#non-fiction is still writing

[dunkelzahn]

One of the things I think a lot of people don't really get about writing is that it doesn't necessarily have to be fiction.

Like, fiction writing. Good, excellent, create your worlds, tell your stories, may it be popular and lead to success. But it's so easy to crush your writing under the weight of your own expectations, isn't it? It's so dreadfully easy. You can write a first draft, or just an opening, and give up because you feel there's no way that it'll ever be good enough to show to anyone and that just taints your feelings about the work, your skills, and writing in general.

But what if you didn't seep all of that into your fiction? Just... write something. Doesn't have to be fiction. Like a diary entry. Your thoughts on the news. Conversations you want to have. Events in your life. A paragraph or so on that nice meal you had. Non-fiction stuff, things no one will read. Something with an audience of one person, totally personal and private.

Still, it's writing. I've written furious screeds about topics I don't think anyone else cares about, so I don't bore folks with posting them. I've written tutorials about subjects that've undoubtedly been covered, and in a more comprehensive way than I could manage. I've written love letters to someone that'll never read them. Sometimes what I write is just transcriptions from another source. (No one I know is interested in recipes from 14th century England.) I've written political rants aching with frustration. I've written reviews of canons and products. I've written apologies that will never cross the bridges I've already burned. Even, embarrassingly, a few bits of poetry. They were awful.

And, yes, I've written fiction, both original and fan fiction.

Sometimes it's experiments. Sometimes it's just to get my emotions straight. But writing about the real stuff, the stuff that isn't fiction, the stuff that doesn't have the expectation of readership.

Some of it's saved onto an external. A lot of it, I just delete once I've done it, after I let it sit for a day or four. Then I'll come back to reread it and feel satisfied that I've got it out of my system. So I clear out the text document and start on something new.

But the thing was, I wrote it. And it was freeing because, since I knew I'd be the only one to ever see it, I had no expectations and felt no pressure to make it good.

And, honestly, I feel like doing that frees up some of the pressure for when I do write something that's intended for others. It's like singing in the shower.

Anyway. This got overlong. The short of it is just this: When someone says 'just write something,' they don't necessarily mean to follow it with 'and show it to everyone.' I think a lot of people get caught up on that silent adder and it makes them shrivel up when they do keep writing and never manage to meet their own expectations.

So write, but write for yourself. If you happen to think it's good enough to share, do it. Otherwise, just treat it as private practice, a way to vent out those ideas and feelings until you either find the diamond you want to polish and show off or you decide that you're ready to show off the diamonds you've already got.

[mbat]

i literally read the book of bill days ago but its only now kinda hitting me how fucked ford and bills whole thing was though cause ford literally talks about being so unable to sleep (to try to keep bill away), and when sleep inevitably caught up to him, he would wake up to his body abused and things messed with and he just couldnt seem to find an escape (and he literally didnt get to truly escape until 30 years later)

(also keeping people awake for unhealthily long periods of time is another tactic used to mess with and control people because of how it impairs brain function)

listing off the things we see in those few pages in the book of bill:

i mean, punching and scratching at a steel door for hours would be so damaging to your hands and probably hurt like hell for at least 2 days after. then bill says he was hitting fords head against a wall, though its said in a post-it as if its a joke, but he also isnt exactly above doing that, and honestly he says most things like its a joke.

i also dont need to say 'bill really doesnt know how to take no for an answer' because he makes that very clear in literally any interaction we see with him.

bill literally puts a venomous snake near ford while fords asleep, which could have killed him if he wasnt lucky+skilled enough to deal with it.

he nearly gives ford hypothermia, and in the same action actively threatens ford with the idea of making him jump off of a high spot, and like ford says, doesnt do it just so he can send a message to ford about how hes the one in control.

he gets ford in trouble with not only the law, but also with other people that are probably not very happy with him after. he mutilates fords body in several ways, and i dont think i need to go into detail on them because theyre... so ew. and he even exposes part of fords body to the world. like, its just taking his shirt off, but thats still showing off his body in a way that he didnt agree to or want

and then he attempts to (or purposefully fails to) call stan, using fords voice to threaten suicide and tell stan that ford never loved him.

and he punctuates it with a final power move, in a hallucination that he creates, hes messing with stans memories and making him feel like his body was basically about to implode

and like. okay, we all joke about toxic old man yaoi, and its a good joke and toxic old man yaoi is great and its an interesting ship, but holy fuck.

like. to say the absolute least, that had to be so, so deeply violating. its no wonder that when we see ford in the past, when he finally contacts stan, he looks like hes on the verge of shattering into a million pieces. he just went through, and still wasnt yet out of, some deeply abusive shit.

like... everything coming out lately both in this book and what ive heard is on the website, mixed with what we already knew from the show itself... the stans are both so, so fucking tragic dude. their whole lives were thrown away over things that really didnt even need to be the way they were, and then they both get into situations that are pretty damn screwed, and those situations follow them for the rest of their lives. its basically a miracle that things worked out in the end for them.

i dont really have a point, i just had to talk about all that. i read almost all of the book of bill in one sitting, and while i was really enjoying it, i was also getting kind of tired of sitting in one spot only doing this one thing for several hours straight. i still felt a lot of the emotional bits of it of course, but man this part specifically just really didnt hit me until now.

i mean, to say the absolute least, i know what its like to feel violated in a similar way, though not anywhere near to the extent of what he went through at all. someone get that man some therapy got damn

[uncanny-tranny]

I know this is a very unoriginal observation (much like any other), but I'm finally reading The Great Gatsby, and even I wouldn't describe men the way Nick does.

[spottys-rathole]

(all q!)

There's that scene where Baghera, Antoine, and Bad go adventuring out with their kids, and Bad leads the way trying his best to show them good dungeons with useful loot that aren't too hard

They cross a field running, jump into a speedboat and dash through until they spot a structure on the horizon. They loot it, rinse and repeat.

They just raided an outpost, Baghera has just stepped in and is trying to collect the bookshelves inside when she hears one of the eggs outside blowing into a horn, calling for attention. All the while Baghera is feeling overwhelmed. She explains out loud that she feels the others don't realize how poor she really is, how she's got nothing and how she's still discovering so many new biomes and new features that were added recently. She wants to take her time to check it all out properly, she wants to collect building blocks she likes for her house - because Baghera doesn't have a house yet.

This isn't the first time she brings it up on this evening. Since the first time she encountered BBH earlier that day, he has been slowly introducing her to the idea of building a house near him and Pierre. He said so himself to the eggs that he's trying to convince her to do so. At first he asked her if she had anywhere to live, then upon learning she's only got a hole dug on the flank of a hill so far, he told her they needed to get her a house. Then he showed her his place, welcomed her in and showed him everything that could peak her interest :

Here's BBH's storage room, Baghera can have free unlimited access to it. Here's a flower field surrounding the place, it's really pretty isn't it ? Here's the beach house Pierre built on the bank of this cool lake, look how gorgeous it is, she could build the same if she wanted to. Also don't fail to mention there's a nearby lavender field around, Baghera really likes purple right ? Surely she could enjoy the biome enough to decide to settle down over there.

And Baghera's immediate response is to use Pierre's waystone to teleport the gang to her actual place. Actually, she doesn't exactly teleport them to her place, she teleports them to Phil's place first, which is right across the river from where she lives. Because she doesn't have a waystone to herself, because again : She is poor.

She then proceeds to show them around her "house", which is a (yet to be) repurposed dungeon. It's empty so far. BBH notices and remembers it's a dungeon that he had already raided with Dapper a week ago before Baghera found it.

Baghera doesn't have much if anything at all. She started the afternoon with -37 coins and a gapple which she offered to Acau as a welcoming gift. Still she was so happy when she accidentaly discovered that dungeon and loved its aesthetic, even if the loot that was left inside was barely useful, but to her it was all she had.

Back to the pillager outpost, Antoine overhears Baghera mention how exhausted she is and how meeting everyone at spawn earlier has been really draining for her. That's why she usually prefers exploring alone because then she can do it at her own pace without feeling pressured, because what is of interest to her may not be for her adventuring partners.

Antoine immidiately tries to reassure her the best he can, tells her that she can take all her time and shouldn't hurry for them, that they will wait for her. Baghera apologizes. While BBH is wondering what they're doing, Dapper goes up the tower to check on them, Antoine asks them to wait for them as they are taking their time. Baghera apologizes. When alone with her again she explains that it bothers her to not be able to take breaks and go at her own pace, but she blames herself for it because she accepted to go exploring in group and obviously even if Antoine and Bad keep telling her that they understand and try to make her feel the most at ease, and giving her food and gear. Well anyone would still feel pressured because making the others wait all the time might become boring for the rest of the group whether they say they're okay with it or not. At some point Baghera explains to Bad that she isn't feeling so hot, when she turns around he is 30 ft further ; something caught his attention and he wanted to check it out briefly. She comes up to him again and tell him she needs to get sugar because she is feeling dizzy, she insists that they shouldn't wait for her. Once she comes back, she tells the group that she wants to part ways and go back to building her house. Right on queue, Bad reminds her that she is the most welcome if she wants to come live near his place. Baghera still doesn't explicitely agree nor disagree with the idea, she only says she wants to build because that's what she enjoys doing. Right after, the group catch her up on what they were doing while she was afk : They're about to go raid this very dangerous sky dungeon, and Bad invites Baghera to join them. She iterates that sadly she will not, but Bad who's attention was caught by Dapper, has already ran off to listen to his child. Pomme and Antoine tell her it's okay, but then Bad rushes back towards them to excitedly show them what cool shenanigan Dapper is up to. Baghera bids them goodbye and Bad seems both surprised and disappointed to hear she's leaving now. As she is walking away, Antoine once again whispers to Bad that she was feeling real tired to which the latest answers he completely understands.

It's not so relevant of a moment lore-wise, but I've still been thinking about it a lot because I'm usually really into these kinds of small interactions that are still loud because of everyone's points of views ? Baghera's been there for 3 days and she still hasn't properly brought up to anyone what happened to her during Purgatory - she is not doing fine (I'm not going to go in depth because I'd have to slap a big ol trigger warning but her reaction to reading Pomme's and Richas' signs kicked me in the guts with the strenght of a 3T truck). And meanwhile BBH is this close to kick the bucket too and there's all his motivations that push him to surround himself with people when he would previously be paranoid about inviting anyone to his old base (and none of the french-speakers knew back then). Antoine is just vibing good for him (this was his last qsmp stream too lmao pretend i'm not crying rn /hj)

But it's one of those cases where everything was set up perfectly for it (Pomme was literally jumping with excitement at the idea of two more of her parents getting to live near) but it simply wasn't meant to happen -at least not that day-

[turtleblogatlast]

omfg did you have any content on that post you just posted? the one about leo never shutting up until hes in real pain? because you are very much Correct for that one holy hell it gets me every time

[ cw: violence mention / self sacrifice implied / ]

No content, just something I thought upon when thinking of the movie (something that is on my mind so very often.)

Just, thinking of Leo, when he’s separated from everyone and everything, being completely silent. Even being so horrifically beaten as he was, even being in a true nightmare scenario, he is silent in his suffering. Smiles through it, even.

At the moment where it would have been more than justified to make any noise, he stays silent.

[wired-for-weird]

your taur reblogs reminded me tht my friends keep having discussions about wether centaurs could jerk themselves off or not. like this keeps being a Reoccurring Discussion. i think the solutions we’ve gotten are:

- mage hand (specific to dnd i guess). pretty self explanatory. summon a hand to jork it.

- grind against whatever soft surface you can find.

- or. try to ?? bounce the cock against your stomach??? my friends discuss this more than i do.

you have great friends i think actually

tbh if it's purely a question of logistics I'm confident it is perfectly possible for a taur to get themselves off. real world creatures with even more inconvenient body plans- horses, dolphins, elephants, seals etc- all manage perfectly well.

really it's more about the dubcon element, for me, at least. purely in kink terms, I'm just Into the age-old trope of a creature not being able to satisfy an appetite with anything less than a Very Specific thing, and if they way they have to get it ends up being Taboo then so much the better. so a taur not being able to find any relief without a living, fighting mate to fuck appeals to me real strongly

[official-saul-goodman]

By the way white people and a lot of writers of colour also seem to not understand that you shouldn't write racial slurs that you cannot say in general. They seem to use 'oh my character is black/asian/latine' as an excuse to just use that slurs as they wish. And this is cause people don't actually understand what anti racism is. And they're also racist as fuck.

[puirell]

some nonsense i drew during my 5hr class last week >:)

[ratbastarddotfuck]

I added that longass caveat to my podcast post about how you don't have to write an in-universe explanation for why your audio drama is being recorded, and then immediately came up with a found-audio horror plot bunny. which does happen often. so I suppose it probably happens more often in audio medium because the medium lends itself well to this line of thought, and people can't stop coming up with fun ideas. I know I can't lmao

[tippenfunkaport]

When I first started in fandom, for whatever reason I decided making fankids was like… too cringe for me. Like that was the arbitrary line I drew of what was too deep into fandom for me.

Anyway, think of this when I post my fankid drawings later because they represent me surrendering what is left of my dignity and fully surrendering to the cringe.

[fudan-no-nijiiro]

Popped Maji Love Kingdom in to rewatch this evening, and yep. Every time I watch the Quartet Night talk time bit I think about its obscure near-references to Fiction and Non-Fiction (references which, to be clear, I may or may not have wholly imagined) and go red-string-corkboard all over again

[welcome-here-in-my-world]

for every day I don't feel like myself, there's also a day I get to prepare questions for an interview I'd like to do with Joakim Brodén and then explain Sabaton lore to my teacher

[amphiptere]

is gay hockey smut a thing? because unless the authors are prepared to make their hockey universe co-ed, there's no way to have players on the same or even opposing teams get together and frankly that's a way more interesting story than "random hot girl meets hockey guy."

[unladielike]

Every once in a while, I'd remember @spiritpyro's Hayate mentioning in his internal monologue that he likes everything about Vivian, including even her personality and her speech patterns, which to this day, makes me emotional, because as a character, Vivian has gone through a lot... from characters getting pissed off at her for saying the wrong thing (thereby ending a thread prematurely) to characters outright not getting her humour and claiming she's unkind, even though it hadn't been her intention to offend them.

Granted, I don't really treat those as canon occurrences, because I'm not really a single verse blog, so any interactions from partners who have broken mutuals with me/deactivated/didn't follow me on my remade blog are null and void (meaning as far as Vivian is concerned, they have never occurred and will no longer be referenced in any threads/headcanon posts except for this one), but at the same time, I will lay in bed at night sometimes... and have this startling revelation that the way Vivian had been treated remarkably mirrors the experiences of most autistic people I've read about/heard from. Honestly, it's astounding to me how many on Reddit would describe similar struggles/feelings she also has, to the point where even though the RPC has a general distaste for slice-of-life muses, I still take comfort in the fact she is at least relatable.

Like, yeah, I might not be the most descriptive/poetic writer on this godforsaken site, but in my opinion, my characterization is where my writing truly shines best... and so, Hayate catching feelings for Vivian (despite me portraying both her flawed and endearing sides as a young, neurodivergent woman in her early twenties) is such a memorable thing to me, that I would find myself occasionally thinking about it even while I'm at work. I mean, granted, Vivian is nowhere near as dysfunctional as the main female lead from Asper Kanojo (That's My Atypical Girl), but it cannot be denied she is still very hard to love... to the point where Hayate pretty much fell out of love with her in an alternate universe.

Either way, it honestly hurt me on a deep, visceral level when Hayate was like, 'Fucking think before you speak', when they fought that one time, because autistic people will commonly be told that at some point in their lives... furthermore, Vivian had to hear that from someone she loves, so I can only imagine how betrayed she must have felt, especially since she already tries super hard when it comes to explaining things from her point of view and can only process her thoughts when speaking them due in part to her disability.

At the same time, though, it also makes me think that in the event Vivian and Hayate would romantically be together, this would realistically be a reoccurring issue within their relationship, where every time they would argue, she'd utter out stuff that would potentially annoy him, because according to Hayate, Vivian probably doesn't put a lot of thought into her words... so there would be instances where she would view him as an absolute alien. Still, knowing Vivian, I could also see the aftermath of their fights being one of those rare, few moments where she would wish she was more normal; after all, if she happened to be less difficult, Hayate might actually become less frustrated with her.

Since this is Hayate we're talking about, however, I could also see him potentially researching autism a bit more and slowly reaching a point where he would better understand Vivian, but either way, their relationship is one I always have fun, psycho-analyzing, because it's between an unpredictable, misanthrophic man and a manic, neurodivergent woman.

[andthebubbles]

i actually kinda miss rpf fandoms haha like... i don't miss f1 itself, but i miss rpf fandoms where everyone knows what they're doing and what's up, like how nobody really believes that their otp is actually together (and even if they actually are (?? haha), it has no bearing on what you write/create). and just. i miss that there are no canon ships, so everyone just ships whatever they like (or whore their fave out like i do) and well, i didn't really catch any ship wars during the time i was in the f1 fandom (twice) but maybe i just managed to stay away from all of that. and (at least in my experience) there wasn't any weird comments on fic of how the plot should've been like that, or you shouldn't have done this with this character; i also really liked how there wasn't just smut fic (although there was plenty of that too heheh), but also wonderful, wildly creative AUs of any sort, like it just became so easy to take these characters (because by the time you write about rl people in fic, they DO become characters) and put them in any situation/scenario that you liked--like it just became so easy to know them on a fic/writing level because people before you did the research and put it in their fic, and then you'd read their fic and you'd learn that this guy has blah number of brothers and sisters and these are their names and these are their parents' names--

anyway. i miss the chillness of rpf fandoms. or at least, the ones i've been in anyway.

[palant1r]

there should be a rule that people have to watch dan olson's video about fifty shades of grey before they get into shipping/fiction and reality discourse