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caterpillarinacave · 2 months

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I love Charlotte and Henry and they're super underrated. And I would VERY MUCH like to hear the headcanons whirring about in your brain.

Oh well buckle up cause literally all I think about is head cannons. Like, you know how cells replace themselves every few years? Mine have replaced themselves with head cannons. *Sorry it took me a hot moment to answer this ask, I was busy howling into my pillow whenever I tried to articulate thoughts.*

First of all, they’re very cuddly. They basically sleep on top of each other (Charlotte hasn’t needed a pillow in decades). Henry cant sleep well without Charlotte in his arms and Charlotte can’t sleep well anywhere other than Henry’s arms so it works out. Plus, they both do that thing where they jerk awake like the world is ending and scare the shit out of each other, so sleeping in a hug that basically pins them both down saves some energy at 2am. Henry’s perpetually cold and sleeps under like, four blankets, so Charlotte just wears summer nightgowns all year and wraps herself around Henry like a koala.

Naturally there’s an angsty side to the incessant cuddling because that’s just the way I role.

Charlotte sleeps with her head on Henry’s chest so she can always feel him breathing because, by the angel, she remembers when he wasn’t. She sleeps with a hand on his pulse point because she wakes up in the middle of the night and she’s still half asleep they might as well be on the floor in that mountain and she might as well still be desperately swearing she didn’t imagine his heartbeat.

While on the topic of soul crushing feelings of guilt, y’all remember from Clockwork Angel that Henry was the one who told Mortmain what a Pyxis was? And he wanted Charlotte to tell the clave that and she wouldn’t because “they already treat him so badly”? Because I do. And so does Henry.

(I’ve got a whole WIP that I love very dearly about this head cannon and this chess game hehe) There’s one random old tutor who goes to the London institute once a month-ish, basically to hand out a few weeks of homework to any shadow hunters who don’t have their own tutors. Most shadow hunters who live in a more rural area show up a few times a year so the clave knows they’re alive and at least somewhat literate. Charlotte attends them every month since, you know, she lives there, but Henry lives somewhere around Yorkshire so he shows up every few months. The professor is kind of a dick ngl. He doesn’t help Charlotte with any school why would a woman need to be so well educated? “Go on find a husband and stop worrying you’re pretty little head” sort of shit. Henry drives him insane because he’s a) some random kid who’s smarter than him and b) didn’t use any of the professors materials to get that smart. Professor Douche is constantly trying to get him to be wrong about something, or at least flustered about something and he doesnt ever do either of those things, and even more aggravating he refuses to get upset. (He honestly just assumed the professor wasn’t that smart.)

Charlotte’s a really good student of course, but she’s having a shit time with some mathematics and the professor absolutely refuses to help her with it. Eventually she asks Henry if he wouldn’t mind helping her with it, which he’s happy to do (once he figures out that’s what shes actually asking lol.)

Charlotte is incredibly distracted the entire time by Henry’s freckles (and eyes. And hands. And the way his hair curls on the nape of his neck. And the spots of gold and green in his hazel eyes that flashed as bright as the sun when the light catches them. And-), but they get through it in an hour or two which leaves them alone in a deserted wing of the institute. They end up playing a game chess. Charlottes a decent player and thought since Henry had never showed any interest in chess it would be a probably be an evenly matched game. She didn’t know what hit her. He beat her in like, eight minutes, eighty percent of which were spent on the last two moves by Charlotte who, upon realizing she was fucked, spent five minutes staring at the board trying to figure out when he even started beating her. She was sitting there having a whole crisis, (she’d been distracted by a man who probably doesn’t like her, and certainly doesn’t think much of her now after a pathetic loss like that and now she’ll have to sit hear and wallow in failure-) just preparing for him to start that whole smug gloating thing men do when they win and Henry you know. Didn’t. He just put the pieces away and thanked her for the game, in that very genuine way, with the gloomy London evening light casting a depressing shadow across the room, a shadow that he stood out against all gentle, kind, bright and brimming with a sort of barely contained passion. If Charlotte had ever doubted that shadow hunters had come from straight angels then sitting there, looking at a boy stained in soot, who she loved more than anything else to walk the earth, she would never doubt it again.

(It wasn’t until after Henry won and noticed Charlotte hadn’t said anything in a while that he remember people don’t like losing. Honestly he was playing just to be around her and he would have thrown the game if he could conceptualize how to do that on the fly. They spent like five minutes in autistic silence waiting for the other to stand up and declare newfound hatred.)

In true British fashion the a modern tea bag would kill them both.

When they were both 13 or 14 Charlotte mentioned she was dreading winter because it’s so bleak and dark (and her mom had died a few winters before, though she didn’t drop that in casual conversation). Anyways, come winter Henry brought her a marigold preserved in something like resin. She kept it in her jewelry box for years and after they got married she found out he had literally dozens of them. Whenever he came across a particularly bright flower he preserved it and set it aside. He was never quite brave enough to give them to her pre-TID, but he now leaves them for her when she’s particularly sad or stressed. She keeps them all in a drawer- they fit together like little tiles, and still look as fresh as they would had they just been plucked from the ground.

Somewhat surprisingly Henry doesn’t really lose stuff, with the singular exception being his own medical equipment. He’s lost the leg braces he wears every single day of his life before. Charlotte’s not usually speechless but she wasn’t sure what to say to that one.

Henry gave Charlotte a watch with a hands and numbers that can glow the same way a modern day one would. It’s absolutely beautiful, durable and accurate, even if Henry set himself on fire at least four times making it. (They can say with confidence that that watch is fireproof)

—-

Honestly, I could go on and on, then on some more, but technically I’m supposed to be writing a paper on gut micro biomes that’s due tomorrow, so I figured I’d cut myself of. In conclusion, I love them dearly, they love each-other dearly, they deserve the world, all I can think about is them, and the world can pry them out of my cold dead hands.

#My rough drafts are a goldmine #I’ve got basically a full novel of Henry and Charlotte in the form of random chapters scattered around a google doc #The second to last one might have come about because Ive always had an affinity for losing medical equipment #Yes it’s normally attached to my body no I don’t know where it went #I love so much #the thoughts are suffocating #My brain replays “they believed right then that Shadowhunters came from angels” constantly #It’s one of the lines I made up and lives rent free in my head #I direct everyone to Qui Voltum Tolt Vultum Perdit on my AO3 which will eventually be full of henry and Charlotte #That fic is a very articulate example of some of my thoughts #The bit about the marigold I mentioned is just the surface btw it’s so much 💅deeper💅#I didn’t even mention the snow scene on here (scene I made up. And only I know about)#Or the scars. Dhegvgfg the scar thing #One of my own WIPs that makes me cry because I need someone to love me that way #Also left out the pajama thing the baked good thing the boat thing the “teaching original London institute gang to swim” thing #The newspaper thing floor thing the triplets thing the Yorkshire thing the bathtub thing the tiny little children #The smell of air before a storm thing the lemon thing the piano thing the music thing ugh I could go on and on #Tid #thanks for the ask!#fairwell #…anyone got any good articles on the gut microbiome

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artificialqueens · 5 years

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Smut Writing - Tips from an Amateur

Hey kids! This is just a short list of notes I put together for another ask I got awhile back. It’s based on my personal process/thoughts. Hopefully it can help someone. <3

(It’s not particularly NSFW but I’m putting it after the jump anyway. Also, plenty of it applies to writing in general.)

Read. Read, read, read. While you’re reading (or after, if it’s really good), ask yourself what worked? What didn’t? What would you like more of? What was missing? What style or kind of language appeals to you - do you like rough, “coarse” language, or flowery euphemisms? Figure out your own taste. Remember that your first reader is going to be you.

Don’t be afraid to do research. If your characters are doing things you’ve never done, or possess body parts you’re not familiar with, it’s perfectly reasonable to look up the mechanics and see what other people have to say about it. (Google is your friend - don’t be shy.) When I’m writing M/M, I sometimes run scenarios by my gay male friends to see if it’s realistic/plausible.

Once you feel like you have somewhat of a handle on the equipment, I think it’s helpful to start with an outline. Even if it’s just a sentence or two with your goal for the scene (for example: X and Y fight, then start making out, then fuck). If a more detailed outline is more helpful for you, go for it.

Pay attention to mechanics and order of operations. If you describe someone’s naked body, and then later talk about their lingerie, that will be confusing. Pay attention to who’s on top, and the order of what is happening. You don’t have to describe every single moment in detail, but you do need transitions. (Example: if two characters are going from a blow job to fucking doggy style, you probably need at least one sentence in between, even if that’s just a time lapse.)

Zero in on small moments to focus on. What are the most important beats in the scene? Go back to your goals: is this smut purely for porn? Or are you using it to advance the plot? To show an emotional connection? To show LACK of emotional connection? Maybe the first kiss is important. Maybe getting undressed makes one of your characters feel vulnerable. Maybe there’s awkwardness, humor or angst. Maybe something changes about their relationship through sex. Figure out what your needs are as the author.

Focus on foreplay. That’s where all the fun happens, generally. What kinds of things turn you on? Write that.

Practice, practice, practice. Write a lot. Don’t edit as you go, just get it all out. Is your first try shitty? Try again. Keep trying until you write something that you are happy with. My first time writing smut, I think I had 20 drafts before I felt okay about it. And looking back, it wasn’t groundbreaking or perfect by any means. But it’s the best I could do in that moment.

EDIT THOUGHTFULLY. Ask yourself if this is something you would want to read. If not, then why? Add and subtract. Maybe you’re too focused on mechanics and not enough on emotions. Maybe there are phrases that, upon second reading, don’t sound right.

Personally, I like to add little moments of levity/humor because I think that building up tension/breaking tension/building up tension is a great way to keep readers engaged.

It’s totally okay to borrow from people you admire: maybe someone inspired you to explore a certain dynamic. Maybe you really love a term or phrase they used. Maybe it’s just that they have a style you emulate. As long as you don’t actually plagiarize, then getting inspiration from others is great. (Although it is important to credit them.)

Get beta readers who you trust, who are good at constructive criticism. If you can manage to convince someone whose writing you admire to beta for you, then you’ve hit a goldmine.

Don’t be afraid to publish something that’s imperfect. Because all writing is imperfect, and feedback helps us grow.

Apply the feedback you get to the next piece you write. Even comments that are 100% positive can be helpful. If someone loved your dialogue, that can tell you that dialogue is a strength of yours. If someone says “I’m dying to know what happens next or would happen if X,” then maybe you can use it as a prompt for the next chapter or next fic. On the other hand, if people say things that you either disagree with or don’t find helpful, it’s perfectly okay to disregard them.

HAVE FUN! Remember that sex is a human activity. And humans can be silly and playful and flawed and messy. Humans can be contradictory and complicated and have more than one emotion or motivation at once. Humans are kind of (extremely) ridiculous.

#writer tips #admin post #smut writing #writing resources

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joshmcclenney · 5 years

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Photo: “T-MOBILE” - Commercial

Day 248: “Don’t Just Obtain. Know How To Maintain.”

Date:

6-26-19

Mood:

Development

Actor:

On the go again today, sending emails, chasing payments that I’d earned.. good news. I heard back from the company. They said they were having issues with their payment system and they would get my check and fee out to me right away.. that’s good. But I’ll feel better when I put the money in my bank and see it clear. I’m just sayin. It’s slows down a bit for work.. for now. I did apply to an event working for a couple of days in July. Feel good about it.

Filmmaker:

After all my running around I got to the writing. Late start with it considering the stuffs I was doing today.. but it went well! I almost have rough drafts of each of my short films. It’s great stuff. As long as I know what’s going on in each story.. and I can feel it. Then I’m golden..

Clay is looking beautiful too.this scene breakdown thing I’ve created is like a goldmine. And the best part is. It’s so simple.. now long checklist or crazy formula.. easy. And most importantly. Clear. It lets me look at the story. Watch it. And see what’s working and what’s not. Love.

Final Thoughts:

Here’s where I always take a breath. I mean one of those where you say.. “ I wanna say a lot of shit right now.” But I’m gonna stick to business. Besides. My career is already personal enough.

I was offered a writing job today. It’s a remote writing job. Meaning I can do it from home or wherever. I don’t need to go into an office. I showed the company some of my writing samples. We had a phone interview and they hired me. They’re sending over the paperwork this week.. again. I believe when I see. I’m not a skeptic. I’m just a person that likes action. I like to see the thing. Get my hands on it.. talking about it? Yeah that’s fine. But show me.. anyway. It’s cool. Nothing big, and I’m writing about a subject that I don’t know much about. It’s a good challenge.. other than that just living the frames in between them and within them. Meaning I’m paying attention to my present. I know this moment will pass like many others and it’ll just be a memory. Making it count.. tired. Been working hard and doing a lot of here and there. Gonna rest. Tomorrow. I’ll see ya.

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buzzdixonwriter · 2 years

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Writing Report January 8, 2022

I’ve begun working on my January 2022 project.

It’s going nicely.

Not well, but nicely.

Nicely insofar as I’m managing to do some work every day, but after a couple of 2K days there follow a few days with less than 500 words.

Still, 500 words are better than no words.

Nicely insofar as the story if flowing, and as I write, to relationships and linkages and ideas present themselves.

Nothing that will drastically alter the story, just plus it out.

Not well in the sense that this first draft is going to be a really rough draft, loose and shaggy, underwritten in places where I’m going to need to go back and do further research now that gaps, weak spots, and rough patches have been revealed.

I tend to come pretty close to a final draft with my first drafts, rarely going through more than one big rewrite.

This one is going to take at least two. The story know works on a skeletal level, but it needs its sinews and flesh before it can be turned loose on the world.

I won’t be surprised if my second big project for the year is finished / polished / ready to show before this one.

. . .

In addition to the big project for January 2022, I’m also doing concurrent research on the big project for June 2022.

That one requires a lot of technical info on the state of TV broadcasting in the late 1940s.

Now luckily I found an online goldmine of old tech manuals, books from the early days of TV, etc., but I still need to talk to people who gave clue me in on a lot of less-than-obvious details that, by the very nature of my story, I’ll need to know.

Simultaneously I’m scouting agents to handle last year’s major project, just fired off three short stories to three markets, and am doing a variety of other bits of writing.

This weekend I hope to find time for yet another Batty ‘bout THE BAT installment, this about three direct knock-offs of the original play / movie.

As I mentioned before, my days are not 100% my own.

I need to help Soon-ok around the house and at the garden, there are errands to be run, we look after our grandson twice a week.

I really can’t get down to the business of writing until after Soon-ok turns in at night, typically 10-10:30.

If I’m lucky, that buys me 3 hours of uninterrupted writing time.

With the big project on, I’m not going to have time for watching movies late at night or doodling sketches or reading.

This is why I try to schedule projects at healthy intervals.

Gives me a cushion if they run longer than expected, but also allows me some time to recoup.

. . .

Sooo…why the Harlan Ellison books?

Decades ago when we downsized I sold my Harlan Ellison books, assuming they’d always be available to re-acquire later.

But one of the frustrating things about collecting Harlan’s books is that there are so many under so many different titles and editions with different content from earlier editions.

On top of this, Harlan also disavowed several editions, as well as mixed and matched earlier works into later volumes, not to mention special collector editions.

So trying to collect all of Harlan’s work is both daunting and expensive. While I purchased several of his later works, I opted not to fill in all the blanks.

I did decide, however, to get a complete run of the Pyramid editions. These were reprints of many of Harlan’s earliest work including Spider Kiss (a.k.a. Rockabilly), Memos From Purgatory, and other non-sf stories (yes, I’m aware of Sex Gang, a more recent anthology of Harlan’s even early work originally published under his Paul Merchant pseudonym; I’m passing on that because I’ve read a lot of Harlan’s work from that era in various sci-fi digests on the Internet Archive and frankly, his stuff at that time for the bottom tier markets just wasn’t that good).

Pyramid originally intended seventeen volumes in this series but when they were bought out by Jove the series was truncated to eleven titles.

Thanks to Roger Freedman, I now possess those eleven.

Two years ago, having missed the 50th anniversary of Harlan’s groundbreaking original anthology Dangerous Visions, I re-read the volume, planning to do a story-by-story, intro-by-intro analysis of the book.

There’s a yellow legal pad with notes for that sitting on my desk; I put the idea aside in order to find time to do a similar analysis for his follow-up, Again, Dangerous Visions.

Now, with the acquisition of the Pyramid titles, I’m planning a little reward for myself once I get the first draft of the January project put to bed:

I’m going to re-read those volumes and Again, Dangerous Visions and the original hardcover of Love Ain’t Nothing But Sex Misspelled (with significantly different content than the paperback version) and write blog commentaries on all of them.

Hell, I might even do a compare & contrast on the Ace and Pyramid versions of The Glass Teat.

(I won’t do this with his later books because there’s too much overlap among them, but these early volumes from the mid-1970s proved tremendously influential to me as I began to concentrate more seriously on becoming a writer.)

#writing #writing report #Harlan Ellison

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mirrirr · 6 years

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Justice League spoilers

I loved it. It’s not perfect and could have used a bit more polishing, but it was fun and the characters were amazing.

I also really loved the beginning montage - almost a music video. I like to see movies using music well. I grew up with with MTV when it still played music, so scenes like that will always have a special place in my heart. It’s part of the reason why I loved The Crow, Velvet Goldmine and the first GotG movie so much.

I loved Diana - it is so great to see female characters like this. Ones who are strong yet have empathy. I wish I had had role models like this when I was a child. Maybe I would be less cold with my emotions. Also, that step-on-sword-to-flip-it-to-your-hand move from promo stuff was still <3.

I loved Barry - I was really iffy about him before seeing the movie, but he turned out to be an adorable dork who easily won me over. I’m glad he slot in with the team so well in the end, it made me really happy for him. I grinned at the end scene I knew was coming, but it was still unexpectedly cute (and dorky) because of his reaction. He’s definitely the puppy in this team. (And it was nice of them to play with him, like in the after-credit scene!)

Alfred was still dryly sarcastic and I loved it. Some of his comments were brilliant.

I was really iffy about Cyborg before seeing the movie, but I liked him here and I liked the tiny bit of character development he got. I want to see more of him.

Aquaman... wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, but I assume that’s because this is a rough draft of what he will become in his own movie. He’s really only becoming Aquaman here. They also left out the hottest promo scene for him? At least the close-up? (Where the water splashes him.) I blame Whedon for that. I liked his entrance to the team, though. And I do see the character’s potential... he’s just not there yet for me.

I actually thought that the villain was ok. Reviewers have complained about him, but he actually worked better than some superhero movie villains, imo. He actually came off scary at times, unlike many others.

I still liked Lois Lane and Martha Kent.

There were lots of butts and bulges in this movie I could have lived without. They didn’t really bother me, but they were noticeable enough that they made me roll my eyes.

This was more funny than other DCEU movies, but the humor fit in well for the most part - like Alfred’s dry comments. It didn’t annoy me the way it did sometimes in GotG 2 and Ragnarok. I just hope they won’t overdo it in the future.

THERE ARE TWO END-CREDIT SCENES! STAY FOR BOTH!

Bigger spoilers beneath

I liked the Clark thing, but it annoyed me that no one asked if maybe they should have Lois Lane sitting by. I mean, they did have her, but Diana at least should have been telling Bruce that they should get her or his mom. Or didn’t she just want to risk civilians? What? I would have liked to get an explanation of some kind.

I loved the part where everyone was holding him and Barry started running and then his eyes and face started turning and Barry’s expression... it was brilliant. The first time he met someone fast, I assume. I just really loved that scene. I also loved how Clark played with the puppy - like when they were saving the Russian civilians with the car and the building and then in the after credit scene. I really loved their interaction. It’s like Barry still has a sense of childish wonder and it was so refreshing after all the grumpy, testosterone-filled dudes. I loved how the team grew fond of him and indulged him.

I also loved that they showed Green Lantern in the history parts... now they just need to bring him in.

Plus the Aquaman trapped in the lasso part was funny.

I liked how the hell-scape turned into strange flowers at the end. I’m just a little disappointed because the trailer made the scale of it all to be bigger - like pretty much the whole planet would be destroyed into a nightmare realm and that’s why they were bringing in Flashpoint to reset all shit. Now it just felt really small in comparison. Still... better for the people. And I liked how they used that one family to build on the feeling of terror - it worked well.

The CGI could have been better. I liked this movie more than I did ragnarok, but Ragnarok definitely had better CGI. I remember thinking how fantastic it looked, while here I felt kind of meh about it. Like it was an old movie. (Not all of it, but parts.) Still - I’ll take a great bunch of characters over CGI any day.

All in all, I loved this movie. It could have been better, yes - especially in the CGI-polishing - but it was a great movie for the characters. I loved how they were such a mismatching bunch in the beginning, yet slowly started to slit in together... and then Clark showed up and just slotted in and took responsibility and played with the puppy and <3. I can’t wait for the next team movie when they’ve had time to polish their co-operation.

#justice league #rl #omat

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tlbodine · 7 years

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Writing Advice: The Real Power of Revision

One piece of writing advice that’s repeated like gospel is this: Writing is rewriting.

The revision process is often hailed as so essential, so important, that it takes on a certain mythic significance. It’s practically worshiped. There are those who insist that you can only achieve a great book through multiple drafts and revision passes, that if you haven’t labored over a work many times that it can’t possibly be good.

I take some issue with that. While I do tend to agree with Ernest Hemingway’s assessment, “The first draft of anything is shit,” I don’t necessarily think all writers require multiple passes to get something right.

Or, rather, I think that the more you practice, and the better you get at the process, the better your drafts will become because you have gotten better at all of the skills you need to get it right the first time (or, at least, quicker).

But before you can get to that point, you need to practice. And part of that practice means understanding what you’re doing each time you make a pass over a manuscript.

Because editing and revising isn’t necessarily about fixing your fuck-ups -- it’s about layering in improvements. It’s a process of sculpting and refining. And at first, before you’ve mastered your writing process and learned how every tool in your toolbox can best be put to use, you may require multiple passes through a book to do all of the refining necessary. (later, when you’ve gained more skill, you may find that what once took you seven drafts now only takes you three -- or revisions that used to take months can now be knocked out in days).

So: What actually needs to happen before you call a story finished?

First: You tell yourself the story. You figure out what happens, you get to know the characters, you understand the setting -- you lay out all of the important pieces. You now have a chunk of something that can be refined.

Second: You fix the structure of the story. You recognize that stories hang on a scaffolding of plot, and those plots have a specific structure that they follow in order to work properly -- establishing the world, introducing the conflict, the rising tension, the character’s developmental arc, etc. Good news: Once you’ve studied story structure (by reading carefully, by using beat sheets, by studying The Hero’s Journey and writing advice books, and most of all by writing many stories) this will come more naturally to you. Eventually, you will start to write stories that naturally have a more solid structure. You won’t need to go back and repair major structural problems as frequently because you will have practiced and writing structurally-sound stories will become more like second nature.

Third: You hone the writing. This doesn’t just mean editing grammatical mistakes. It means recognizing that your words are doing more than telling a story; they’re bringing it to life. Poetic devices are the writer’s equivalent to camera work and special effects. So now that your story is structurally sound, you go through and you add those effects. You put in the foreshadowing. You refine the imagery. You change out words for greater effect, paying attention to the way they sound or the precise meaning or the connotations that provide delicious depth to the story.

You do this step only after you’ve fixed the structural issues. I mean, sure, sometimes you will hit on a goldmine in the rough draft and the image will stay through to the end. But this refining phase is your chance to identify the motifs or themes you’ve introduced subconsciously, and then bring them to the forefront.

And you can’t do that until you know exactly what the story is, and you won’t know that for sure until the structure is appropriately in place.

Fourth: You test that bad boy out in the real world. You get somebody to read it, or ideally more than one somebody, and you see if it works. You listen to their feedback. And, if it doesn’t work, you figure out why, and you figure out how to fix it. (and depending on what you’re fixing, you might need to repeat steps 1-3 for every change you make).

Then finally, you make a last pass over it, looking out for those pesky typos and irritating formatting issues, and you can call it finished.

If you like this type of content and would like to see more, please consider leaving a tip in my Tip Jar!

#writing advice #revising #editing

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literateape · 6 years

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American Shithole #20 — Vacations, Part One: Camping Is For Masochists

By Eric Wilson

This is as good a week as any to introduce my series on vacationing: American style. The president has been overseas; leaving rotten chum in his filthy wake for allies and enemies alike. At least he gave us all a break here domestically from our daily mouthful, I suppose.

My good friend and housemate just returned from two weeks in Iceland, Scandinavia, Europe and Russia, while I have been dog sitting on what was supposed to be a staycation for me (it wasn’t) — providing more than enough material for future articles on the topic.

Part Two of this series is a piece I wrote before American Shithole. It was to be my first feature for Literate Ape; one in which I found myself on a miserable LA weekend getaway for an Eric Clapton show. Unfortunately, the night before I submitted my draft some asshole murdered 58 people at an outdoor concert just down the street from where I live, and I didn’t feel it was an appropriate time to share that story.

In fact, I slid into a funk that week, and I hardly interacted with anyone for a while. A few months later Trump called Haiti and unspecified African nations “shithole” countries, my inner fury was rekindled, and American Shithole was born.

So I will be returning periodically to this series that never got off the ground. It was always my intention to write a few pieces on the American vacation. I know it's a boon for comedy. Holiday travel is a goldmine for humor in general; in my case, even more so because I truly suck at vacationing, and terrible things always happen.

Staycations — if I am to judge them by the last two weeks — have me faring only slightly better.

The good news is: things are looking up, baby! This was my least disastrous vacation (okay, staycation) yet, even though I slept fitfully, had only a very limited amount of fun, and as expected, terrible things still happened (even though I stayed at home), I still feel like it was a success. More on this later.

If you’re wondering how it’s possible that a mostly unpleasant staycation was my best vacation ever, it’s because my experience with vacations includes heavy hitters like suicide, sickness, hurricanes and other natural disasters, being thrown off a bridge embankment — and camping, which I’m sorry outdoor aficionados, but camping is just the worst.

I am convinced that folks that choose to go camping over a plethora of other vacation destinations — sunny beaches, moonlit resorts, islands with sexy people, places with people of any kind, coordinates that include a nearby lavatory, locations that aren't teeming with wildlife looking to eat you, etc. — those people are fucking closeted masochists. Here is how many times you should go camping in your life: one-half of one time. You should attempt to sleep on rocks, in a damp tent, with a wet blanket, soaked shoes — like some sort of cold burrito for bears — hungry, exhausted and homesick, just one-half of once. Then pack up in the middle of the night, drive home, and never look back.

In my lifetime I have been camping roughly a score of times. That’s twenty, millennials. (Well why didn’t you just say twenty then, fuckface?)

While I cherish the time with my father (an avid, well-respected angler and outdoorsman), and I do genuinely love the remoteness and beauty of the wilderness, I have camped nineteen and one-half times too many in this life.

I assume I have never taken to vacationing as an adult, at least in part due to my experiences on vacations as a kid; which were at times awful. Or perhaps just some of it was traumatic, and that is all that I remember.

On one of the first camping trips I can recall I was eight years old, and while we were in the Grand Tetons the mother of my best friend at the time committed suicide. She shot herself while her son and I were camping together. I'm still haunted by that quiet drive home. I can’t imagine being my father and having to tell a child his mother was gone. I can’t possibly fathom what that was like for my friend.

That event set the tone for every subsequent camping trip over the next forty years.

I have been on trips that didn’t involve camping; although only a handful. I have taken one cruise back in the nineties — we were hit by a hurricane. The captain made a late decision to turn the ship around and head back to LA, missing our ports of call, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán, and Cabo San Lucas. Half the ship was throwing up for hours as the swells throttled that behemoth vessel like it was a tug boat in a bathtub with a fat, unruly toddler.

I have never forgotten the generous 25% discount offered by Carnival on our next Carnival cruise adventure, as compensation. Thank you Carnival Cruise Lines, I will never stop telling people of your boundless generosity — I hope you don’t mind that I roll my fucking eyes every time that I do.

On my next vacation (other than sporadic wilderness treks whereupon I fall into rivers, catch zero trout, or get bitten by nasty critters) I spent a month in Belgium, France and Spain during the summer of 2001. I picked up a lung infection on the flight over that dogged me the entire trip. I also fell asleep shirtless on the beaches of Biarritz, after not running with the bulls in Pamplona — probably one of the few smart moves I made. I got drunker than my normal drunkenness to ease the pain of my scorched backside, and somehow managed to offend a tiny British woman; who subsequently shoved me off a bridge.

Besides a brief sojourn in Dublin shortly after 9/11, I haven’t been back to Europe since — or anywhere else of note for that matter. Except camping of course, I have heartily not enjoyed plenty of camping.

I was also taken to Disney World by my mom as a young lad. I cried on the roller coaster, so she took me on the Tea Cups. I cried on the Tea Cups.

I found out much later in life that my vacations — the majority of which involved camping, I think I’ve mentioned already — were not the vacations my friends from later on in life enjoyed when they were kids. The key word here is enjoyed.

They traveled to exotic places that offered not only luxuries such as food and lodging, but culture and entertainment.

I stared at trees.

My European friends seem to have it all sorted as well. They enjoy paid holiday at least twice a year for as long as they can remember — to wonderful destinations all over the world. Yes, that European socialism sounds like a real nightmare.

Yet, before this bit of light entertainment is taken as some sort of whingeing by my friends at home and abroad, I would like to mention that I am very thankful to have had any holiday trips at all — as I know millions have never been afforded a single vacation in their entire lives.

Except camping, but I have made the case that camping doesn’t count.

We can all agree, right? That camping doesn’t count?

It’s not a vacation if what you are doing is indistinguishable from survival training. Preparing for the coming apocalypse by eating baked beans straight out of a can is not a vacation.

That being said, I have a feeling staycations are the vacations I will look forward to in the future, until it is time that I shuffle off this mortal coil. I am fine with that, although wary that the comedic arc of my creative endeavors will suffer. Granted, this staycation over the last few weeks was rough — and I will get to that story someday soon — but at least I was home.

I don’t know what it is about travel, but I never seem to enjoy myself the way it seems everyone else does on vacation. How about you, dear reader, are your holidays all they're cracked up to be?

On a more somber note, I watched a lot of Parts Unknown this past weekend — I imagine quite a few of us did — and I would like to take a moment to honor one of humanity’s great travelers, Anthony Bourdain. I looked up to Anthony. He had suffered, he was honest, he had integrity. I had always hoped that one day I would be able to call him my friend. As a writer, entertainer, culinary master and cultural ambassador for the world, he was peerless.

Bon voyage, Mr. Bourdain — you will be missed.

B.S. Report

Two of the families of the Parkland student activists were Swatted last week. If you don’t know what Swatting is, that’s when someone calls in a phony emergency — usually involving imminent danger — whereby a SWAT team is deployed to an unsuspecting household, in hopes that they will shoot innocent people accidentally.

So yeah, that’s what conservative gun-loving fuckheads would wish upon the surviving family members that dared to stand up to the NRA. Trump’s base truly is a festering hive of dickless cowards, with no sense of compassion or empathy, and nothing but shit for brains.

4LWjr.

#vacationing #staycation #camping #Parts Unknown #Anthony Bourdain

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theliterateape · 6 years

Text

American Shithole #20 — Vacations, Part One: Camping Is For Masochists

By Eric Wilson

Staycations — if I am to judge them by the last two weeks — have me faring only slightly better.

In my lifetime I have been camping roughly a score of times. That’s twenty, millennials. (Well why didn’t you just say twenty then, fuckface?)

That event set the tone for every subsequent camping trip over the next forty years.

I was also taken to Disney World by my mom as a young lad. I cried on the roller coaster, so she took me on the Tea Cups. I cried on the Tea Cups.

They traveled to exotic places that offered not only luxuries such as food and lodging, but culture and entertainment.

I stared at trees.

Except camping, but I have made the case that camping doesn’t count.

We can all agree, right? That camping doesn’t count?

It’s not a vacation if what you are doing is indistinguishable from survival training. Preparing for the coming apocalypse by eating baked beans straight out of a can is not a vacation.

I don’t know what it is about travel, but I never seem to enjoy myself the way it seems everyone else does on vacation. How about you, dear reader, are your holidays all they're cracked up to be?

Bon voyage, Mr. Bourdain — you will be missed.

B.S. Report

4LWjr.

#vacationing #staycation #camping #Parts Unknown #Anthony Bourdain

0 notes