birlwrites

[birlwrites]

Yeah, a lot of what bothers me about fantasy settings (especially D&D) is that people try to run wizards like they're academics, but their only exposure to academics is authoritative professors telling them The Truth, so they don't realize that all academics are always 5 seconds away from trying to strangle each other over questions like 'does time really pass or does it just seem to pass'

[birlwrites]

The fae smiled, sharply: “Give me your name, child.”

“Uhhhhh. Stick.”

“What.”

“Does Leaf work better? I’m just kinda looking around this clearing. Look, I’m trans, I haven’t decided on one yet, I’m throwing some spaghetti at the wall, you know how it is.”

#other people's writing

[birlwrites]

We don’t talk enough about the satisfying feeling you get as an author when you’ve written exactly the fic you wanna read

[birlwrites]

chapter 17 of lachrimae is up!!

#lachrimae #birl writes #hp

[birlwrites]

some rambles about this new story i'm working on:

the protagonist is a young woman who's been training to serve the crown since she was a toddler (unusually young)

she must have been named something when she was born, but she doesn't remember it, and nobody around her knows what it is. she's called the bloodfinch, or bloodfinch as a form of direct address - it's her title, the role she'll play for the crown, and it's become her name, more or less

privately, she calls herself finch

finch has a near-legendary ability to heal herself through singing. the last recorded occurrence of someone having this ability was over a century ago. this is why she was taken to the palace as a toddler, to train and grow up there

she's called the bloodfinch after an animal from a tale central to her country's religion (this is secondary world fantasy)

more under the cut, cw for blood and human sacrifice! (which seem to be like... run-of-the-mill for my blog now. LMAO) EDIT ALSO ANIMAL DEATH. forgot to mention that one

the story of the bloodfinch is that it was stabbed through the heart and kept itself alive with continuous song, bleeding for twenty years before it could not sing any longer and died. flowers sprang up wherever drops of its blood touched the earth—the flowers that nourished the first king of this country and gave him the strength to unite the peoples of the land.

the capital-B Bloodfinch is a person with the ability to heal themself through continuous song. they're very rare, and when they're found, they're taken to the palace to train for 20 years, before they're ritually stabbed through the heart by the current king and sing to self-heal until they die. those same flowers bloom at the moment of their death, and the pollen is harvested and carefully rationed out (since nobody knows when the next bloodfinch will come along).

it's a cause for celebration, unless perhaps you're the bloodfinch and you don't want to die.

#bloodfinch #my stories rlly do just get darker and darker #i do anticipate a happy ending for this one though #feel free to ask questions about this as well! #i know i haven't given y'all much to go on with just this post #but if you're curious about anything go wild

[birlwrites]

WRITE IT!!! WRITE THAT SELF INDULGENT SHIT!!!

[birlwrites]

this is in really really really really REALLY early stages (i have a mindmap and ~300 words of prose) but... workin on an original story........... it's about a girl who's forgotten her own name who doesn't want to die

#feels presumptuous to make a tag #fuck it i'm gonna do it anyway #bloodfinch #300 words? only gotta do that uh. checks calculator. 300-400 more times and i have a draft!!

[birlwrites]

it’s almost midnight but i am here on Tumblr Dot Com to let everyone know that a fantastic and underused trope is “uses terms of endearment only when under huge amounts of stress.”

Like some character is fairly formal or is just not a pet names person but then they get a panicked phone call from a loved one and the first words out of their mouth are “Sweetheart, what happened?” 

Team “I-only-ever-use-your-first-name” going “Oh, jesus fuck, love, I’m so glad you’re safe” or “Okay, darling, you know I love you but I need some space to fix this giant mess” and everyone around them is like “oh god we have reached Pet Names Level Bad, that’s not good” 

this is the new trope I am championing, I would like it to be the Hot New Thing

[birlwrites]

Alright, to ao3's soon to be arriving Wattpad Refugees, a basic guide to general user culture:

1.) Unlike Wattpads vote system that let's you like each chapter, the ao3 equivalent kudos only allows one per work. Everyone is generally quietly annoyed about this. To engage with each chapter, you're heavily encouraged to comment. Trust me, it makes people's day.

2.) Ao3 has no algorithm. By default it's latest updated work first. You can find things to your taste through searches, filters and tags.

3.) 'No archive warnings apply' and 'user has chosen not to use archive warnings' mean two very different things. No archives warnings means the work is free from any content that could require a warning tag (character death, graphic depictions of violence, non-con, etc). User has chosen not to use archive warnings means it could contain any of the warning content, be it hasn't been explicitly tagged. Treat it like an allergen. No archive warnings apply is allergen free. User has chosen not to use archive warnings, may contain traces or whole chunks of the allergen. If you're likely to have a bad reaction, maybe don't take the risk.

4.) Speaking of warnings, ao3 has very few restrictions on the type of work that's allowed. Whatever your personal thoughts or feelings on that are, thats how the site is. You're likely to run across some dark subject matters and a lot of people are uncomfortable with reading that. You're well within your rights not like these works and have your opinion on whether they should be allowed, but harassing the authors of such works (or any works) is more likely to come back on you than them. Ao3 operates on a strong policy of 'don't like, don't read'. Use the tagging system to your full advantage to only engage with the kind of works you want to see.

We look forward to welcoming you all and seeing the fantastic works you create. Happy writing!

#ao3 etiquette

[birlwrites]

Reblog so everyone can hear what they need.

[birlwrites]

Had a revelation recently and thought it might help other people too.

There is absolutely NO shame in having a ton of projects on the go and switching between or even dropping them on a whim.

Hobbies are meant to be FUN.

You can have 20 writing projects, or knitting, or whatever your thing is, and putting them down for a bit or abandoning them is a-okay.

I personally would never think that someone who started playing a video game and then decided to play another before it was finished was a quitter, so why am I so judgemental towards myself?

Doing your hobbies in a way that brings you joy isn't selfish or weak, it's...literally the whole point of them. Go nuts!

[birlwrites]

reblogging this to try to catch as many people as possible!

considering posting more frequently now that lachrimae is completed... if you're reading along w lachrimae, please lmk how soon you're normally able to read a chapter after it's been posted!

i want to make sure people have time to read + process each chapter in between updates which is why i'm asking. ty in advance<3

#lachrimae

[birlwrites]

hey. HEY. artists. writers.

take your TIME

[birlwrites]

i'm usually able to read an update as soon as I get the email! but then i need anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour (depending on just what happened in the chapter and what I want to say in my comment lol) to process what you just did to me. and to regulus ig

AFJLSGHKSJDF that's so fair. you're going to have a lot to process very soon

#very. VERY soon #next chapter in fact #and every chapter after #this was the last semi-uneventful one you're welcome #lachrimae #should i make an inbox tag #hehehehehe

[birlwrites]

Trans Horror Books

Looking for some trans horror books to read for Halloween? Here you go:

Book titles:

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

The Ojja-Wojja by Magdalene Visaggio and Jenn St-Onge

Let Me Out by Emmett Nahil and George Williams

The Honeys by Ryan La Sala

Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt

All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes

Bound In Flesh by Lor Gislason

#other people's writing

[birlwrites]

considering posting more frequently now that lachrimae is completed... if you're reading along w lachrimae, please lmk how soon you're normally able to read a chapter after it's been posted!

i want to make sure people have time to read + process each chapter in between updates which is why i'm asking. ty in advance<3

#lachrimae

[birlwrites]

Tragedy and melancholy in art is escapism. Lets you put time and energy into being sad for a bit without thinking about the things making you sad in real life.