#so u just suffer

[clementines-writing-corner]

🚨new project just dropped *sighs in wip hell*

Hello friends!

So… if any of you happened to see that last post I reblogged (and had a peek at the tags) then you’ll have an idea about what this post is going to be about. Unfortunately, it will not be about my original high fantasy story project, as I had hoped last week. It is about something entirely different. Huzzah!! (I mean that in the most semi-sarcastic way possible– I am excited but also annoyed lol). 

I completed and turned in my first creative brief writing assignment for any of my writing classes this semester (and am currently halfway through my second for a different class) and, long story short, ended up getting kinda hooked on the story that happened to develop while I was writing. So… new project. Yay. ᕱ__ᕱ

For the assignment, I chose to try to combine two stories from the weekly writing prompts that we do for the class and imagine how the characters I created in them would interact with a slightly larger story rather than 2-3 pages of chicken scratch character development scenes. I ended up succeeding in this goal, one may even say superseding it, in fact. The plan was to write them into a short story with a little more plot. What ended up happening is that I created a whole new character, slapped them and one of the original characters in the middle of a huge plot, and wrote an entire chapter (+ some change) for a novel involving them. And not even like the first chapter of a novel. Noooooooo. I had to skip ahead and write like chapter 10 or something. 

So… (promise it’s the last time I’m doing that) yeah. That’s what has taken over my brain this week. An entirely new project. (I can never get anything actually done around here I swear!!) A couple more details about it before I give you a little taste of my draft because why not:

It will probably by a middle grade novel (unlike high fantasy project)

Speaking of – this story is definitely more low fantasy, as in it takes place in a version of our world in which magic exists (which will make it 10 million times easier to write because I wont be creating everything from scratch ha ha ᕱ__ᕱ)

It will take place in the modern day and age (perhaps like a few years old, but definitely after 2000)

Plot so far is vaguely based on the story of the snow queen by hans christian andersen (which is what disney's frozen is loosely based on btw)

The main character is around 12-13 years old (right now anyway)

And, as promised, a little snippet of this project. Let me know what y’all think!

**

A branch snapped to my left. 

My back straightened and I took a step towards Ms. Cattell, before slipping on a patch of wet leaves. I would have face-planted into the tree roots in front of me if Ms. Cattell hadn’t caught my arm. Her hands were very soft. How she got the few paces back to me so fast, I didn’t know. Magic?! My inner Paxton squealed. Shut up, my inner me shot back, not now Pax!

Crack! Another branch fell victim to whatever was creeping towards us.

My heart started pounding against my ribcage. I looked up at Ms. Cattell, my eyes wide and panicked, only to see a soft smile on her face as she stared off in the direction the sounds were coming from. As if feeling my gaze, she directed the smile down at me and patted my arm where she had grabbed it, before letting me go and crouching down, looking back into the forest and holding her arms out.

Suddenly, a blur of brownish-gray fluff hurtled out of the brambles and into Ms. Cattell’s open arms. She grinned down at the fluff, now cradled to her chest, before standing and turning her gaze back towards me, clicking her tongue. “Now Alvin, look what you’ve done!” Ms. Cattell gently scolded the fluff, still smiling. “You’ve frightened the poor dear. And after the day she’s had too, you should be ashamed of yourself!” 

**

But yeah. Like I said earlier, I’m pretty excited about this project. I haven’t been able to really develop another project in years since my mind has been stuck on my high fantasy story so for me to come up with a new project like this completely out of the blue (or so it seems) is actually really refreshing (if not really annoying because I wish high fantasy story stuff would come as easily). 

^ me @/myself right now (especially that eye twitch fr)

I will still most definitely be working on high fantasy stuff, do you worry, but occasionally this story might make an appearance as I continue to post on this blog. So… (ha ha I lied earlier) buckle up folks because, as it often does, my creative writing goals just got a bit messier lol. ᕱ__ᕱ

And whatever you're working on, don’t forget to cross your j’s and dot your t’s!

~Clementine J. Quincey 🪷

[isjasz]

[Ready for a new game?]

day 11 definitelynottober - heart in your fist & week 1 weeklyhermittober - beginnings

===

IM SO READY LETSGO SO EXCITED FOR THE NEW LIFE SERIES💥💥💥💥💥💥

[hinamie]

I don't want to regret the way I lived

[vmkhoneyy]

“People are inherently terrible” no!!! Have you ever seen a child wait for their friend while they tie their shoelaces? Have you ever known someone who would bring hurt squirrels and rabbits and mice to the nearest vet just so it doesn’t suffer? Have you seen someone grieve? Have you ever read something that hit your heart like a freight train? Have you looked at the stars and felt an unexplainable joy? Have you ever baked bread? Have you shared a meal with a friend? Have you not seen it? All the love? All the good? I know it’s hard to see sometimes, I know there’s pain everywhere. But look, there’s a child helping another up after a hard fall. Look, there’s someone giving their umbrella to a stranger. Look, there’s someone admiring the spring flowers. Look, there’s good, there’s good, there’s good. Look!!!!

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

real talk having the 2nd worst new years eve yet 🤢🤢🤢 (throat infection, twisted neck, banged-about-foot, ego AND the rest o' me all bruised like misjuggled peaches 🍑🍑🍑)

im bent outa shape and suspectin the universe owes me 8 buck if anyone wannsa chip in

[choccy-milky]

part 3 to my modern AU 💞🍺 (part 1 / part 2)

[rystiel]

shipping chart thoughts

(billford always happens and they always break up. ford was obsessed when bill was his muse, then bill is obsessed after they’re no longer together and he realizes what he lost) (this dynamic is just canon, really)

(fiddauthor is always present at some point but in one route they end up together after canon events, and in another route fidd moves on) (it’s possible that they had a thing in college but consider it “typical college experimentation” because it’s the 70s and denial is strong. they still go through canon events)

(fiddlestan only happens during the fiddlestan route. otherwise canon events stay the same and they barely actually interact with each other. in the fiddlestan route they work together in the 80s and grow old together)

(billstan isn’t really romantic but it is a one-sided obsession. bill just can’t stop obsessing over the stans… for very different reasons…) (dare i say an unrequited kismesis dynamic?)

(ford and stan are brothers. that’s it. leave them out of the shipping dynamics.)

(fiddlebill isn’t really included here but i feel like the only way this would happen is if bill was possessing ford and wanted to fuck with fidd by using his crush on ford against him) (this one’s basically only possible if it’s fiddauthor-adjacent)

[yakultii]

eating japanese cheesecake at 3am or is it eating me

[maelancoli]

i'm kind of late to this but i just finished reading the scholomance trilogy by naomi novik and i feel like it is such an underrated urban fantasy?? taking the chosen one trope and turning it on its head with a fmc who has been prophesied to bring death and destruction, who is imbued with terrible power, but cannot even properly use said power to solve any of her obstacles because it would obliterate them and her soul. it takes a tired trope and the idea of an 'overpowered mary sue' and throws it back in your face by showing how all the power and destiny in the world is useless against a system filled with corruption that has burdened you with an easy way out (evil/destructive magic) that you can't take so now you have to work twice as hard as everyone else just to do simple, constructive spells instead of flicking your wrist and being done with it.

[ash-and-starlight]

by far the funniest thing to find while reading a canonverse atla fic. what is blorbo from religion doing there get him out immediately

[hinamie]

domain expansion

[rosielefay]

England Headcannon ʚɞ

England is very gentle. All his canon hobbies are homely: baking, embroidery, gardening, literature. He's said to be really soft around children, and if you consider all his related nations, he's very much a family man.

Imagine him quietly tutoring Sealand, reading him bedtime stories of folklore and Celtic myth. Baking cakes for birthdays and celebrations, hand-piped messages for every occasion. Gifting nations embroidered pillowcases and crocheted placemats. He's so lovely and sweet, a source of home and refuge for so many people.

But England is also someone who is brutal and clever and unafraid. He's a conqueror, a man most comfortable in the throes of war.

And in some ways these two aspects of him overlap. The smell of his cooking, the fresh flowers in the garden, the new quilt on the sofa - his domesticity is dominating. His affection for his family cannot be separated from his obsession with legacy and succession and power. Everyone gets together at his house for the family picture, and for a moment there is tenderness and nostalgia and humanity, and then everyone leaves and its just a terrible looming portrait, suffocating in the empty halls of the manner.

I think it would massively colour his relationships with other nations. Yes he represents home and family, but his dominating colonial history cannot be erased. And its sad too, because its not his intention; he's trying to love them but he's choking them. He makes them feel safe, and as a very sad consequence, he makes them feel small. Small like a child, small like a new found colony.

[antsday]

okay i will admit it: i don't like 431 from a narrative standpoint (or really any standpoint) but if you view it exclusively as the true epilogue in an alternate universe of mha in which 5 year old katsuki is right about deku looking down on him and doing everything to spite him and wanting to bring about his downfall then the whole thing becomes kind of absurdly funny

[knifebaby3000]

eleven years / when the thorn bush turns white, that's when i'll come home

[pondslime]

What do you want from me? What have I done? I'm just a word processor, for Christ sake!

Griffin Dunne as Paul Hackett AFTER HOURS (1985) dir. Martin Scorsese