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drivingsideways · 3 years

Note

In your experience, how much can a fic really improve after a shitty first draft? I can never just make myself keep writing without editing because I always think: the better the first draft, the better the final product :(

Hi!

First a disclaimer: I am not the best editor! I hate it! When the first draft is done, my impulse is to get “rid” of the story as fast as I can; I often feel emotionally done with the fic before I’m actually done with fixing it, even at like, basic proof- reading level. And that’s something I’m trying to fix as a writing process, but I don’t always succeed. The luxury of fanfic writing is that it’s so low stakes that you can do this, and feel only a mild pinch of conscience.

Anyway, trufax: I don’t have the kind of patience that @rain-hat has for revisions. And I can see the difference in the quality of the fic! So this is why I’m trying to internalize and nurture within myself some discipline and patience.

So this “first draft only has to exist” rule is really something I currently use when I’m feeling particularly stuck. Which happens a lot, especially when writing long fics, or feeling that my fic is getting out of hand. (As I write this, I’m side-eyeing my current WIP where I really want to write just That One Scene, but I’m finding myself writing 5k words of back story to get there.)

Anyways! I think the point of first drafts- they are allowed to be shitty. Second, I don’t think first drafts are actually first drafts in the sense that they’re not just top of the head, no filter brain to paper/ word doc writing! It’s just the first version of the story where it’s completed in the most basic sense, but within it lies many “drafts” that you’ve discarded along the way.

Ok, so first, the different ways in which first drafts are shitty. There are so many.

There’s the kind where at some point you realize that ohhh, a key plot point is resting on something totally unworkable/ untenable even within the universe of your fic, forget “real life.” This is probably something you should fix straight up, as you write, because otherwise you end up with a lot of rewriting and midnight cursing.

Then there’s the kind where you’ve got midway or even three-fourths through your initial plan, and it feels patchy and incoherent- maybe you aren’t hitting the right emotional notes in sections or you’ve bogged yourself down in subplots that felt necessary when you started, but now JUST WON’T WRAP UP. This is the kind of thing where I think it’s super useful to remember that you can fix it later. Give the story some time to rest with you, and sometimes, writing ahead actually clarifies what it was that wasn’t working before. Enjoy going down the rabbit hole with whatever silly subplot or character is demanding your attention. Once it’s done, literally cut that section out into another document or something and let it sit there! Then come back. You’re a fic writer! There’s no deadline! Nobody outside of you ever even needs to read these parts where you reveal your obsession with idk, wine prices in 18th century NY, or whatever. It can be fixed!

There’s the kind of shitty where the sentences just sit there like ungainly rocks on a hill and you’re frantically looking up synonyms for “said”. Adjacent is the kind of shitty where you’ve been swinging between tenses like a trapeze artist within the same sentence. This is the kind of thing I’d say you can fix relatively stress free- even if you cringe a lot as you go through the edit. Thank god your English teacher won’t ever see this kind of thing. I’m REALLY bad at this kind of fixing though, so if I can bamboozle kind souls into beta reading for me, then I do so pretty shamelessly. But wow, it’s amazing just how much, idk, just neat punctuation and fewer adverbs will improve the readability of the fic dramatically. If you don’t have a beta reader- I think it’s great to take a few days off entirely from the fic, until you’ve more or less forgotten what you wrote. Fresh set of eyes- even your own- can help this part a LOT!

So the other thing I mentioned- the first draft isn’t actually “first”.

I’m also a fan of editing as I go along, or going back to a previous section to tweak things. Sometimes I write a chapter, and then wake up the next morning and think, well, that wasn’t great, and I’m not able to move on until I fix it. So then I do that, and the "first draft” version may more or less be this “second” version. And y’know, I know some fic writers who will draft and redraft each paragraph as they go along because they can’t get to the next section in their heads until they do that. And that’s fine, if that’s working for you! But for me, what happens is that I run out of patience, and then stress myself out, which makes the “imperfect” section have even less of a chance of being fixed.

So this is where non linear writing helps me, as a trick, to move the story along while also keeping me mentally in a good place re: the story. In my most recent fic, I actually wrote the end and then went back to the beginning. Which was a very, very weird thing to do, even for me--but after the prologue, that I’d written first, I just wasn’t able to make the introductory chapter work. Just staring at blank pages and feeling a rising panic. Because I was in that obsessive stage with the fic, y’know, when you’re thinking about it constantly , but the problem was I wasn’t thinking about the chapter I was supposed to write, it was the chapter I wanted to write. So that’s what I did!

And I think this trick works if your story isn’t very plot heavy; or it is, but you do have a good and detailed plot outline done. That way, you don’t mess up too much in terms of continuity and so on. Sometimes I find that just making chapter headings clear my head out A LOT. Also then I can do the - ok, you have 3 chapters to go ONLY. (Lies, this will become 5, but still.) Anyway, having some kind of progress bar does help a lot!

Ok, this is extremely long and somewhat rambly. I hope it’s encouraging!

Last thing: it’s fine if you trash the first draft and start all over. (Ok, don’t REALLY trash it, keep it there. You’ll find some of it would be useful!) Anyways, lots of pro authors say that their first draft and the final version are completely different- so you know, sometimes that does happen. Maybe the right thing to do IS trash it, and approach the story or the characters from a different perspective. It’ll be hard to do, and you need to allow yourself space and time to mourn the bits you’re trashing (the grief is REAL!) but at the end of the day, you’ll free yourself to write the better version of the story!

Ok, really shutting up now. :D

Take care and best of luck with your writing projects!

#writing things #Anonymous

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snickiebear · 3 years

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yo nadia <3333 i'm bored in my online classes and u reblogged the questions thingy at the right time lmao, so get ready: 1, 4, 5, 9, 10, 17, 23, 24, 28, 30!!!, 34, 38, 39, 40 (the intimacy of being understood) (imma stop here lol) (also i'm sorry u're not feeling well, ily and hope u'll feel better soon!! <33333)

ELE ILY. (and thank you, i’m stayin home today cause,,, yeah. i appreciate you sm.) you’re the literal best, i adore you.

1. How long ago did you start reading fanfiction? Writing fanfiction?

The first fanfiction i read was for The Lunar Chronicles when I was like 11?? and it was 100% on accident and it scarred me because it was a hardcore porn one with a period kink and i was like WHAT IS THIS??? OH MY GOD???? LMAOOOOO i didn’t pick it back up until i was 13-14 and really got into the Fairy Tail fandom. I still reread my favorites on ff.net cause i love them.

As for writing, I wrote a horrible, terrible x-men fanfiction when I was twelve. (my friend still brings it up and REFUSES to delete it so it still gets comments and views, that shit HAUNTS ME ELE.) then tried again for Fairy Tail, posted like two chapters before taking it down cause i wasn’t really feeling it. And then I posted The Intimacy Of Being Understood and here we are.

4. Link your three favorite fics right now.

OMGG okok

@murd3rm1ttens ‘s The Problem How Time Works IF YOU HAVENT READ THIS YOU GUYS NEED TO HOP ON IT ASAP. MITTEN’S WRITING SO SO SO SO GOOD. SAKURA AND INO ARE TOTAL BADASSES. KAKASHI IS A SIMPPPP. ITS SO FUCKING GOOD.

@mouseymightymarvellous ‘s We Were Screaming In Color (Only A Possibility) yes, yes I KNOW. i always point into mousey’s direction but i WILL always advocate that everyone reads her fics, they’re literally so beautiful???? i just happen to be rereading WWSIN rn

@safelycapricious ‘s Shaking Up And Breaking Down series. I found this like?? idfk but i’ve been raving about it ever since. ALSO CHECK OUT THEIR FICS IN GENERAL.

fuck i have more than three but also check out @ambivalens999 ‘s Masks

i do wanna make a fic rec thing where i just rav about my favs,,, might do that later or sum

5. What are your fanfic pet peeves? Do they have a huge effect on whether or not you decide to read something?

Omniscient third person. I don’t like it. Like I can understand that it can be a little hard to stay in one person’s perspective but, in my opinion, if you can, it shows how disciplined you are as a writer. Plus, i just get so confused when I go from A’s thoughts to suddenly what B is thinking about A.

When writers use ‘ ‘ instead of “ “. When writers put thoughts in ‘ ‘ instead of just italicizing them. It’s small things but like they just bother me sO MUCH. most of the time i can ignore it and try to enjoy but other times i just dip.

9. Tag 3 fic writers you think are underrated/unknown in the fandom/fanfiction community.

@espoir-et-reves !!!!! THEIR SHISAKU FICS ARE SO SO SO SO SO GOOD. And they have a warring states one going on THAT I AM SO OBSESSED WITH.

@writer168 idk if they’re really “underrated” but THEY HAVE SUCH GREAT FICS ON AO3. Like theres an AU with sakura, kiba, and shino that i reread constantly because it just. is. so. fucking. GOOD. and they posted a new one that i’m YELLING about.

@eggtoasties okay they only have 2 in the naruto fandom (one shisaku which is still ongoing) BUT THEIR WRITING STYLE IS SO NICE?? I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. I still go back and reread their shikasaku one cause UGH i can’t get enough. I love it.

10. What’s your favorite fandom, pairing, or character to read fic for?

Fandoms: Naruto, Soul Eater, The Old Guard, ATLA

Parings: KakaSaku/ShikaSaku/ShiSaku/MultiSaku, SoMa, Joe X Nicky, Zukka

Character: SAKURA. I will read anything with Sakura as the main character and her being a fuckin badass or becoming a badass. I love her.

17. How obsessively do you sit and stare at your fic after you’ve just posted and wait for feedback?

aha.. haha.. well. I check my email like three times an hour. its the first thing i check in the mornings too. I’m literally a whore for praise and literally eat up feedback like its going out of style. I also reread a lot of my stuff because i make so many mistakes and spelling errors, or the spacing is weird oR SOMETHING. plus, literally any and all comments make my day, i go back and reread them cause they just make me feel so tingly and warm like “wow. this person enjoyed the fic/my writing enough to tell me. thats HUGE!”

23. What’s your absolute favorite trope to write?

Angry, feral, bloodied, morally gray women. They aren’t bad guys, they’re probably the good guy, but that doesn’t mean they cant be fucking raging at the world with raw knuckles and blood on their teeth. I just love an angry woman who struggles with her emotions and just has so much inner conflict but that doesn’t take away from her character or badassery, it adds to it.

24. What’s a trope that you’d like to never hear about as long as you live, let alone write?

The fake dating or miscommunication troupe. LIKE GUYS JUST TALK. AND TELL EACH OTHER OMFG. the entire like obliviousness of “nah they dont like me” while the They holds their hand and kisses their cheek. MOFO WHAT. it makes me so impatient and like mad HAAHHAHA. its probably because i’m a pretty confrontational person so seeing stuff like that just “cmon bro, USE YO HEAD.”

28. How do you deal with writing pressure (ie: pressure to update, negative comments, deadlines, etc)?

I have yet to receive a negative comment! Which i was really surprised about tbh. As for deadlines or pressure to update, i just kind of do whatever. I do set goals, but i set them flexible enough that hey, if i can’t do it, that’s okay.

I have a lot of mini goals, like “i want to write this chapter and get it done this week” and then the large goal is “FINISH BY END OF MAY” so i have time.

Actually, now that I think on it, the entire pressure to update thing is probably why i’m waiting until I have all of OL&W written to post it weekly,, cause well. I wouldn’t wanna leave you guys waiting as I tried to write and work out the next chapters and stuff, you know?

30. Post a snippet from your current WIP without context - no more than 300 words.

AAAAAA YOU KNOW I LOVE THESE AHAHAHAH

Have you seen the way the dead dance, World Breaker? They roar, half mad and starving. Do you not wish, do you not hope to see them twist and bend and dance to your will?

Shikamaru snarls, looking behind his shoulders to where his Shadows lay. “Patience.” He spits. “Is of the essence, Things of Ancient. Know your place as the dark you are.”

34. How much of yourself and your life experiences do you put into your writing? What do you think your readers’ image of you is?

None of my experiences match up to anything I write tbh,,, probably the only thing that is me in my writing is maybe the emotional turmoil? I’m pretty emotionally and mentally mature because from a pretty young age i started forming my own opinions, started looking into the world around us and being like “dude what the fuck this is not what disney advertised”. Then i started talking (read: arguing and debating) with my dad about a lot of it. So, like emotions are kind of hard for me. Like i’m pretty good at controlling them or understanding them, but still. idk its hard to explain ig.

Like the weight of stress, the anger, the sadness. It’s kind of therapeutic to write. Cause i don’t know how to put those feelings to verbal words so writing them really helps.

As for my readers’ image? Probably like some kind of hunched over figure typing away in the dark with a maniacal grin on their face. I honestly don’t know AHHAHAHA but it is fun to think about. I think they’d see me as someone with potential but a lot of room to grow and someone who is imperfect but in a charming way LMAOOOO

38. What does your writing process look like? How chaotic is it on a scale of 1 (very tame) to 10 (you can’t handle this kind of chaos)?

I’m gonna be real honest. Its probably like a 2. I’m a bit of a control freak so I almost always go in chronological order, my writing is pretty linear. Unless, i get bored and jump to one of my fav parts. It's pretty much i sit down, i open the doc, read over my notes and just start writing.

It’s a little boring to explain AHAHAHA but once i get into the groove of things its really fucking great, I can like feel myself in the world, I can feel what i want the characters to, i love it. I catch myself mouthing the words as i type too, which i find hilarious.

39. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

I rather like how raw my writing is sometimes. Which might sound really vain, but i do like the way i word things or describe things. I love juxtaposition and repetition, or making a good ole circle back to some minute detail that wouldn’t stand out until i repeat it at the end and you’re like “omg” AHAHAHAHA.

Like those little poetic snippets or certain wording i just sit back and go “damn thats kinda good nadia! go you!’ HAHAHA

40. How did you come up with the idea for The Intimacy Of Being Understood?

AAAAA this fic is like my first child, my pride and joy LMAO

so the idea initially came when i was reading some fic, idk if it was even naruto, but i was like “i don't like this, but i do like the rain symbolism.” And I knew i wanted to write something kind of slow paced, something a little sad and angsty, but would show KakaSaku slowly but surely falling in love.

Idk if you’ve noticed but a lot of my fics, the pairings don’t change each other dramatically. They accept each other as they are and then they grow with together. Like that acceptance is something i just love writing, its so subtle, it isn’t something you declare. Its simply “I am going to love you. I am going to love you despite your flaws and faults. I am going to love you unconditionally because I know you, I understand you, and there is nothing you could do to drive me away.”

The fic kind of wrote itself after that first scene. I kept going back to the rain, go being ghosts, and resurrection, and the small epiphanies one gets. I wanted to focus on each character’s growth with each other. They didn’t find light in life because of each other, but with each other. And i think that’s my favorite thing about that fic.

I wanted something raw and real and just something beautiful. I’m actually really proud of it tbh. Would i go back and rewrite/edit it? Oh of course! I’d do that with every single one of my fics, but i’m not gonna cause i think its in its rawest form right now. :))))

ask me shit plz

#silly things from silly friends

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pebblysand · 2 years

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the new chapter 🥺 i love the way you signpost moments with the years and season, as if Harry's looking back. in my own healing and recovery, i look back in a similar way and it really speaks to me 💓

aw anon, thanks so much for your kind words! i'm glad this is resonating with you :). you're actually not the first person to comment on the use of time as a narrative device in castles, which is extremely flattering because it's actually one of the things that, as an author, i'm most fascinated with. i have a few thoughts about this, so if you're interested, here they are.

first off, i have to say, while a lot of people have noted on this in relation to trauma in castles (like you did) i have to be honest and admit that that is not something i initially thought of. i think for me personally, time has always been something that i've loved to play with in fiction, and castles is just a result of that. i have about a million thoughts on time and how it is a sadly underused concept in fiction; it is honestly something i could write dozens of articles and advice posts about, but i doubt it would interest anyone, lol. this being said, to give you an example, in my previous longfic, i played a lot with time with the use of flashbacks. this suited the story because it was surfing on the trope of people meeting as young adults and living through something, and how does that impact their lives, twenty years on. in that context, there were a lot of interesting comparisons to make between martha and clive as "kids" and martha and clive as "adults", which invited the use of flashbacks.

castles is obviously different because de facto, it's more of a linear fic, but you're correct in the way that it is almost told from a pov of hindsight. i think that as an author, you have a number of ways to write a post-war story but, if you're sticking with canon (as i am), there is no way to avoid the fact that every reader you'll ever have will know you're heading somewhere down the happily ever after, 19 years later line. so that "kills" your capacity for "intrigue" a little bit because how do you keep a reader entertained when you already know how the story ends, right?

and, so for me, as someone who has always been fascinated with the idea of time and how it frames our perceptions and our psyches, the one way i've found around the above was to play into it. be like: yeah, we all know where this is going. we know that he marries ginny, we know he becomes an auror, we know these facts but the fascinating question is how do you get there? and what are the points that matter in that journey? and so castles is told with a lot of foreshadowing and a lot of inserts about how things look in hindsight because it works within the realm of exploration of what "all is well" means and how the core characters of the series get there.

this being said, i'm also so happy that this choice i made for purely stylistic, narrative reasons also works from an experience-based pov of people who have gone through trauma. i think that's absolutely awesome and as i said, i'm so, so glad this is resonating with you on that scale. it's such a fantastic added bonus haha.

and then in terms of signposting and using elements to show time rather than simply stating it, i suppose that's just the way i like to do things. every time i read a book/story where time is only sign posted with something like a date at the start of the chapter, i always find myself skipping over it then three pages in, going back thinking "wait, when is this again?" "where the hell am i in this story?" so, i suppose i just try to not do that? they always say: write the story that you want to read and for me, that's a story that reminds you often of when it takes place, in multiple ways. not only with dates but with clothing, politics, etc. and i like the idea of a story that has a sort of leitmotiv, a stylistic figure that comes back often to mark developments and such. i'm so glad people are enjoying it done this way as well, ahah. it's definitely cool to write.

#asks #anon ask #castles #writing

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thespiantherepist · 4 years

Text

Android Shinsou x female reader Smut!

Notes: Hitting you with that dirty game first babes! Ill try my best to make a Gender neutral reader for it I swear.

Warnings: Smut, pet names, yandere-ish themes, slight aphrodisiac.

Your experiment, one you had been working on since your first year of college. Your pride, and joy. The one thing you cared about as much as your animals.

The very thing you devoted your soul to.

Your android.

Yeah you'd made one, or two, or uhh... Seventeen award winning ones, and twenty nominated ones. This one was different though.

You never really were able to get a partner. (You never looked.) You didnt know why.

(You Never Looked.)

So... you made a robot that would love you just as much as you loved it. Because appearently you didnt appeal to anyones tastes anyway.

(For the love of god, the huminoid sonic had been trying at you since pre-k!)

It was the moment of truth.

You tested his chips, his circuts, the endoskeleton. You ran his programming through a computer for days to make sure it was correct.

You beamed with delight. Your smile illuminating your flat.

"This is it!" You said, flipping your head over to stare at your Bulldog, Steve on the couch. "Soon you'll have a buddy to play with all day!" The American wagged his tail in a chill manner before lying his head back down.

"3...," You whispered to yourself. Flipping the switch on the back of his neck to boot him up.

"2...," You said louder this time, leaning into your computer, and running a safe check on his files.

"....1." You said in an awestruck tone as the pop up button showed on your screen. You clicked it.

Hurriedly you skipped over to your creation, giddily jumping up, and down.

Soft whooses, and buzzes thrumed in his ribcage. His skeleton moved into place visibly. His artifical skin heated, warming your freezing hand.

'Yes..'

The yellow light turned on.

"Yes."

It slowly changed to Green, then started blinking rapidly, starting his actual systems. Air seemed to spin in the room to fit your excitement. Beeps from deep within him cued your reactions. Your eyes glittered with glee, and tears pricked your eyes. His body moved slowly a bit.

"YES!" You happily grabbed his hands shaking them a bit.

"Open your eyes sleepy head!"

A breath came from him.

You drew yours in.

He didnt respond.

"Come on hun, lets get at it!"

... This is worrying.

"Shinsou, on." You said, trying to verbally aid his process.

And for a second.

It seemed to work.

For one second.

It never actually did.

Your heart shattered, tears immediently trekked down your face. Hitched breaths wrecked your body, as you dried to calm down. Trying to swallow the coil in your throat.

You sat inside your house for a few days.

Religiously trying your process.

And each failed attempt ended in more tears.

Each ended in another heartbreak.

It sent you spiraling.

And each day you spiraled further. Further into a pit of resentment to the peice of junk that ruined countless oppourtunities for relationships.

For jobs.

For sleep,

health,

money,

family.

You resented the scent of lavender, and blackberry that came off of him each night. The scent that would drive you wild.

Cause you to touch yourself each night.

Each night.

On the couch facing him.

After you finished you always felt violated.

You couldnt stay at your flat any longer.

You spent two weeks at Tenya Iidas. It was the best two weeks of your life. You actually felt terrible leaving.

The second you entered your house you noticed something was up.

There was a linear pattern of lavender lights leading into the hallway.

The smell of Lavender, and Blackberries were gone.

There was a silhouette sitting at the bottom of your stairs.

The shape sent an immediate rush of fear into your heart, and you whimpered stepping back towards the door. The figures eyes opened slowly revealing beautiful, glowing, purple orbs.

Strangely enough this sent even more fear through your body. You had programmed your android to protect you after all.

"What. The. Fuck. Type of stunt do you think you just pulled Kitten?" His voice was laced with venom, a warning had you ever heard one.

"I- I wha?"

"Dont act fucking stupid with me!" He shouted, springing up from his spot at the base of the stairs in incredible speed.

"You smell just like him."

You paniked, pressing your back against the door as he advanced to you. The scent coming back stronger than ever this time. Your knees buckled, and you fell to the floor, hand grasping then knob.

"Oh, Kitten, I didnt mean to scare you." He said in a mocking tone. "Come here~" Your body moved on its own. Pressing flush against him. Arms encasing his neck, nose nuzziling into him.

"Thats really sweet of you, ya know?" He asked in a vauge manner. He pushed you away slightly so he could get a better loom at you. "You didnt become a slutty little bitch when you went to that cucks house. My Kitten stayed heated only for her Master~"

Your eyes widened in fear, then in realisation. You huffed slightly. Pressing your now, warm, nose against his neck.

'Of course, you programmed him with those sensors idiot.' You mentally kicked yourself.

"Were you on the entire time?" You asked pulling away from him glaring slightly at your masterpiece. Watching as his pupils geared to aim towards a spot in the corner of his eyes. His lips stuck out in a playful pout before he smirked.

"May-be." He said misheviously. You gasped, and punched his chest lightly, to which he chuckled.

"You asshole, why?"

'Ah, so loud!'

"I thought you looked cute mad~" It was your turn to pout a bit. 'This sadist.'

"So kitten," Shinsou said leaning in, "Tell me," Your mind went blank from the scent that he emmitted, "Do you wanna play a bit?"

You nodded quickly, staring at the man above you.

His eyes flickered for a second.

Lavender to Ruby.

A glitch?

You didnt think it was too problematic, a minor color glitch. Nothing too serious.

Im so sorry my friend.

He smirked, picking you up by the hips, wrapping your legs around his waist.

He kissed you deeply, his warm lips unexpected especially for him. He immediately pressed his tounge past your lips. Turning your head so you could get better leverage. You squeaked in suprise, and slight discomfort. Bringing a hand to his shoulder, and the back of his head for stability.

He presesed you against the wall behing you, one hand at the small of your back, pressing you up to him. The other left your hip, trailing up to your breasts, then slipping his hand into your pants.

You gasped in surprise, trying to break from the kiss, instead he deepened it. You moaned slightly into his mouth, causing him to groan deeply. He wrapped his tounge over yours, nearly chocking you in passion.

Your eyes were practically screwed shut from intensity. The two tendrils slid over each other, collecting the essence upon each other.

Shinsou slid his finger into your sopping cunt. Pushing upwards in a quick pace.

You openly gasped at the intense sensation. Youd never inserted anything inside before.

You threw your head back, neck bare to the machine in front of you. He added another finger, heading right for your neck afterwards. He nipped and bit as he pumped his fingers at a rhythimic pace. He felt your hands curl at his head, and he looked back up at your soft, lewd expression.

Drool fell in thin rivuletts down your chin. Your eyes tolled the back of your head. Heated cheeks adding to your beautiful expression.

It seemed as if the world stopped for a second, Shinsou felt real. He hadn't realised his fingers sped up until he heard your delectable moans gettting louder.

"Ngh- Ahah! Shi- shinsou, so clooose ahahh!"

You whined in pleasure squirming on his fingers. He wasnt going to let this opportunity go to waste.

He heaved lowered your bodies quickly so he was face level with your cunt, then without taking his fingers out he started to devour your pussy. He sucked against your clit, then dipped his long tounge deep inside you.

You flinched at the warm sensation entering your hole. Your eyes rolled into the back of your head, in pure bliss.

Your moans shook the windows behind you. And Shinsou?

Shinsou was dining like a king. Your essense dribbled down his chin, making his sensotove nerves go haywire. He twisted, and turned his tounge around inside you, pulling it out occasionally to press a kiss to your clit. Everytime he did that he sped up.

You felt it wriggling inside you, pressing at your walls demanding you to come.

His artifical scent grew stronger as you came closer to your finish. You wailed, pulling at Shinsou soft locks.

"Are you gonna cum kitten?" He said, voice muffled by your pussy. He nuzzled your clit with the top of his nose, forcing a drawn out moan from you. "Kitty cat, Imma count to three for you okay?" His voice again sent vibrations to your hole.

You ground your hips into his mouth, causing his movements to stutter a bit, before he gained a new pace.

"Three, two... mmph, now kitten!"

The coil inside you snapped hard. Your jucies sprayed all over his face, and partiality on his chest.

He stared at you in awe, seeing your pussy absoulutely soaked. Some dribbled on his hands. His eyes resumed their glowing state as he flipped you over.

He leaned over you on the floor, bending down to whisper in your ear.

"Im going to fuck you so hard kitty, Im going to fuck you until I am the only man you'll ever wanna see."

You moaned in anticipation.

"Wait, please be gentle, its my first time."

He just smirked softly, placing a soft kiss to your neck. He slowly slid his member in, the muscle massaging your slick walls. Hitting every pleasurable nerve on its journey. Your brain blanked.

He didnt bother going slow after that immediently blasting into your hole. Large hands grasping tightly onto your hips. Thrusts shaking your entire body.

It carried on this way for what seemed like ages. Him thrusting into you at unimaginable speeds that sent your body into a tizzy.

When you finally came you fell from heaven, and landed into the fiery pleasure of hell. Warmth left, and entered you at the same time. A moan leaving your twitching mouth, drool escaping in tandum.

Shinsou pulled out. Marveling the sight, and oicking your limp body off the floor. He pressed a tender kiss to your forehead.

"Dont worry bout a thing kitten," He said when you felt yourself asending the stairs, and you looked up slighlty. "Ive got you."

ge entered your room, and layed you down slowly.

"I love you Shinsou."

"Love you to kitten, now let me go get my charger, and Ill be right back."

#Yander shinsou #Android shinsou #Shinsou is a kinky bastard #hes also sneaky #reader is precious #Android Shinsou x reader #You really do be simping over androids though #I should be asleep #rough smut #18+#jealousy #Dont put your dick in a robot.#Iida and Shinsou are rivals #You and Shinsou were roomates.#As per my girlfriends request.

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compassion-in-perspective · 3 years

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Achievement Unlocked: Self Love

Self- love. What an elusive thing to all of us. And no, women aren’t the only ones with this issue. If you relate to being a human, good chance you have this problem too. The question of “how can I love myself?” or “will I ever love myself?” are questions a lot of people spend most of their lives chasing. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not sitting here behind this screen pretending that I fully love myself, because I don’t yet. But after my journey through the pandemic and these last 6 months, I’ve finally been able to start on a sustainable path that’s right for me. Today let’s see if I can frame a perspective, that you could start to feel like maybe someday you could put yourself on that highway too! And today we ain’t following no TDSC format! You’re going to have to read and follow along to find out how I got myself on this journey!

To start off, I’ve put a lot of work into letting go and detaching from most societal expectation that I let affect me on way too deep of a level. Do I think everyone needs to do that? No. However, I’m willing to bet there’s lots of people out there that should consider looking into expectations from anything or anyone that could be holding them back. In my experience, letting go of certain fundamental external pressures such as parental biases, gender norms, and compulsory heterosexuality has helped me on my way to finally seeing my true self shine through. As appose to the identity of dressing a way I hated, originally choosing a career path I thought I had to choose, and saying I liked Kevin out of the 3 Jonas Brothers. And we all know that’s weird because no one would say they liked Kevin back in 2008. And all because I thought had to like boys and not girls. Obviously, those are just personal examples to me. However, in my viewpoint, a lot of us don’t realize those expectations show up in the things we ask ourselves about on the daily like: “Why am I so lazy because I keep procrastinating that thing I need to do?” or “Should I dress a certain way, so people won’t judge me?” Those are the secret examples of suffering under those thought to be set standards that are holding most us back from living authentic, healthy, and fulfilling lives. And you might be thinking, “I’ve never asked myself anything like that before.” Well, those questions can hide in emotions like shame, guilt, or anger. Or maybe it’s behaviour like never saying no to our mom’s. Or suffering from excessive amounts of toxic masculinity and being extremely homophobic, because underneath is more feminine traits that you don’t want to expose. Bottom line taking the time to examine the extrinsic things that feel like a devil and angel sitting on your shoulders are totally worth the time if you can pinpoint which ones effect you. Something my therapist told was “name it to tame it.”

Next, were at the midway point of this journey to potential self-love, and that is digging deep into your past experiences. And to tell you the truth, this was the hardest part. I got so deep in the hurt at one point I actually realised why some people choose to not face their pasts at all. For me this part of my story started this past winter. I personally got to a point where I needed to seek therapy. My anxiety was through the roof, and my thoughts assumed they were Lighting McQueen racing to see how fast they could make me upset. And honestly, I could barely function in day-to-day life. After 5 months of speaking to a therapist I finally started to make break throughs in my psyche. When I had my biggest realization, I was slightly unwell for almost 2 weeks trying to process my trauma’s. But as hard as those 2 weeks were, it was totally worth it because I had 2 weeks that followed of pure peace. 14 days of my first encounter with serenity in 24 years. I did so many things those 2 weeks. I started reading again, I spent almost every day sitting by the ocean, I painted, and built LEGO’s! That’s when I knew I finally discovered what life could really feel like. Overall, I would be so bold in saying that this part of the way to potential self-love is like a weight loss journey. It’s not for the faint of heart. You will be taking 1 step forward to take 2 steps back again. You need to be ready to put that work in if you so choose to better yourself. And when you find you are ready it’s totally worth moving in this direction, because you the reader, are valid. Your experiences are valid. And if you do choose to reach this milestone of digging into yourself, it will be worth it in the long run.

My final point of perspective on moving in a direction of loving yourself, is that there is room for healing when you can get to a head space to accept yourself. Getting to the point where you can accept yourself is nothing but empowering. It’s hopeful. And it’s freeing. When reaching this part of your story you’ll finally be able to breathe fresher air, colours will start to feel bright like when you were 12, and maybe you’ll catch yourself singing in the car again. When those feelings are felt and processed in a way that works for you, you’ll have the ability to love and help others better. And the best part is, you’ll finally feel like you can move your life in a direction that you want. Not what anybody else wants. Just you. This was my favorite part because for me I have felt lighter mentally and emotionally than I have in a long time. Am I saying that these conclusions have solved all of my problems? No way. But it’s been a freeing process to finally unwrap a lot of the layers that I was living under and afraid to come out of. And I do wish others will get to feel the relief I experienced someday no matter how they reach that inner peace!

To sum up my short telling’s and views on how you can maybe start on a path to self-love there’s three things that you as the reader had to navigate through theses paragraphs. One, letting go of external expectations that you think could be holding you back. Two, digging deep into your past experiences that you think made up the person you are at this very moment. And three, contrary to the popular belief there is room for healing in accepting yourself when you feel like you finally can.

Are the three topics of discussion going to help you reader? Maybe. Maybe not. That’s up to you! But the mysterious idea of self-love, it’s always going to be something most people will struggle with. And I’d love to help in changing the conversation on this topic in a direction of believing that loving yourself is not linear. Like I said, 1 step forward to take 2 steps back. I encourage you reader to try and choose ways to love yourself that are sustainable and forever changing and molding with you! As apposed to treating self-love like it’s a giant X marked on a map that you’re seeking. And I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again! I would like to imagine this has helped you guys as the readers in provoking thoughts that are new and inspiring because I was able to put a topic that needs more compassion, into a simpler perspective.

#Writing #Self love #storytelling #experiences

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inknose · 4 years

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mdzs read diary part IV, the end

It’s inspiring how much self care wwx is gonna finally get now that his husband will go along with whatever he does, so he’s gotta look out for lwj’s well being if not his own. that is emphatically the STUFF

dragging my hands down I face as I read this, after all these chapters of getting up close and personal with ghouls bleeding from every orifice, slaying ancient beasts, rebelling against the entire cultivation world, the two of them are absolutely paralyzed by middle school crush sleepover math

chicken

he actually drew kissy doodles .... he....

IDK I THINK I JUST DOCUMENTED THIS PART CUZ I WAS STILL SCREAMING you cant expect me to have very useful things to say at this point

this is torture you are both so mushy you are so GONE

This part really stood out to me, it’s an attitude I feel like wwx implies with his inner narration a few times but most clearly says here: he’s not one for allowing himself to exaggerate how bad his circumstances are/could be even a little bit - he’s already lived through some extreme low points and found a way to keep going, so he never makes sweeping statements about what he couldn’t live without (Inner JingYi: you’re supposed to say you’d be lost without him here!!!) Instead he seems to accept as a given that being alive doesn’t guarantee him any pleasantness or joy at all, and as a result his feelings toward being in TRUE LOVE are surprisingly pragmatic, but also colored with such gratitude. There are a lot of things in the novel that struck me, like this, as being just a little to the left of familiar tropes/sentiments, and were more touching for it. Whether it be the influence of culture difference as opposed to what I’m used to reading in most western romance stories, or MXTX’s unique outlook, or a combination of both, it was really refreshing and made me pause over it. Not “I can’t imagine living without you” but “I could be living without you, but instead I get to be with you and I think that’s the best thing that could happen.”

ADJFDKFJ THE UST BEING SO STRONG THAT EVEN THE VILLAIN COMMENTS ON IT IN THE MIDDLE OF EXECUTING HIS EVIL PLANS IS ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT WILL NEVER FAIL TO MAKE ME LAUGH MY ASS OFF. hes like god damn! here I thought I had problems

it was at this moment that I realized we were doing this Now... I’m still recovering. What a scene. I am so glad I saw the most incredible fanart soon afterwards, bc the fact that someone has already drawn a perfect comic of this part means I don’t have to

I love you so much, you are so annoying, you are perfect... I like how he’s been experiencing openly requited love for all of ten minutes but he’s already figured out how to weaponize it to piss people off

doing!!! his!!! job!!!!!

ahh... it’s a really good story. JGY is a great character. One of the most interesting differences for me between drama watching vs. novel reading experience is that without an actor to bat his vulnerable doe eyes at you and smile faintly with his cute dimples, the book does not go much out of its way to try to lull the reader into a false sense of security around him or *endear* him to you the way the show does. But just by seeing events through wei wuxian’s POV, its still enough to evoke pity or understanding towards him. The overall impression is a bit more detached though, there’s less emphasis on the spectacle of how he could manipulate everyone closest to him and more of a general feeling of resigned tragedy that everyones the worst on this bitch of an earth.

I CANNOT DEAL WITH YOU FOR EVEN ONE MORE SECOND!!!!

I clearly paused to take note of less and less parts at the end & the extras due to: a) too excited to reach the end b) too spicy to photograph and c) too sleepy cuz I kept reading in the middle of the night. but I absolutely took the time for Bro We Are Teens appreciation corner:

I’d absolutely read 40 more extra chapters of their monster-of-the-week field trip antics.

god... poor Jin Ling now basically has to deal with divorced parents that talk shit about each other to him whenever he is saying with one of them. except they are both his uncles. just a disasterhood of all uncles from start to finish. AUUUGH wei wuxian and jiang cheng have fucked me up completely, I dream of them reconciling but I also REFUSE to believe it would ever be easy. let me know if theres a fanfic that absolutely tortures you for decades before they hug

HAHAHA oh no this man ain’t making it to immortality thats for damn sure. HE’S JUST GONNA TRY AS HARD AS HE CAN HIS WHOLE LIFE NOT TO LOOK AT HIM BUT THEYRE *MARRIED* SDLKFJSF ohhhh it’s too funny, like... the mundane domestic family drama IN the fantastical swords and sorcery setting is what really ratchets up these things from amusing to fucking hilarious I think

aaaa the end... final random thoughts? No not final, I would like to please keep discussing at length and exhaustively, all the time please - CQL has gotta be one of the best TV adaptations I’ve seen. ANY adaptation of anything would be lucky to be so good!! reading the novel has just made me appreciate it even more.

- I don’t think I can do justice to what I find most fascinating about comparing the two versions briefly, to do that I need to get drunk and ramble at my friends for hours but... the condensed version is something like this. Really all the significant differences between the two versions (besides the ones which can be attributed to censorship and therefore aren’t worth discussing) are a side effect of the structure of how the story is told - there’s barely anything changed arbitrarily. Aside from having a cold opening, the drama sticks to a very linear version of the story, and I think for a TV show or film, that’s probably the best way to do it. We see everything, we get shocked and tricked and betrayed and surprised along with the characters, we feel the biggest impact at the climactic scenes having experienced all the build-up. The novel on the other hand is not only much more non-linear in WHEN we learn bits and pieces of information, but that information is also obfuscated under wei wuxian’s multiple layers of Unreliable Narratoritis, which are as follows: 1) difficulty remembering things because of personality/avoiding painful memories/actual memory loss, 2) No Homo Goggles still on, and 3) a wry sense of humor that makes the reader unsure of how much they can trust his attitude toward things, especially near the beginning. The experience of reading is a puzzle the reader has to mentally piece together through all of the above listed camouflage, and the puzzle itself is a three-sided mystery: One - How Bad of a guy was Wei WuXian really, and how exactly did all the bad stuff in his life go down; Two - wangxian epic pride & prejudice gambits; Three - political murder mystery. (I love stories like this btw... though I fully admit I’m glad I watched first this time bc it might have taken me a long time to tackle otherwise.) Because of this, where the drama wants to pull you in and submerge you in all the most potent emotional parts, the novel in direct contrast deliberately side-steps around these things and asks that you hurt yourself by filling in the blanks. In fact the more intense emotions and painful memories involved, whether it be his relationship with jiang yanli, his DEATH, the darkest days of war times etc, the more the novel evasively withholds details. I actually really like both styles of storytelling but each one is obviously way better suited to its medium. ANYWAY.... THATS BASICALLY WHERE MY BRAINS AT WHILE IM READING GAY SWORD WIZARD BOOKS

- The extras are so saturated with domestic married bliss that it’s a good thing I stopped taking pictures because I’d just take a picture of every page. this is too much for me to take... I did jump the gun a few times and read a few fanfics while I was still mid-read of the book (I tried to hold out but alas I am mortal) and at one point after finishing I was like “wow what fic was it in where lwj says something cute and wwx kisses him in public but they’re in the corner of the restaurant so no one really sees... OH NO WAIT that was actually in there.” and ... and that’s the LEAST OF IT... *stares into the distance* theyre married wow

- I ofc couldn’t help but see a few vague blogs beforehand so honestly I was braced for something like, wildly ooc for the sake of porn to happen in the extras... I definitely appreciate how the incense burner porn interludes could be uhhh a lot for many people and not my personal cup of tea in terms of smut however [here follows the words of a poisonous frog who has dwelt her whole life in the rainforests of BL] the concept is also surprisingly SWEET SDFLKJF like wwx sees lan wangji’s darkest mixed-up violent teenage fantasies and he’s just like aww babe you had a crush on me!! just... good for them

- I swear I’m not gonna rehash every cute married thing they do but wei wuxian grading papers in the tub........................rEALLY GOT ME

- I want to Draw - ok thats enough if I keep going I’ll just write “wei wuxian grading papers in the tub” seven more times probably

#mdzs readthru #this obviously has many spoilers

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vanaera · 4 years

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@xakemi-chiix replied to your post The Prince and His Rose Masterlist

Hi! So I finally decided to read through my to-read list and your story the prince and his rose was the first and I love this whole concept. This is so soft and cute and kookie is such a sweet friend! Gosh my heart is melting when I read through this whole drabbles. I really loved that both of them are each support pillars. That they help each other when they are about to give up and how well they know each other(their teenage years made me cry damnit, with Jungkook's dad and everything.)

I also love their little arguments and how awkward kookie is to compliment oc and how frustrated Jimin/Taehyung are lol Also this little misunderstanding of Jungkook thinking how oc was going to submit an application for the female leading role and jungkookie applying lmao I love this drabble ahaha Also bc of how throughout the performance how he looked into the audience, in other words looking at oc, which was just so cute gosh

Also I really love the way how she got the red scarf you already mentioned and how cute it was how disappointed he was that oc couldn't be there and celebrate his birthday and ahh this whole series is really cute and I would def read it a hundred times again.☺️

Oh my god, this feedback got me happy-crying!!! TT u TT God, I’m so happy you saw the essence in OC and Jungkook’s relationship. Writing the fluffy and awkward moments between these two is so fun! But what made me truly happy in writing TPAHR is how I tried to humanize these two characters. Writing about their fears, pains, mistakes, and how they try to deal with them while supporting each other made me go through a journey of my own along with these characters. And I am so happy you saw these too! One of my greatest joys is to have my readers get the thesis of my stories. That’s why I feel so blessed I managed to have readers like you get interested in my stories!

The story-telling I did for the red scarf is one of my favorite things I’ve ever done in writing! When I first started this series, I decided I don’t want to write OC and Jungkook’s story in a conventional linear structure. I want to tell this “cliche” story of friends falling in love with each other in a different way that could give a fresh twist to this established trope. Hence, the jumping from past to present, present to past, in the story was born. I guess this is TPAHR’s charm because I managed to get my readers curious enough to follow this story and know more about OC and Jungkook and their past. So I’m beyond ecstatic you loved what I did for this series!

I, too, have read stories I like re-reading again and again and never get tired of doing it. They have touched my life in so many ways/ I feel so lucky I got to read/watch them bc idk what would I be now If I didn’t encounter them. Thus, I think to be write a work that could astound people that they will not get enough of going back to it is a great feat for any artist. So to have you say you’ll read The Prince and His Rose a hundred times again, I feel like I’m standing on the other end this time, overwhelmed with love and happiness. Thank you for letting me have this experience that once was a dream a thousand light-years away from me 😊😊😊

#xakemi-chiix #sorry this got so long Hsjjsjs #my heart went off when I saw so many notifs in my blog #and when I checked it #it was bc you liked and reblogged every single installment in tpahr #and you even wrote me such long and heaet-fluttering feedback #and for that. THANK YOU SO MUCH 😭😭😭#thank you for letting me feel so happy #and important and appreciated and loved 💞💓☺️🥰#dandellions on stage was one of my favorite installments bc writing jk bend his back just to get the leading man role was hilarious #i can't count how many times i fell off my chair laughing at probably every scene znsjjs #and yes!!! TAEHYUNG AND JIMIN IS A MOOD bc Jungkook why u like that??! 🤣🤣🤣#you're not alone hon #the sneak peek of OC's and Jungkook's teenage years had my heart clenching #much more now whenever i look at my draft in the installment that will center what happened to them in their high school #and how it made such a great impact to where their relationship stands now #aera blushes #tpahr #fic: the prince and his rose #the prince and his rose feedback #the prince and his rose #tpahr feedback #reviews

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lettucetacoboatsix · 4 years

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Eating Ass: Yay! or nay

Anonymous asked:

It's me again: the kinky one. I want my partner to eat my ass. How do I tell him it's not gross?

Hello, my kinky friend!

Thanks for reaching out again! I am more than happy to respond to this message and provide an educational view on this topic, but I want to start with a brief conversation about consent. I am not saying you’ve done anything wrong, but there is a difference between educating someone and trying to convince someone to do something you want. If this is a hard limit for your partner, you must respect that. If your partner seems unsure and wants information and wants to make sure that their safety is guaranteed, please do what you can to make sure that they know they have every right to say no at any point. Be willing to hear “no” and understand that consent can only be given without any sort of coercion and ought to be given enthusiastically. It really is more fun that way. Bodies are weird and gross, and a lot of people consider this specific part of the body to be particularly taboo. Tabooty, if you will.

The technical term for “eating ass” is “analingus” (see also “rimming” and the colorfully named “tossing salad”). Before anyone reading this says, “Ewwww! Gross!” I encourage you to keep an open mind. It absolutely may not be your thing, and that’s 100% okay. Then again, if you’re comfortable with the idea and experimental, you might find a new trick to add to your sexual repertoire. If the thought makes you squirm in your seat, and not in a good way, then go ahead and click away—but if you’re even a little bit curious about bucal anal contact, then stick around. We’ll make that journey together. Can you imagine your current sex life without any form of oral stimulation? Blowjobs are the subject of many cringe-worthy 90s teen comedies. We have a song flooding our airwaves right now that tells you to swipe your nose like a credit card. While we like to pretend that sexual liberation is a linear progression, that is far from the case. Oral sex of any kind used to be a “no-no” in polite society (especially from around the turn of the century until the 1960s), although it certainly still happened when that was the case. There was a time when it was outlawed in most states, and it was considered a perversion. In fact, there are still sodomy laws on the books in Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Some of these still include statutes regarding oral sex of any variety regardless of a participants genitalia or outward expression of gender. While it is rare that these laws are enforced, they still can be, especially for gay men. But if you go back far enough, like to Ancient Egypt, you might see that wearing lipstick was a sign that you were open to oral sex. Sexual practice is as varied as the human experience. It always has been.

Analingus is one of those sex acts that still remains in the sexual dark ages, but it does seem to be coming back into the mainstream (see previously mentioned song about swiping your nose like a credit card). While we can probably credit “the gays” with this rimming Renaissance, the actual practice is documented in Middle English literature (see ”The Miller’s Tale” from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales) and while I can’t cite an example off the top of my head, I’m sure I could find a reference in Ancient Greek poetry or Roman graffiti. The point is it’s nothing new. People have been eating ass as long as it has felt good, and since our biology has remained relatively the same for 200,000 years or so, the cultural misgivings are far more recent. It’s time we brought that dark, forbidden kiss into the light (for those who want to venture into that arena). While shame is necessary for the development of our internal moral compass, there should not be any shame associated with any sexual act among any number of consenting adults—rimming included. Still, feeling some hesitation and even a little embarrassment about rimming is normal, for that very reason—the anus is one part of our body that we have internalized a great deal of shame about in our culture. The prevailing cultural means to overcome that shame isn’t really fitting. Reading Everybody Poops to your partner is a very specific type of foreplay that will probably be counterproductive if you’re bringing this desire up for the first time. It takes overcoming some of that to even entertain the idea, let alone actually attempt it. You might want to try some other forms of anal play first—fingers or toys—before you introduce the idea of anal oral contact. Since you’re asking, I’m guessing you have that experience, but your partner may not. Likewise, dear readers, if you’re actually curious about it, and not just reading this out of some morbid curiosity like someone slowing down at the scene of an accident, you probably have already been involved in some sort of anal play. Sometimes people fall into this experience through a delightful mishap—someone is going down on you, and—oops! The tongue slips down lower than either of you expected, and you jump and moan and you both look at each other like: “WTF! What was that?!” Things happen in the dark. If it feels good, and you’re partner’s okay with it, then make your inner Bob Ross proud with your happy accident. I want to reiterate here, If you’re interested in it, but your partner isn’t, let it go. One sex act shouldn’t ever come between you, and who can enjoy something if they know the other person isn’t enjoying themselves, too? But if you’re both curious and interested, just not sure how to proceed, then talk about it. Who wants to give? Who wants to receive? Sometimes it’s both of you, sometimes it’s just one of you. Make sure to tell your partner why you enjoy it and what you get from the experience. If there are concerns about hygiene, then read on, because I’m about to assuage them. The biggest fear with oral/anal contact is fecal matter and bacteria. That’s certainly understandable. A lot of people won’t put food that’s fallen on the floor in their mouths, so it makes sense. If you can get past the psychological aspect of it, though, the reality is that with proper hygiene, there is very little danger of coming in contact with any sort of fecal matter. A bit of a biology lesson: fecal matter is actually store above the rectum in the colon. It only moves into the rectum and out through the sphincter when you are defecating, or when you are ready to. There are only trace amounts that remain in the rectum or on the anus, which can easily be washed away, and if you are looking for actual oral penetration of the anus, not even Gene Simmons’s tongue could make it to the colon. If you are really concerned, there are also things like enemas or anal douching that can help give that extra feeling of cleanliness, but do not overdo it. If you do choose to go this route, use clean water at a safe temperature. Over-douching can lead to a tear in the rectal lining. Infection is the real concern, here—the possibility of introducing bacteria into our digestive tract from oral-anal contact. The dangerous bacteria are e. coli, salmonella, intestinal parasites like giardia, and of course viruses like Herpes and HIV. The good news is you can seriously minimize your risks. If you are practicing safer sex and you know that neither of you is HIV positive, has any STIs, and are free of parasites, careful washing should be sufficient. You can shower together, which is always fun foreplay, anyway. One technique I’ve learned is to fill the tub halfway, squat down, and engage in some manual stimulation. If you do feel like it’s necessary to use soap, use a mild soap like Dove. You don’t want to upset your microbiome. Press the pad of your finger gently against the tissue of the finger and move in gentle circular motions until you feel it begin to relax and welcome penetration. Turn your finger around a few times, so the water washes away any residue in and around the area. If you or your partner are still hesitant, you can use a dental dam (think of it like a condom for the mouth). You can also approximate one of these using unlubricated condoms (don’t use any lubricated ones or any with spermicide!) Now, on to the fun part—actually doing the thing. It helps to get relaxed. A sensual massage from the giver to the receiver can only be helpful. Whatever you can do to relax each other, do it. Find a position that is comfortable and allows access to the area in question. Popular positions include being on all fours, or standing and leaning over the bed/counter/arm of the couch for two reasons: it provides maximum exposure but still allows for genital play, and it is the most vulnerable. One of the turn-ons of rimming can be the surrender in it. You are opening up parts of yourself to a lover that are generally not touched—not only that, they have been culturally shunned and rejected. Many of our associations with the anus are negative: that it is a “bad” part of the body. This is a way to give yourself wholly and completely to your partner, and for your partner to accept you that way as well. These positions also allow the receiver to hide their face in a pillow at first to deal with any shame that comes up.

With any new sexual experience, I would encourage a session of after care. Check in with your partner. Tell them what feels good both in the moment, and afterward. Ask your partner how they are feeling now that they have shared that experience with you. Show them your appreciation through words of affirmation or gentle physical contact.

So, yeah, in general our meat suits are a little gross, but this is no more gross or shameful than anything else you can do with your body, but there are appropriate ways to have that conversation with your partner and maybe share a new experience together.

I hope this helps, friend!

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fursasaida · 4 years

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Care to share your thoughts on what reality is and what makes life life?

I’m thinking a lot about consequences and loss after the events of the last few days, so it seems like the right time to come back to this. The first time I tried to answer it was overly explanatory: I was trying to walk you through every idea I’ve read and internalized that brought me to the perspective I have. I think that’s probably more trouble than it’s worth (for you the reader, not just for me), so I’ll just provide the names of some texts at the end for anyone who’s interested.

The short version is this. What does it mean for something to happen? Why do things exist the way they are and not other ways? How are these existing things related to each other? My understanding is that things come to exist through happenings, and that these happenings can only be defined by having some sort of consequence. That is, a mark must be made, or something must be divided from something else, or transformed, etc. An apple becomes part of my body because I eat it, and we can know that I ate it because my stomach is fuller and the apple is smaller. In turn, the event that produced these tangible marks defines my relationship with the apple; this includes not only the eating but my ideas about apples as food and the processes by which the apple becomes available to me (that is, how the apple is produced). I think a lot about Cole about 2/3 of the way through 12 Monkeys, when he starts to accept the premise that maybe he’s insane (rather than that he’s a time traveler) because moving between different points in time has destroyed his sense of sequence, causality, and consequence. It’s not just that time as we currently imagine it is linear and orderly (time is actually much more complex than this). It’s that if events have no consequences–if they make no marks, if they can’t be understood to affect anything–then they are not parseable as events.

This does not translate into clockwork determinism, though, where everything is inevitable because it’s all just endless chains of cause and effect. The past is fundamentally inaccessible (in exactly the same way that the future is). All we have is memory and material traces of the past, which exist in the present. We constantly reproduce and remake the past on the basis of these traces and memories, now, in the present. Therefore the past can be changed. But it cannot be erased or undone, because the very things we have to work with–our means of changing the past–are the marks and traces and memories that show that there ever was a past at all.

If I put this on a metaphorical level I think it’s pretty easy to understand. We change our minds about what traces of the past mean all the time. Take a monument, like say an obelisk. When it was built it meant something very specific to the religious-political elites who made it in Ancient Egypt, and to its audience; obelisks were, among other things, tools of communication. Over time, obelisks became ruins and mysterious monuments bearing unreadable marks. Later, as Europe became fascinated by Ancient Egypt, obelisks became symbols of wealth and power, used to imply continuity between French and British Empires and the Ancient Egyptian empire. When an obelisk was placed at the center of the Place de la Concorde in Paris, it was because it was seen as an apolitical symbol in the context of French political strife (though this of course ignored that the French colonization of Egypt was…..political). Meanwhile the study of heiroglyphics proceeds such that obelisks become, instead of tools of contemporary communication, part of that category called archaeological evidence. And meanwhile Egyptian politics and nationhood develop to the point that obelisks become part of the category of objects called “heritage.” The object remains the same, though it weathers and it travels; the actions that produced it as itself endure, literally as marks in stone. Its meaning changes over time and with context as different narratives and ideologies reshape it for their own purposes. The history of these reshapings can be traced as what we call “historiography,” or the writing of history; that is, history has a history of its own.

The point I want to make very clear is that the “remaking of the past” is not only symbolic or ideological. It’s not just about interpreting things differently; it is more than historiography. No one can make it so that the obelisk was never carved. But what the obelisk is, not only what it means, does change. Normally I would get into quantum physics here (the quantum eraser experiment and quantum discord), but I’m trying to keep it simple, so just consider it noted that this phenomenon appears even at the molecular level. You can decide in the present whether the light you measured (i.e., used to make marks) in the past was composed of particles or was a wave. But when you make that decision, the marks from your last decision do not go away. The past has a past. The traces of that meta-past cannot be undone even when you change what the past is.

If the past could be erased or undone, this would mean that, say, toppling a monument means it was never put up–that that event didn’t happen. It is tempting and easy here to retreat to the metaphorical/historiographic level and say, well, in a way that’s what toppling it is doing; it’s announcing the end of somebody’s power, trying to erase that power in the landscape. But making people ignorant of the past is not the same as undoing it, because whatever happened in the past–by virtue of the fact that it happened at all–had material consequences that are not reversible. The toppled monument may become covered in soil and overgrown, but it was still carved out of rock and nothing undoes that. The stone does not magically reappear as part of the rock it came from. That people forget does not make it something that never happened. Instead it becomes the mark of a past version of the past. Whether we remember that past version doesn’t change the fact that it happened; it just means we have remade the past in the present. If you’re familiar with Walter Benjamin’s notion of debris and the Angel of History, my version of it would be that we are surrounded by all the traces of all past pasts; indeed, part of what makes it possible to remake the past is the fact that these traces endure to coexist with us in the present, and not all of them fit together.

This matters to my feelings about what reality is and what makes life life because, as I said early on, if you could undo the marks of the past–and of the past’s past–then there would be no events. There would quite possibly be no things at all. To move this to an ethical register, to live a life in which you always have a do-over button is, for me, impossible to imagine. It requires that the other people around you be essentially simulations (assuming they, too, have do-over buttons, and therefore are proceeding through their own playground universes), or else be puppets to your whims. It means you will never be responsible for anything or to anyone; it means always being able to declare “I didn’t mean it” and have that make everything okay because no one else will ever know what you did–because you didn’t do it. The minds, feelings, and pain of others need not ever be real to you, only your desire to avoid being made to feel bad by their reactions, which you need not even understand; you can just redo stuff by trial and error until you get “changes” you want to “save,” and move on. It is a life of being sorry only to get caught, so to speak. You need never make any mark on the world you don’t intend or like, which is–I mean like, materially–just literally not what existing is. I exist because of the other things and beings that constitute me and that I help constitute in turn. If I can pick and choose, if I can curate what all of those marks and relationships look like–well, for one thing, I’d never have time to do anything else (perhaps I don’t wish to disturb these carpet fibers in this particular way), but also I am simply not operating in the domain of what existence is? I think Russian Doll illustrates this pretty well. Nadia and Alan do live this kind of do-over existence, but the universe doesn’t just accept it. Even after reboots, their actions have consequences, entropy proceeds, things start to decohere.

That life is hard because there are no do-overs is true. It’s not that I have no sympathy for this fact; trust me, I feel it acutely all the time. Nothing I’m saying here is intended to come across like “grow up and join the real world, snowflake!” But without this fact there is also no life, because nothing happens; there are no meaningful relationships or responsibilities. It might be pleasant to be able to return back to your last save and redo things better, but it would also mean living in a world where nothing is real. Responsibility is many things. Two of them are a) the ability to respond to others, and b) the ability to allow others to respond. Even a puppetmaster must contend with the fact that their puppets sometimes break; they have to look after them. But this shouldn’t be seen as only restrictive, a burden to be borne. The forms of responsibility enabled by the indelible past are also what allow us to remake it–to respond differently. We are only here because we inherit the past, and in that sense we owe it a debt; but we have also received from it the gift of being here at all.

References!

At Multiverse Impasse, a New Theory of Scale

Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”

Laurent Olivier, The Dark Abyss of Time (review/summary here)

Gastón Gordillo, Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction (which you can hear something about on this podcast)

On 12 Monkeys:

“12 Monkeys Is the Apocalypse Film We Need Right Now”

The film Looper, if you haven’t seen it, is itself a comment on 12 Monkeys and extends its ideas in the direction of responsibility.

Karen Barad, “Temporality, Materiality, Justice To-Come” and Meeting the Universe Halfway (you can find a pdf if you google)

(It was hard to find anything both readable and open-access on this, but if you’re really interested, get into quantum discord and quantum illumination)

Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past

Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting

Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International

Derek McCormack, “Remotely Sensing Affective Afterlives”

#anonymous #happy new year i guess #time #responsibility i suppose

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neversidekick-blog · 5 years

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Flamethrower’s Alleged Harassment

What’s going on?

deadcatwithaflamethrower has suggested she is the victim of a targeted campaign of harassment, and along the way she’s used some antisemitic dogwhistles, which would be problematic on its own, but is especially insidious IMO given the topic of the alleged harassment.

I am positive that I am one of the people she says harassed her, though I maintain I did no such thing.

I’m going to attempt to provide the fullest accounting of these events possible, with the caveat that I simply don’t have copies of a few key pieces of evidence.

If you’re going to follow along, I ask you read all the screenshots and quotations carefully, because the details do matter if you want a complete picture.

The first two sections are background info for those unaware of a few relevant facts. The issue of alleged harassment follows.

Jewish Snape

Flamethrower has written a long, serial HP fic called Of a Linear Circle. In it, Severus Snape is portrayed as Jewish. While his Jewishness is touched upon in multiple chapters across multiple parts of the series, this is how it is introduced:

“I didn’t know you were Jewish.”

Severus rolls his eyes and taps the bridge of his nose. “It isn’t obvious?”

Nizar gives him a baffled look. “What does your nose have to do with it?”

“It’s a…stereotype.” Severus grimaces at Nizar’s continued look of confusion, but he still meets older adults who’ve never heard the word used that way. “Racism.”

“Oh. Idiots,” Nizar mutters. “Besides, if you wanted to see some truly horrific examples of nasal protuberances, you’d find yourself a Viking who’d had their nose broken four or five times.”

I applaud including Jewish characters in fic, even in the case where they are not Jewish in canon. Positive portrayals of Jewish characters should be encouraged throughout fandom.

Picking Snape to be the character from Harry Potter to reframe as Jewish is a complicated choice, because of the vile and enduring antisemitic stereotype relating to Jewish people having large, ugly noses.

Consider the following quote spoken by the Marauder’s Map in POA:

Mr. Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business.

Mr. Prongs agrees with Mr. Moony, and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git.

Mr. Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a professor.

Mr. Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball.

Leaning into a stereotype is a difficult choice. It’s not bad, but it should be handled with some thought. IMO you either need to ignore the canon association with Snape’s nose, or you need to deliberately deconstruct it.

Flamethrower did neither. This by itself I would not say is antisemitic, merely clumsy. She went to great efforts to portray Snape’s Jewishness positively, and I honestly applaud that.

But I know I’m not the only person who encountered it and was uncomfortable with the antisemitic stereotype being on display so clumsily. Not that I thought it meant flamethrower or her fic were antisemitic, just that this particular use of a stereotype was uncomfortable.

A Thread about Hebrew

Of a Linear Circle is heavily concerned with linguistics. It features discussions of many languages, including Hebrew. One of those discussions contains an error, a faulty transliteration. This is a minor mistake, and in a fic with so many linguistic discussions, some mistakes would happen for even a true polyglot.

The problem is that when a Jewish fan commented with a polite suggestion of a fix to the error, flamethrower proceeded to Goysplain both Hebrew and the Shoah to her.

It’s not a good look. It’s arrogant and condescending. By itself, though, it’s not antisemitic, just an author being a little too defensive and overbearing. But it’s there, and more than a few Jewish fans noticed it because flamethrower has promoted the fact that Snape is Jewish in this fic.

Where the Harassment Supposedly Begins

At some point, a Jewish fan (who implicitly identifies herself as such later), leaves a comment on the chapter of flamethrower’s fic with the potentially upsetting antisemitic nose stereotype.

The request is for a tag or warning of some kind for the comment, just so it doesn’t take readers by surprise. Perhaps requesting the fic as a whole be tagged with “antisemitism” is a step too far and would seem bizarre, but the gist of the comment is a request for a content warning. Flamethrower could have sorted out a note or a less inflammatory tag if she cared to do so, but she never replied to this comment.

The fact that she didn’t reply to this comment doesn’t matter really. She gets a lot of fic comments, so the idea she missed one or didn’t feel like replying isn’t the issue.

But this comment was left on August 10, and when it received no response for a week, I believe the same fan sent flamethrower an ask on the same topic, which is where the saga of supposed harassment begins.

The Ask

The text of the ask was as follows:

HI! I LEFT YOU A COMMENT RECENTLY ON YOUR FIC OF A LINEAR CIRCLE, BUT I CAN SEE YOU WERE VERY BUSY AND PROBABLY DIDN'T SEE IT. I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND ME ASKING, BUT WOULD YOU MIND TAGGING IT FOR THE ANTISEMITIC HUMOR IN IT? I KNOW IT WAS MEANT IN GOOD FAITH AND YOU HAD A JEWISH FRIEND CONSULT, BUT NOT ALL JEWS ARE COMFORTABLE WITH JOKING ABOUT STEROTYPES, AND FOR THOSE OF US THAT AREN'T, A LITTLE WARNING WOULD BE VERY KIND. THANK YOU!— queried by heatherly84

I consider this fairly innocuous and polite. As I said above, perhaps the reasonable outcome wasn’t the exact tag suggested, or even a tag at all--maybe a note in the intro notes of the chapter warning for it would have sufficed.

But this is how flamethrower responded:

So, because you had a single moment of twinge due to a child character’s self-consciousness regarding their appearance and their religion as they struggle to come to terms with stereotypes they face every day…you want me to add a tag to my fic that will see it immediately black-listed as anti-semitic even though it’s absolutely nothing of the sort.

No. No, I will not.

I am not here to gatekeep your internet experience. If that moment made you uncomfortable, you should a) think about what the character was going through instead of expecting it to be the author being a dick, and b) click your back button.

EDIT: No, wait. I’m not done.

What really gets me here is that you are asking me to tag a scene as anti-Semitic when this underconfident Jewish-born child, already dealing with horrible stereotyping, is promptly reassured by an Adult that there is nothing wrong with his faith or his appearance, and said child shouldn’t put stock into the people doing the stereotyping.

You want me to tag something as Bad that is meant to be enouragement for anyone in that position, a common theme in YA lit.

Are you sure it’s the perceived anti-Semitism that’s the problem, or is it something else entirely?

I saw the ask and flamethrower’s response shortly after it was posted on her tumblr. To say I found the response troubling is an understatement.

Flamethrower condescends to a fan asking, not for any substantive change or edit to the fic, but to a mere content warning.

Flamethrower presumes to tell someone how they must feel about the handling of antisemitic stereotypes in a fic, which would be bullshit even if she didn’t handle this particular antisemitic stereotype so clumsily.

Flamethrower accuses the fan of some secret and malicious motive because she, the author, is overly defensive.

Particularly considering the topic of antisemitism, I found the response wanting, so I decided I should say something.

The Submission

In an attempt to convey to Flamethrower that the concerns about the antisemitic stereotyping of Snape’s nose wasn’t the concern of a single fan, and to try to open a dialogue and point out some other missteps I felt she had made in the general region of Jewish representation in fandom and antisemitism, I decided to send her a submission.

I am an ancient member of fandom from the days of usenet and livejournal, and to be honest I just never got tumblr, so I had to create an account solely for this purpose. I’m sure that makes me sound like a bizarre dinosaur, but it’s the truth. And I created this account and wrote up a submission to flamethrower and sent it in.

Admittedly, my tone was a little sharp in a few places due to very genuine frustration, but as I tried to make clear, I was trying to appeal to her to do better, not simply condemn, and definitely not harass.

The following is the full and exact text of my submission to flamethrower:

I feel that you're being deeply disingenuous. You introduced Snape being a Jew in your fic with the following lines:

“I didn’t know you were Jewish.”

Severus rolls his eyes and taps the bridge of his nose. “It isn’t obvious?”

And a Jewish person rather politely asked you to mark it as referencing antisemitic stereotypes, because holy fuck you made a character whose nose is remarkably large in canon Jewish and leaned into that in. Sure, you followed it with a joke about Viking noses, but that's not the deconstruction you seem to think it is. It's just a handwave that accomplishes nothing.

That, by itself, I could maybe give a pass, but then there's this comment thread: https://archiveofourown.org/comments/113294382 Someone tells you they're Jewish and gives you a bit of helpful advice about a bit of Hebrew linguistics that you have absolutely and totally wrong; it's not something, as you suggest in your replies, that varies with regions. It's universally understood, but you talk over the person whose cultural language you're using as if you know better.

But the part that really crosses the line is that you say the following in your scramble to throw shit against the wall to insist you could be right:

Then there are the parlances common to specific groups that are just fucking GONE because of the Holocaust, and we don't have any way now to know how they might have said certain words.

You Goysplain the Shoah to a Jew.

If you actually care as deeply about positive representations of Jewish characters in fandom as you say you do, maybe listening to actual critiques from actual Jews should be a thing you do, instead of reacting defensively and shutting them down.

Also, please never refer to a person as "Jewish sidekick" again, as you did in that thread. Unpacking the baggage there would take a separate submission. I'm taking the time to write this out, perhaps foolishly, because I hope you're sincere about caring and will actually listen. Shutting down the voices of Jewish people is not a part of portraying Jewishness positively in fandom. I hope you can see that and will listen and do better.

She posted and responded to this. I don’t have a screenshot of her response, nor do I have the full text because of how quickly she deleted it, but I do have a partial quote of her response:

However, you did accuse a Jewish woman by proxy of Goysplaining, which I find incredibly insulting on my best friend’s behalf. (She wants her name left out of it for anxiety reasons, and given how this is probably going to turn into a huffing and puffing Drag Down The Evil Witch Goyim thing, I don’t blame her.)

This bit of rhetorical gymnastics on her part served an interesting and infuriating purpose. I objected to her refusing to listen to actual Jewish fans trying to tell her things on multiple occasions, and I also criticized her use of the “I can’t have done anything wrong, my best friend is Jewish,” defense. Here she doubled down on that defense, essentially saying the person she has referred to on multiple occasions as her “Jewish Sidekick” insulates her from all possible problematic statements re: Jewishness.

The rest of her response was equally inane, but as I can’t quote it directly in her own words, I can’t justify saying more about it.

A Second, Unpublished Ask

As I mentioned above, I’ve never really used Tumblr. The difference between submitting posts and submitting asks confused me. I knew the original request for a content warning tag was an ask and that I’d done a post. I was afraid I should have sent an ask instead.

I was also rereading her response to heatherly84, and I was annoyed that she didn’t get why the joke about Snape’s nose wasn’t okay.

So I sent in an ask before my submission was posted and responded to.

I don’t have the text of my ask, but I give flamethrower permission to post it in full if she chooses. I recall saying two things:

1) In the form of a question, I tried to walk her through understanding why the joke about Snape’s nose could still read as antisemitic.

2) I acknowledged I’d sent the submission, and said I would prefer she respond to it, since it was more detailed.

Perhaps I committed some terrible tumblr faux pas in submitting a post and an ask on the same topic closely together and that constitutes harassment.

I suspect the former is true but the latter is not.

Flamethrower Deletes Posts and Claims Harassment

In a matter of minutes after flamethrower posts my submission and her response, she deletes it. A new post goes up.

I have to assume the combination of two asks and a submission is what she is saying is harassment. You’ve seen the text of one ask and one post, so hopefully you’ll agree one ask was very polite and the post was slightly terse but A) not harassment, B) not an ad hominem attack, C) and a list of reasons why she was wrong to do certain things, not a list of reasons why she as a person was awful. I maintain the unpublished ask is in the same vein, and she is free to publish it in full if she chooses.

Then she begins posting more, and her claims about what she was sent escalate.

Here we have what is called a dogwhistle: she’s not saying evil Jews are conspiring against her to make her look bad. However, in response to criticisms of potentially antisemitic behavior, she falls back on the trope of “devious” Jews in a malicious conspiracy. This is problematic, and I will say flat out it is antisemitic.

She also misrepresents what was going on: Jewish fans asking her to listen to them without being condescending. Jewish fans asking for a single content warning.

I believe at this point I sent either another ask or submission, with the gist being, “If you’re going to post about things I submitted to your tumblr and characterize them a certain way, I would appreciate it if you reposted them so viewers could judge for themselves whether what you’re saying is accurate.”

Continuing to engage was a mistake, clearly.

Her vague posting with the context hidden continued.

And she ends by going full non-sequitur.

She never raised not wanting to attract white supremacists and Nazis as a reason to avoid a warning tag.

She condescended and attacked and told a Jewish fan her reactions were invalid.

If flamethrower cared about Jewish representation in fandom, opposing antisemitism, and Jewish fans, she could have compromised with some sort of warning in some fashion.

Even if she were absolutely opposed to a warning of any kind, she could have not condescended and invalidated the experiences of Jewish fans trying to speak with her.

Even if she couldn’t do that, she could have avoided deleting all context and then going on a posting spree that suggests an evil Jewish conspiracy is harassing her.

The only conclusions I can draw from all of this are as follows:

1) Engaging with flamethrower as a person who cares about Jewish fans is a mistake, because she cares more about presenting herself as an authority on Jewish experiences to non-Jewish fans than she does to listening to any critique, no matter how minor or polite, from a Jewish fan.

2) Flamethrower is happy to oppose antisemitism in the shallowest possible way to pat herself on the back and seek congratulations from others, but the second she’s in conflict with actual Jewish people, she resorts to vague and just barely deniable antisemitism herself.

3) Flamethrower is unable to accept anything she perceives as criticism, no matter how kindly it’s presented, because she’s too invested in presenting herself as the absolute expert on every topic she has passingly researched for a fic. Her defensiveness over a trivial topic is merely odd, but on more serious topics, it becomes problematic.

4) No one has harassed flamethrower, and nothing she is construing as harassment is part of a “setup” or conspiracy.

5) I probably don’t know how to use Tumblr properly.

Edited to Add: What I Think Is a Lie

I have been refreshing flamethrower’s tumblr nearly non-stop since this began, as have several people I know. Unless the offer of a different tag occurred in a private message, I am confident in saying it is a lie, particularly given her instant negative reaction to the very idea as shown above. If screencaps are provided, I will of course retract this and apologize.

#deadcatwithaflamethrower #antisemitism #ofalinearcircle #flamethrower #deadcat

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wellesleyunderground · 4 years

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Wellesley Writes It: Interview with Anissa M. Bouziane ’87 (@AnissaBouziane), author of DUNE SONG

Anissa M. Bouziane ’87 was born in Tennessee, the daughter of a Moroccan father and a French mother. She grew up in Morocco, but returned to the United States to attend Wellesley College, and went on to earn an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University and a Certificate in Film from NYU. Currently, Anissa works and teaches in Paris, as she works to finish a PhD in Creative Writing at The University of Warwick in the UK. Dune Song is her debut novel. Follow her on Twitter: @AnissaBouziane.

Wellesley Underground’s Wellesley Writes it Series Editor, E.B. Bartels ’10 (who also got her MFA in writing from Columbia, albeit in creative nonfiction), had the chance to chat with Anissa via email about Dune Song, doing research, publishing in translation, forming a writing community, and catching up on reading while in quarantine. E.B. is especially grateful to Anissa for willing to be part of the Wellesley Writes It series while we are in the middle of a global pandemic.

And if you like the interview and want to hear more from Anissa, you can attend her virtual talk at The American Library tomorrow (Tuesday, May 26, 2020) at 17h00 (Central European Time). RSVP here.

EB: First, thank you for being part of this series! I loved getting to read Dune Song, especially right now with everything going on. I loved getting to escape into Jeehan’s worlds, though sort of depressing to think of post-9/11-NYC as a “simpler time” to escape to. My first question is: Reading your biography, I know that you, much like Jeehan, have moved back and forth between the United States and Morocco––born in the U.S.A., grew up in Morocco, and then back to the U.S.A. for college. You’ve also mentioned elsewhere that this book was rooted in your own experience of witnessing the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. How much of your own life story inspired Dune Song?

AMB: Indeed, Dune Song is rooted in my own experience of witnessing the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. As a New Yorker, who experienced the tragedy of that now infamous Tuesday in September almost 19 years ago, I would not have chosen the collapse of the World Trade Center as the inciting incident of my novel had I not lived through those events myself. So yes, much of what Jeehan, Dune Song’s protagonist, goes through in NYC is rooted in my own life experience. Nonetheless the book is not an autobiography — I would consider it more of an auto-fiction, that is a fiction with deep roots in the author’s experience. The New York passages speak of the difficulties of coming to terms with the tragedy that was 9/11 — out of principle, I would not have chosen 9/11 as the inciting incident of my novel if I did not have first hand experience of the trauma which I recount.

EB: Thanks for saying that. I feel like there is a whole genre of 9/11 novels out there now and a lot of them make me uncomfortable because it feels like they are exploiting a tragedy. Dune Song did not feel that way to me. It felt genuine, like it was written by someone who had lived through it.

AMB: As for the desert passage that take place in Morocco, though I am extremely familiar with the Moroccan desert — and have traveled extensively from the dunes of Merzouga to the oasis of Zagora — this portion of the novel is totally fictional. That being said, I am one of those writers who rides the line between fiction and reality very closely, so if you ask me if I ever let myself be buried up to my neck in a dune, the answer would be: yes.

EB: How did the rest of the story come about? When and how did you decide to contrast the stories of the aftermath of 9/11 with human trafficking in the Moroccan desert?

AMB: Less than six months after 9/11, in March of 2002 I was invited back to Morocco by the Al Akhawayn University, an international university in the Atlas Mountains near the city of Fez. There I gave a talk which would ultimately provide me with the core of Dune Song: the chapter that takes place in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, where following a mass in commemoration of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, an Imam from a Mosque in Queens was asked to recite a few verses from the Holy Quran. The Moroccan artists and academics present that day were deeply moved by my talk (which in fact simply recounted my lived experience); they told me that I should turn my talk into a novel. I thought the idea interesting and began to write, but within a year the Iraq War was launched and suddenly a story promoting dialogue and mutual understanding between the Islamic World and the West seemed to interest few, so I moved on to other things. Nonetheless, the core of Dune Song stayed with me.

Years later, as I re-examined that early draft, I realized that if I was to turn it into a novel, it had to transcend my life experience — and that is when I turned to my knowledge of the Moroccan desert and my longstanding interest in illegal trafficking across the Sahara desert. I returned to Morocco from the USA in 2003 thanks to Wellesley’s Mary Elvira Stevens Alumnae Traveling Fellowship to research what will soon be my second novel, but truth be told I got the grant on my second try. My first try in the mid-90s had been a proposal to explore the phenomenon of South-North migration across the Sahara and the Mediterranean. I remained an active observer of issues around Trans-Saharan migration, but I went to the desert three or four times on my return to Morocco before I understood that this was where Jeehan too must travel. My decision to bring Jeehan there probably emanated out of the serenity that I experienced when in the desert, but if Dune Song was to be more than just a cathartic work, I realized it should also attempt to draw a cartography of a better tomorrow — and so Jeehan would have to go to battle for others whose fate was in jeopardy because of a continued injustice overlooked by many. It seemed clear to me that Jeehan’s path and those of the victims of human trafficking had to cross. Her quest for meaning in the wake of the 9/11’s senseless loss of life depended on it.

EB: I really loved the structure of the book––the braided narratives, moving back and forth between New York and Morocco. How did you decide on this structure? And how and why did you choose to have the Morocco chapters move forward chronologically, while the New York chapters bounce around in time? To me it felt reflective of the way that we try to make sense of a traumatic event––rethinking and obsessing over small details, trying to make sense of chaos, all the pieces slowing coming together.

AMB: Fragmented narratives have always been my thing, probably because, as someone who straddles many cultures and who feels rooted in many geographies, I felt early on that fragmented forms leant themselves to the multi-layered stories that emanated out of me. My MFA thesis was an as-yet-unpublished novel entitled: Fragments from a Transparent Page (inspired by Jean Genet’s posthumous novel). Even my early work in experimental cinema was obsessed with fragmentation — in large part because I believe that though we experience life through the linear chronology of time, we remember our lives in far-less linear fashion. I agree with you that trauma further disrupts our attempts at streamlining memory. The manner in which we remember, and how the act of remembering — or forgetting — shapes the very content of our memory is essential to my work as a novelist, for I believe it is essential to our act of making meaning of our lived experience.

In Dune Song the reader watches Jeehan travel deep into the Moroccan desert. We also watch her remember what has come before. And we witness her struggle with her memories, which is why the New York chapters bounce around in time. The thing she is frightened of most — her memories of seeing the Towers crumble, knowing countless souls are being lost before her eyes — this she cannot remember, or refuses to remember clearly. And it is not until she is in the heart of the desert and is confronted with the images of the collapse of the WTC as beamed through a small TV screen in Fatima’s kitchen, that she takes the reader with her into the recollection of that trauma. Once that remembering is done, her healing can truly begin — and the time of the novel heads in a more chronological direction.

EB: While this is a work of fiction, I imagine that a significant amount of research went into writing this book, especially concerning the horrors of human trafficking. What sorts of research did you do for Dune Song?

AMB: As I mentioned earlier, beginning in the mid-nineties, the issue of human trafficking across the Sarah became a subject of academic and moral concern to me. But the fact that I grew up in Morocco, and spent many of my summers in my paternal grandmother’s house in Tangier, sensitized me to this topic very early on. Tangier, is located at the most northern-western tip of the African continent, and therefore it is a weigh station for many who aim to cross the Straits of Gibraltar with hopes of getting to Spain, to Europe. I recall a moment when as a teenager I gazed out over the Straits from the cliff of Café Hafa, where Paul Bowles used to write, and imagined that the body of water before me as a watery Berlin Wall. One of my unpublished screenplays, entitled Tangier, focused on the tragedy of those who risked their lives to cross the Straits. So, did I do research to write Dune Song? You bet — I folded into Dune Song topics that had been in the forefront of my consciousness for years.

EB: I know that Dune Song has been published in Morocco by Les Editions Le Fennec, published in the United Kingdom by Sandstone Press, published in France by Les Editions du Mauconduit, and published in the U.S.A. by Interlink Books. What was the experience like, having your book published in different languages and in different countries? Were any changes made to the novel between editions?

AMB: Dune Song was first published in Morocco in an early French translation. Initially this was out of desperation, not choice. I wrote Dune Song in English, and I shopped the English manuscript in the UK and the US to no avail. I was told by people who mattered in literary circles that the book was too transgressive to be published in either the US or UK markets. Suggestion was made to me that I remove all the New York passages from the book if I was to stand a chance of having it hit the English speaking market. I refused to do so and instead worked with my friend and translator, Laurence Larsen to come up with a French version. That being done, I shopped it around in France only to be told that a translation couldn’t be published before the original. Dismissively, I was told to seek-out who might benefit from an author like me existing. The comment hit me like a slap across the face, and I sincerely thought of giving up on the work all together — more than that, I thought I might give up on writing — but my students (who have always been a source of support for me — more on that later) convinced me not to trow in the towel. Once I had the courage to re-examine the question posed to me by the French, I realized that there was a viable answer: the Moroccans. That’s when I contacted Layla Chaouni, celebrated French-language publisher in Casablanca, and asked her if she might want to consider Dune Song for Le Fennec.

Layla’s enthusiasm for the novel marked a huge shift in Dune Song’s fortunes: the book was published in Morocco, won the Special Jury Prize for the Prix Sofitel Tour Blanche, was selected to represent Morocco at the Paris Book fair in 2017, which then lead me (through my Wellesley connections) to gain representation by famed New York literary agent Claire Roberts. It was Claire who got me a contract with Sandstone as well as with Interlink and with Mauconduit — she has been an unconditional champion of my work, and for this I will be eternally grateful. It must be noted that when the book got to Sandstone, I believe it was ‘wounded’ — it had gone through many incarnations, but I was not thrilled with the final outcome. My editor at Sandstone, the fantastic Moria Forsyth gave me the space and guidance to “heal” the manuscript — that is, she identified what was not working and sent me off to fix things, with the promise of publication as a reward for this one last push. The result was the English version that everyone is reading today (published in the UK by Sandstone and in the US by Interlink Publishing). My translator, Laurence Larsen worked diligently to upgrade the French translation for Mauconduit.

It has been a long journey, at times dispiriting, at time exhilarating. I am terribly excited that today, my Dune Song has been published in four countries, and there is hope for more. In the darkest hours of the process, I gave myself permission to give up. “You’ve come to the end of the line,” I told myself, “it’s okay if your stop writing altogether.” In hindsight, hitting rock bottom was essential, because the answer that came back to me was NO. No, I won’t stop writing. I accepted that I might never be published, but I refused to stop writing, for to do so would be to give up on the one action that brought meaning to my life.

EB: You’ve mentioned that Dune Song was originally written in English, though I am guessing, based on your background and reading the book, that you also speak Arabic and French. How and why did you decide to write Dune Song in English? And did you translate the work yourself into the French edition?

AMB: Yes, Dune Song was originally written in English. Though I speak French and Moroccan Arabic (Darija) fluently, my imagination has always constructed itself in English. Growing up in Morocco as of the age of eight, I considered English to be my secret garden — the material of which my invented worlds were made. I had often thought that my return to the United States, at the age of 18 to attend Wellesley, was an attempt to find a home for my words. Even today, living in Paris, I continue to write in English.

I chose not to translate Dune Song into French myself, primarily because my French does not resemble my English — it exists in a different sphere belonging more to the spoken word. I wanted a translator to show me what my literary voice might sound like in French. I have done a fair amount of literary translation, but always from French into English, and not the other way around. Nonetheless, as you rightly noted, I have actively wanted to give my readers the illusion of hearing Arabic and French when reading Dune Song. I like to refer to this as creating Linguistic Polyphony: were the base language (in this case English) is made to sing in different cords. I think my French translator, Laurence Larsen was able to reverse this process and give the French text the illusion of hearing English and Arabic.

EB: In addition to your research, what other books influenced or inspired Dune Song? My fiancé, Richie, happened to be reading the Dune chronicles by Frank Herbert while I was reading your book, and then I laughed to myself when I saw you reference them on page 56.

AMB: The Dune Chronicles, of course! Picture this: a teenage me reading Frank Herbert’s Dune while waiting at the Odaïa Café on the old pirate ramparts of Rabat while my mother was shopping in the medina. I read twelve volumes of the Chronicles. Reading voraciously in English while growing up in Morocco was one of the ways for me to always ensure that my imagination was powering up in English. You’ll note that I give Jeehan this same passion for books. Many of the books that she turns to in her time of need are the books that have shaped who I am and how I see the world: Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Allende’s House of Spirits, Okri’s The Famished Road, Calvino’s The Colven Vicount, Aristotle’s The Poetics, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry…

EB: What are you currently reading, and/or what have you read recently that you’ve really enjoyed? What would you recommend we all read while laying low in quarantine?

AMB: I’m one of those people who reads many books (fiction, non-fiction, and poetry) at the same time. If I look at my night stand right now, here are the titles I see: in English — Hannah Assadi’s Sonora, Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, Du Pontes Peebles’ The Air You Breathe, and Margo Berdeshevsky’s poetry collection: Before the Drought, in French — Santiago Amigorena’s Le Ghetto intérieur, and Mahi Binebine’s La Rue du pardon.

In quarantine, Margo’s poetry has provided me with a level of stillness and insight I did not realize I longed for — and has seemed prescient in its understanding of humanity’s relationship to our planet.

EB: On your website, you mention you are also a filmmaker, an artist, and an educator in addition to being a writer. How do you think working in those other fields/mediums influences your writing? How do you think being a writer influences those other pursuits?

AMB: Writing as an act of meaning making is the mantra I constantly recite to my students. In my moment of greatest despair, they echoed it back to me. Why do I allow myself this type of discourse with my students? Because as a high school teacher of English and Literature, my speciality is the teaching of writing. While at Columbia University, though enrolled in a Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction at the School of the Arts, I had a fellowship at Columbia Teachers College, specifically with The Writing Project lead by Lucy Calkins (today known as The Reading and Writing Project). There I worked as a staff developer in the NYC Public School system and conducted research that contributed to Lucy’s seminal text, The Art of Teaching Writing. Over the years my students have helped me realize why we bother to tell stories and how elemental writing is to our very humanity. I could never divorce my writing from the act of teaching.

Regarding cinema, as I mentioned earlier, my frustration with how to translate multi-lingual texts into one language is what originally drove me to experiment with film. What I discovered as I dove deeper into the medium, was how key images are to the act of storytelling. Once I returned to writing literature, I retained this awareness of the centrality images in the transmission of lived experience. I smile when readers of Dune Song point out how cinematic my writing is — film and fiction should not stand in opposition one to the other.

EB: Writing a book takes a really long time and can be a really lonely and frustrating experience. Who did you rely on for support during the process? Other writers? Family? Friends? Fellow Wellesley grads? What does your writing/artistic community look like?

AMB: It took me over ten years to write and publish Dune Song. The tale of how it came to be is almost worthy of a novel itself. When things were at their most arduous, I went back to reading Tillie Olsen’s Silences, about how challenging it is for women to write and publish — it was a book I had been asked to read the summer before my Freshman year. Though I won’t tell the full story here — I must acknowledge that without the support of my sister, Yasmina, and my parents, as well as essential and amazing women in my life, many of them from Wellesley, Dune Song would never have seen the light of day. Sally Katz ‘78, has been my fairy-godmother, all good things come to me from her, plus other members of the astounding Wellesley Club of France, especially its current president, my dear classmate, Pamela Boulet ‘87. I must thank my earliest Wellesley friend, Piya Chatterjee ’87, who plowed through voluminous and flawed drafts. Karen E. Smith ’87, who reminded me of my creative abilities when I seemed to have forgotten, and who brought her daughter to my London book launch. Dawn Norfleet ’87 who collaborated with me on my film work when we were both at Columbia, and Rebecca Gregory ’87, with who was first in line to buy Dune Song at WH Smith Rue de Rivoli, and Kimberly Dozier ’87, who raised a glass of champagne with me in Casablanca when the book first came back from the printers. The list of those who helped me get this far and who continue to help me as I forge ahead is long - and for this I am grateful… writing is a thrilling but difficult endeavor, and without community and friendship, it becomes harder.

And since the book has been published, the Wellesley community has been there for me in ways big and small, even in this time of COVID. Out in Los Angeles, Judy Lee ’87 inspired her fellow alums to read Dune Song by raffling a copy off a year ago — and now, they have invited me to speak to their club on a Zoom get-together in June!

EB: Speaking of Wellesley, and since this is an interview for Wellesley Underground, were there any Wellesley professors or staff or courses that were particularly formative to you as a writer? Anyone you want to shout out here?

AMB: When a student at Wellesley, a number of Professors where particularly supportive of me and my work. At the time, I was a Political Science and Anthropology major; Linda Miller and Lois Wasserspring of the Poli-Sci department were influential and present even long after I graduated, and Sally Merri and Anne Marie Shimony of the Anthropology department helped shape the way I see the world.

Any mention of my early Wellesley influences must include Sylvia Heistand, at Salter International Center, and my Wellesley host-mother, Helen O’Connor — who still stands in for my mother when needed!

More recently, Selwyn Cudjoe and the entire Africana Studies Department, have become champions of my work. Thanks to their enthusiasm for Dune Song, I was able to present the novel at Harambee House last October and engage in dialogue about my work with current Wellesley students and faculty. This was a remarkable experience which gave me a beautiful sense of closure regarding the ten-year project that has been Dune Song. Merci Selwyn!

I speak of closure, but my Dune Song journey continues, just before the pandemic, thanks to the Wellesley Club of France and Laura Adamczyk ’87, I was able to meet President Johnson and give her a copy of Dune Song!

EB: Is there anything else you’d like the Wellesley community to know about Dune Song, your other projects, or you in general?

AMB: Way back at the start of the millennium, when the Wellesley awarded me the Mary Elvira Stevens Traveling Fellowship, I set out to excavate family secrets and explore the non-verbal ways in which generation upon generation of mothers transmit traumatic memories to their daughters. My research took me many more years than expected, but I am now in the process of writing that novel, along with a doctoral thesis on Trauma and Memory.

In conjunction with this second novel, I am working with Rebecca Gregory ’87, to produce a large-scale installation piece exploring the manner in which the stories of women’s lives are measured and told.

EB: Thank you for being part of Wellesley Writes It!

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spnfanficpond · 5 years

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September 2019 Pond LiveChat Recap

We had a great time chatting with @manawhaat today! Thank you so much for joining us, even though you were busy!!

Today, a bunch of us got together and talked about inspiration and writer’s block! We all had good ideas that were discussed! A rundown of the chat, as well as general Pond news, is below the cut!

To start us off, Mana shared a link to this ask that was recently presented to the Pond. The question was that a professor said that there was no such thing as a muse or writer’s block. The answers given by some of our Big Fish are terrific! All seem to agree that the ideas of a muse and writer’s block are valid, no matter what you call them. Digging beneath the surface to ask what is causing the writer’s block or the inspiration can help to get you past what’s stopping you and get you writing, again.

@mrswhozeewhatsis (Michelle)shared a link to a tweet by Robbie Thompson. She had asked him for tips on getting inspired or getting past blocks when the words just don’t want to flow. He responded by saying, “write from emotion: what scares you, angers you, etc. and make writing a habit. sit down once a day, same time if you can & just get to work. got nothing? write until it comes. inspiration is great but not always reliable.”

When looking for ideas from other famously prolific writers, this post from Neil Gaiman came up. In it, Mr. Gaiman says that blaming writer’s block gives you something to blame, but it’s usually a combination of laziness, perfectionism and getting stuck. He goes on to encourage writers to not accept writer’s block as a insurmountable thing and figure out the cause so you can get past it.

@mostly-shawn (Maayan): My professor's take on writer's block is that writer's block doesn't exist because there's no such thing as "not knowing". What we call "writer's block" is simply being distracted by other things like shopping lists and to-do lists and everything else, so in order to overcome "writer's block" you just need to sit and write everything that's in your head and clear out your brain space to allow yourself access to the idea. And in terms of muse, she doesn't believe in muse because no work is perfect on the first draft and because it's not perfect, you can't have had a muse.

If anyone wants to read her book it's called "To Tell The Truth" and it's about how to write creative nonfiction. Obviously, that's not what we're all in the business of, but it's a good read for all genres.

Everyone seemed to agree that this professor has a strange view on muse, but she’s got a point about writer’s block. A muse can be anything that inspires you to write, and nothing anyone ever writes is perfect right out of the gate, so her perfection theory makes no sense to us. Mana disagreed with part of her thoughts on writer’s block, though.

Mana: I think she has a point of clearing your head in order to get into your 'writing groove' but insisting that there isn't such a thing as 'not knowing' sounds ridiculous to me, specifically, a person who has not known what she wanted to do with a certain rpf fic for over 4 years.

@katehuntington mentioned that sometimes she feels like she knows exactly what she wants to write, but when she sits down, the words just won’t come. She can’t get them down. Michelle said her Fibromyalgia sometimes causes similar cognitive difficulties. The words just aren’t there. (If anyone has read Rob Benedict’s chapter in Family Don’t End With Blood, the feeling is described there beautifully.)

Michelle: Physical and mental issues can definitely affect creativity. When you're struggling to do the basic activities of daily living, creativity is not your body's priority.

Q: So, what do you guys do when you hit a block?

Kate: Accept it. LOL. I take a lot of inspiration out of what I've written already, if that makes sense. I revisit stories, go over what made those work. And I read back on the feedback I had from readers too. Those can be super inspiring.

Maayan: Yeah, I basically just say "alrighty then" and continue on with my life and push the work as far out of my head as possible.

Mana: Write some flaming garbage. (Michelle added, “Crap makes good compost.”) I get through as much as I can, plot wise. if I'm stuck between point b and c, but know where I'm going from point d to e then I just put down anything I might want to happen between point b and c and then move on. There is no rule that says writing needs to happen in a linear form so if I get stuck, I move on.

Michelle: I once heard Robbie Thompson talk about writing at a seminar, and he said that if he's really stuck, he'll take a walk, get outside, get some fresh air, clear his head. Just change his scenery, really. Did you know that when you move from one room to another, your brain kind of ties off the thought you had in the first room and opens up another thread in the second room? It's why so many people arrive in a room and then forget why they're there. (This is why carrying something from one room to the next can help you remember why you're in that second room.) Sometimes, that's what you need. Make your brain jump out of the rut it was in. Write in a different room, on a different medium (paper instead of tablet, tablet instead of computer, etc)

Mana: I haven't tried writing on a different medium, unless you count someone else's computer instead of your own, but the change of scenery does help. listening to different music instead of your usual tunes helps.

Maayan: I think better when I pace so when if I'm trying to figure out a storyline I pace, but when I have the storyline but I can't make my fingers do the word thing on the magical typing box I'm just stuck for good usually. (A suggestion was made that she could try speech-to-text software to help her get past that!) Mana records voice notes to her phone to be transcribed later.

Kate and Michelle both said that having ideas isn’t the problem for them, most of the time. The problem is usually having the focus to sit down and translate them to paper.

Mana: Watching a movie you know well enough to tune in and out of is a big one for me. Literally any time I NEED to do something in my life, I put on Pride and Prejudice bc I know the film so well and love the score, but it's my ultimate focus movie. I can tune out and write or file taxes or whatever the fuck and tune back in for him to hold her hand helping her in the carriage and then tune back out and repeat this process while the movie plays 6 times in a row.

Michelle: I can't have anything else playing. No music, no TV, no nothing. However, I've discovered that a lava lamp does wonders! When we lived in our apartment in Chicago, I had a great view of the planes coming into O'Hare, and it was an east-facing view, so I saw the sunrise after a long night of writing so many times. My creativity dropped way down when we moved and I no longer had a view to stare at. So, I bought a glitter lava lamp. I love staring into that thing. And then I put up twinkling fairy lights over my desk. Something about that got me going, again.

Maayan: I use my fish and snail as a lava lamp with the same effect.

Q: What do you do when you’re in the flow, and everything is going great, but you suddenly just stop? You know where you want to go, but you’re suddenly just stuck for no clear reason?

Michelle: I've discovered, and this may not be true for anyone else, but I've discovered that it usually means I've screwed up a little ways back. If I go back to where I last felt like everything was going well, and rethink everything I wrote since then, I've usually made a mistake in that section, and it needs to be rewritten. Whether I've made a character do something that's not in their character, or I've added something (or taken something away) that isn't right, whatever it is, it's in that section. If I just delete it and start writing from the previous good spot, I get going again.

Kate: Yeah. I've read somewhere that when you're stuck, you should go back at least 5 lines and start over. Put those lines away, pick it up again.

Mana: I think that's a big difference between us, Michelle. You can pinpoint a spot where things go awry and back up, cut off what isn't working and restart. I am a stubborn bitch so even if I see that something isn't really working, if I like it even the slightest bit, I refuse to get rid of it or change it. And those are the instances where I 'pick fights' with you and resist your input when you're beta reading for me. Am I the only one that does that? And if so, how are you all able to justify letting go of something that doesn't quite work but you've grown attached to?

Michelle: It’s perfectly okay to set bits aside and use them in other fics! Timestamps. Put it in another fic. Make it a one shot! I cut SO MUCH from Non-Trad, but I loved those parts SO MUCH, and that's how the Timestamps were born. They really didn't fit into the story well. They made it bloated. So I published them separately. Now, finding that I've gone off the rails entirely makes it easier for me to go back and get rid of something.

Q: Tips that we haven’t mentioned, yet?

Kate: Ask for help. Have a beta look it over, or whoever is interested and might be able to add to it.

Michelle: When looking for inspiration, always go back to the source material. It's not lazily, obsessively binge-watching the same show over and over, it's RESEARCH.

Mana: Someone asked what I do to get over it and I said: when I experience writer’s block or when the character I’m trying to write isn’t cooperating with me and I can’t get my brain to function I try to distract myself with something else or another character. Try watching an episode with your character in it, get a refreshed feel of how they move, talk, interact with other characters, draw from the episode or scenarios that you can fill in where the ep didn’t. Or, take ques from other characters, write about someone else for a bit so your mind has a break and time to sort itself out, then go back to what you were working on.

Another way to get past it is to read other’s work. It may inspire you, make you realize that the story you wanted to tell this way can be told a different way, or give you the kick you need.

My best answer to this: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

When the block hits and you have zero inspiration or motivation, write about anything and everything. Start reading and watching new things to see if it’ll spark something, check out Tumblr and users you don’t follow to get your eyes on some fresh content, write a dramatic scene of you sitting on the couch to hear the doorbell ring and let the suspense grow until you open it to find a pizza man there when you specifically did not order a pizza. Writing through it may spark something, and if not, my best suggestion would be to read. Read your old stuff and that of others, read a new book, read an article on how to beat writer’s block, read through the writer resources tag at the @spnfanficpond…

Mana also gifted us with these lovely links:

Writer’s block app that won’t let you do anything else until you’ve reached your goal.

A lovely gif beautifully encapsulating exactly how writer’s block feels.

General Pond Updates and Reminders

What we’ve got cooking up next: Not much, at the moment, since everyone is busy, so we’re just trying to keep up with the day-to-day at the moment! Our to do list is still long, though, and will not be neglected forever!

Reminders:

Angel Fish Award nominations are accepted all month long! No need to wait to tell us how much you liked a fellow Fish’s work! IF YOU HAVE SENT IN A NOMINATION, BUT HAVE NOT RECEIVED A PRIVATE MESSAGE CONFIRMING WE RECEIVED IT, WE DIDN’T GET IT. Be sure to use Submit instead of Ask!

Don’t forget to submit your stories to be posted to the blog! When your stories are on the blog, then they are easier to nominate for Angel Fish Awards!

SPNFanFicPond Season 14 Weekly Episode Challenge - Even though season 15 is just around the corner, these prompts will still always be open for you to use! Remember, there’s no deadline for submissions! Just tag the Pond and @mrswhozeewhatsis in your post!

Say hi to August’s New Members!

Check the Pond CALENDAR to see when Big Fish will be in the Skype chat room/discord general channel and other Pond and SPN events are happening! Know of something that’s not on the calendar, send us an ask or submission with the deets info details! The calendar offers a lot of features, such as showing you when things are in your own timezone! Since we’re an international group, that’s a definite plus!!

We don’t have a topic or speaker set up for October’s event, yet, so if there’s something you want to talk about, or someone you want to talk to, LET US KNOW!

#spnfanficpond live chat #chat room #let's chat #pond chat #THE CHAT ROOM #chat recap

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illthdar · 5 years

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11/11/11 Tag

Tagged by @silver-wields-a-pen

1. Who is your favourite oc?

To be honest, I flip-flop a lot on that one. Generally, it is the OC that is being tormented or experiencing the most growth in whatever character arc in the Illthdar series.

2. What themes do you struggle writing?

I struggle with fight scenes and romance. Fight scenes because it calls for a snappier text style that my over-wordy self has a hard time balancing. Romance because I crave a specific brand of romance that isn’t often depicted in fiction - the slow kind that builds very carefully over months/years. The sexual tension, the overdone tropes, associated with romance just kind of make my toes curl or make me want to throw books across the room and scream “you aren’t in love yet!” Writing my own version while still adding those snippets that readers crave - the glances, the fumbling, the derp - is hard for me.

3. What’s been the best thing about writing your wip?

The world exploration and the slow unfolding of events and discovery of life on in the world as a whole. I took to writing Illthdar from the perspective of an immigrant - someone who sees the new place they are living with eyes wide open and with none of the rose-tint that natives would have, as well as that naivete and innocent trust that the people around them mean well. This perspective lends itself greatly to the steady exposure to the evil that can be found under the surface of any world, but is especially compounded in the world of Illthdar.

4. What themes has your favourite story included?

The Illthdar series covers several themes: prejudice, platonic/romantic love, good vs. evil, power and corruption, survival, courage/heroism, and war

5. What time of day do you prefer writing?

I typically write in the evenings, after the kiddo has gone to sleep - which is typically around 8PM - and I normally call a quits at 10PM.

6. What’s your favourite relationship trope to write?

The comrade or friends relationship is my favourite to explore. I feel like I don’t see enough of those outside of the friends-to-lovers trope in fiction and I like to explore as many versions of it as I can.

7. What detail about your ocs has surprised you?

(Warning, these are relating largely to later books in the series) The detail about Date Toshiiro’s fingers was not something I originally thought was so important but later turned into something much bigger. Tundra’s past and his life’s mission also took me by surprise somewhat. Seth’s arc is something I don’t think anyone could have anticipated. Magnilla also takes some interesting turns. Vyxen, for me, is especially heartbreaking. Scyanatha’s progress wasn’t something I really saw coming. The same could be said for Nyima. Abaddon’s arc is hints upon hints upon hints of so much stuff that I think will be really awesome to see when it’s all laid out in the end. Zercey/Lerki/Inari have so far been largely predictable in the writing process, though there have been legitimate times where I’ve wondered about where they’re headed.

That’s just the main cast! There’s a ton of things I found interesting about the secondary characters in the series, but it would take forever to write it.

8. Thoughts on including romance in other genres?

I’m going to be real: the suspension bridge trope that’s seen in horror bothers me. Romance in horror - where X character feels forms a very quick and strong bond with Y character is creepy on so many levels, I don’t even know where to start.

9. Favourite writing snack?

There isn’t any one specific snack I’ll reach for when I write. Normally, I’ll have something before I’ve sat down so I’m not usually nibbling as I go. When I do have something, it’s usually something like a fried egg sandwich with some token bits of salad greens.

10. Favourite villain trope?

The villain in waiting. This person has been there this whole time, they’ve been bugging you forever to the point that you’ve convinced yourself they’re just there for the comedy relief but, surprise! They’re gonna cut you up and they are absolutely not sorry. This is the person who, in hindsight, you should have seen it coming, but was so long in waiting to make their move, the only emotion you have left to give is the desire to have gotten to them first.

11. Best scene you’ve written?

Without getting into spoilers for future books, the best scene is a toss up in Guardians of Las between the scene with Vyxen and Scy emerging from the forest during the battle or Tundra and Nyima’s conversation on the balcony.

Tagged by @bigmoodword

1. using one sentence summaries, can you tell me about your wips?

Illthdar: When everything defies logic and reason, nothing and no one is safe.

2. what inspired them?

A lot of things inspired the Illthdar series: common fantasy book/game tropes, classic literary works (J. R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, H.P. Lovecraft, J. M. Barrie...), my life as an immigrant, society today on a whole.

3. which of your ocs do you most identify with?

While not specifically my OC (she was originally designed by @guardians-of-las-vyxen), I can relate very strongly to the emotions she experiences in the series. When I write, I try to put a little of my own humanity into all of my characters, in terms of qualities, people who know me personally and have read the first book see that that reflected strongest in Zercey.

4. if you’ve ever cried while reading, which book cued the waterworks?

Honestly, nothing will crush a heart more than Pamela Denise Smart’s “Who's Afraid of the Teddy Bear's Picnic?: A Story of Sexual Abuse and Recovery Through Psychotherapy” Massive trigger warnings for anyone who has experienced childhood sexual abuse, however. An added plus to it was that it’s also a coming-out book as the author happens to be a Lesbian.

5. how do you conduct research for your wips and what’s the most interesting thing you’ve discovered in said research?

I have a terrible habit of doing things to characters first, then researching the potential outcomes after the fact. Were some of the OCs real, they would not like me at all. I won’t give spoilers, however. That said, I think this is a better way to write a bit of reality into a story: the outcomes are not pre-scripted, just as anyone’s life journey is never linear. Forcing the OCs to “deal with” whatever consequence without the benefit of having an desired outcome in mind, puts character and reader on the edge of their seats, I feel, because the threat is real.

6. thus far, which scene has been the most difficult to write?

Again, without spoilers for the future books, for Guardians of Las the hardest scene would have been the mock-fight between High Elder Culvers and High Elder Trenfal.

7. which of your ocs do you like the least?

Currently, as it does depend on who is feeding my sadism, where I am at in writing the series it I can’t decide if I hate Maraxis or Lord Rhett, the most. Maraxis is every bit the villain that you have to live with in life - which makes him frustrating to an extreme degree. Lord Rhett, on the other hand, is the self-righteous, might-equals-right, stereotypical kind of evil - the cliche villain that we don’t have to look at very hard to recognise.

8. which pov and tense do you prefer to write in?

I like third person limited. It allows me to explore the minds of different characters on a deeply, keep the cards to the plot close to my chest out of open sight to the readers, and help the readers connect to the world without a million I-statements.

9. do you write poetry?

In my late teens, I tried, but ultimately saw the paper fit to use only as kindling.

10. who is your writing role model?

Gosh, I don’t even know. I don’t think I have one. I think the narrative voice of each author has its pros and cons, so it’s hard to point to just one and say “I want to be like that.”

11. if you could give your younger writer self some advice, what would it be?

Revision isn’t a dirty word, nor is the suggestion of it a blemish upon your name. It’s a compliment; the one giving the critique sees in you potential to grow and improve. And that is worth everything.

Tagging: @aslanwrites, @bigmoodword, @english-undergrad, @elizabethsyson, @garrettauthor, @haileyavril, @igotablankpage, @imaghostwriter, @jessawriter, @kobalt-ink, @mvcreates

My questions for you:

What was the very first story you ever wrote?

What does your ideal writing space look like?

How long do you give yourself to research for your WIP?

What do you think is your greatest weakness as a writer?

What do you think is your greatest strength?

Name one of your bad habits as a writer.

Where do you find inspiration for your OCs?

What OC would like you the most?

What OC would like you the least?

Name something you do that you think no other writer does.

Have you ever done NaNoWriMo?

#11/11/11 #11/11/11 tag #11/11/11 meme #writing community #Illthdar #guardians of las #tagged #confessions of a writer #illthdar confessions

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