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angeltism · 4 months

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YAY YAY YAY WE DO HAVE A TON IN COMMON THEN!!!

honestly i also kinda feel that way about my gender currently like. its just Me. my gender is just being Myself. aside from that it just feels like an empty space but thats not relevant SHAJHDJSH but for now my gender around you is just one truly in love individual hehe

OH MY GOD YEAH wait YOU ACTUALLY DO THE SAME THING I DO EVERYTIME I EAT FRIED CHICKEN FHSJEHSJEHWH it takes me like one hour to finish eating like. three pieces. because of how much of that time goes on just taking out the meat HSJAHSJS honestly its a lengthy process but good lord it is worth every second of it (also im lowkey really entertained when doing it. even with other foods. i remember very clearly these many times i would put a bunch of grapes with seeds on a bowl and then just. eat the top of the grape and take out the seeds and then peel them. i did it for like two hours each time and i never got bored JHSJSHSH) oh yeah chocolate is always my go to sweets option even if i dont get to eat it that often for health reasons.. the times i do eat it though? magnificent i say! OH OH UH i cant say i hate any of those options in particular? big fan of all of them honestly But if i had to pick it would probably be milk chocolate!

- 💌 anon

honestly that's like 100% real , i'm kinda the same (masc? fem? neu? sometimes all of them . sometimes none . sometimes literally the most confusing xeno shit ever . but always 100% moi no matter what !) . . . and uur flattering me again . squishes uu in a bone crushing hug . uu are loveletter anon and uu are awesome no matter the gender honestly ( . i mean this genuinely in a friendly way but also in the bi with a gender preference of "whoever i like at the moment" y'knowww . ^_^)

and OMG YEAHHH TWINNING . . . . ugh i just cannawt handle meat on the bone . so literally same i spend wayy too much time trying to get the meat off of the bone n making sure it doesn't really have any weird texture bits (like . . . cartilage ick . my sensory issues cannawt) . and omg that grape thing is so silly <3 i try my best to get seedless bc seeds can be kinda icky sometimes for me . . . but taking the seeds out sounds silly n weirdly fun actually ?

and oooo yeah everything in moderation i suppose,, i'm glad uu still get to enjoy it though , even in small amounts !! and oo reasonable , i purrsonally have to eat white chocolate in super small amounts at a time cuz it's reaaally sweet n i can kinda have sensitive teeth so . but ugh milk chocolate is sooo good yumyumyum .

also . no need to answer if uu don't wanna but are there by any chance irls or media appearances of uurs that share a source with me . . . just curiousies . esp if like . pj.sk ou somethin else i'm rlly into (star rail , genshin , even just vocal synths in general cuz i'm like 4 of them teehee)

#➳ the fool's mail box #➳ sender; 💌 anon #long post #<- again ?#siiiince uu mentioned uu have irls uu mentioned teehee :3

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elenajohansenreads · 3 years

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Books I Read in 2021

#58 - Sit...Stay...Beg, by Roxanne St. Claire

Mount TBR: 55/100

Rating: 1/5 stars

Let's be generous and say 1.5 stars, because it's better than one of my recent one-star reads, but definitely worse than another recent two-star read.

I am not a dog person, but I'm not not a dog person either, so I thought I could still enjoy it. I didn't realize going into this that being a dog person is a requirement. Dogs are arguably more important to the hero than the heroine (which is an issue I'll revisit) so I felt mildly alienated the whole time that I don't love dogs as much as anyone in this book.

I dislike romance series that front-load the premise and set-up in the first book to the detriment of the story of the first book, and this was a prime example of that. The prologue is a heavy-handed and maudlin backstory that set a depressing tone for what is supposed to be a happy romance, and throughout the story this history is brought up repeatedly, to the point where I don't believe the prologue was necessary at all; everything in it could have been revealed organically as the plot unfolded, and it would have been far better that way. In addition, every sibling in this huge family had to be shoehorned into the plot somehow so that we could meet them all, which took away time from the romance but didn't really add much otherwise. I think the "family" bits could have been limited to Garrett (the lead) and Molly (the former best friend of the other lead) as the primary focus, with Dad and Gramma Finnie being the stronger supporting roles. Everyone else was completely extraneous.

Now let me gripe about the actual story, because Garrett is garbage. He got burned badly once by a woman, so now all women are untrustworthy liars, and he got burned badly once by the media, so all journalists are untrustworthy liars. Our heroine is both of those things. They spent most of the book doing this weird (and at times, questionably ethical) half-interview-half-romance thing, and then when something goes wrong near the end, Garrett one-eighties from "I love you" to "I'm completely unwilling to hear your side of the story because obviously you're an untrustworthy liar," and I get that in most romances, it's the hero who makes the mistake and the heroine who forgives him, because that's how the genre works, but man, Garrett really effed up, and his apology fits with the theme of the book (dogs are better than people, which is maybe not actually supposed to be the theme but that's what I got out of it) but doesn't actually address in any depth how he screwed up, or the magnitude of the hurt he inflicted both by abandoning the heroine over a betrayal she didn't actually do, and by refusing to listen to her because she's clearly a no-good lying journalist.

Like, seriously, Garrett, get the fuck over yourself. If you really have trust issues that deep, get counseling, don't expect the woman in your life to fix you, or yeah, maybe just be alone for the rest of your days with the dogs you like better than people because you're a bitter mistrustful person, and our heroine could probably (and maybe should) do better.

I've read two other novels by this author, also first-in-series freebies I picked up over my years of scrounging romance deals, and since (looking back) I gave those two reads three and four stars, I'm genuinely surprised I thought this was so bad. I certainly won't be continuing this series, because I'm not dog-person enough to connect with them; I haven't felt any great need to go back to either series I'd started before, either, so maybe it's time to scratch this author off my reading lists.

#booklr #book review #romance novels #my reading challenges #mount tbr 2021

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mister-maiden · 3 years

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Pikmin 3 Is a Wonderful Gem

Pikmin 3 was one of my most anticipated games for the Nintendo Switch. I didn't have the good fortune of owning a WiiU, so I never got to experience the third game for myself. After spending 60 dollars on the title, fixing myself up for a long weekend, to my surprise I beat the game in two days...but was I disappointed?

Absolutely not.

Gameplay: Pikmin 3 forces you to take control of three captains who had crash landed on the planet of PNF-404, a planet encompassed with dangerous fauna, familiar faces, and delicious fruit. Using the captains to form smaller groups of Pikmin, you can effectively multitask across each of the diverse maps available.

Several puzzles force you to use this feature by giving you the ability to flung captains alongside Pikmin, effectively allowing you to reach new areas both high and far. This ability is best used with small groups performing tasks across the map. Having one captain destroy a gate while another keeps charge of pikmin harvesting berries. Meanwhile you can have your final pikmin harvesting the corpses of enemies to make even more pikmin!

In this regard, you can play in anyway you want. If you want to keep your pikmin together to keep an army of 100 so you may overpower all in your path, you are certainly free to do so..you may just be hurting a bit on time in comparison to if you divided and conquered. To add onto this, there is a familiar special ability which allows you to split your army apart into the specific elements at your disposal so you can clearly choose the best group for the job.

The objective of the game as you quickly find out is to gather as much fruit as you can to bring back to your home planet of which is having a rather serious issue: starvation. So you'll be looking in every nook and cranny for each piece of fruit you can find to juice and bring back home.

The fruit are finite, and each gives you a specific amount of juice for fruit. Some fruits have enough juice to give you two days worth of sustenance while others barely give half. It is certainly a welcome change from the first game's finite time limit. It allows players to be rewarded for how well they are performing instead of giving them a deadline. This is a huge gripe many had with the previous installments as well as other games with a similar time limit (Dead Rising comes to mind)

Alongside the fruits, powerups lay hidden amongst the maps which give you certain abilities. I won't dive into this as not to spoil it for any of you new players, but all I'll say is it is worth it to check every corner. To retrieve these treasures, you will have to use a specific amount of pikmin for each item. You can use a bit more than the maximum per treasure to make the journey back to the ship far more quicker. During this time, I recommend traveling with your pikmin so none shall perish to the random hazards of elements and enemies that may have slugged in the way of the path.

With a lot of multi tasking and pathing involved in this new installment, it seems the developers worked more with the pause menu. A map allows you to see the areas you have explored and seen, marking a small green blip for each creature you spot. This was done intentionally so the player would be unaware of what lay in a path and to determine their best plan of action. To walk through the shorter parh with several blips and pray they are not too dangerous, or go around. A new feature with the mapping system also works alongside how you will be controlling three captains. You can now go to your map, scroll to an area, and press where you would like your captain to walk to. This will trigger whatever captain and pikmin group you have selected to automatically path to the point you selected. This allows for large scale multitasking in which you can have two captains traveling to destinations while your third deals with an entirely different task. A very welcome development for people such as I who want to use their time as wisely as possible.

Combat is roughly the same as the previous installments: overwhelm by sheer number while also avoiding the attacks that have a potential to wipe your armies. Picking the right pikmin for each battle is crucial...but to be honest I felt like this game gave me a bit too much leniency for making mistakes. For instance, there wasn't too much punishment for throwing an incorrect pikmin at an opposite element. You can just whistle them before they perish and all will be okay. Maybe it's my new game wisdom I have earned from thousands of hours of gaming, but I don't remember pikmin 1 being so easy.

Pikmin 3 also brings back the system in which you can slay your enemies...and use their bodies as mulch to grow your garden empire upon.

Your empire is stored in a pikmin bulb! In previous games you would have several bulbs, each being a different color representing the different pikmin types. In this game, there is only one bulb which is chromatic and swirls with different colors. Although I miss the triple pikmin bulb threat and getting violent/white pikmin from the ship, this is a welcome change since it allows the player to quickly populate a group instead of wasting time going to each bulb.

You can carry the corpses of creatures you kill with your pikmin to their bulb to create even more pikmin! It's always been my favorite part of the pikmin games because it rewards you for playing intelligently and conservatively.

An interesting development from Pikmin 1 and 2 to this new game is the replacement of the C stick directing agility of the pikmin to a new ability which allows you to send your pikmin forward all at once with a ravenous screech of war. It's great to quickly swarm an enemy, or to feverishly collect fruits and other valuables by surrounding them. While I shall miss the previous agility to accurately create a tendril like construct with my pikmin, I absolutely love the new battle rush!

Each pikmin, as the previous games, have their own situations they are best in. Reds are best at fighting situations, when things get heated up. Yellows for digging and reaching high spaces. Blues are good at swimming...yeah. Then this game introduces two new pikmin at the cost of two of the previous types introduced in Pikmin 2. Stone pikmin and flying pink pikmin replace the fat sumowrestler purple pikmin and toxic white pikmin. Stone pikmin are best when cracking open the defences of enemies or crystal rocks found around the maps. Hell these are my second favorite pikmin because of how they attack. Rather than use their leaves utop their hard heads, they just RUN INTO the enemy as hard as they can. It's amazing. Then my favorite: pink pikmin rule the sky..though they are the weakest in combat (though never underestimate the swarm >:] ) you can have up to 100 total of a combination of the pikmin. My personal favorite is 20 of each, as something special happens as you walk with them.

Spicy berries and bombs make a return in this game. Shrouding your pikmin in a special dust created by the planet's berries gives them a special buff that lets them go mad with energy, moving quickly and hitting harder. What's important in pikmin 3 is that the berry mechanic is much different than the previous games. This game allows the process to be automated. Berries are grown back in minutes, so pikmin can constantly move back and forth from the ship to the plant to harvest more juice in comparison to the previous games where once you harvested a berry plant, it was done for the day.

Bombs allow you to do 'tons of damage'. Throwing a pikmin with a bomb makes the pikmin drop the bomb and run in terror to avoid the massive blast. These are typically used to take down the toughest of obstacles- be it wall or wild creature, nothing shall stand in your way.

These bombs allow you to go forward so you may find shortcuts to shorten your time traveling...and now the final feature I would like to mention is the time system. Each day you are given a specific amount of time to explore the map before day changes to night...and the nocturnal predators awaken from their hungry slumber to feast. Before this time, you must gather your pikmin up as they are helpless without you. If you are unable to gather all of your pikmin, at the end of the day alongside a cinematic of you leading your pikmin to safety, you will have to watch the pikmin you left behind consumed by the hungry beasts of the night...it's rather sad and I would recommend to take track of each pikmin you send out. I have heavy attachments to even these little guys and it pained me just to lose one :c...BUT!

To combat this sad ending, the developers did something wonderful and added a brand new feature to your ship. You can walk to your ship and select a massive whistle option which will attempt to call back EVERY single pikmin on the map granted they can path their way to the ship. This was such an excellent feature as I always had one or so random pikmin in each map getting caught on something random and being stuck. With this tool, it gets rid of a lot of the stress of poor npc pathing which plagued the games before. Sure the pikmin can still get caught, but now there is a proper solution.

Also: there are missions and side content to do if youd like. I enjoyed it! Certainly felt alright...but i still enjoyed the main story more. I never was a huge fan of these types of side missions...didn't really feel like Pikmin.

I also understand there are harder difficulties, but truthfully I hate having a difficulty meter review, so I typically play on normal.

VISUALS and AUDIO

The Pikmin series has never looked so beautiful. It still holds the familiar cartoon wonders we all loved. Those small moments of captains sticking their eyes out in surprise or pikmin expressing themselves in cute little squeaks of joy or terror. The water is gorgeous, the plant life is vibrant, and the wildlife is horrifying. Seriously, the creatures in this game have never looked so revolting yet adorable at the same time.

You can take pictures of the world with the camera feature which is nice. It gives you a complete POV from the captain's point of view which is quite hilarious to see pikmin right in front of your face. Adorable little things just staring at you both full of wonder and waiting for direction. I really don't know what else to put here since I can't describe the game by any point except cute since the game isn't about its visuals in the slightest, so I'll leave it at the game absolutely nailing what it was going for.

Overall:

I really enjoyed this game, no matter how little time it took to finish it. It was a happy gift to my childhood in which I got to experience another mouthful of happy juice. It was something I was really looking forward to and I have a certain someone out there who can attest to that.

Nintendo did a fine job in tuning the nobs of the game in a way that made it better yet still paid respects to the previous installments. I can't explain just how quickly I was taken back to my childhood with the familiar Pikmin themesong that I could sing at any moment on the spot because of how many times I've heard it. I think we all have those sensations that bring us back to moments when we were kids...mine always seemed to be sounds and music, be it the login music of Runescape to the Pikmin themesong. I almost have tears listening to some tracks...but regardless!

Pikmin has always been one of those games I can look at and just say "yeah. that's fun". I love the ability to command troops, make friends, and explore, and this game did all three in a cutely brutal way that I can respect. While I found some disappointment in how short my journey, nothing shall ever beat my love for Nintendo's Gem that has been in my memories for years. I highly recommend you give this game a shot.

#pikmin 3 review #pikmin 3 #pikmin review #nintendo review #game review

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talkingismylifewrites · 5 years

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Those ot4 asks I just don't have the words Roger needs all the petting in the world & also hugs & cups of tea & gardening with Jim & Brian kissing the top of his head & also a lot of therapy & being told all his good qualities as well as his good physical points & I can see that being harder for the others but finally they get it he's heard all his life that he's pretty but when you're in a band with Brian the astrophysicist and Freddie the genius...(1/2)

...& all coupled up with Dom who is brilliant at life & John and Ronnie who don't have any doubts about who they are themselves whatever other insecurities are & you think of yourself as just 'the girl for everything' in that, well, you need a little building up sometimes is all... (2/2)

okay so i’ve definitely focused mostly on roger in all the hot space angst?

but while this is all going down the other three are kinda...not doing great

like john is going hard on the alcohol

dom has some issues with PPD and isn’t connecting very well with the baby

(basically she’s always had problems in the beginnings with babies?? like we’ve touched on it very briefly but she struggles to connect with the baby and with herself and now she’s missing Roger and the family is all broken and she just...can’t)

meanwhile veronica is lowkey the one who really took on the crusade and sorta forced Roger’s hand into leaving so she’s feeling the backlash on that

on top of that, she’s forced to pick up the slack of john and dom not exactly being 100% there for the kids

before she had roger as her support but now he’s gone and its kinda her fault and dom won’t hold the baby for more that 5min and john is drinking and she just is the only one holding the family THAT SHE BROKE together

and then on top of that there are so many insecurities all floating around and its....hard

so when roger comes home and they start working things out

they start being more attentive to each other

they start going to therapy

they learn to say “i need help”

each year they take a vacation just the four of them going off to the beach together no kids

and they work on coming back together

as terrible as it is if roger had never left they never would have figured out how much they all needed each other and things would have been much much much worse

so yeah!

relationships are hard

they’re all struggling with things on their own

but they’re dedicated to making it work because they all love each other and they want to be hte best that they can be for each other

and there’s tons and tons of make up sex but also

make up flowers

and cuddles

and “i did the dishes even though its your night because i know you hate touching wet food so don’t worry i did it all”

and “i know all about your incredibly weird crush on boy george verONICA so i got him to call you and sing karma chameleon over the phone”

and “in your suitcase i packed letters from each of the kids telling you how much they love you as well as pictures of me in that lingerie you love have fun xoxo”

and “i know you used to cry in the shower because of reasons pertaining to our relationship so in a fit of rage over how we made you feel i’ve completely redesigned and constructed the whole fucking bathroom by hand just so that you never have to shower in your Sad Place ever again”

so yeah! they all learn how to treat each other better because they love each other

(roger definitely learns to feel the love)

(they all stay together and their relationship becomes stronger than ever)

#caro writes #roger taylor #john deacon #veronica tetzlaff #dominique beyrand #john/veronica/roger/dominique #answered asks

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coldtomyflash · 5 years

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Weird question, and it's perfectly okay if "I don't know" is your answer: How did you manage to do grad school AND finish writing so many good fics? I'm writing the lit review for my dissertation right now, and I want to finish several WIPs I have (if nothing else, just to prove to myself that I can), but it just feels like I can barely do either, much less both. Any advice at all?

Ah, no worries! It’s not that odd a question. Actually, someone’s asked me before ^^; My reply to them at the time was here. No need to read it, but it’s some context?

My reply now that my head is in a healthier place is... long and winding and not actually full of that much advice but eh, I rambled as I do. If you just want the advice, scroll all the way down and it’s there.

For starters, I’m not a normal comparison point. This isn’t to pat myself on the back, but for a variety of reasons, writing is something that comes really naturally to me. I’ll detail those reasons, but before I get into that, the point I’m illustrating here is that... sometimes I think people compare themselves to how much I wrote and what else I accomplished in that time and think “hey cool - that is a function human! Why can’t I do that?” And the answer is short answer is that my brain is programmed for pretty much one thing, and that thing is writing writing, and holy crap I was the opposite of a functional human when writing that much and that quickly.

The long answer is -

I’ve been making up stories literally as long as I can remember. I spent my childhood consuming stories. I taught myself to read and was during school I was consistently reading about 8 grade levels above my reading level, and loved learning about narrative structure. I annoyed the shit out of my older brother by reading the same book series as he read, but guessing plot points that were going to happen either in that book or else 2-3 books out. he didn’t get how I would just know and I’d be like “it’s obvious - that’s where the story has to go!” Because I was imagining it in my head - what i would do with it, where it would go, where it had to go. Closing the page mid0chapter and imagining the next-scene, and then picking back up to see how right or wrong I was.

And I had a best friend for most of my childhood through to early adulthood with whom I made stories. Every weekend, creating narratives together, not writing them down but basically roleplaying them by talking them out (voices and all, it was a heck of a lot of fun, as much as it made me pretty much the nerdiest teen in existence). We tried to write a novel when we were 12, got about 7 chapters in. We had a lot of starts and stops on other stories too.

Which isn’t said to stroke my own ego, it’s said to highlight that I have a metric fuckton of explicit and implicit practice at storytelling. It was and sort of is my “whole life”. I also had teachers that helped me develop storytelling skills, and was really freaking lucky to go to a school with an AP program for English that seriously stretched my ability to write fast. We had to write an essay every single class, during class, and have it finished by the end of class (or in less time if we had lecture stuff to go over too) in my last year of high school. The essays could be creative response (i.e., short stories). I wrote a short story almost every week in the space of an hour when I was 17. By the time I got to the end of year final and actually got to use a computer and type that shit instead of hand-cramping halfway through, I somehow managed to write the two-essay final in the allotted 3 hours and, i shit you not, had a wordcount of 6000 words.

That’s still my record. It was probably a dumpster fire but I got 100% probably for sheer volume.

Anyway that was over a decade ago, but the whole reason this life story is pertinent is because -

I have practice. The only way to improve at anything, to get faster at it, for it to ease, is to practice. Practice at storytelling, practice at having to set a scene using just words sitting in my BFF’s room and trying to describe the image I had in my head for how I wanted her to see the scene as it was playing out. Practice at writing fast and getting feedback on how to write. Practice implicitly at trying to imagine what routes stories can take. Practice taking stories apart and piecing them back together, in my head, all the time.

So that’s part of it.

The other part, and this is what I said in my previous post, was depression. I was seriously fucking burnt out and depressed when I started writing coldflash fic, and grad school took a huge toll on my mental health. It’s easier to write when you’re doing it to procrastinate working on your dissertation, and easier to keep writing when you get positive feedback and it feeds those lovely dopamine gremlins in your brain who aren’t getting any positive validation from grad school because holy damn that shit is hard.

I had no balance in my life for a long time. It wasn’t good. I went to counselling. I got more balance. Fic slowed down. Still finished, but not 120k words in 3 months (that was the pace when I started fic writing...jfc I don’t know how I managed.) Life got harder. Fic was now harder to write. I got more counselling. Fic was easier to write. I moved around the world. Fic got harder to write. I started anti-depressants. Narratives now seem to be flowing again.

Regardless of the state of my mental health though, I’ve never written as much as quickly as I did during the middle of grad school. And I think that’s because I was very narratively pent up when I started writing fic. I had been so busy and pushing myself so damn hard in grad school that I didn’t make almost any time for stories, for fic, for imagining my own stories. I was suppressing that side of myself in the service of Focus. So when I burnt out, my narrative side rebounded and said “fuck that noise, I still exist, and we’re making space for me”. It took over. I came literally a hair’s breadth from quitting my PhD post candidacy. Idk what type of program you’re in, but business schools in North America? It’s a 5 year PhD typically, and I was at the end of year 3 and eyeing the door.

Anyway - I say all that because -

I am not a good example and you should not do what I did. Finishing that many long WIPs that quickly wasn’t healthy, and was only possible because I didn’t do much else at the time, and had a lifetime of practice and a narrative rebound to make it even possible.

But -

My actual advice?

1) Practice. Practice. Practice.

Not all at once, but everything counts. Daydreaming counts. Watching shows and thinking of how they could be improved counts. Talking out story ideas with friends counts. Just make it fun. Practice is something we think of as arduous and annoying. Learning new words is practice. Meeting new people and considering their traits is practice. Everything can be practice for writing. All the research you do can be practice for writing. (Random note: a childhood coping mechanism for anxiety that I had was to narrate what I was doing to myself in my head in the 3rd person. Like telling a story of myself walking to gym class in my own head. That was also practice.)

2) Have fun with it!

Don’t making writing an obligation. Then it’s another thing on the list of things you avoid. Finishing stories often feels like an obligation. I’m going through this right now with Needs Must. It can be hard to complete a WIP because you start to have internal anxieties about disappointing readers, not living up to expectations, exhaustion from that narrative, distraction / temporary loss of interest (which is normal! and not actually a bad thing!). All of that then makes you feel guilty, which makes it impossible to get into a creative space to write. You can’t work on the thing you’re avoiding.

3) It’s okay to give your WIPs breathing space.

When you hit a wall, you may need to set it aside and read it again in a month with fresh eyes. You may need to treat your story like someone else’s story. That’s, again, literally where I’m at right now with Needs Must. I just reread a bunch of it and hadn’t really forgotten the details but once they’re on the page they’re out of my head, and so taking some time before going back to reread it made it easier for me to think of like I think of every other story: “what would I do next with this? Oh that’s a twist, that needs to come back later. There’s a theme here, we’ve seen that three times. What’s the best ending I, as a reader now, can imagine for this?”

If avoidance, guilt, and/or writer’s block aren’t your issue, and it’s literally just down to time management -

4) Your graduate degree is more important than your WIPs.

Your WIPs aren’t going anywhere, they don’t have a deadline, and your readers will wait for you, and new ones will find you. Time management is an essential, awful, part of being an academic.

I get more done, both at work and creatively on fic, when I’m just a bit too busy, but that’s me. Figure out what is optimal for you, and do it. When do you get the most writing done? When you’re relieved? When you’re anxious? Late at night? First thing in the morning? When does it flow? When won’t it ruin your graduate career?

(Seriously I was writing fic at work last week and was kicking myself. I don’t have time for that shit! Set boundaries on your time!)

But full serious here, graduate school is exhausting, and almost inherently de-motivating, and even the best damn students eye the door a lot of the time, even if they do finish. It’s stressful and you feel constantly powerless. It’s a lot to need to cope with. I found writing to be a way to cope. That lit review you’re working on? Yeah, it’s zapping your time and energy. That’s normal (unfortunately). And it’s good to give yourself breaks from that to write. Don’t feel guilty for taking time here and there for yourself - to write, or to not write. To relax, unplug, unwind. To close your eyes and daydream (if you’re me) or have a bubble bath (if you’re my sister), or do whatever helps you honestly, genuinely destress. The best thing you can do for both writing and for graduate school is to take breaks and take time for yourself. There is actual science on the importance of breaks, and academics are fucking notorious for putting too much pressure on themselves to actually relax.

5) If you’re burnt out and/or depressed - seek help!

Most universities have resources for mental health! Talk to a doctor! Don’t put too much stress and pressure on yourself! Almost half of grad students are mentally ill at some point!

6) Talk out your stories with friends!

I know I already said this under “practice” but having a fandom friend to bounce ideas with and cheer you on is amazing and essentially. I was in constant contact with Bealeciphers when I started writing, and now I have a different friend who’s helped me the past couple years with writing and developing my stories. Mostly they cheer me on, and when I’m stuck, I tell them where the story is going and what I need help with. But honestly, writing doesn’t need to happen in a vacuum and doesn’t need to be you hunched over a laptop in the dark all alone and staring blankly at a screen (I’m definitely not projecting here, no siree). It’s amazing how motivating it is and how much it can help you stay on track to check in regularly with other writing friends!

7) Pick your battles.

You say you have a... couple(?) of WIPs? How many are you juggling? Is it too many? Do you need to set one (or two??) aside? When my steam was slowly and AATJS and Tumbling Together started to feel like a chore, I set TT aside and took a month break from AATJS then dived right back into AATJS (with the help of the friend mentioned above, cheering me on) because I knew it would be the harder one to finish, and the one that I feared I’d never finish if I put it aside too long. I tackled the biggest hurdle first. If that’s the type of thing for you, I recommend it. Pick the story that’s either the most or least likely to get finished, and focus your energy there.

Another battle-picking thing here? It’s okay to outsource. I’m terrible for not using a proofreader beta. It’s a weird control thing, despite the fact that I love people pointing out typos in my works so I can freaking fix them. The point here is: don’t be like me. If you suck at finding your own typos, use a beta or proofreader. My writer friend who helps me helps when I get stuck. I help them when they need feedback on specific scenes and tones, and I’ve recently discovered they hate editing (I love editing) so this entertains me to no end. Just - you don’t have to do it all yourself. If you feel like you do, see points 5 and 6 again.

Aaaannnddd that’s that. Whew. I just spent... wow, too long on this. I spent as much time on this as I did on my own grad student’s lit review I was providing feedback on today ^^; #whoops

#redhead vs. writing #long post #long post for ts #phyn rambles #writing advice #depression tw #ask to tag #Anonymous

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thedeadflag · 6 years

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Hey, as an ace-hetero person; fuck you. You have no right, no damn right to tell me where I belong. I don't think you understand how isolating it feels to be ace-hetero, and that's not to discount the struggles of those on the LGBTQ spectrum because there's no denying they deal with a hell of a lot, but that does not mean we don't deal with shit too. Being ace-hetero, I've always felt indescribably different from everyone I know.

My hetero friends wouldn't understand and my LGBTQ friends don't want me. It's like being inches away from two sides of a cliff but you can't reach either. And to have people like you, arrogant assholes who overestimate the extent of their knowledge, constantly discredit who I am hurts more than you could imagine.

The LGBTQA+ community isn't for you to decide who belongs and no, accepting ace people wouldn't take away from other issues, because being ace is not an issue and, although i can only speak from my own experience, most ace people just want to be accepted, and when people like you decide we can't be, it fucking sucks.

I’m gonna be nice and not air out your username, since your first message was on anon and the rest weren’t, and you might have genuinely misunderstood my stance on this. I’m also sorry you haven’t had good experiences in getting support.

I’m not sure how you got that I don’t accept or support ace folks, though. I absolutely do, I just use an understanding of power to establish my priorities when it comes to LGBT+ spaces, who is welcomed into them, whose voices should matter, who resources should be directed towards and made more accessible, etc. and that necessarily excludes cishet aro/ace folks because when I have to choose between their inclusion and the more marginalized people their inclusion would exclude, I’m going to stand with the latter. I’m going to support people who need those spaces and resources because they literally do not have anywhere else, whereas people with more power can find some semblance of what they seek elsewhere.

Here’s a bit of what I’ve said in the past

I’m saying that aro/ace folks are, and have always been, part of the community. Anyone who is out of their teens and has been active in meatspace LGBT+ spaces will be able to tell you that.

But my stance is that certain groups of people within the community who wield violent, oppressive power, regardless of their membership, should be removed from spaces and resources whenever possible.

This includes TERFs, white supremacists, cishet folks, among others, but the aforementioned three are pretty easy examples of groups that historically wield violent oppressive power to and within our community.

It’s not that they aren’t LGBT+, necessarily, it’s that they cannot be trusted as a group to not reproduce violence against the most marginalized of us, and we cannot weigh ideals and utopian goals of what we’d wish the community to be like, over the material realities of what the community currently is.

That, IMO, would be like SWERFs who want to abolish sex work and don’t care about the material impact their policies have on real living sex workers right now. Maybe in a fantasy world, a world without sex work could be better, but right now, there are people who need our help, and harm prevention needs to be the top priority. Allowing harmful groups to remain in our spaces, and in control of our resources, will only end up excluding those community members who need support, spaces, and resources the most. Like, any space that is welcoming to TERFs is automatically trans-exclusive, for example. That’s just a fact. Any space with white supremacist leadership would be poc-exclusive. Just a fact.Due to violent groups’ presence and power in the community, they wouldn’t be safe in those spaces and in accessing those resources and for many of them, there is literally nowhere else. Not potentially some places where they can manage to cobble some degree support or resources, even if it’s sometimes not ideal or sometimes isn’t quite enough, like cishet folks can, but literally none.

So, for your example, cishet aro/ace folks are indeed inherently LGBT+. But as a category, they wield too much violent power and oppression to outweigh any gains that could be made of allowing them to remain active in those spaces. Education is not a viable strategy to fixing that(it hasn’t worked for PoC, it hasn’t worked for disabled members, it hasn’t worked for trans members, it hasn’t worked for intersex members, etc.), but working to help develop resources outside of the community that might serve them better is viable and has been effective.

For instance, a lot of sexual support services have gotten material from within the aro/ace community as well as from within the broader LGBT+ community to help expand their services like sex ed, their hotlines, etc. to cover a more diverse population. I fully 100% support this endeavour, and I’m happy to know that gains are being made on aro/ace information and outreach and support in that sector in north america. That way, cis het aro/ace folks could get support, spaces, and resources they need without exerting violent, oppressive power against anyone. It’s a win-win. Just like LGBT+ TERFs being able to contact The Trevor Project is a win-win because that allows them to receive aid without running the risk of encountering anyone they oppress or spreading their oppressive bullshit in our communities.

Worst case scenario when some individual cishet aro/ace folks absolutely, for whatever reason, literally cannot get any aid elsewhere…yeah, cut them some slack. But they should never occupy positions of power. They should not be able to vote on resource allocation. They should never lead educational workshops. I’ve seen too many people wielding violent, oppressive power sneak into those positions of power/authority, and use their influence to shift voting towards outcomes reflective of their oppressive views/perspectives, or disregard certain forms of harassment inside the community, or promote certain harmful views in community events, or facilitate the social ostracism of unwanted outspoken marginalized people who are rocking the boat too much (often trans folks, poc, disabled folks, etc.), so IMO, it’s too dangerous to let them take root like that. They have too much oppressive power to be trusted to take up permanent space. It really isn’t much to ask that they be aware of how dangerous and distressing their presence can be to more vulnerable folks.

I say this as someone who has spent over half my life in and around these spaces, and having overwhelmingly heard similar stories elsewhere. Power is real, it functions in predictable patterns, and it needs to be accounted for when discussing how to run and facilitate our spaces and resources. Spaces and resources where violently oppressive groups are allowed access and to set down roots? Those end up growing toxic and exclusive against those who need help the most. Maybe one day things will be different, but right now? We can’t afford to let violently oppressive people remain in our communities.

I love aro/ace folks. I do. But power is something that has to be acknowledged, especially when it is directly tied to violence against community members. And those who wield violent power and oppress should not be welcome, and should be exiled by any means necessary, regardless of their identity or position

Ultimately, what it comes down to is whether I choose other trans women, or cishet aro/ace folks, and I will always, always chose trans women. If that makes me a bad person in your eyes, so be it I don’t mind. I know I’m not a bad person, and I’m doing what’s right for people like me. I don’t have the luxury of not being realistic about the generally predictable power dynamics in the LGBT+ community.

My activism is all about harm reduction. Reducing harm is pivotal, and that means finding ways to make communities safer and resources more accessible to everyone, and that includes helping folks understand where they can appropriately take up space.

My top priority when it comes to organizing, shaping, and navigating our communities is to make community more accessible for trans women of all stripes because we’re a demographic with appallingly low community support and accessibility to resources, and that has to change. Trans women need to feel safe.

When communities bring in people with more oppressive, harmful perspectives, it passively and/or actively pushes more marginalized members out. I cannot abide that, and while I will do what I can to help aro/ace folks of all stripes, I cannot pretend that the inclusion is cishet aro/ace folks is not a zero sum issue because it absolutely is, whether people want to accept that or not. It’s a silent choice people are faced with...you can hate me for answering vocally but that doesn’t change that I had to choose, and I choose my people.

I will not be ashamed or feel guilty about prioritizing trans women when no one other than trans women will. I’m not arrogant for doing so or pushing for certain people to not take up space in our communities as a means to keep those spaces safer and more accessible to those who need it more. Because frankly, the most marginalized in the communities do need those spaces the most, and need to be prioritized. Ideally, everyone would have their needs met and would be safe and supported, but that’s not reality. That’s not how it goes down, not locally, and not online, so I need to be realistic. I need to prioritize.

My prioritizes don’t include cishet aro/ace folks when it comes to maintaining and operating in LGBT+ spaces. I trust the aro/ace community and general sexual support services to understandably pick up that slack, which they generally do well with. I want everyone to get the support and resources they need, but when the inclusion of one group virtually always raises obstacles for members of my group to access those spaces, the support they need, and the resources they need, I need to have their backs in that. Maybe that’s ‘ruthless calculus’ as Garrus Vakarian would call it, but like I said, no one else is looking out for trans women except trans women, so I don’t have the luxury of caring about anyone else when my people are put at risk of complete isolation (which can often lead to death for us).

#intracommunity issues #intracommunity violence #transmisogyny #transphobia #long post #Anons

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