#so hopefully this is helpful and not me just repeating platitudes lol

[rollercoasterwords]

hi! no pressure at all, this is just my curiosity getting the best of me, but I was wondering if you’re planning to eventually write more in the atyd another perspective series? It’s feeding my soul hahah. also if you have any writing advice for people just starting out? thank you sm and I absolutely love all your work, the hand that feeds is consuming me atm!

hi thank u so much i'm so glad u enjoyed sirius's pov + that ur enjoying the hand that feeds!! 💖

i do still have a few oneshots that i eventually want to get to in the atyd another perspective series, but i honestly have no idea when i'm going to get around to writing them just bc there are other projects holding my focus rn, so i'm basically just considering it on hold indefinitely :)

and i've already talked a little about writing advice in this post, but i feel like i got very rambly over there so i'm gonna try and be more concise here:

(first - a disclaimer: i’ve never really studied english and am by no means a creative writing expert, so i’m not the best person to give advice about like...technical aspects of writing. the advice that i do have to offer has more to do with mindset!)

1 - no writing is bad writing! writing is just like any other creative pursuit -- playing an instrument, painting, drawing, etc. the more you practice, the better you’ll get. especially if you’re just starting out, try not to beat yourself up if your stories don’t come out the way you want them to. any piece of writing you create -- no matter how cliche or full of grammatical errors or boring or incoherent it might be -- is you practicing + learning + growing as a writer. focus on having fun with the process and try not to beat yourself up if you aren’t reaching, like, ~writing perfection~ (bc perfection in writing doesn’t exist anyway!)

2 - you’re not selling a product, you’re sitting around a campfire. i genuinely feel like that’s the best way i can summarize this point lmao

what i’m trying to say here is that i think it’s really easy to get into this capitalist-brainwashing-induced mindset that anything you create is a product for consumption. this leads to a lot of pressure to not only create at an unsustainably fast pace, but it means that if your audience doesn’t like the product, or if there’s not a large audience coming to consume the product, it’s easy to feel like a failure.

but that’s not what writing is about!! writing is about storytelling and the communities it can build and the joy of imagination!! good writing is messy and stupid and fun and driven by emotion, not capital gain (at least, in my opinion)! if there is even one person who wants to sit around the proverbial campfire with you and listen to your story, that’s so exciting!! if you’re at the campfire by yourself looking up the stars and hanging out with a bunch of funky little characters in your head, that’s so much fun!! this mindset shift has been the most helpful thing for me personally when it comes to writing, because in the past i really felt like writing wasn’t really worth the time unless i was working towards the ultimate goal of publication. now that i’m writing purely for the fun of it, and writing stories that i enjoy, regardless of whether i think they’ll appeal to a broad audience, it’s like the floodgates have been opened and suddenly writing isn’t a chore or a burden but just something that i truly, truly love -- and also something that has helped me plug into a community of other people who write for the joy of writing, and i truly think that is so special and unique in this day and age <3

[incarnateirony]

Democratic Debates, Day 1

So a few ground rules:

If you’re going to reply, be an adult about it, and don’t try to read everything in bad faith default lens. Ask questions of anyone who engages rather than accusing. And not in that presumptuous white guy bad faith questioning that isn’t a question tone.

If replying, put your comments with a lead in no longer than two (reasonable) sentences behind a cut. Because

some of us are fandom blogs first or whatever interests and our followers aren’t deeply invested

I just don’t want goddamn pillars of text on my reblog wall if I respond to discussions.

Literally if you’re a republican out to just be a shitlord and start whining or complaining or insulting or “no u”ing, see rule 4

I will not reblog or reply to any commentary that doesn’t fit these very basic guidelines, because internet trolling etc is not worth the future of our country. And that’s very much at stake now.

If you don’t want to see this, blacklist #politics and/or #democratic debates. Now, my takeaways on this, some surprising.

So, I’ll start with some disclaimers: I’m pretty much “vote for my dog over Trump” party line right now but we need to figure out a mix of “our best chance of winning” along of “award for the least tool” with hopefully a side of “I really like them and their policies”

Honestly, I entered this without being fond of Warren. She had some... establishment backing and other things that were just rubbing me wrong. I actually went in to day one looking to hear about Tulsi since I heard great buzz about her but honestly had only pulled up a few pages that sounded great on paper, but wanted to see her in action. Everyone else was littered policy ideas disembodied and, as a very visual person, I need to be able to connect to how they handle their podium beyond writing nice policy platitudes or listening to the toss back and forth online with everybody screaming at everybody else.

I’m also going to get something out of the way, and BEFORE you flame me on my marks on the image, read why I selected one that... I generally wouldn’t. First, this was my original graphic I released.

Okay so sore thumb here: De Blasio. The reason for the circling being simple: if you took every semi-valid idea of every other white guy’s platform on this lineup, gave it a little bit of meat, and showed ACTUAL LIVING PROOF OF HAVING ENACTED IT ALL IN HIS TENURE AND MAKING THE IDEAS WORK, you get De Blasio. A lot of the ideas of the other nominees is basically *hand raise* “I did that.” So like. That’s that.

Anyone with no mark whatsoever is kinda like “you’re there and not trump so good for you” but there’s some updates further down this conversation on one of those.

The internet keeps acting like Klobuchar did well and I really don’t get why. It kinda feels like our token non-canuck trying to appeal to them-there northern hunter-type and cheese folks to reach out as a middle ground without actually committing to much and honestly, she’s just not going to last.

Booker caught my eye even if I was kind of head tilting because that is quite literally the whitest black man I have ever fucking seen, but he made a point about intersectionality, marginalized groups, and held his ground. He was all but unknown to me but I at least looked at him now. On the other hand, a lot of it felt like borderline pandering. I don’t know. I’ll keep an eye on him, but he actually stood out a bit at least. Not hard with the mayo jars up there but whatever.

It’s not a rare take online that Castro took the internet by storm. I love him. Everyone loves him. I do have some concerns long-term though; it’s less having actual problems with his ideas and more knowing that ... our country is too fucked for him right now. He’s advocating some pretty heavily open borders and while in principle I enjoyed watching him stomp on Beto about that, I honestly feel like if we put him against Trump, we’d lose. 

There’s people in the red party that ARE tired of Trump, that ARE experiencing a crisis about the inhumane shit going on at the border, that WOULD be willing to crossvote to make it end -- but we can’t forget that a lot of them initially voted for Trump BECAUSE of a deep seeded Xenophobia, and the level of aggression -- again, the kind of aggression I personally agree with -- Castro had may end up being very dangerous long term in getting that vote. Pretty much everyone up there agrees we need very comprehensive immigration reform and immediate action about the travesty, but I feel like unless Castro smooths his roll a bit we’re in for a long term faceplant that gives us another four years of Trumpian hell by people pulling back into their xenophobic mindset and -- if not voting for Trump -- abstaining from voting for him, which I think several other candidates have in their court.

Castro made a bit of a gaffe about switching trans genders but the fact that he tried, I guess. And considered trans in the discussion of choice and birth control etc. It could have very easily just been a stupid fumble. He’s still trying to take it into account. I can forgive that, in the scale of it, even if it has a bit of performer aspect.

Also I’m left to wonder where Castro was when they needed help running in Texas to begin with. I also just don’t see the passion in his eyes of several candidates, it’s strangely calculating on most topics. I like his platform, in theory, but I’m very cautious. 

Jay Insley is just weird even if everyone likes him.

Dulaney is a meme and I don’t know why he’s even here.

Tim Ryan accidentally wandered in on his way to the Republican debates as best I can gather.

Tulsi was the one that I was watching. All in all, I was underwhelmed. And then... it got worse.

The better part of her time was spent repeating her time in the military. And while it was great watching her school Tim Ryan, that’s not exactly hard to do. The fact that she lit his ass on fire when he just about self combusted in front of the party without her help -- I mean, it was the highlight of her showcasing aside from the snazzy Rogue hair.

Somehow, for as woke as tumblr is, and the progressives that had me looking her way, I hadn’t heard of her anti-LGBT past which she’s mostly couched her opinions on and held as recently as 2014 or THE FACT THAT I HAVE FOUND OUT THAT SHE WAS VETTED BY THE FUCKING TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO BE ON THEIR CABINET, I’M FUCKING HORRIFIED.

BUT THEN THERE WAS THIS LITTLE GEM THAT I FOUND BEFORE ACTUALLY DISCOVERING THE PREVIOUS PARAGRAPH.

What the FUCK? What are you, seven? That’s literal pre-emptive “my sister stole my phone lol sorry” level tweets. YOU’RE A FUCKING PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE TALKING ABOUT IMPORTANT NATIONAL MATTERS LOCK YOUR GODDAMN PHONE.

Because THAT’S just what we need, we’ll go from Trump impulse-tweeting to like “LOL fuck korea - lmao sorry my sister texted that”???? 

Neverminding how STATISTICALLY INCORRECT that is. Depending on exactly HOW you count time Warren got 2nd or 3rd most time -- yes, more than Tulsi. She did not have the most. She did not have “more than all the other candidates combined.” And Tulsi did not have the least time, but center-ground on time. She wasted a bunch of it endlessly reciting her time in the military, scoring an okay shot on Ryan, and... well, vagueblogging about her opinion on LGBT to the vein of “something something equality my bad I was raised conservative” great. Great selling point. Great couching there. Five years ago you were fighting against me having rights and now you’re basically against government deciding what people can’t do but what the fuck is your opinion on me as a human being?

Doubling back from that problem though, that’s when I dug in her LGBT history and ended up tripping over the Trump stuff. AND THIS IS THE CANDIDATE I WENT IN TO HEAR FROM TONIGHT LIKE “YES PLZ LET ME HEAR MORE” because people I knew LIKED her, but then I find out she’s a Trump frand that has Trump-like hyperbolic meltdowns on twitter? NO I DO NOT WANT FEMALE TRUMP WITH ROGUE HAIR THANKS BUT NO THANKS. 

Back to Warren, who I started with a MEH on, she came out WICKEDLY strong out of the gate. Her second half was weaker, she kinda has next to no active plan beyond talking/passing around more research on gun reform, but everything else, yes. Do I think she has the potential weight to pull it off, yes. And most of all, watching as she gets mad, upset, or emotional, do I believe she believes everything she said tonight, yes. Look, I know there’s STUFF about her claiming she had Native American heritage or whatever but I’m honestly so far past giving a fuck about the obscure shit like that if they have decent policies because our country is so FUCKED right now that I DONT CARE. She held her ground.

So in the end my spread ends up looking more like

of day 1 contenders, Warren still maintains her strong chance. Castro kind of sprouted up out of the earth and I really goddamn like him, but I do hold caution for my reasons above, because again, our country is THAT FUCKED.  

Booker really turned some heads and I liked him Booker... Booker’s very concerned about a lot of marginalized intersectional issues and it took him from “who the fuck is that” onto my radar which is a leap, but he didn’t drill in as hard as Castro did to my mind and I feel like he’s just... I dunno, I could be wrong but I feel like he’s gonna fade. Beto, IDK, still exists, isn’t an embarrassment and doesn’t just morph in with the other white guys up there. He’s not Trump. So I won’t delete him, but let’s say he barely, and I mean BARELY hedged into my consideration in this image, I almost just cropped it over to Warren.

De Blasio is just sort of “status quo, but actually enacts it” but I wouldn’t weep to see him vanish, either. In the end out of this debate though, I see like

Everyone else go home.

ON THE OTHER HAND, MOST CANDIDATES I’M ACTIVELY INTERESTED IN ARE ON THE FLOOR TOMORROW, WHICH BY THE LINEUP IS SLATED TO BE A BLOODBATH.

I’m really, REALLY hoping everybody has the common sense to make such an ass of Biden he’s knocked out early. Like that’s part of why I’m so goddamn interested in day 2. If we end up with Trump vs Biden we might as well all just put on our goddamn clown suits but he has the fiscal backing to push through even if he shouldn’t unless he’s utterly DECIMATED early on.

I don’t like Kamala Harris’ prison industrial complex CRAP but I’d be HAPPY to watch her drag Biden around like a wet rag. Sanders is a given point of interest. Buttigieg is another one to watch. Yang... isn’t... gonna last. But is just sort of a ... fun thing to watch I guess in this mix up. Someone else may surprise me, I don’t know.