#we're what we absorb

[fvaleraye]

We want the estrogen that makes us look like Gali. Specifically Toa Mata Gali

Look at her. Her tgirl swag. We want what she has.

[torosdottir]

the thing about violence as human connection is. well. if someone puts their hands on me and leaves them there, or attempts 2 embrace me or something, then my instinct is 2 shrink away. but if someone hits me then my instinct is to hit back. in this way i often find that peoples attempts to reach out to me are met with a reluctance and withdrawal that they naturally take as rejection. whereas a specific kind of passionate excited assault will always be returned and form the natural bond of sharing passion and excitement.

[emiliosandozsequence]

i'm soooo sick of the way people treat those who have eating disorders. it's like everyone suddenly forgets they're one of the most deadly mental illnesses out there caused mainly by sexual trauma the minute they have to think about and be considerate of people who have them.

[tanicus-caesareth]

guarana drama, damage control

[angelthingy]

the thing is i think that like. afab and amab as terms arent like. a bad thing?? like if you're talking about urself and ur assigned gender happens to be relevant and is preferrable to another descriptor (eg if ur dysphoric abt ur body to some it may be easier to say ur agab rather than describing ur features) or describing a situation where thats relevant then like. sure! its just like any other word u just use it cus it makes sense- (note this only applies if YOU'RE using the term when you're talking about YOURSELF)

the problem is that when other people use or ask for someone's agab there's some kind of weird implication that it somehow changes how you behave, and that based on that you can put people into a new binary which shouldnt exist and negatively effects all trans people

people ask if you're amab expecting that to mean you're inherently more patriarchal, dangerous, "masculine" - and if you're afab expecting that to mean you're inherently more quiet, sweet, "feminine" - and BOTH of these fucking suck!!

[vermillioncrown]

at the risk of sounding butthurt for talking about not being butthurt: going through quals really prepared me for trawling through fandom meta and research while keeping my zen

[autumnalhalcyon]

.

[louderfade]

exene talking about the state of the world. the good stuff starts at eight minutes. or you can just read the transcript complete with the usual errors that accompany robot transcribed speech (the irony of which is not lost on me). maybe it's not about transhumanism and living forever (or maybe it is who knows), but there's definitely an agenda of surveillance and control at work which is designed to keep the powerful in power. cash rules everything around me and you will own nothing etc. the future is worse.

[subconsciousmysteries]

idk what to do about the 4s man. They're either really whiny manipulators and groomers (4 -> 2) or they are bona fide psychopaths (4 -> 1 false security) or they are an ungodly combination of both.

In fiction I've seen good examples of 4s but in reality I struggle not to blame them for all the world's problems. There are reasons.

[aeide-thea]

lol just found out the former owner of this property has been surveilling all our mail via usps's informed delivery service, to which he still has access because he never bothered to file a change of address with them even though it's been literal years at this point, and so now i get to put 'calling the post office to get him kicked off because what the actual fuck' on my to-do list for the day!

also: i found this out because he emailed my dad an image of a piece of mail he wants us (me) to forward to him. flames on the side of my face.

[todayisafridaynight]

okay so this feels like many eons ago, but I was the anon who asked if Daigo was a dilf (what a fool I was) now I have another question what do you think Daigo would be like as a father?

daigo as a dad doesn't sound like the worst reality for once. he'd probably be like. a standard dad if that makes sense ?? he's not overly doting but that doesn't mean he won't remind his kid how much they mean to him whenever the opportunity arises and he's sure to be there for them whenever they need him

[orcelito]

so yea i finished watching tristamp. absolutely bewitched by the animation. but also wanting MORE... and so . i am planning on watching the original anime. at some point soon.

sometimes joining the bandwagon of what's currently popular is fun if it coincides with my preexisting interests lol

[archaeren]

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)

[aeide-thea]

the thing about stele3's addition to this post is that i'm 100% with it until the final sentence—nonconsensual outing is heinous! and does, i agree, feel especially egregious coming from someone who's gay himself!—and then i start to have a serious problem with it.

like. 'traitor'? you really want to deploy the language of nationalism here, and connect moylan's actions (that, again, i too decry!) to legal charges that in the united states incur the death penalty? that's really how you want to play this? 'and should be treated as such'? if a conservative used this kind of ambiguous-but-suggestive language to paint a target on someone's back, we'd call it stochastic terrorism; it doesn't sound any better to me coming out of a liberal's mouth, and i'd like to suggest that it shouldn't sound better to you, either.

thinking about the whole "only queer ppl should play queer characters" thing and how Lee Pace got flack for playing a gay drag queen back in the day by his homophobic father. when he accepted the role he said "there was something about telling this story that was important to me" even before he was out / maybe even before he himself knew that he wasn't straight....like maybe we should stop demanding that actors either out themselves or give up roles that speak to them, even if he hadn't come out, the role meant something to him, it meant challenging his father's attitude, and fuck if it didn't have a profound impact on me as a young in-the-closet teen watching him perform it.

[fvckw4d]

I'm not much of an angry rant kind of guy most of the time. But god it's so fucked up to be trapped in a body where I can't move around too much or I won't be able to to move around much at all for the next several weeks and the general culture is just obsessed with whether or not I'm excercising enough. I have to prevent myself from moving. I want to move around and have to stop myself. I have to carefully ration every movement my body makes. I have to decide regularly whether or not bending down to pick something up is worth the cost of present and future pain and lack of energy.

It's also weird because so much of my life is defined by hunger. I have to actively try to ignore it because most of my day is thinking about how hungry I am, how I'm going to get food, am I going to have enough energy to make food, or even eat it, what can I do to temporarily stop being hungry, and dreading how much pain I'm going to be in when I eat. And I'm not really food insecure in the same way I was even a month or two ago. I spent a good chunk of time actively starving.

I do fucking yoga. I try to go outside and stare at birds for a while instead of being on my phone. I have to walk pretty much everywhere I go. Almost all of my meals are home cooked and with the best ingredients available to me. But the message is constant that it's not my circumstances, I just don't try hard enough. So I fucking sympathize with people who are constantly told the same, not by one person, but kind of by everyone, when that makes no fucking sense. Excercising is good, eating nutritious foods is good, but there are circumstances outside of your control.

Letting go of control was hard enough for me, being told I dont take enough control of my life and that's why it fucked me is really fucking exhausting.

[snekdood]

i honestly think i like it better that my ethnic genetic makeup is vague, it makes for very entertaining interactions.