#my perfectionism will not let me write until it's perfect but it has to be perfect immediately and since it's not I can't do it

[chishiyasleftnut]

Hi!

I LOVE YOUR WRITING SO MUCH!

Can I request a (funny) valentines day gone a bit wrong smut?

Hi there (｡♥‿♥｡) Happy (early) Valentine’s Day! I’ve learned that I really enjoy doing these seasonal fics haha, so thank you for suggesting it!

As for other requests: I am working on them! My semester has started and I’m still working on an exam from the last semester, so my schedule is PACKED. I will get to them, though!

Delayed Valentine's

🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 Warnings: Smut. Pairing: Chishiya x fem!reader.

Plot: Chishiya wants to surprise fem!reader with something special for Valentine’s Day, but his plans don’t go as expected.

2434 words. 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

If there was one thing Chishiya didn’t have a lot of experience with, it was romance. Sure, he was a pretty good flirter, charming anyone he set his mind out to charm, but this was different; this was you. He had already ‘charmed’ you. You were his, through and through, and had been so consistently for a while now, long enough that he even dared to call it love.

Even though showing love was completely new territory for him, it didn’t mean that he didn’t try. No, Chishiya had decided to try very hard, and seeing as Valentine’s Day was coming up, the timing couldn’t be better.

He knew that he could go the easy route: buy some roses, put on some sensual music, and make a romantic dinner just for the two of you, but that was almost too easy. You had probably had other boyfriends in the past who did that, so he knew he had to up his game. Simple wasn’t good enough, not when it came to you.

After researching online, he came up with the perfect plan: a romantic getaway. Just you, him, beautiful scenery, and no responsibilities. From what he could gather online, this was something that women loved, so he was pretty sure you would too. Then the organisation began: booking tickets to Okinawa, finding a beautiful and luxurious hotel, researching good restaurants in the area, and calling your boss to convince them to let you take a few days off. Luckily, it all went smoothly. The day prior he packed both of your bags with all the necessities and a few gifts. This would be great, he thought.

You didn’t learn of the plan until the night before and even then, he kept it annoyingly vague. You walked into your shared apartment wrapped in various winter garments to keep you warm in the cold, Tokyo February weather. Chishiya greeted you at the entrance, leaned against the wall.

“We’re going somewhere tomorrow.”

“What, after work?” you asked sounding both surprised and happy. You were well aware that tomorrow was Valentines Day but didn’t expect Chishiya to remember (or care).

“No,” he said with a smirk. “You’re not going to work. We’re going to the airport at 7am.”

You were just about to argue - you couldn’t just skip work, what was he thinking? - when he pulled you closer, his lips grazing your forehead.

“I have sorted everything out, don’t worry,” he whispered. “Just trust me.”

-----------

7am the next morning you were hauled into a taxi, still half asleep while Chishiya and the taxi driver loaded the trunk with your luggage. For the entire drive, Chishiya sat beside you with an arm around you, kissing your temple and whispering into your ear about how he was going to spoil you for the entire trip.

To your surprise, Chishiya was likewise as cuddly the entire way through airport security, despite him otherwise seldomly participating in PDA. His hand rarely left your waist, only letting you go to pass through the metal detector and immediately touching you again once he joined you on the other side.

Due to Chishiya’s perfectionism, you had plenty of time to peruse the various airport stores before it was time to board the plane, looking at everything from perfumes to tacky souvenirs. Every time you tried to make a purchase, Chishiya would pull out his credit card before you even had a chance to pay yourself. He was taking Valentine’s Day seriously, it seemed, but you obviously weren’t complaining. It was nice being pampered.

Having finished your shopping, Chishiya led you to a nearby flight board to check what gate you had to proceed to.

“Ah fuck,” you heard him mumble. Curiously you followed his line of sight and noticed the big, red letters saying DELAYED displayed next to your flight number.

“That’s okay,” you quickly said to calm Chishiya down. “It’s probably just a little bit late.”

Oh boy were you wrong.

10 minutes turned into 30, which before you knew it had turned into 4 hours spent on uncomfortable metal airport seats. Chishiya looked particularly tense, his leg anxiously bouncing, and his jaw clenched - perhaps because his well-throughout plan was crumbling before his eyes and he wasn’t entirely sure how to remedy the situation.

This was definitely not how either of you wanted to spend Valentine’s Day. The day was supposed to be spent at a beach resort with a fruity drink in hand, not at Haneda Airport’s terminal 1. But here you were, facing two choices: either you went home and cancelled the rather expensive trip, or you stayed waiting at the gate for God knows how long.

It was clear to you that it was those two choices that Chishiya was internally trying to make sense of. If you left now, he could drive you to a spa somewhere and then maybe get you dinner after. That wouldn’t be a bad plan, but it would mean wasting a ton of money on non-refundable plane tickets and hotel reservations.

Chishiya groaned and leaned back on the uncomfortable chair. He rarely outwardly showed displeasure like that, but you couldn’t blame him. With his hand in yours, you began drawing circles on his palm with your thumb. The contact seemed to calm him down somewhat, his leg slowly quieting down and his jaw unclenching.

“It could be worse, you know?” you said softly, trying to make him feel better.

“How could it possibly be worse?” he sighed with closed eyes.

“I don’t know... Godzilla could be wrecking the airport? I could be pregnant? A lot of things could make it worse!”

Chishiya slowly opened his eyes to look at you like you were insane.

“Ah yes, the well-known, very realistic situation of a giant, radioactive lizard ruining our Valentine’s Day plans.” he said dryly. “As for the pregnancy thing: don’t even say it. You’ll jinx it and we’ll be stuck changing diapers for the next few years.”

His tone shut you up immediately. Normally he would at least chuckle a bit at your nonsensical words, but it didn’t seem like he had the spoons for humour right now. Unsure what else to do, you continued to draw circles on his palm until he closed his eyes again. 

You felt bad knowing that he had tried so hard to make you feel loved, just for everything to go wrong. At this point you didn’t even care about the trip to Okinawa, you just wanted him to feel as happy as he had intended to make you feel. The least you could do was make him relax a bit. And that’s when you had a lightbulb moment, causing you to lean in closer to him, your breath tickling his skin as you whispered.

“Let’s go to the bathroom.”

The blonde turned to look at you. Although he knew what your intentions were, he was still confused as to why you were suddenly in the mood for public sex. Surely failed plans wouldn’t get you in the mood.

“Come on,” you repeated with a smile, standing up and pulling Chishiya with you towards the nearest accessible bathroom.

Once inside, you locked the door and turned to look at Chishiya who still looked quite confused albeit now also a tad amused.

“May I ask why you’ve pulled me into a handicap stall?” he asked with a raised eyebrow and the faintest smile on his lips.

“Well 1) I’m terribly bored,” you laughed, causing Chishiya’s grin to widen too. “And 2) I can see how tense you are about this entire thing not going as you envisioned. I just want to tell you that it’s okay. I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Is that so?”

“Mm,” you hummed and nodded. “It was very sweet of you to plan all of this. So, thank you.”

With two confident steps, you walked closer to your boyfriend and wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling yourself in close to him. Without even thinking, Chishiya’s hands found their way around your waist, squeezing you slightly.

“Let’s just forget about the plane for a minute and celebrate Valentine’s Day anyway. What do you say?”

Chishiya didn’t respond with words, but the smile on his lips as he leaned in to close the small gap between you told you all you had to know: he was finally relaxing.

Your lips met in an at first tender kiss, completely transporting the both of you to another universe - one that wasn’t an ambiguously clean airport bathroom. The only thing you felt was Chishiya’s soft lips on yours and his strong hands squeezing around your waist. Your lips parted, begging for Chishiya to explore you fully which he did.

All you could feel, hear, smell, and taste was him as he took over every single one of your senses. He backed you towards the wall, pressing you up against it with his own body. His hands moved from your waist to roam around your body, going up and down the natural valleys of your curves and traversing every inch of you.

With his body pressed up against yours you couldn’t help but feel his hardening length prodding your abdomen, only getting harder and harder the more skin his hands covered. Swiftly, he hiked up your skirt and slid his hand down your underwear causing you to gasp at the sudden sensation.

Your arms tightened around his neck as Chishiya began circling your clit, making you wetter and wetter with each orbit. Instinctively, you felt him grind up against your body to provide any sort of relief from the uncomfortably tight tent that was forming in his pants.

Unwilling to wait longer than he had to, Chishiya quickly pulled down your underwear, letting them slide down your body until they reached the floor where you stepped out of them. With full access to you, he likewise as rapidly dropped his own pants to the floor, pulled one of your legs up around his waist, and teasingly ran his tip up and down your wet folds, coating both him and you in your arousal.

“You’re already so wet for me” he murmured smugly, satisfied with your bodily response to his touch. His words sent fire straight to your core, making you whimper for his touch.

“Please” you whispered breathlessly into his ear, pleading to feel him fully.

Chishiya didn’t waste even a second before he sunk his fat tip into your entrance, pushing his entirety into you until he bottomed out and pressed up against your cervix. His body twitched and his breath turned shaky as he got used to the feeling of your tight, wet walls hugging him, simultaneously begging him to stay right where he was and to begin fucking you.

And he did just that. With rhythmic movements he repeatedly thrusted in and out of you, sending both of you to heaven with every plunge his dick made into your wet core. The sounds of your moans and whimpers echoed through the tiled walls of the bathroom, the only other sound being that of skin hitting skin.

With your fingers intertwined in his blonde locks, and his fingertips strongly digging into the fat on your hips, you immediately became one with one-another, transforming into a single being whose only purpose in life was pleasure - and it was certainly succeeding at that task.

“I want to see that pretty ass of yours” Chishiya growled into your ear before pulling out of you and leaving you feeling terribly empty.

The emptiness didn’t last long, though. Chishiya swiftly spun you around and lead you towards the sink, pushing your upper body over the cold porcelain.

With both hands firmly on the sink to stabilise you, you made eye contact with Chishiya in the mirror as he lined himself up at your entrance and immediately pushed in, fucking into you so good that your vision went blurry. The pleasure made it so that you didn’t even notice that he leaned down over you, positioning his mouth right next to your ear.

“God, I love you,” he half whispered, half groaned.

You wanted to reply, to tell him ‘I love you’ back, but nothing intelligible came out of your mouth. Chishiya, as always, found both humour and pride in the condition you were in.

“Mm, what’s that darling?” he purred smugly. “Use your words.”

“L-love you t-t-too” you finally stammered out.

“Good girl.”

Chishiya fully stood up again allowing for deeper thrusts, effectively hitting your cervix each time. It was the perfect mix of pain and pleasure, making you crave more in the moment despite knowing you’ll regret the roughness later.

“Mmph, m’close,” you mewled as your core tightened around Chishiya. “Don’t stop.”

Before you knew it, one of Chishiya’s hand has snaked from your hip and down in between your legs, aiding along the rapidly approaching orgasm by playing with the needy bud.

You came hard; so hard that Chishiya had to cover your mouth with his free hand to not attract unwanted attention from the rest of the airport. Chishiya came not long after, his hips stuttering until he half-collapsed down over you as he spurted his seed deep into you, his shaky breath dancing against your sweaty skin.

For a moment you both stayed in that position, too fucked out to do anything else. Chishiya was the first to come out of the trance-like state, kissing you on the cheek to awake you too before he stood up and got dressed again. You followed suit shortly after, putting on your still damp underwear to cover your core, which was dripping with both of your arousal.

With his hand around your waist, Chishiya led you back out to the waiting section by your gate. There, you were both greeted by a welcomed sight.

“Seems like boarding is in 10 minutes,” Chishiya commented casually as if he hadn’t spent the last 4 or so hours on stressing about the delayed flight. Perhaps the sex had helped to calm his nerves a bit.

“Thank God,” you exclaimed with a chuckle before sitting down and going through your bags to find your passport and boarding pass. “We’ve waited ages.”

Chishiya chuckled too, happy that you didn’t seem to mind too much that his otherwise lovely Valentine’s Day plan hadn’t worked out as he envisioned it. He helped you find the documents, holding the both of yours in his hands. To show his gratitude for your carefree approach to the entire situation, he gently placed a kiss on the forehead before whispering.

“You’re going to love the hotel.”

#aib chishiya #chishiya smut #chishiya alice in borderland #chishiya shuntaro #chishiya x reader #shuntaro chishiya #aib #alice in borderland #chishiya x you #smut #valentines #valentines day #valentines story #alice in borderland chishiya shuntaro #alice in borderland chishiya #alice in borderland smut #chishiya #shuntaro chishiya x reader #shuntaro chishiya x you #aib shuntaro chishiya #aib chishiya shuntaro

[that-student-that-has-homework]

Heyy, I’ve been reading your wonderful one piece works for a while — and I couldn’t stop wondering how are you actually doing those magnificent headers?

Like… hello? The great quality, with additional 3D-alike details I could catch by my eyes? I got only Ibis Paint X on mobile, since I’m only a young man that literally two months ago went on a life-time ‘adventure’ of living alone in a small apartment.

In short — I got no money to pay for additional graphics/drawing programs, not yet at least

Hello!

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy my writing - I'm curious to know what's your favorite piece / part? Also I'm so happy you like my headers? Makes it feel worth it to spend time on them! :D

I have excellent news for you, I used a mix of Canva and Photopea. They're both FREE!

I'll be explaining the process for making these two kinda? The full tutorial is below the cut, to be courteous to the other folks, hope you don't mind?

Though I am hearing that Canva has given people some grief. But Photopea is just *chefs kiss*

If you've ever used photoshop, Photopea is essentially a free photoshop, and it even has the automation tools! An absolute lifesaver when you have multiple layers you want to export (but that's for larger projects not this)

I'm going to assume you have basic knowledge of layers in digital drawing programs for this. If anything isn't clear: ask me, I'll clarify!

//-------------------------------------------------

My General Process is:

Search for official art / images

bring it into canva / photopea

crop / arrange images to match the dimensions

select a thematic color that is associated with the character

separate the foreground from the background

mess around and test things until they work

//--------------------------------------------------

Given "Louder than Words" is the latest one I've made, I'll start with the process for it.

Dimensions: 3000 x 1055 px dpi: 96

//-------------------------------------------

Let's Get Crackin'

Alright let's grab some official art so we're not using any fanart without the artist's permission

I try to pick images that feel relevant enough to what I'm trying to make. For example: the image for the Matching banner shows the ASCE tattoo which is super important in that fic

2. Let's arrange them onto a banner where each individual image has the same/similar dimensions to the rest

That's probably part of why you like these. To a certain extent they have similar dimensions, so they have a uniformity that's pleasing to the eye! (It's not perfect because I threw perfectionism to the wind because this is tumblr not my portfolio) Tip: if you have 3 images and only 2 that have similar dimensions, and the 3rd one can't be cropped logically: but the one that's a different aspect ratio in the middle!

3. lets arrange them in such a way that the borders all feel like they're the same/equal width/thickness

you might find that you have to shrink some images for this, that's fine.

ALTERNATIVELY: if you're going with one image crop it so it's just the relevant info and it matches the dimensions (3000 x 1055 px)

We have our base! Now let's add some color, and direct the viewer's eye together!

4. pick out a color that you think matches your character / vibe - that color is going to be your background Given I'm making an Ace banner: orange is the color I'm going with

I went and named my layers for this lol. The numbers represent the opacity, and they aren't important. I just kept changing the opacity until I liked the way things looks. But here's the secret to the 3D feel:

Motionblur (+ moving it about)

Separating the foreground and background and dulling out the background.

I'm going to show you my process so you can see the effects, but first let's give you some quick skills:

//------------------------------------

SKILLS / THINGS I THINK ARE HELPFUL

//------- Select Similar

magic wand -> select something -> right-click -> select similar This works best when you have high contrast images (like manga panels that are black and white). You can select the black or the white areas. Depending on what works better for you. TIP! Invert selections with ctrl + i Say you know that you want to select everything but Ace's face in the second panel. Select his face with the magic wand then ctrl + i, and that's the only thing NOT selected

TIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please, please, please, duplicate your original image and work on the duplicate layer. This helps you SO much. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TIP! Check your selection tolerance! This could be why too little, or too much is being selected.

//------- The Move Tool

Shortcut key: v While the move tool is active, you can nudge the stuff on whatever layer with your arrow keys Shift + arrow key = 10 px move (generally)

//------- Layer Locking

1- Layer Blending Mode (see Overlay vs Multiply vs Normal) for how this can affect results) 2- Opacity: how see through it is / isn't 3- Lock Transparency (it's the little checker board) 4- Lock Layer (looks like a lock) 5- Lock icon that appears when anything on the layer has been locked More on 3 Lock Transparency: You can only paint on / modify what's on that layer. You CANNOT add anything to any area that is already transparent Here's a demo of what you can do with this power:

Here's the original Image - notice how it's just the lineart with a transparent background.

It's powerful: abuse it

//------- Overlay vs Multiply vs Normal

I think seeing this is the best way to visualize how different modes can affect the color.

//--------------------------------

Back to the Tutorial

!!I IMPORTANT NOTE !!

Please play around with the opacity slider to figure out what opacity works best for you on the multiple different layers we're about to make / work with. It's up to your own style to figure this out. Next: please feel free to not follow all of it. Add more layers, add less layers, take the base principles and go wild! :D

5. Separate the lineart from the background and save it as a new layer 6. Duplicate it and set it to overlay, or set it to overlay immediately

7. Duplicate that lineart layer twice and set the blending mode to overlay 8. lock transparency on the top one and change it to be a dark grey 9. Apply motion blur to both:

Main menu bar -> Filter -> Motion Blur I made it so that the grey layer was blurrier than the black layer

10. More them around a little to give it a "3D effect" as you called it.

It creates shadows under the lines - I was aiming for an effect similar to chromatic aberration (chromatic aberration is a valid way to add punch to your stuff too!)

So this is what things look like now - painful, but let's keep going

11. Duplicate the ORIGINAL / BASE lineart layer, that you DID not apply motion blur to -> set the blend mode to multiply (reduce opacity for it to actually take effect)

okay that's less painful here's what the layers look like right now:

let's bring more focus to Ace's face, and push the background farther away:

12. Use the magic wand tool to quickly select large areas of the faces / focal area / foreground and the lasso tool to refine things

TIP! Hold shift + click -> add to selection Hold Alt + click -> subtract from selection

13. On a new layer with blending mode -> lighten, fill that selection to be white

If you look at it, you'll notice that it is ALREADY starting to draw our attention to his face, but the background is kinda aggressive, so let's dim that down

TIP! Right-click on the gradient tool to find the paint-bucket tool

TIP! Sample All Layers: Turning this option off makes it so that you only work with the content on THAT specific layer. Turning it on makes it so that it is working while taking all other layers into consideration.

14. ctrl + click on the "white foreground" layer to select the contents of that specific layer (pink thing is your mouse)

15. ctrl + i to invert selection and ON A NEW LAYER (layer mode -> multiply) fill that with a complementary color

16. I did one last thing where I took the original base (before we separated the lineart) and added it to the very top and played with the opacity to get something less in your face (layer blend mode was set to NORMAL)

And that's it!

More considerations that I take:

I want the banner to be "thin" or not square, so it doesn't take up too much screen real estate on people's devices

I don't want readers having to scroll too much to get to my writing (which is the whole point of the post, let's not waste their time making them look for things)

I want the banner content to be relevant enough?

ie: with Matching: I wanted the ASCE tattoo to be visible. With matching I wanted Ace to not look too happy in some of them.

I'm also trying to avoid spoilers, I hated getting things spoiled, so I'm trying to be careful that the images I pick don't spoil anything really.

Congrats on starting life on your own! I did that whole living by myself thing too! Tip: keep the pantry stocked with lentils, beans, pastas, baking essentials, rice. They really come in a clutch when you're hungry.

#photopea resources #photopea psd #tutorial #tutorials #tumblr banner #photoshop #photoshop tutorial #digital art #fuck adobe #adobe photoshop

[gtunesmiff]

What is the single biggest mistake writers make?

They're ants when they should be spiders.

Let me explain... Here's how most people approach writing a song:

They write on a section;

Once they're happy with it, they move on to the next one;

They continue in this way until all sections are written

I call this the "ant approach", because it follows a clear path from A to B. You start somewhere, and you finish one thing after the other until you end up somewhere.

t seems plausible. We like clear-cut processes like this. There's something soothing in formulas like this.

Here's the problem: this process doesn't work

(or at least it makes your life a lot harder than it needs to be)

Why? Let me explain it from the lyrics perspective (most writers have an easier time seeing the issue here).

For decades, here's how I used to write my lyrics:

Verse I: I got this! Man, some of these lines sound so cool!

Pre-Chorus: Starting to run out of ideas here... I guess I'll have to lower my standards somewhat.

Chorus: Right, chorus time. Time for a summary of everything I already wrote... well, if I'm honest, I don't quite know what it means myself...

Verse II: Ugh, I hate this! Why does lyric writing have to be so hard? What haven't I said yet? And what else rhymes with "broken"? I wonder what ChatGPT would make of this.

Chorus: Gosh, this makes even less sense now, but I'm so used to this chorus that I don't want to change it anymore.

Bridge: Maybe I'll just do a "who-oh" type section or repeat the same phrase over and over.

Chorus: Please don't ask me what my song is about, because it has so many layers that even I don't know (and honestly, maybe it's about nothing).

Recognizable?

Well, this happens in music, too, it's just that most writers don't recognize it there (probably because they don't know it any other way).

What's the alternative?

I present: The Spider process.

Consider the spider web:

We don't care where the spider began crafting it.

We don't care that it didn't look like a web for the first few hours.

We don't even care that the spider had to undo some of its work.

All that matters is that all the right connections were made at some point during the process and that the spider ended up with a great, working web.

The Spider Process doesn't work from A to B like the ant, it starts with a rough version and iterates on it over many drafts.

(And if you're not slapping your forehead yelling "of course!" right now, let me elaborate because this makes a MASSIVE, MASSIVE difference.)

Instead of fabricating your song as you go (which makes it easy to lose focus, lyrically and musically), you start with a rough draft.

Your goal is NOT to write and finish a section - it's to write the ENTIRE song, and quickly.

And if you think your song's not going to be good at that point: You're right! Your first draft is going to suck!

But that's the beauty of it: You can write something that sucks! And you know how to make something terrible better.

Think about it, what's more fun, what's easier: writing perfectionism... or making something bad a little better?

The Ant Process sets you up for failure because every single thing you write needs to be great. You don't move on until your section (your line, your sound) is perfect.

The Spider Process on the other hand sets you up for success because with your first draft, you're not trying to change the world. You're just trying to write something. You're having fun, you're fooling around.

The quality comes from rewriting your draft and iterating on your ideas. You're approaching perfection step by step instead of having to write something perfect right off the bat!

So when I write lyrics now, I don't write them from start to finish and line by line, I write a few words here, a few words there. A little for the verse, a little for the chorus, get an idea for the pre-chorus, then jump to the bridge, and so on... that's how a spider works: little by little, weaving that web, until it all comes together.

Here's another way to look at it that might help:

Don't think of your song as a blank page or a void where you have to create everything from scratch. Not only is it unhelpful, it's also not true.

Instead, think of writing as shaping a statue out of a giant block of marble. As Michelangelo said: “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

Fun fact: the word decide comes from latin "decidere", literally "to cut off". By writing down a line, by recording a riff, by picking a chord progression, you're getting rid of everything your song is NOT. You're cutting off your options. You're not "creating", you're deciding what your song is.

This is one of several basic principles that have shaped the process I use now, what I call the 24-Hour Song. I wrote my last album of 15 songs in 14 days (6 hour days), and it's the best music I've ever written. I wouldn't have been able to do that a few years ago (it used to take me MONTHS to finish a song).

If you want to be able to do this, too (maybe you're a dad like me or you have a full time job on the side), keep reading my emails. I'll show you how you can write your best songs at record speed, too.

Stay gefährlich,

Friedemann

Holistic Songwriting

[baconcolacan]

@letmeaskdanielaquestion I hope you dont mind but I’m posting this because its impossible for me to answer fully in the replies. And I count this as another ask so just in case someone else has something similar to ask they can look to this one :] Also thank you again for the previous kind words!

And, hrm…about writing, yes I did write a lot before regimen, but its far FAR from being any good. Thankfully most of my early works have never seen the light of day (because they’re in a now dead and deleted fb group) and the ones that did never got off the ground and is lost in ff.net. I was a horrible, horrible, little goblin of a writer and a total weeb. If you cant imagine in, just know that I used stuff like “Kya~!” in the writing……..yeah, I’m choking from embarrassment how did you know?

I also understand the perfectionism bit btw. I’m diagnosed with OCD, and my brand of OCD makes me obsessed with perfection among other things, to the point where I risk bodily harm to achieve it. It took me years of therapy and medication to overcome it, so I understand giving up when you feel something isnt up to your standards. The best advice I can give is this:

When writing, your first draft is just that, your first draft, it doesnt matter if there are grammatical errors and wonky dialogue, its there for you to have fun with and go wild on, word vomiting whatever you feel is the best next sentence. Personally, it feels cathartic to put down all my thoughts on the paper instead of letting them fester in my head, at least its out and not bugging me from within my own mind. I dont sweat the details of my first draft, I just need the words out of my head and physically there so it doesnt bother me as much. Trust me, ideas love to nip and yap at any creative’s heels until they make them real, only then will you have your peace and quiet.

And if you want more order? Before your first draft, make a skeleton of your story, put down the events that happen in each chapter in bullet points. I assume you’ve read chapter 1 of Regimen already so I’ll give my chapter skeleton as an example:

Regimen: Act 1 Outlines

Ch1 - Escape

* Pick up from Armistice. Tom is stumbling through the woods trying to get back to base

* Introduce some unit mates and their relationships with Tom

* Tom hides the fact that the General is dead + his encounter with Tord

* Peace treaty is aired. Things go horribly wrong (Tord is a bastard snake here, remember that Neil)

* Tom announces his intention to escape Norway. The others follow.

* Add context to the world and the state of Norway at the moment, have Tom reflect on his relationship with Tord compared to others. (Hes wrong btw, he ***I erased this next part because the note spoils something***)

* The escape ends in tragedy. Most of the unit is destroyed.

And for inspo? I always suggest different media: books, shows, movies etc etc. Analyze them, see how the plot flows, what works and what doesn’t, how does the story progress? Do they use flashbacks? How often? Exposition? How much? etc etc.

But ah, take my advice with a grain of salt. I’m a professional visual artist, I’m just a hobbyist when it comes to writing ^^;

#asks #letmeaskdanielaquestion #regimen ao3 #Its late here now so I’m going to bed #night you guys~ #long post #kinda #I jabber a bit lol

[gisellelx]

For the fanfic author asks do you want to talk about: 6, 30, and/or 42?

Thanks, @palmofafreezinghand

6. How do you come up with ideas?

In fanfic, I write the stories I want to read for which I can't find a version I love. Almost all of my fics come from me basically just wanting to be a voyeur: "The Talk," my first fic, was me reading the line in BD where Edward mentioned he'd talked to Carlisle about having sex and me thinking, "Well now that had to have been an interesting conversation!" So I wrote what I thought happened. They also come from conversations with people--Ithaca Is Gorges came from talking with my bestest bestie about the fact that as you get older, you start realizing that your parents are fallible people, and that one of the biggest problems with the Twilight saga is that Bella is taking Edward at face value when he has not ever managed to get to that point with Carlisle and Esme. So what do the Cullens look like when they're not filtered by Edward?

Also I was trained to write characters first; plot second. So "ideas" for me usually are "okay, in this situation, how would this character logically respond, given all the things they hold dear, are afraid of, think are at stake?" I don't think of plots first. Plots emerge (and frustratingly, keep emerging.)

30. What do you struggle with most when writing?

Perfectionism. So, so much perfectionism. I very often see something that needs to go first before I can write the second thing, and then if I can't write the first thing, it doesn't matter if the second thing is more white hot. It's the main reason I've shifted to fully drafting long fics and only posting fics that consist of what are effectively related one-shots: Cien Años right now has been stuck because there's a chapter with Rose and Esme I need in order to establish something about what Esme thinks of Carlisle before I go to one of Esme and Carlisle 70 years later. But I've been having issues with that one. I will obsess over pieces of a work and over individual sentences until they truly pass muster, and, if I decide there's something else that belongs in the work, I will edit it later. I appreciated your tag comment btw, and also laughed about it because I revise everything. Sideblog answers? Yep. Headcanon posts? Yep. This post? Yep! I will move beats around in a sentence on a reddit post so that it has the rhythm I want it to have, even though there's absolutely no creative merit in it at all.

I used to be way better at just writing and letting stuff stick but not anymore. The other day one of my collaborators talked about her writing process and described mine as "Oh and then [giselle-lx] just produces these perfect sentences that say exactly what we all mean" and I was like, "No I have just already edited five times before I put them into Overleaf!"

42. How do you get over writers' block?

I...don't? I'm staring at a fic in Scrivener that hasn't been updated since 2019 and which I started drafting in 2010. And like I said above, been stuck on another work for a year.

But the thing which works the most reliably is reading. When I read, whether nonderivative stuff (which is mostly what I read--I am a bad fanfic reader, I confess!) or fic, my brain starts sparking with ideas and then I can get going again. If I'm struggling to get words down, it's usually a sign I need to read more.

Oh and the other thing which reliably creates writing is getting the hell off social media. Every single time I am serious about that practice, my brain just rebels at how bored it is and starts writing. "Ordinary Time" happened after I deprived my brain of social media for a month, and "Drying Up" happened after I deprived it for merely a long weekend. I know this in my soul, and yet... :/ :shakes fist at Mark Zuckerberg:

Ask me things!

#ask game #fic #writing

[cantshinebrighterthanyou]

Parallels and Contradictions: Gina Porter (S1E1 / S3 Trailer)

"My first time really going up for the lead." That line stood out to me immediately. Because the first time we meet her character back in S1, it's established that she's been the lead in every other musical she's been in.

Right?

Well, no. Not exactly.

It's established that she's never been an understudy. The implications of those scenes side by side are fascinating to me. We know that Gina would have liked to play the lead in S1 (re: Wonderstudies) and S2 ("playing a part I didn't want"), so the key word is "really going up for", which she also emphasizes. The way I see it, there are really only three possible (interesting) interpretations:

1 - Gina has played leads at other schools before, she just never had to try out.

Or at least, she never had to try very hard. Cause she's just that good of a performer. This could be either literal (unlikely), or Gina might have thought that there was never any competition at her old schools (similar to the way Lily thinks during S2 auditions.)

While that would be in character for the persona that early-S1 Gina portrays herself as, the way S3-Gina emphasizes that this is the first time "really going up for the lead"... if it was about not having had competition before East High, that would be uncharacteristically mean for the version of her that we've gotten to know since Homecoming. So in my mind, this is probably the least likely interpretation.

2 - This is the first time her heart is in it.

We know from Season 1, that Gina has been raised in a way that puts her under a lot of pressure to be perfect. Even after she lets down her guard around the Wildcats, her difficulties adapting to being co-coreographer and one of three people in her, Ashlyn and Kourtney's audition show that this mindset is something she still struggles/struggled with.

Maybe, after all that character development across two seasons, she's finally ready to audition for a lead - not because she feels that's what she's supposed to want, because for the first time it's what she does want.

3 - Gina was lying in Season 1.

When the audience meets her, she is portrayed as both fiercly talented and really condescending to Nini, who has mostly been cast in ensemble so far. Gina says "I've never been an understudy" and the implied reading is "I've been the lead every time I've tried." Except that's now been contradicted. So has she either been an understudy or has she never been a lead or an understudy?

Over the course of Season 1 we learn that being the new transfer student all the time has left Gina feeling like she has to put up a facade in every new place. Appear confident to the point of coming across as a bit intimidating and unapproachable. She's essentially accepted being labelled 'mean girl' as the price she pays for the respect and admiration she needs to make her mark - to make sure she's remembered for something once she inevitably leaves. Even if what she'll be remembered for is a persona that crushed dance solos and the short-term goals of people like Nini. Having the reputation of someone who plays leads all the time would certainly fit and help with the persona she's putting forward in the first few episodes of the show.

Now that she has close friends she can be vulnerable around, if she was lying/lying by omission, has it just not come up again? Is she still struggeling to break free from her perfectionism and has kept that secret until now? Is that an arc we're going to see?

(It could also just be bad inconsistent writing. But that's the least interesting theory, so I'm not gonna bother with it when I could be having fun with headcanons instead lmao)

Maybe it's one of the first times she thinks she has competition. Maybe it's the first time she thinks she has a chance. Maybe it's the first time she's doing it just for herself. Maybe it's something else entirely.

Whatever is going on with that line, I'm so damn fascinated by it.

#hsmtmts #gina porter #hsmtmtsedit #hsmtmts analysis #hsmtmts meta #hsmtmts season 3 #also none of this was meant as gina-bashing! in case it came across that way #she's one of my favorites and might be the most interesting character to me #the musical the series the tumblr tag

[tlacehualli]

KNOWING YOUR PARTNER WELL CAN POTENTIALLY MAKE WRITING TOGETHER A LOT EASIER. ( REPOST DO NOT REBLOG ! )  

name: alexis but you can call me lexi pronouns: she / they / a bad bitch preference of communication: discord. i'm pretty sure tumblr dms are fucking haunted idk they're terrible. i mean it's fine though either way. just be prepared for me to like either forget dms or like dm you incessantly, i only have two speeds. name of muse(s): Olivia Colomar, aka Sombra experience/how long (months/years?): oh man let me tell you. i'm 31 now, started roleplaying when I was like 9 on NEOPETS ROLEPLAYING BOARDS. from there, moved on to AIM and just used Neopets to recruit on over to the superior platform. quit for a long time, came to tumblr probably 2012 ish? on and off until maybe 2014 2015 i don't really recall, then i was gone untillll now. so. a long time. idk. don't make me do math outside of work. platforms you’ve used: neopets, AIM, tumblr best experience: man, finding the homie sue again has been lit, and ofc getting to meet all her pals. other than that, the absolute shedding of my old perfectionism and all the pressure i used to put on myself. that's why i write like a demon now. nothing to hold me back. feels good! feels freeing. i am a god. no i am not. pet peeves / dealbreakers: i do not like pushy people. it used to be more of an issue before when i didn't write at the speed of light because i kept giving myself anxiety about everything but you know what, it sure didn't fucking help. also in the context of like, when we're in a thread and you're trying to make this one thing happen really weirdly and i'm just like idk man. kind of odd. but that hasn't happened in years. just like this uwu pushy sexual thing usually.  fluff, angst, or smut: sombra is pretty easily in both fluff and angst. smut is personally a little weird for me but if it feels right then sure whatever, but the former two are more my speed generally plots or memes: oh absolutely plots but i can meme with the best of them. best time to write: i work from home and i write fast as hell. work fast as hell too. thank you ritalin for all you have given me. so yeah. rn. do it. you wont. are you like your muse(s): a disturbing amount, to be sure. around the same age, similar ethnic background, similar field of work (engineering vs what computer science or some shit), we're both of us trolls, hell both got some pretty serious trauma involving death. i did take liberties and added more similarities but counting those seems like cheating. i do generally take up muses that are like me in some way, usually at that point in time. had a ryuko matoi and a lightning that were both perfect in their time but i could not write them at all now 'cause i'm OLD.

tagged by: @femtaile tagging: you. i am perceiving you.

#memes #tagged in #reblogging cause i got tagged in it twice since #here is all u need to know about me (i am a loser)

[thepatronsaintoffilth]

Hi, newbie writer here.

How do you get passed the embarrassment of writing smut? Hell, I’m struggling to get over the embarrassment of writing, period (I’m a mega perfectionist and hate everything I do 😅)

Any advice?

I'm going to answer both (writing in general and writing smut in particular) at kind of the same time, because a lot of the principles for getting around self-consciousness and embarrassment with writing applies to ALL writing, smut or otherwise. I will add a few things toward the end about erotica specifically though.

the short, boring, oversimplified (but correct) answer: Practice, practice, practice.

the expanded version:

Seriously, get into the habit of writing A LOT and CONSISTENTLY and SHIT-ILY until you wear down the part of your brain that's worried about getting it perfect on the first, second or 12th try.

This isn't just necessary for mining good work out of raw material, its essential to getting past self-consciousness and having fun with the process. Because once you start having fun with it, you'll stop holding yourself back. Which leads to writing more, which leads to better writing, on and on; it's an upward spiral, a virtuous cycle.

I have a notebook that I handwrite my ideas and rough passages and stuff in, and I write in pen. I do that for a specific reason: It puts me in the habit of crossing and scratching things out and not being able to take back what I say in the form of erasing with a pencil or a blinking cursor in a word doc.

That really, really helped me get over my own perfectionism because once I learned to stop expecting so much from myself in the drafting and pre-writing stage, the rest of the creative process really opened up for me. Once I let my writing be "ugly", imperfect, stream-of-consciousness chicken scratch, it felt more like play than work. That's the key.

Also: write for YOURSELF first, then worry about making it fit for others. You're going to be your first reader, your first fan, and its YOUR life, subconscious, interests and desires that are going to shape what you make. I'm so serious about this. No one - and I mean, NO ONE - reads and rereads my own work more than I do and that's because I write the kind of things I wish I could see more of and I enjoy giving myself exactly what I want.

Plus on a practical level, you're going revise and edit and rewrite a lot (depending on how you define your work's "readiness" for others to see it), so its essential to enjoy what you're making because you're going to be spending SO much time with it. No one but you is entitled to ever see your first drafts, so don't be afraid to get weird with it.

These are some books I highly recommend that not only go into the creative process, but also the mentality and emotional parts of being a writer: embarrassment, perfectionism, society's influence on us, how we struggle with the creative process because it differs so wildly from how we're taught to behave normally, the reasons WHY we write, etc, etc.

(And I'm only going to recommend these two, not because they're best, be-all end-all books on the subject, but because if I recommended everything I wanted to, we'd be here all damn day)

Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver The Courage to Write by Ralph Keyes

Writing smut: This one's a little trickier.

I'm a very sexual person, have been for as long as I can remember, so I've gravitated towards erotic fiction (even before I should have been looking at that). And I tend to befriend others who feel the same way, so I'm used to not only writing about wild shit, I talk about it constantly as well. All that has given me an advantage because I'm pretty shameless.

Having said that, I was raised in a quasi-religious (don't ask) household, in the deep South as a closeted person so I'm no stranger to shame, guilt and self-disgust, as well as the self consciousness that comes with it. The cheat code for this is to eroticize the pain, turn it into a weapon for you instead of against you. It's hard to explain, but I wrote about it ... somewhere (can't find the damn link on my blog, I'll get back to you on this one)

Apart from all the advice above, I would say immerse yourself in erotic fiction and associate with others who do too. Get to know your likes and wants, seek out that kind of material and get a feel for how different writers describe and phrase things. This, in addition to writing more in general, should help you find your voice.

ALSO, ONE LAST THING (god this ask is a mess, I hope you got something from this)

As far as hating everything you do, that's totally part of the process. It sucks, but don't make it suck more by feeling guilty about it; it's natural. I know for me personally, I get to a point in my editing process where I hate everything I'm looking at, I feel like a fraud and I've tricked everyone into thinking I'm a real writer and I should just trash it all.

Aaaaand that's when I know its almost ready to post! Everything's going according to plan!

(... writing is a very weird process, if you take nothing else from all this word vomit, at least take that to heart)

Good luck and godspeed

- M.

#ask #answered #anon #writing #writerblr #perfectionism

[translightyagami]

That’s really cool, an editing & proofreading type position sounds close to a dream job for me, I think the revision process is so much easier than stringing together ideas and writing the first draft in itself. It takes me embarrassingly long to write from habit of perfectionism, but I see you publish works pretty consistently. How do you come up with and most importantly commit to your fic ideas? Is the whole / most of the story already planned, or do you prefer feeling it out? (I tend to be the former).

Your style is very abstract and metaphorical which I like and can relate to, it adds a lot more depth to the character’s feelings and perspective. I’ve had people say my stuff can be “too complex” or layered to read, but seeing a similar kind in your content brings reassurance that can be just as appealing to certain audiences. It honestly makes things more of a treat to read.

—🤟

I like my work but overall its as much a job as anything else. It’s hard, because being an editor doesn’t mean there’s no writing work involved. It’s almost entirely about having strong ideas that survive to the final product. First drafts are easy, and the way they are easy is through letting them be sandboxes for everything you think or want or hope for the piece you’re writing. Revision is the tough part - the part where you have to carve away from the mess a perfect shape.

Like you say, my writing can be really metaphor heavy and can often be “abstract” though having read really abstract writing, mine is sort of … well i’m still learning a lot aha. Revision is a place where one can make work that is maybe a mess of complex ideas and layers into readable, consistent prose with depth. I don’t plan much ahead of writing a fic, and I usually do very loose outlines when writing longer work - just the nuts and bolts so i can be as free as i need to in the first draft phase. My process is basically lifted from a Simpsons writer’s, lol. I write a sloppy first draft - just flat dialogue and bad prose that has the outline of what I want to happen. Then the next day I return to the draft, revise, and keep revising until I like what’s there. I’m not sure if this helps ya, but maybe it will. Idk. The way to make writing something you do consistently is to just write what you like. Then you’ll care about getting it done.

[kayluh1915]

Are you still planning to write that one starker mixed media fic? The one you posted about around 5 months ago

Reference to this post.

Hi sweetie! I am, Indeed! I hadn't realized it's been so long since my "mini sneak peek." 😬 I don't want to over-hype it up, but it's REALLY long and still has a bit to go.

I struggle a lot with toxic perfectionism so I'm not gonna lie, it's gonna be a while. I'd like to be optimistic and say another month or two, but it well could be another 6 months. I hope not, but history tends to repeat itself...

I just want it to be perfect! I'm working extremely hard on it and I hope I can get it finished for you guys sooner rather than later!

While you wait, I published a Starker fic back in April called "Perfect." I'm not very happy about the ending, but you can check that out if you like! Keep in mind, though, it is A/B/O. I understand that isn't everyone's cup of tea so I put some more "mini sneak peeks" under the cut!

I hope you guys like it so far and I'll keep you updated on my progress!

--------

These are subject to change and may be different once the story is finished! I also couldn't resist adding in Stucky! 😍😍

ALSO also, let's pretend Elon Musk never bought Twitter, okay? Okay.

DISCLAIMER

“I don’t think we allow children in this program, Mr…” He paused, looking at the embroidered last name on his lab coat. "Parker." Chuckles from the other interns filled the otherwise silent room. Peter gulped, his eyes darting back down to his shoes.

“I-I’m not… not a child, sir.” He stuttered, drying his increasingly sweaty palms on his oversized labcoat. Peter heard Tony shuffle the papers some more. He wasn't actually reading them and got a kick at how much more nervous the kid got the more he shuffled through everything.

“How old are you, kid?”

Peter cleared his throat before answering, trying to get rid of the lump in his throat. “24, sir.”

Silence filled the room once again, the sound of Tony’s foot steps growing closer until Tony’s cisp, expensive dress shoes joined the sight of Peter’s converse.

“You’ve got a lot to prove, Mr. Parker.”

--------

--------

“What’re yo-”

"Come on, dance with me."

"Uhh, I-I a-are you sure?" Tony's smile grew wider.

"I wouldn't have asked you if I wasn't." Peter hesitated, but allowed Tony to take his hand. He wasn't prepared for Tony to yank him up from his seat so fast. He tripped over his own feet with a squeak, grabbing Tony's forearm to catch himself.

"Tony!" Peter yelped. Tony allowed him to fix himself and Tony led him over to the dance floor.

They danced quietly for a moment, neither one speaking.

"So… Tony, huh?" Peter looked up at him with a furrowed brow.

"What?"

"You called me Tony."

"I-I didn't."

"Yes, you did. I think I'd notice my name falling from these cute lips " Peter blushed as Tony caressed Peter's bottom lip with his thumb.

--------

--------

"We'll be back in a little while. Call us if anything changes." With that, Steve and Bucky left, closing the curtain back behind them. Tony focused back on Peter, petting his hair gently.

"I'm so tired, Tony..." Peter said, his voice low.

Tony's heart broke. He's never seen Peter this weak before and he hopes he never has to again. "Then sleep, Honey. I'll be right here when you wake up." Peter hummed, scooting away from him as far as he could.

"What're you doing?" Tony asked, confused.

"Lay with me..." Tony huffed a small laugh.

"I don't think I'm allowed to, Peter."

"I don't care. I want you..." After that, Tony didn't care either. He toed off his sneakers and placed his phone on the guest's chair, climbing into the small stretcher as carefully as possible, being mindful of Peter's IV line and monitor wires. Once he was as comfortable as he was going to get, he pulled Peter close to him and covered them both up with the thin hospital blanket. Once Peter was settled, Tony placed a gentle kiss atop his head.

#anon #answer #starker #ironspider #my fanfiction

[bmpmp3]

i guess “wobbly” isn’t totally the right way to describe what’s going on with my art, a better descriptor might be a sort of “double vision” created through an inevitability turned into an intentionality

(sorry im very sick rn and my sick brain accidentally wrote some barely readable essay about my own artistic techniques orz under da cut)

i think a large part of the reason i gravitate towards drawing analogue vs digital nowadays (ignoring the fact that i have spatial issues and i can keep track of proportions much easier on paper than on a screen) is that like, at least in my experience (growing up on deviantart LOL) traditional art, while being less popular online (at least, growing up on deviantart it was), also allowed way more room for visual mistakes and imperfections than digital art did. i think sometimes, at least for me, having an undo button ended up putting a weird perfectionism on me instead of being a useful tool orz

YOU MAY have noticed my double/triple lines in my linework, especially in long, uninterrupted lines, that’s what i mean by inevitability turned intentionality: its a sort of “line correction” like one would do when doing a rough sketch except for some ungodly reason i do it during my very permanent inking stage LOL jk jk its actually several very good reasons: you know how many artists find their rough sketches look better than their final linework? part of that is because your eyes bring in all the competing sketchy lines together as one cohesive sort of “vibe” of a line, making it look exactly how your brain thinks it should look to be “correct”

another reason is that, going back to the spatial issues, the dysgraphia is inevitable and i will always end up strange, jerky lines no matter the sketch stage or the ink stage, no matter how careful i am no matter how careless, its something that’s stuck with me for 24 years and i can usually write my b’s and d’s without a reference nowadays (the z’s are still questionable) but it’s always present - SO i’ve found, especially in the past couple years, embracing it is vital

hold on, here’s some examples of my double lines:

THIS drawing around the legs is a REALLY clear example lol

you can see what happened, the red lines are what i attempted to draw first, my dysgraphia then caught up to me half way through bringing in those big wobbles, and then i added the blue lines as a sort of corrective buffer

this one had a LOT, the orange lines were likely what were drawn first. you can kind of tell that i tend to ink from the face first because as i get to the body i get more tired and the more corrective lines need to be drawn LOL

of course there’s exceptions: i think with this girl I hadn’t done any warmup sketching (just drawing vague circles and swirls and lines or maybe a blobby creature doodle LOL) and my hands were hashtag unsteady hjdskfjds

of course when i said inevitiability turned intentionality, i do mean that part of it is done intentionally: on purpose. that’s part of embracing it: it really does just look good and feel good to draw like this. like here i can’t remember or tell which lines were drawn first, i just know it felt right where i placed all my doublelines

i think that’s why i had to stop doing digital art for a while, it tends to not be super conducive to this style of drawing, or at least i haven’t quite gotten the hang of it (despite doing digital art since i was 10 LOL). i remember like 90% of the stuff i would draw digitally, instead of letting my doublelines through i would just ctrl+z and redraw the line 3000000 times until it was “perfect” orz a fools errand that created way more work for myself and was nawt great for my drawing health (both physically and mentally very exhausting). i hope someday i can work out some techniques im happy with that make digital art feel as easy as analogue art has become for me

my chosen medium for colouring in traditonal art also helps i think, i originally gravitated towards watercolour because it was faster and easier on the hands than pencil crayons (especially as a person with this many ocs with black and brown hair LOL my pencil crayons were STUBS while the other colours were nearly untouched) but it also allows for you to get SLOPPY with it LOL painting outside the lines feels SO good and right and not painful WOULD RECOMMEND. plus, i think you can see it in my drawing of Su up there with her brown hair, because to build up deeper colours in watercolour i find it easiest to do it in layers + i cant mimic the brushstrokes very easily, i end up with these sort of simple gradations around all my drawings which i think has a similar i-liked-the-rough-sketch-best effect that the doublelines have, the weird aura tricks the brain into filling in the blanks

of course my lineart style is not super conducive for digital art colouring, paintbucket filling this shit is a NIGHTMARE jkgdfldsjhfkds that’s another thing i gotta do a lot of experimentation with..............

anyway WHAT im trying to say is sometimes the best thing you can do for your art is let your arms draw the way they want to. (also im tricking your eyes into seeing the best version of my art with my fuzzy colouring and double-lined inking. bmpmp3′s trick hee hee)

#ba ba ba ba ba. bababaa aba ba ba ba ba ba #ba ba ba ba ba

[nicetrynicetry]

152

I’m writing this while playing a sedate game of fetch with A’s dog, who demands her ball to be thrown every few sentences. By Tuesday I am in near-perfect health and playing tennis. A takes me to his weekly session with a Danish coach, which I am nervous to attend having not picked up a racket in 4 years, yet oddly exhilarated. I give the coach a brief rundown of my tennis career, my early competitive playing, omitting how swiftly I plunged into anorexia because I took losses of any kind so hard. After 5 or 6 forehands the coach picks up on it anyway, because apparently it’s obvious. “See the trauma?”, the coach shouts at A while we are taking turns on the court, “she still has the self hatred, and she still has the top spin”. He later asks if my former coach was tough on me, or perhaps my parents were tough on me, and I reply with a vague “yeah something like that”. In truth my tennis coach was fairly benevolent, even though he did have a taste for filming his protégés and forcing us to watch back our mistakes. And my parents were supportive, and let me wear converse instead of adequate tennis shoes. But my school athletics coach was a sadist, and perhaps this awoke the harsh perfectionism that would colour everything I did before and since. I will never forgive her for telling me what a calorie was at age 10, for letting me know how much ice cream was too much ice cream and how negatively it would affect my sprint, my long jump. She made her dashed Olympiad dreams my problem, as many coaches do

But I digress. I am a more stylish player than A but where he excels in consistency I crumble in self-flagellation, and this is the reason he would probably beat me. It feels good to exercise to this extent, ie. to the point of total agony where I sense every cigarette come back to haunt my chest cavity like ghosts of Christmas past. Because of my “sports trauma” (trauma said with a Danish accent), I refuse to let A or his coach know how much pain I’m in. But we get a kick out of telling everybody we see for the rest of Tuesday “we had tennis this morning”. It’s very couple-y and I’m not mad at it

The day before, Monday, I smell the air and A’s home for the first time since my sinuses cleared. I take deep breaths of the foliage and the coffee shop and Erewhon and the Hailey Bieber smoothie we buy there, riddled with $22 dollars worth of coconut, strawberry and stevia. I look like shit, but I don’t care. A shows me his gun and lets me hold it, takes photos of me holding it with a limp wrist. This is how I know I look like shit. I gua sha my face desperately and A asks what I’m doing and I explain it decreases puffiness. “I just assumed you were born with those bags under your eyes”, he says, with love. We get coffee, and we go shopping. First in Silverlake, where I buy a shacket in the men’s section. It is the perfect garment. And in fact I don’t buy it because A insists that to get his friends and family discount at the store, he has to pay for it. I reluctantly let him. We collect A (other A) and go to West Hollywood to have lunch with E. I ninja-pay for the meal as discreetly as I can, until the server ruins it by bringing the chip and pin machine to the table. It begins to rain very hard. We go to three expensive avant garde clothing stores and I find a jacket made of rucksacks, and a jacket with nose rings piercing every square inch of it, and a skirt the length of one of my fingers, and a hat with brooches and frayed fabric pinned haphazardly to the brim. It says “don’t ruffle my feathers” on the front. A (other A) tries it on and I tell her she looks amazing. An employee of the store approaches us and says that it’s actually his personal hat, even though it looks so at home in the store, which is to say extremely creepy and extremely expensive

By mid afternoon the jet lag hits and I recline on a puffy leather chair at Dries Van Noten after trying on every set of sunglasses they offer to prove to A and A that no sunglass has ever looked bad on me. Even the ones that make me look like a sci-fi wasp somehow suit my face. I lie down and feel nauseous, and when the rain stops, A and I walk around the giant reservoir and he tells me he used to run 9 laps of it before he ran a marathon. Dinner is in Eagle Rock and we run into a stand up comedian and her musician boyfriend who A and A know. I unnerve the comedian by asking her again and again what Shane Gillis is like in person. We eat calamari and I drink a Ghia, the latest in sober beverage technology. It’s not bad. We try to work out if the music executive A spots across the room is the music executive he thinks it is, and whether he’s on a date or dining with his daughter. We drive back to West Hollywood for an art party, and I see J again which ruins my focus, and A laughs at me coming alive in a room full of my colleagues, watching me socialise en masse for the first time. C is also present, and gives me a frigid hug that feels like my uncle’s Christmas hugs. I share a smoke with another C, and he suggests that the NyQuil I took to heal my cold the previous night might have put my sobriety in jeopardy. Perhaps all I needed to stop ailing was to lightly relapse, and I can live with that. I don’t want to leave when we leave but I do. I am rolling with two introverts masquerading as extroverts when I’m the other way around. We listen to piano music in the car and I get to sleep on my face for the first time in days without getting a blocked nose

And back to Tuesday, where I have lunch with my uncle and aunt and cousin and my aunt tells me how she got pickpocketed at the same restaurant we’re eating at. Later we go to J’s dinner at Jack Nicholson’s daughter’s home, and A’s ex girlfriend walks in, and it’s uncomfortable for me, but the food is good and the room is riddled with nepo babies and art people. Considering the host’s sobriety, there are fewer non-alcoholic options than there should be. I sample the entire Le Croix line. We drive home through the canyon and I say I’d like to live on one of these implausibly windy roads and A tells me that it would be a pain in the ass to get groceries and I tell him that‘s a really good point

[iluzja-odlegla]

I've realized something incredible, yet extremally frightening. It's been brewing for weeks. Things that I now understand can be explained using the same words and sentences yet will mean completely different things to me now and to me from the past. I've tried to tell my friend about it and she dismissed me and joked about it and it made me realize that something needs to click in your brain for it to make sense. I've talked about the fact that nothing is really true. There is no objective proof anything is real or legit and that nothing is really "trustable". All human knowledge is just complicated guessing and we base our reality on that. I've based my whole understanding of the world on my personal experiences but mostly on movies and books and stories. I took everything I digested as reality and not as subjective experience of someone that is translated to some form that I consume and make of it what I make of it. It makes agruing over any topic seems so silly and unproductive. We are truly alone, there is no possibility to truly be understood. I think that David Hawkins book broke my brain. It's like my previous framework of thinking got obliterated. It taught me how to listen to emotions truly. I never understood journaling or therapy, it didn't work for me. It's all because for it to work you really have to already feel those things clearly. Now that I harnessed that ability and ability to dig into the og feeling I let it consume me for a while (phisically) and do my daily things while feeling it and then all I get back is one a5 page of writing. Summary of my biggest secret, of things that tormented me for so long needed just one page. Incredible. I was free of it for a while until it came back. But I stopped theorizing about it because now I know that I have a certain emotional need that I fullfil through fantasy because I refuse to get it in real life. If I tried to get it in real life it would take a toll on my dignity because it exposes my animalistic needs to the world. By knowing that I can just refuse feeding the animal that. Being aware of my feelings deeply and being honest with myself makes me trust myself. By acknowledging my feralness I take its power over me. it no longer rules me, I don't identify with it anymore. I know I feel face these tough feelings again because body remembers but in a way I'm not scared anymore. I will feel it and I will survive it. The worst thing that can happen is that that one person will see I'm being emotional (thus weak in my silly brain) and it's not the end of the world.

But back to the og theme. Now that everything is subjective, perfectionism doesn't make sense and all I'm saying here is not something to be understood intellectually but something to be FELT. it's a really important distinction. All these things I've known in the past but they meant something different. Now my experience of music is so much different. I don't hear perfection where I used to, I don't seek it even. All I hear is choices. Just choices on choices. Someone decided something and got some outcome. Good or bad stopped existing for me in every sense. Some things just work for most or don't. Some things just work for me or don't. Now I understand my dad's words differently. I asked him whining what should I do with my life and he said that he did something and how has what he has. And that I need to do something and get my outcome. These words are void of judgement. They are neutral. It's freeing and beautiful and paints life as just existence. No rat race, no goals, no things that need to be done or experienced. Pure sandbox. It's sad because there is so many things that I won't know. But exciting because I get to live in a totally unique way and I can choose that life everyday. If I read it once while having some musty ass corporate job - I can make a change that day. I can choose every fucking day and it's incredible. It's very scary tho. So scary that it makes me want to not knowing what I know. Scary because it places all responsibility on me. I'm not allowed to whine anymore. If I truly believe I can choose every day I cant blame everyone and everything for my poor conditions.

Living, reading, listening to people, experiencing is now only possible as consuming what I am able to consume. there might be more about all these things, but im incapable of understanding it fully or in a different way. Thus, it's impossible to do/understand something perfectly. the world is just a blob of things that I interact with and take it as I can, there's nothing I can do to live better. I can only live. And I need to repeat it after reading that paragraph. I don't think that. I FEEL it. Words truly can't describe it. Something must switch inside. But it brings a great relief - I am now capable.

[trickster-shi]

Okay so. I've read your home across the universe series fully, and I'm busy with my second read through. It's just so good. I'm waiting for my AO3 account to set it up and be able to actually bookmark and comment that way but I seriously need you to know how amazing the whole 'verse you've created is. Reading it and seeing all the updates pop up has been the highlight of a very bleak year.

I absolutely love your writing style, it captures everything in such a perfect measure and mix of the emotional, physical, thoughts, actions etc. It's honestly incredible. I can picture everything so clearly as I read and it's wonderful.

I especially love the way you characterise everyone. Even while making the 'verse your own and tweeking the characters personalities cuz if their ages and lives and backgrounds, you stuck to the basics of all their personalities and that's an insane talent you have.

I'm a massive fan of Noah Stilinski and the way you write him is literally my favourite written version of him. I eat it up like I'm starving. The whole dynamic and flow of his and Stiles' relationship is brought to incredible life in your writing. I LOVE me some Stilinski fam. The acknowledgement of the ways Noah can fall short while having him do better and all that was awesome.

Also, what first gave you the idea for the series at all?? And what ideas can you share that you might have for it in future? Do you have any headcannons that you have specific to your verse?

Just go ham and talk about your writing cuz I love it and I would love to hear and see more!!!

Loads of love and support!

- Tae

Oh my gosh, Tae, this comment made my morning and made me cry! Thank you for your kind words, I’m so very happy you enjoyed my ‘verse so much, it’s the highlight of my day to know it brought someone happiness. (Internet hugs!) And I can definitely go ham talking about this ‘verse :D

To be honest, I wrote this series because I needed to prove to myself I still could write something, anything. When I started it I was near to burnout. I’d self published a book I’d been writing and rewriting for years, and every draft I wrote for the sequel just did not work. I kept finishing drafts, editing, tweaking, and nothing in it came out right. So I would start from scratch and try again, and again, until I got to a point where it was like…I didn’t know if I could write anymore. I felt like I had lost the ability, like everything I’d ever learned about writing was trickling away and there was no way to stop it.

All my words felt like garbage.

I kept trying because writing has been the main constant in my life and living without it, giving up, was too scary to contemplate. But there was a wall I just couldn’t seem to get past, so I turned to fan fiction more and more to lose myself in when writing left me feeling like a fraud.

I got hooked on time travel au’s and read everything under that tag for Teen Wolf. I also read some superhero au’s, and ideas just started click-clacking in my brain, bouncing off each other, trying to make a picture. I resisted at first because I’d never written for Teen Wolf before, just Supernatural, so I was apprehensive about getting the characters wrong. Iin the end I decided, what the hell. Fanfic was supposed to be fun, I needed something fun, something interesting and new.

And I wanted more Sheriff Stilinski because, hell yeah, he is an AWESOME character and his relationship with Stiles was one of the first things that really fascinated me when I started watching the show. I always wished more had been done with him, there was so much potential. So once I had enough ideas mashed together in my head I wrote Teenage Vigilante Witch fast and hard. I didn’t let myself sit too much on it. In fact, it was finished before I started posting and I got the whole thing up in one day and then just sat back and marveled at the fact that I’d finished something. Finished it, threw it out into the world, and didn’t let my perfectionism get in the way for once. And it grated, because that story was (and still is) incredibly rough.

But I proved I could still write. That gave me hope.

Then the comments started pouring in. It was like discovering what water was like after wandering a desert for an eternity. The kindness, the encouragement, the love that came through from everyone who read it was amazing and I couldn’t believe it. That initial validation warmed me and commenters wondered if there would be more. I was still gun-shy about sequels, especially since I hadn’t written the Sheriff’s POV yet. So Case 405 came about as testing the waters with his POV and inner voice, and that was well received, so I sat down to figure out what else I wanted to explore, because I loved playing in this world and I knew there was more to tell.

Before I started on Whistle in the Dark, I decided on some parameters for the series to keep it narrowed down and deliberate. I have a bad habit of wandering sometimes, and losing the plot, and then getting myself stuck, which was part of what happened with the sequel I wrote and burned out on.

I decided that I wanted to focus on the father-son relationship, as well as the budding brotherly relationship between older and younger Stiles. I wanted to explore the canon trauma Stiles came with and to build off it for what I changed, because so much of his suffering was swept under the rug. I wanted to dig into what it would mean to be transported to a parallel world with no hope or point in returning, how that would effect someone, how they would learn to build a new life for themselves.

So that became the focus of the new stories and as I built and explored I listened to the comments people were leaving to get a feel for what worked and what didn’t and the feedback was so helpful in how the series came to be shaped. For once I didn’t feel alone on the journey, and it continues to humble and amaze me that so many other people found comfort in the story and loved it enough to keep up with it for over two years. The entire experience taught me a lot, enough that I feel way more confident returning to original stories because my biggest dream is still to be a published author and for my books to support me.

But I’m still going to write fan fiction. Some sandboxes are too much fun not to play in and I have a TW/Firefly series that will be updated soon, as well as a couple unrelated one shots that I’ll be finishing next year when I’m not working on a new original project that I hope to have published by the end of 2023 or early 2024 (fingers crossed!).

As for the future of the series, I have one more story planned to tell in it. More of like an extended epilogue that takes place about seven years down the road for all the characters. That one will complete this series. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that the Stilinski clan continues to expand a little, the young pack continues to get into shenanigans, the hunters are still sort of around, and the sheriff is still watching over everything with a sharp papa bear-eye. ;) Oh, and Derek and Stiles are even more adorable and supportive of each other (or more obnoxious, if you ask Mini-Stiles, he's got Opinions).

Oh, headcanons. I could be here for days with this, lol! I will say there is one head canon I really hold onto but didn’t use for this series, and that is that Parrish is actually Camden Lahey. I saw that one going around on Tumblr and forgot about it, then saw it again after writing Camden into the story and it was one of those moments I wanted to scream, because that would have been such a cool element to include and for Stiles to grapple with. But I’m okay with how Camden turned out anyway. And Parrish may find a way to appear in the epilogue in some shape or form, we’ll have to see.

Thank you so much for messaging me today, Tae. It was a wonderful present to find after I woke up this morning and thank you for asking me to talk about the series. It truly became a labor of love and it helped me combat the darkness in my own life so I’m so happy it was able to do the same for others. I would not mind doing this again if there’s anything else you want to know.

Thank you again, and I hope you have a wonderful day and/or holiday! <3<3<3

#shi speaks #anonymous #ask box #fanfic #teen wolf #home across the universe

[moonstation888]

10/21/22: Unlearning Perfectionism

Hello internet people ! Today I felt like writing about perfectionism, something that I have been constantly plagued by for years and am finally starting to unpack and let go of and I’d like to talk about it!

Sometimes I think I don’t know enough. Always in search of more knowledge that will give me what I want, to be able to seamlessly translate the thoughts and feelings from my mind into reality and for someone else to understand. I think a big part of it has to do with perfectionism. Like if I can’t absolutely articulate an idea or feeling I’m having perfectly so the receiver will understand in the way I feel it, then its not even worth doing.

And I think there’s a lot to say about that. For one there’s the classic, you’ll never know if you don’t try. And secondly, I think this school of thought tends to neglect the beauty of perspective. My desire and need for perfectionism in conversation with others tends to negate the fact that they actually shouldn’t understand my thoughts in the exact way I do and that’s a good thing. Offering different feedback on an opinion I hold can be really beneficial and I always seemed to be shocked when it happens and I’m like oh… I wasn’t expecting you to receive it that way, but I actually like it.

I’m not sure why we perfectionists feel the need to be perfect. Maybe its trauma or simply just wanting validation, the fear of rejection. The fear that if I do not articulate myself perfectly, you’ll misunderstand me and judge me based of a perception that isn’t true to me. But the truth is its okay to be misunderstood and its not our job to make people understand us, our minds, or hearts. Trying is better than doing nothing out fear.

I’m really starting to grasp that as I enter this new phase of my life.

I’m starting to unpack my desire to be perfect and the way that need inhibits me in so many aspects of my life.

I’m realizing my perfectionism is a lot like the devil on one’s shoulder. It sits there all day, telling me no, you can’t do this because it isn’t good enough. You can’t do it because you haven’t perfected it. You don’t have a right to speak on that until you know every possible thing about it or can articulate it to the point of no-question.

Which in turn negates even my own perspective on things.

It deletes perspective from the entire conversation.

There is only being perfect and nothing else.

There is no room for nuance of my own thoughts or another’s and if it isn’t perfect, it isn’t worth it.

Another thing perfectionism really inhibits is growth. Because as we all know mistakes and failure are the mother to growth and change. You literally cannot change if you never allow yourself to fail or make mistakes.

Perfectionism is a fucking bitch and I’m tired of it. I think for most of my life I’ve been trying to be perfect and let me tell you, its fucking exhausting.

I want to make mistakes now, I want to fail, if it means I’m going to learn and grow from it. If it means I can finally push that devil off my shoulder forever, I’ll do it.

I’ve been stuck in the comfort zone of perfectionism for a long time now and I’m ready to step out. I have exhausted and burnt myself out so many times on a never-ending cycle of perfectionism I reached my breaking point. Like why am I doing this to myself still? What am I gaining from it? How is it serving me?

Well, it’s not. And it’s not serving you either.

As Jupiter prepares to enter Pisces in March 2023 I think there’s a lot to be said here about introspection and prioritizing our well-beings in real way. I see the collective ditching this toxic and narcissistic self-love and expanding our perception of self-improvement in a much healthier, and introspective way.

Because the truth is no matter how many times we tell ourselves we’re bad bitches and hype ourselves up extensively, it’s not actually going to “fix” anything. It’s a delusion of confidence.

Confidence doesn’t come from telling yourself you are confident and better than everyone else endlessly.

I think real confidence in who you are starts with introspecting, realizing hey I’m not that big of a fucking deal, because if you aren’t that big of a deal then who is? And when that happens, I think it creates so much room for healthy change and improvement, which will inherently bring confidence.

Realizing you can make mistakes; acknowledge the unhealthy patterns you have and owning them so that you may recognize them in your head, when they would normally float around up there unnoticed.

I am a perfectionist and its not fun, it ruins my ability to freely think and communicate.

And that’s only the first step, because once you acknowledge its there, you can recognize it in daily life. And when you can do that, you can effectively step back from it.

When you can recognize and step back from it, what ever patter it may be for you, you can replace it with something better.

And such is the beauty of change and failing.

Its actually funny because when I think about it I’ve been suffering under my perfectionism for so long, under the lie that I am working to be perfect, when in reality the strive to be perfect to the point of inhibition is failure in of itself. In a weird way I have been failing by trying to be perfect, and now I’m learning from that failure and changing and growing.

And that my friends showcases a fraction to which the mind can twist and convolute and self-delude.

Perfectionism convinces the mind of exactly the opposite of what it actually is.

Which is again why I think self-introspection and not holding ourselves (or anyone else) to these insane standards of perfection and expectation, learning to be indifferent, is so crucial to growth and truly prioritizing our well-beings so we might become happier humans.

I’ve been doing some hard introspection the past few months, as you might be able to tell lol, and it’s led to major epiphanies in the way I think. I’ve been able to recognize my previously subconscious thinking patters that are rather self-hating and when it happens, I’m like yo, my brain is really going off right now, and I recognize that pattern/ thought as something that does not help me and move on.

And I’m positive that after enough time those patterns will no longer exist in me because of how this act re-wires your brain into self-indifference, which is really the best thing we can be to ourselves and others. I’ve already started to notice the difference in my mind and how it manifests into my physical reality. Every day I’m plagued less and less by the previous perfectionism of my mind.

Depending on how you learn, you might be an ‘implement in the physical first, and then changes in the mind follow suit’ kind of person.

I however learn and change with my mind first, then it manifests into my physical world. So, by slowly changing my negative thinking patterns it has allowed me to prioritize my well-being physically and spend time caring for my physical self in ways I never did before.

Now, if you haven’t heard of the book Cringeworthy: The Theory of Awkwardness I HIGHLY recommend it the author Mellissa Dahl really expands on this idea of self-indifference and it has forever changed how I view myself for the better.

To summarize her main point: Self-love and self-hatred are both inherently narcissistic to be obsessing over your emotions and thoughts all day whether from the view of love or hate. And there’s a huge sigh of relief in realizing you and your thoughts just aren’t that fucking important.

Such is self-indifference.

I keep this in mind in my daily life and it’s really allowed me to start ditching my perfectionism in the past.

Accepting it’s existence and knowing I don’t have to hate myself for being like that, but I also don’t have to keep it around anymore. I can live and not be afraid to make mistakes and be misunderstood.

Because the truth is:

I’m just not that big of a deal to expect so much perfection from, and neither are you.

Writing these things out really helps me work through my feelings and thoughts, kind of like journaling so maybe it can help or offer some insight for you too!

That’s all, peace out!

#astrology #pyschology #philosophy #perfectionism #mental health #mental wellbeing #daily life #astro community #lgbtq

[mkanjari]

Academic and Business writing course (EDX - Berkeley X)

My Journal

Subject: Academic and Business Writing (Berkeley X)

Week 1: Types of writing

On a daily bases, I write a lot of emails to address situations, respond to queries and communicate progress, some other times I write presentations, either to bitch a new idea of mine or to report progress and state findings of certain activities

What I think about writing is, that writing is one of the essential skills for the development of the human as a race and as individuals, there is an Arabic say, it says that"  knowledge is a hunt and writing is the leach of it”, it’s a safe and effective way to realize ideas and feelings, to express and examine feelings, to experience a fantasy in a magnificent way, whether it is my fantasy or someone else’s, now I am thinking about it I imagen how amazing it could be to write something today and someone could read it years after and in a way we get connected over a feeling or an idea, on the other hand, I think about how my dread of write stopped me from developing myself, it stood a barrier between me and continuing my educational journey, one specific experience that made it clear for me why I feel that way?, which is that I admitted for the CIPD Lv5 HR Management diploma over 5 times, and I remember vividly how I every time get excited by the amount of knowledge I am learning about my profession that I love, and about the opportunities I can see this diploma opening for me, but every single time I started it I would always get stuck on the first module specifically on the first essay, I would start writing it and shortly I would start feeling overwhelmed by how perfect I would want it to be, what impact I would like to leave on my touter and colleagues when they read it when I poste it on my linked in, and how I want this essay to reflect my well understanding of my profession, and how I want to squeeze every last information that I can get hold of to make it perfect, thereafter I would feel lost and overwhelmed by the stream of ideas I want to express and include in my essay, so I start editing what I wrote and try to reconstruct the essay over and over and finally when my mind get exhausted I drop the whole course and fall out

But why do I do that to myself? And complicate what could be a simple task into an impossible one, what caught my attention is that one of my junior employees who started the same course finished it successfully without any trouble and in a timely fashion, that observation led me to question my method and mindset knowing that the real problem wasn’t in the course itself and how difficult or easy it is, it was then when I realize that it because I couldn’t write the essay, and why is that so?

There are two main reasons that I found, an incident that happened during my 8th grade of school when a teacher that I admired a lot asked the class to pick a subject and write about it and unleash our imagination, it was the first time he asks the class to write, and in that age until that day I used to think that I am a good writer cause I would always get the best grads in writing, and cause I used to read a lot of literature, novels, and books in general, so I want to impress him so much, though I have spent the time and effort to deliver the best writing that I could, so after submitting the essay and on the day the teacher was discussing every one paper and giving us his feedback, I was on the tip of my toes waiting for my turn, funny enough his feedback was shocking to me, it was the worst the feedback of that day in addition to the mockery of my writing I guess I let my imagination go so far, somehow that feedback scared me and since  then I am always afraid of getting criticize like that again, but again why would I be so sensitive to criticism, one day I was listening to a broadcast show while I was driving my car, and it was talking about the perfectionism, and how perfectionist has troubles getting things done, it was then when I understood my behavior and here I am, I decided to work on my writing and the best way to do that is to practice, lucky enough I came across this course which I decided to take to develop my academic writing, to be a better writer in general and to practice articulating my thoughts and to construct ideas through words as simple as I can, and I am certain that I am on the right track