I……… love…………… them……………………….

catch a break

my full piece for @phosphorzine ! ✨

first light

3 mimir

RutiYellowPad is good  👌

(this was a labor of love)

OTP with modern AU

imo the best way to interpret those “real people don’t do x” writing advice posts is “most people don’t do x, so if a character does x, it should be a distinguishing trait.” human behavior is infinitely varied; for any x, there are real people who do x. we can’t make absolute statements. we can, however, make probabilistic ones.

for example, most people don’t address each other by name in the middle of a casual conversation. if all your characters do that, your dialogue will sound stilted and unnatural. but if just one character does that, then it tells us something about that character.

When you reconnect years later and the same thing keeps happening

while you’re still checked in to the hot take hotel, know that “you can benefit from systems of oppression without wanting to, because these are systems much larger than any individual” does not mean “you are inherently oppressing other people through your presence and also by virtue of being alive.” spread the second message and you should go to hell for that

You know. Reading is important. Because I'm like always trying to make every line I write this groundbreaking mindfucking art but like. A book is 90% just saying what happened. "I hugged him around the waist." "The chair was brown and overstuffed." "I woke up alone." Etc etc. Like normal ass lines. I just keep comparing my boring, necessary to set a scene lines, with famous authors' absolute best lines and like.... every line doesn't have to shatter the earth. Sometimes someone just sits in a chair and the lines that wreck you come later, one at a time, here and there. It's alright.

This is super common and I wish we were taught when we begin to write that those quoted lines are also in a sea of the same sort of setup we obsess over not being 'good enough'. I saw multiple people drop out of writing courses over this in college. Sure, sometimes you need a better way to describe something prevalent or to pinpoint an emotion, but if EVERYTHING was written in that sort of tone for a whole book it would prove utterly exhausting to read.

Also, if every single line in the book was hard-hitting and mindblowing, then it wouldn't be memorable because it would be drowned out.

The best lines are famous because they stand out.

Commenters are the real MVPs

Feel free to reblog from the source and ignore this addition but I just wanted to add to this for people who truly do not get it:

Society tries to trick fat people into thinking their lives will get better when they’re skinny because “you’ll feel better skinny because your body is healthier” and shit like “you’ll act more confident and people respond better to confidence.”

This is to absolve themselves, on a personal level, of fatphobia. It is to say FAT PEOPLE make their own lives harder and skinny, midsize, even other fat people do not make it worse. The fatphobia is made up, not real. Not systemic. Not a constant in interpersonal relationships.

This is a lie.

I lost about ~40% of my body weight. Some of the kindest, least judgmental, socially aware, anti-discrimination people almost immediately started treating me better. I could even just MENTION that I was trying to lose weight, that I had only lost 1 pound, 5 pounds, 10 pounds (while still being “obese” by arbitrary medical standards) and people would treat me better.

Again, these are people who never, ever used fatphobic language. Who never shamed me out loud for being 214 pounds. Who I thought loved me to the best of their ability.

And it made me realize… everyone is fatphobic until they actively unlearn fatphobia.

If you think you aren’t fatphobic, I assure you, you are. And I think you need to mentally check yourself when you are interacting with fat people.

Are you withholding affection? Are you avoiding touching them when you’d touch someone else? Do you immediately try to avoid certain activities with them? Are you PUSHING activities onto them that you think will make them less fat? Do you avoid clothes shopping with them and going to stores with clothes for fat people? Do you avoid gifting them clothes because you don’t want to ever talk about sizes with them?

What do you avoid talking about with fat friends?

Do you complain about your own weight, “feeling fat?”

Do you push YOUR insecurities onto your fat friends?

Do you avoid being seen with them?

What are you excluding fat people in your life from?

Do you have internalized biases? Do you quietly think to yourself that they’re eating too much, that they’re lazy or selfish? Do you assume they’re unhealthy? Do you blame them for what they’re going through?

Do you make it clear you’re willing to listen when they want to talk about this?

What do you do to make sure the fat people in your life know you love them AS IS?

#i don’t think ppl realize just how oppressive fatphobia is#and leftist spaces haven’t quite caught onto it yet outside of explicitly fat liberationist spaces#so literal left wing communist social justice people will be horrifically fatphobic all while denying systemic fatphobia#meanwhile there are SIGNIFICANT hurdles in employment and pay and medical care for fat people#we are less likely to be employed#less likely to be in positions of authority#make less than our thin peers#and are literally more likely to die bc a doctor just didn’t feel like treating us#so many fat ppl have died from completely treatable illnesses bc a doctor decided they were just fat and didn’t need tests or treatment#i will never forget the story of a fat woman who went to the doctor for shortness of breath for like 5 years until they FINALLY did tests#and found out she had stage 4 lung cancer#or the story of another fat person who’d been seeking treatment for difficulty walking#only to be ignored for a decade#and it turned out it was a massive spinal tumor that eventually paralyzed them#like#fuck y’all just truly do not realize how severe fatphobia is#especially when you’re not cishet and white

"joel took away ellie's choice"- damn it's almost like he knew they were both gonna just end up killed.. it's almost like he had no choice either and the fireflies were always gonna kill her with or without her knowledge. it's almost like ellie is a child who does not deserve the weight of the world on her shoulders like this. it's almost like her survivors guilt and unresolved trauma is what drives her to feel as if her entire life needs to end to compensate for those she's lost; it's almost like joel indulging ellie's martyrdom is a far worse thing than saving her on the chance she doesn't want to die. it's almost like she genuinely was never in the right conditions to consent to begin with and was never going to have the chance to regardless. idk

why is the conversation always about how joel “took ellie’s choice away” but never about how the firelfies took it away first? the episode literally went a step further and showed that they lied to ellie before putting her under; they made her believe she would be waking up after the surgery!!! she was expecting to wake up and then go back to jackson with joel. being with joel was literally all that she wanted. so marlene telling joel that dying for the cure is what ellie would have wanted was just her assumption, because if she was so sure that ellie would have agreed to it then why did she not tell her? she was afraid of the answer, she was afraid they would have had to drag ellie, kicking and screaming, onto that table. also, marlene telling joel that she has no choice but to do this, and joel responding that he does have a choice was him taking that choice back for ellie. because she never fucking consented to dying, and even if she knew and she agreed to it, she is just a 14 year old girl with a shit tonne of trauma!! she cannot make that decision for herself. i don’t deny that joel’s actions were also messy as fuck, but i will always be on his side with this.

Not to mention:

Ellie and TLOU II "repaid" Joel by portrayed him as a monster who unironically stole her purpose ala The Incredibles client in the beginning: "You didn't save my life, you ruined my death!!"

Look, I'm going to be honest, I don't care whether people feeding other fans' fanfiction into AI is "legal" or "illegal".

What it is, is rude, entitled, and disrespectful of your fellow fans.

"But you already wrote that trope."