• getting special exemption from the Honduran government to allow divers access to harpoons and spears which are otherwise illegal in fishing

• public campaign to teach people how to prepare and eat lionfish (apparently they are very tasty once the poisonous spines are removed) (but watch out)

• holding lionfish combination hunting competition and cookout (reportedly they killed and cooked 1,700 in a day) (someone killed 60 of them with a rubber band spear gun???)

• most recently and apparently out of desperation, the divers in charge of culling the lionfish in the Roatan Marine Park just started. feeding the lionfish they killed to sharks. bc what else are you gonna do with it

• the sharks don’t seem to notice or be affected by the poison and begin hanging out with the divers

• the sharks then were seen hunting and killing the lionfish on their own

like this is nuts to me sorry. the sharks just had to be shown “hey this is food, did you know?? you can eat these!! here try one!!” we are possibly altering an entire foodchain bc we like feeding the big ocean wolves

[whenmemoriesfrost]

learning from donna tartt's the goldfinch chapter 4: morphine lollipop (early novel spoilers ahead!)

chapter 4 sees theo meeting pippa (whose story mirrors theo's in some ways) for the first time since the explosion, as well as the beginning of theo's friendship with hobie, and the return of his father a year after he left theo and his mother.

particularly with the introduction of theo's father and his new partner xandra, i've been thinking a lot about dialogue as a characterisation tool. dialogue is probably the thing i struggle with most when writing fiction. i find it difficult to write convincing dialogue that isn't stiff. there's a scene in this chapter where theo has been taken out to dinner at a touristy restaurant, shortly before leaving for las vegas. the dialogue in this scene, as his father tells a story about the budding acting career he had in his youth, is masterful at revealing his father to be a jaded, delusional man without ever explicitly saying it, by having him relay a story that has no real connection to the plot. it's really clever. the two of them really remind me of my rotten uncle and his wife.

my skin crawls when i think of the painting, buried in theo's mind and in the prose. it is this far-away, concealed little burst of tension. it's a real skill to achieve that.

[mebssann]

imagine you're living in the post apocalypse and your adopted dad still makes you do homework

[dykemd]

the lack of dykes n more specifically butch dykes in post apocalyptic media is bizarre bc every single lesbian i know is the most prepared person in any room n not even for survivalist reasons we do that shit for fun

[gideonisms]

I LOVE being alive so I can be mediocre at SO many different hobbies

[nouverx]

*proceeds to drink the whole bottle*

Yeah Alastor you're gonna be loved and appreciated wether you want it or not :)

[talaricula]

Things I've seen tumblr memeing about James Somerton doing à la "How did no one see how bigoted he was!" as if those things haven't been a significant part of tumblr culture for over a decade :

Presenting untrue and bordering on conspiratorial versions of (queer or otherwise marginalised) history without any sources

Completely disregarding and disrespecting any expertise on socio-cultural topics/humanities and distrusting academics and historians (incl. acting as if no academics or historians could be queer or marginalised)

Downplaying the role misogyny played in the historical oppression of queer women and concluding that queer men must have been more oppressed than queer women

Bi women are, at best, not as queer as "real" queer ppl, and at worst, simply equivalent to straight women

Despite nominal trans inclusivity, transmasculine ppl are functionally women when convenient (combined with the above, bi transmascs are functionally straight women)

Despite nominal trans inclusivity (bis), shamelessly attacking, threatening and actively endangering any trans woman who questions them or smth they find important (often by unfairly presenting her as violent or as a threat)

Having absolutely fucking wild and reductive takes about ace ppl, the oppression they face and their place in the queer community

Stating that marriage equality is an assimilationist fight while completely ignoring its direct roots in the horrifying consequences of the AIDS crisis for partners of ppl who died of AIDS

Praising western media creators from the past for queer coding even under censure and in the same breath condemning current non western media creators for being homophobic bc their representation isn't explicit enough

Blaming China for all existing homophobic censoring in western media

Assuming all queer media would be better told by western creators and by western standards

Only out queer ppl get to tell queer stories

Heavily criticising almost all queer media created by women or ppl they see as such (see above points about trans ppl) or involving/starring a significant amount of women for any perceived or real amount of "problematicness", but fawning over and praising and negating criticism of queer media created by and starring mostly or even functionally exclusively men (even when it could be argued that, you know, not involving/seriously sidelining women is a pretty clear example of misogyny which should probably be considered "problematic")

And I'm probably forgetting stuff or there's stuff I have internalised myself and don't recognise as an issue

Like idk but I feel like the takeaway from Hbomberguy and Toddintheshadow's videos should maybe be "be aware of such patterns in your communities bc they definitely exist" and not "this guy is uniquely awful" and I feel like a lot of the discussion I've seen surrounding this has been severely failing at that. Most ppl who've spent any significant amount of time on tumblr prob either have internalised at least one of those thought patterns, have had to de-internalise them, or have had to be extremely vigilant to not internalise them (which is done by, you know, seeking out other sources, which also seemed like an important takeaway from the videos)