lunamanar

[lunamanar]

Hey kiddo (idk your age, tbh I call everyone kiddo I’m a teacher),

I have been following your game development since it’s conception. I know you’ve got a lot on your shoulders. I know it must be weighing on you. I want you to know, no matter when or if this game comes to fruition, I am so impressed by your creativity and skills. This game and concept had its hooks in me from day one.

I hope you are doing well. I hope life is treating you decently (which is all most of us can hope for). I hope you have people around you to encourage you. And I hope you never, ever lose your creative spark.

While I have been stoked for this game, if it never comes to full fruition, that’s OKAY. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart and soul. You have talent. You have a gift. You have creativity. Wherever that leads you, whether that’s the finish this game or make another or to just make art for yourself, i hope you nurture that part of you. You deserve to enjoy your creativity. You deserve to just be you.

I hope this message sends the correct vibes. I know connotation can be lost through written word. But I mean this with my whole being. No matter what path you go down, no matter what happens with this game, your next game/project/etc. You are valid. You are amazing and you are incredibly talented.

I see so much beauty ahead of you. I see so much creativity thru your talent and love for creating.

Please never stop creating. Not for others, but for yourself. You have so much to give. Make sure, regardless of anything else, you give to yourself.

the fact that someone out there took the time to write this is why the world is beautiful. i'm saving this message for my wall! it's been much needed. your students are very lucky to have your energy in their lives -- needless to say, i've been in my cave for the past years tinkering on this game for y'all. just took a long time! (hey. workin hard, so i can please u.gif) i can't wait for you to play what's been brewing. it's taking a little longer as we cross the last hurdles, but this is the deer year. -- i'm sending the same energy to anyone reading this that's making anything. it seems the world is become colder toward emerging artists, but screw it... we make shit for the joy of it ^_^ actually, i wanted to ask: what're you're all working on? what have deer game fans been making in their time?

#not FF #deer game

[lunamanar]

(Why can't I stop grieving?)

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So have the very important blue check marks carcinized, yet?

#crab #craaaaaab

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This continues to be the single most "successful" post I ever made. It was such an off-hand thing. I think I wrote it in the space of 20 minutes. It's probably the only reason I still get regular interactions and follows on this page (sorry new people--I'm really not around much these days).

It's so funny how the most random thing will track with so many people (doubtless with the help of content-focused reblog accounts that catch a trend and sling it along to thousands of followers), while most of the stuff that's saturated in blood sweat & tears languishes in relative obscurity. It happens to everyone who creates for an audience, I think. There are plenty of reasons why, too, and I understand them just fine--I actually prefer for the writing that's closest to my heart to be seen by a much smaller audience--but interesting, nonetheless.

In 2015, when I was Very On Tumblr, I would have said something about how art (or even just communication) that strikes a balance between the personal connection to the creator and the impersonal hooks that the audience can glom onto while interpreting as best suits them--so it can be personal and meaningful to them without needing to directly empathize with or even understand the creator's perspective--are usually the things that get picked up and tossed around a lot, both by algorithms and real humans. This makes sense, especially in an environment where sharing things you like or relate to is the whole point of the platform. But it also means that the things a creator puts less work into, and probably cares about a lot less, if at all, often have a higher likelihood of being seen and appreciated by a lot of people.

It's understandably isolating, for a lot of people, even demoralizing, to see the stuff they're ho-hum about get a lot of attention, while their passion projects get crickets. Even if you know why it's happening, it's hard not to feel like it's a sign of just how disconnected your "fans" actually are from you. They're deeply moved or entertained by something that you made, and they might even think you must be deeply moved or entertained by it, too. After all, you made it, to such great effect. But, you think, that's not what really moves me, it's not the message I care most about putting out into the world, and well crap, how do I engage with people who love something I created way way more than I love it, myself? What's a gentle way of saying, "I'm happy you like this so much, I hope you continue to enjoy it, but it doesn't tell you anything about me; there's no author-audience connection here, no mutual understanding that matters. This isn't a personal work, and I'm sorry, I have nothing deeper to tell you about it. You've already put more thought into it than I ever did. Please continue to make it yours."

Of course, you can't really say that to someone, unless you want to make a bad day for everyone. And to be clear: this isn't a problem I've had often, or even currently. But I think about the occasions I have, and what writer/artist friends have said to me about it time and again, every time I see this post come around again.

The other, maybe less-traveled side of this is that...well, the stuff I create that means the most to me, that I'm most proud of, that is closest to my heart, I don't really show anyone. Those stories and thoughts are intimate and not something I want broadcast to the world, no matter how happy I am with it. Not that I don't put a lot of myself into things I do want others to see, but in general, the closer it is to me, the fewer people I want to see it. Even on the (rare, lately) occasions I do post something that means a lot to me, I inevitably feel terrible in the week or two after posting it. Not because I think it sucks, or I'm scared no one will like it or that I'll be criticized...but just because of this feeling of "well, it's not mine, anymore." It's an empty-nest sort of void, something I've let go of and can never take back. There's sincere grief in that. So, naturally, I don't want the entire world to know me, not all of me, not the most important things. There's a boundary of passion that prevents the sharing of some projects. It's a balance, and sometimes it's very hard to weigh how badly I want to be seen against how deeply I value the confidence I keep with myself and what moves, empowers, uplifts, and devastates me the most. That's for me and maybe a few specific individuals to know and understand.

So I'm happy, in most cases--certainly with this post--to have people enjoy and find value or meaning in something I made and quite like, but am not particularly attached to. While being very relieved none of you have divined anything too personal about me, or what I actually feel most of the time. God, I would be the most insufferably disappointing celebrity.

But I do get, on occasion, that brief rush of loneliness, maybe even fear, at the pointed reminders that what people see of me, while it is genuine, is so incomplete as to be inaccurate on its own. If people like what they see of me, they may as well be appreciating a leaf without ever seeing the tree it fell from. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but I think most people have an innate fear of being forgotten when they're gone. It's natural to want the things that matter most to you, that you lived your life by, to have a lasting effect beyond that life. It's easy to think that if you are ever forgotten that means you are forgettable. I'm not immune to that.

This random list I jotted down on a whim continues to be my most circulated post, ever. It's a pretty leaf, and I'm happy it seems to have helped people in at least a small way (though I'd wager most forgot about it a few minutes after they scrolled on).

It says nothing of me, though. It's too far removed from its roots to be matched to them. It's not mine, anymore (if it ever was). It's just something I started and somehow keeps itself going, without me, largely ignorant of my existence, for over 5 years at this point.

There's a weird comfort in that.

Things I Try to Remember When I’m Nervous About Writing

1. Write what you want to read. 

2. There is no problem with a story so great that it cannot be fixed in revision. Keep going.

3. If your story is as uncreative as you think it is, you wouldn’t want to write it so badly. You want to write it because there’s a unique spin on it you have never seen, and want to express. Many people may write similar stories, but it’s the details that make it personal. You may not know it now, but there is someone who is looking for exactly what you’re writing. If you don’t finish it, they’ll never see it. 

4. You can write something amazing and still be met with silence. There are myriad reasons for this that have nothing to do with the quality of what you produce. 

4.1 It’s okay to repeat post your work if no one has seen it. 

4.2 It’s okay to post your work in multiple places.

5. You don’t have to agree with every criticism (but take it gracefully anyway). 

6. Most writers are scared of the same things you are.

7. Don’t judge your works in progress against the archives of finished, polished stories other writers have put together. Archives are Internet portfolios and generally don’t show all the multitude of failures, incomplete, and draft-form works those writers are also struggling with. They aren’t perfect and you don’t have to be, either. Keep working and you will have a portfolio of your own. 

8. Don’t be afraid to share your ideas with other writers. It’s not annoying as long as you’re not self-important about it. Be humble and gracious, and others will reciprocate.

8.1 You can’t write as well in a vacuum; the more people know that you are working on something, and what, the more support you will get for that work. Starting a dialogue before you post something will make it more likely people will read it when you do post it. 

9. It’s okay to take breaks. If the ideas just aren’t coming, go do something else for a while. 

10. Be kind to yourself. Don’t call yourself names. You are not a failure, or uncreative, or boring. You wouldn’t call other people those things, so don’t do it to yourself. 

I don’t know if these are helpful to other people, but they are helpful to me, so just in case, here they are!

#rambling #writing

[lunamanar]

Entry 67

Everything is going to get harder. 

That’s the thing I want to say, but can’t. 

#he was right

[lunamanar]

Felt nostalgic enough to come back and start reading a few old posts. This one made me smile. Sharing again for everyone's amusement (for proper enjoyment, read both the OP and the "fanfic").

I did edit one word in the OP because I've since learned it's offensive. I don't know if it will be changed in the reblog too, but if it's not: apologies. My ignorance.

Might repost a few other things, while I have energy.

So this was a thing I decided to do. 

(If you want the play by play of this whole saga, here’s the discord link and you can find the beginning in the Pinned section!) Enjoy this hastily slapped together little episode of *ahem* GALBADIAN TRAIL below the cut!

Keep reading

#oregon trail #final fantasy viii #long shitpost #with the best follow-up ever #squall leonhart #rinoa heartilly #zell dincht #quistis trepe #irvine kinneas #selphie tilmitt #the worst crossover #or maybe the best idk #good memories

[lunamanar]

#feeling

[lunamanar]

On media storms, and transphobes, and free speech, and the establishment.

Unless you were asleep last week, you’ll have noticed I made the news. I made the news a lot. The Daily Mail (twice); the Times (twice); the Telegraph; the Observer, plus radio and any number of online and international outlets, including UnHerd, where stories go to die.

The story has taken many forms. That J.K. Rowling feels “betrayed” by my “lack of support” for her: that my views on trans rights makes me ineligible for any public role; that people are calling for my removal from the Board of the SOA; that I’m a monster because I replied to a post from a satirical Twitter account with - shock, horror - a smiley.

I haven’t talked to anyone in the Press, in spite of many journalists asking, so this “story”, was taken from Twitter, where stories evolve at such a rapid rate that by the time they make the broadsheets, no-one really knows what shape the story started out at all.

But this is what it has become. I’ve been repeatedly (and wrongly) accused of a number of things, which when you unpick them, boil down to one thing. That as Chair of the Society of Authors (the authors’ trade union), I’ve abused my position to discriminate against people who don’t agree with my support of the trans community.

Full disclosure: this isn’t new. Ever since I was elected Chair in 2019, I’ve been getting increasing amounts of abuse, pressure and demands for “debate” from people with gender-critical views. Some of them are colleagues; some women I once considered friends. Some of these women now have become single-agenda tweeters, railing night and day online about what defines a woman, and spreading misinformation and fear about the trans community. Many of these women claim to be afraid, and to have suffered cancellation for their views. Some of them feel that as Chair of the SOA, I should have taken their side in Twitter debates, signed petitions, joined hashtags to validate their beliefs.

But here’s the thing. The SOA represents everyone. It has over 12,000 members. It needs to stay neutral to represent all its members equally. And it has a strict policy of non-intervention in Twitter debates between members, even when they get nasty, because Twitter can be a nasty place, and the SOA can’t be everywhere. That’s why I tweet in my personal capacity unless I specify otherwise. 

The gender critical lobby has had real difficulty understanding this. Over the past two years, I’ve been under increasing pressure to “speak out” about individual cases (I can’t); ally myself with transphobes (I won’t) and “denounce” death threats to J.K. Rowling (which I do, but apparently not often enough.) Over the past two years I’ve received countless abusive tweets, urging me to kill myself, or resign from the SOA, or hoping that I would die of cancer, all from the gender-critical lobby.

The latest eruption began last week, with the stabbing of Salman Rushdie, a man whose life has been under threat since most of us can remember. Last Friday, an Islamist fanatic managed to get close enough to stab him, leaving him with terrible injuries. The literary world was shaken. Friends of Rushdie’s spoke out in horror. But those of us who only knew him for his books were also deeply shaken and upset. Because this wasn’t just a violent attack on an author, horrific though that may be. It was an attack on free speech, a principle all creators hold dear.

Free speech is a term that has been misused a lot recently, especially by people wanting their say, but denying it to others. In fact, free speech is like oxygen: you can’t remove it from someone else without also losing it yourself, which means that, if you believe in free speech, you can’t then go around deciding who deserves it and who doesn’t. Rushdie is a great writer. But even if the victim of the stabbing had been a minor writer, a bad writer, or a writer with problematic opinions, the same attack on free speech would have happened, threatening writers everywhere. The principle of free speech matters. And it matters to all of us.

I wrote about this a bit on Twitter, where many authors were still upset, struggling how best to respond to the horrific attack. Twitter being Twitter, there were also a number of angry Islamist accounts, crowing about the Rushdie attack and targeting anyone who expressed sympathy. Some were abusive, some even threatening. Several people I follow were sent messages on the lines of: Shut up or we’ll come for you next. I got one myself. So did J.K. Rowling. But on Twitter, size matters. What J.K. Rowling, with her 14 million followers, says is instant news. So when J.K. Rowling announced that she’d had a death threat from an Islamist account saying: You’re next, her name trended for two days, and Rushdie’s all-too-real attack was overshadowed by a Twitter threat.

Now, it isn’t up to me to decide whether the death threat was credible, or whether J.K. Rowling should be afraid. I don’t know how many threats she’s received, or how many she thinks are credible. Having had them myself, I know they can be upsetting and frightening. But a threat on Twitter is not the same as being stabbed in the eye, and I didn’t see the need to comment.

 Instead I put up a poll, asking fellow-authors if they’d ever received a death threat. I wanted to use it as a way of talking about author safety. As it happened, Chuck Wendig had been posting about his latest death threat the day before Salman Rushdie was stabbed (a weirdly specific death threat, in which his correspondent expressed the hope that Chuck would be, er - raped to death by a dolphin), and the tone of my first poll reflected the jokey nature of our interchange. In the light of the Rushdie stabbing, though, I realized that wasn’t appropriate. I deleted the poll almost at once and started again with a more neutral wording, but the folk on Twitter who watch me for any ammunition they can use had already screencapped it and passed it around. It made the papers, variously as: Harris  Mocks Rushdie or Harris Mocks Rowling, but I was doing neither. I do have thoughts about white women online who make the all-too-real attack on a brown man about their own experience, but that’s a different discussion. Death threats – to anyone, including J.K. Rowling – are absolutely wrong. They’re also a crime. Crimes are for the police to sort out. Free speech, however, is a legitimate principle for a union to uphold.

But free speech isn’t always the speech that you agree with. Free speech can be confrontational. It can be unfair. It can even be upsetting. I’ve upset a lot of gender-critical people with my own use of free speech; my refusal to join their hashtags, sign their petitions, enter their debates. That doesn’t mean to say I don’t believe in theirs, or that I wouldn’t fight for their rights as fiercely as for anyone else. But that has never been enough for the people who want me gone.  

Since last week, the wave of people demanding my resignation – or just my removal – from the SOA has grown. Many of those who have joined the “debate” are not members. Many are not even authors. Nearly all are transphobes, though. Because that’s what all this is about. Transphobes want me silenced. Graham Linehan has been posting about me since 2020, calling for me to be dismissed. He doesn’t know what the SOA does. He doesn’t care. He’s just one of many prominent transphobes who believe that someone who believes in the rights of trans folk doesn’t deserve a voice of their own.

I have a trans son. He came out very recently, and I haven’t discussed it online. Last week, I discovered that some of my principal detractors had found out about this. After talking to my son, and with his permission, I went public. I love my son more than words can say, and I didn’t want anyone to think that I was ashamed of him. Kathleen Stock, among others, gloated that this was proof of my bias. She (rather chillingly) denounced me for having “undeclared trans-identified offspring,” and claimed that this was the “real” reason for my support of trans folk. Kathleen Stock finds it hard to believe that someone might uphold a principle without having a personal interest. Actually, I’ve been a supporter of trans rights for much longer than this. Like I said, I believe in supporting the rights of all marginalized groups.

So, just what are they saying now? That I’m jealous of JKR? I’m not. I love my life, and I love my son, and I wouldn’t change that for anything. That because of my pro-trans beliefs, I should be cancelled or lose my job? That would be ironic, wouldn’t it, coming from people who are claiming to have been cancelled for their gender-critical beliefs. And full disclosure; it isn’t a job. It’s an elected position, as part of a Board of twelve people. It’s voluntary, time-consuming, often thankless, and unpaid, and I do it because I care about authors’ rights. All authors’ rights; whether they’re famous of not; whether I agree with their politics or not.

But this assault isn’t going to stop. Given how many people pretend to be “fearful of speaking out”, they’re certainly doing a hell of a lot of it. I’ve had open attacks this week from a certain sector of the author community – all London-based, all cis, all white, all influential people (many of them men) with lots of friends in the right-wing media – saying that they are coming for me. One person compared it to the March of the Ents, going after Saruman. The literary establishment, is seems is desperately afraid of progress.

Here’s the thing, though. I’m stubborn. I’ve never fitted into the London literary scene, so the fact that it now feels the need to mobilize against me means very little to me. This week, I’ve had death threats, attacks in the media, and countless abusive messages. I don’t care. I’m not afraid. I was elected to this role to help protect authors’ rights. That means yours, whoever you are, and those of all other authors. If you’re a member of the SOA, then we have elections yearly. You too can stand for the Board, and be elected, and add your views to the diversity of views already expressed there. My terms ends in 2024. Till then, I’ll do what I’ve always done. Raise awareness of authors’ rights. Treebeard and their London friends may find me harder to uproot than they think.

They grow us tough in Yorkshire.

[lunamanar]

Audrey requires at minimum 10 minutes of belly rubs per day in exchange for not destroying all my belongings.

#cats #Luna M Life

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Hell if this isn't my constant mood.

#writer problems

[lunamanar]

Brain: I'm bored. Let's do something else.

Me, almost done with a very important personal project I've been obsessing over for months: Are you fucking kidding me

#random #adhd

[lunamanar]

The fantasy of the human being is infinite, enjoy the piece that you get.  By Key Monster

#misc #art

[lunamanar]

This is why we're not allowed to buy color cartridges for our printer anymore.

#ff8 #bojak horseman #so i was explaining leon and dissidia-squall to my husband tonight and apparently i had never told him who his va is #he IMMEDIATELY made this for me

[lunamanar]

he did stay in the bed after i put it back down ;w;

#non ff #kiiitttty #cats

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lost in the moss

#non-ff #comics #lol #relatable

[lunamanar]

All I want to do is write. But I can't.

I have to do too many things, first. I have to make sure I sleep, so I can stay awake for my entire shift, so I can do my job, so I can pay my bills. I have to take care of my husband, who is disabled. I need to know he's okay. I have to feed the cats every 4 hours (the only way to minimize puking; we have 10 cats). I have to reserve enough energy for video calls with my parents once per week. I have to help keep the house clean. I have to make sure I keep my doctor's appointments every month, so I can continue to take the medications that allow me to function. I have to fight with my pharmacy every other week to make sure they actually fill the prescriptions. I have to do the same for my husband, sometimes.

My head is so full, and I'm tired all the time. I've neglected all my friends, been an unreliable mess to them so I can be a reliable mess for the parts of my life that sustain myself and my family. Being reliable is the hardest thing in the world and I am the master of failing at it.

I don't know how other people keep their appointments, do their jobs, take their meds, care for their families, and still have the energy left to have friends. Or hobbies. I feel like I should be able to do that. I feel like the fact I haven't been able to reflects badly on me. On my days off, I have enough energy to pay bills, go to appointments, clean a bit, and take care of everyone and everything who relies on me. Whatever's left, is usually spent watching something on stream and trying to ignore the horrible guilt of failing to show up for everyone else...even people I consider family. They feel so out of reach. I don't feel like I deserve them. I'm afraid to say anything at all, because even if we start talking, and everything is okay, and they're not mad and completely understand...I'm not going to be able to keep it up. I'm going to go silent again. I'm going to miss them, again, and it's going to hurt.

I didn't have this problem when I was younger. Well, no, I did, but it wasn't a problem. I had friends, but I didn't mind if we drifted apart. The friends I kept, who I was and still am very close with, were the ones who understood that if I wandered off and didn't come back for a long time, it didn't mean I'd forgotten, or didn't care, but that I'm chronically parched for energy, and what droplets I had were being drawn into a larger pool.

This feels like the deepest pond I've ever been absorbed in. Maybe it's just that I'm older, and my energy is even more limited than it used to be.

I'm supposed to wake my husband up and I forgot. I started writing this instead, having no sense of how long it would be. I've been typing for 30 minutes. That's half an hour I really didn't have. All my free time is just another waiting room. I have to find something meaningless to do while I wait for the next important task I have to accomplish, and it has to be meaningless because it has to be something I can drop at any moments and never have to come back to.

See, I can't be interrupted. I have no mental battery backup. I can't pick things up where I left them—I rely on other people to help me do that, which is why all my relationships fizzle out. I can't remember what I was thinking, what I was doing, where I was going with it. I have to start over every time, and it feels awful. In order to finish or maintain anything, I have to just plow straight through it, and to do that, I need a huge chunk—hours, days, weeks, months—of time where I don't have to care about anything else, don't have to worry about anyone else. Because I do worry. I need to know that everyone is okay. I need to know that my absence isn't hurting them. If I think otherwise, I can't ignore it.

But now there's too many. I'm abandoning family right now. I can only choose who, and I hate it.

#cw uncharacteristic self-pity

[lunamanar]

Redrew an older drawing (this one https://www.deviantart.com/skribleskrable/art/Sleep-tight-563054143 )

#ff8 #skribleskrable #squall and rinoa #rinoa heartilly #squall leonhart #Sant Angelo di Roma