write weird shit. Write indulgent au fanfiction and self insert fics. Write creepy horror scenes and random character crossover dialogue. Write in a different genre. Write that sex scene that you know won’t make the cut. Write about sentient furniture turning into werewolves that try to date your MC. Write whump or hero/villain fic. Write your kink. Write your worst nightmare. Write your delusions of power and fantasies of control. Write whatever the fuck you feel like. Write whatever comes to mind. You don’t have to share it with anyone (but you can). Your writing impulses don’t define your morality anymore than your reading preferences, and actually going outside your comfort zone will improve your writing skills (making a horrifying villain sympathetic requires good characterization). Even if it doesn’t improve your skills, that’s still something you created out of nothing. It’s still valuable. Don’t let purity culture kill your creativity. That’s how culture stagnates. That’s how writing stops being fun.

I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.

This is a friendly reminder to never, ever publish your book with a publishing company that charges you to publish with them. That is a vanity press, which makes money by preying on authors. They charge you for editing, formatting, cover art, and more. With most of these companies, you will never seen a cent of any royalties made from sale of your book. A legitimate publishing company only makes money when you make money, they will never charge you to publish with them. If a company approaches you and says "Hey, we'll publish your book, just pay us X amount of money," tell them to go fuck themself and block them.

I’ve said this before but I think all sci-fi and fantasy adventure needs a little bit of horror as seasoning. It doesn’t need to be full sci-fi horror or fantasy horror but a little bit of scary adds flavor. Build a world and then explore the fucked up implications of that world a little bit

classic scifi novels by men r always like. page 1 here's a cool scifi idea i had. page 2 i hate women so much it's unreal

Eight Rules For Writing -- from a long ago piece I wrote for The Guardian.

1 Write.

2 Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

3 Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

4 Put it aside. Read it pretending you've never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.

5 Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

6 Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

7 Laugh at your own jokes.

8 The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

I fucking love context clue worldbuilding, that talks as if the reader knows what you're talking about, and to keep up they'll just have to nod along like "okay, alright, so this is a thing", where like you descirbe shit like

"The globe was as large as an egg" - okay so they're usually smaller than an egg? or if you'd have said "as small as an egg", it's still the same fucking size but now we know they're usually larger than an egg?

"She owned both of the two tallest hats in the county", okay so this is a place where the height of a woman's hat is something people generally care about? Looking at the way this character otherwise behaves, this is clearly a flex.

"His scowl was as frightening and beautiful as those of gilded temple dragons" okay so there are temples in this setting, and they have scary-looking gilded dragons in them, and also the narrator finds red flags sexy.

au contraire: i believe the reason will doesn't call hannibal by his given name is because names are too personal. similar to eyes (that are distracting), names are very intimate and names give us meaning.

will grows accustomed to hannibal's eyes, to seeing him. but calling him, invoking what he knows to be true and monstrous out loud, is something slightly different.

it is akin to acceptance, and we all know will doesn't accept easy: it takes him the entirety of seasons 1 and 2 to grow used to enjoying killing, to accept and name that in himself, and be at peace with that. seeing hannibal is one thing, naming him is admitting to what he is seeing, and accepting it.

another thing with naming is assigning a set of attributes that stick. and hannibal knows that will, even incapable of accepting it, has so much more in himself, and he's constantly invoking it by addressing will by his name.

will sees hannibal but he never assumes to know him wholly:

I wanted to understand you before I laid eyes on you again. I wanted it to be clear, what I was seeing.

and is therefore wise to refrain from defining him.

thinking about how will almost never uses hannibal's given name, and hannibal almost always uses will's given name ... there's power in names ... i def think hannibal's constant use of will's name is symbolic of his wanting to give will power, and will's reluctance to call hannibal by his name to his face is symbolic of his wanting to take power away from hannibal

ah mhm, and then that relationship (or rather, its dream-manifestation, the ravenstag) dying on the kitchen floor in s2 finale

the way Will's revenge dream in 2x09 Shiizakana was literally about harnessing his relationship with Hannibal (or rather, harnessing its dream-manifestation, the ravenstag) and using it to capture and annihilate Hannibal

and the way even Will's subconscious had Hannibal telling him "this is not a revenge you can carry out on hatred alone. if you want to get close enough to me to destroy me, first you have to love me. you have to understand and accept my love for you. only when you can see the best in me alongside the worst will you have a clear enough view to take your shot."

no actually

u r a seahorse

sorry

Combine your chinese zodiac and astrology sign to make your true fursona

Don’t return ebooks or audiobooks you’ve consumed on Amazon and Audible

Amazon and Audible made it into their policy that you can return ebooks and audiobooks and get a full refund.

They actively promote this, making their book shop into a book lending service, de facto a library you subscribe to. That’s their business plan to encourage subscribtions.

The dirty thing, however, is that Amazon and Audible are making the authors pay for each refunded item. They will detract money, income, royalties, from the authors’ account. They’re not hurting from the refund, the author is.

Look, no-one is saying you’re not allowed to return an item if you’ve read the first 50 pages or listened to the first 45 minutes. Maybe the style is not your thing. Maybe you don’t like the narrator’s voice. Maybe the quality of the writing drops severely after chapter three. Go ahead, if the product is bad, return it.

What I’m talking about is that no one should be able to listen to a ten-hour audiobook or read through nearly an entire novel and still get a refund.

Most of the readers don’t know who’s paying for this business plan. It’s not Amazon and Audible, they’re still keeping your subscription money. It’s the authors.

Spread the word.

Writing about a child rapist did not make Vladimir Nabokov a child rapist.

Writing about an authoritarian theocracy did not make Margaret Atwood an authoritarian theocrat.

Writing about adultery did not make Leo Tolstoy an adulterer.

Writing about a ghost did not make Toni Morrison a ghost.

Writing about a murderer did not make Fyodor Dostoevsky a murderer.

Writing about a teenage addict did not make Isabel Allende a teenage addict.

Writing about dragons and ice zombies did not make George R.R. Martin either of those things.

Writing about rich heiresses, socially awkward bachelors, and cougar widows did not make Jane Austen any of those things.

Writing about people who can control earthquakes did not make N.K. Jemisin able to control earthquakes.

Writing about your favorite characters and/or ships in situations that you choose does not make you a bad person.

It’s a shame that in this day and age these things need to be said.

man mood

I think it is covered with a plexiglass bubble but that would be bonkers and no other sport has that

I think it's literally the hockey rink bc they say something about icing it if they lose

But I also think it's wooden and man, the hockey rink is NOT at ANY part of it wooden

How high is the ceiling bro? How high is it? Have you ever been to the rink??? It's so high you can't see it w/o binoculars Bro

But there also appears to be a place to run around the glass bubble if I recall the source material correctly. Where is that running space bro. In front of the first row in the audience??? No. It's somewhere between the benches and the court. Where.

Where is it.

What does this court look like. Why did we never get a picture Nora.

I have no idea how an Exy court is supposed to look like and at this point I'm too afraid to ask.

ive been in fandom a fresh second but i decided to share anyway

2 ways i know of: the dumb & the dumber

1) heroic vs. just

NO don't go, listen, i promise, it makes SENSE. we've all seen pirates of the caribbean, right?? Jack Sparrow is HEROIC even though the shit he does is often not what the "hero" would do, but it is quick, and REACTIVE to the EVENTS, and on the spot, and he's a hero of his character journey for sure

and then Barbossa is JUST even though he isnt actually just, you know?? like the shit he does is entirely in his own favour but in his own worldview, all of it makes sense: it's fair that he gets to live & he works to accomplish that. he is ACTING with a GOAL.

.....does that make sense?

2) right now vs. always

i know, i know, boo hoo, phrase your thoughts better. ok.

now listen, its the exact same thing.

right now: reactive, in the moment, improvising, caught off guard, able to make it work whatever the situation bc tools & experiences are plenty

always: active, considering yesterday, hoping for tomorrow, planning, able to make it work IN GENERAL, over A LONG course of time bc minor inconveniences don't entirely ruin the plan but may fail in small things

...yeah

ill crawl into a hole now. add more?

how is it 2022 and we still don't have a simple way to explain the differences between prospit dreamers and derse dreamers like if you want to know which one you are you either have to analyze every single page of homestuck until you've memorized every theme, motif, character arc, etc. or just take the extended zodiac quiz's word for it

As a disclaimer, I feel I should mention that in my senior year of highschool I was OBSESSED with 1. Homestuck and 2. Homestuck music. As in, homestuck music was practically all I listened to for the better part of a year. So the reason why I call out songs in flashes I remember is because I remember younger me doing this research and going "i love this fkin song".

There was also the association of listening to the homestuck albums on break or while doing homework, etc because when one of the Good Ones comes on, you got a brief refreshing memory of that flash. Like Im just listening to music, doing my thing- "oh shit is that Sburban Jungle? Oh man, remember that raindrop scene at that part... wait for it... yeah that one that was so cool anyways."

Theres a very ripe nostalgia in all of it, considering I eventually purged all but 1 song from my phone. It really takes me back hearing them all again.

the vien diagram of aftg readers and south park enjoyers is definitely approaching a circle

I want to summarize what I’ve been reading about in the library. hhhhhh how do I do that

I’ve been reading (and have read) a lot about trauma and anxiety, and also literature, literary theory, literary criticism, things like that. I feel like I’m comprehending something vast about human nature and my own nature that makes me want to vibrate at the speed of light.

It’s something to do with picking up a book in the literature section that was a survey of woundedness, or scars and wounds as motifs in classic literature, and picking up a book in the psych section about feeling safe and healing from fear, and realizing the books’ prefaces talked about essentially the same things in essentially the same language

sufficiently advanced psychology, that is, compassionate and human centered, is indistinguishable from literary studies