The Saddest Thing Is I Know I'll Always Be Somebody's Dog, Because I Don't Know How To Do Anything Else

The saddest thing is I know I'll always be somebody's dog, because I don't know how to do anything else but bark and bark and lick my wounds. I chase after cars and I look for a master and if you let me out of the cage I'll go mad with the noise and I'll chase my own tail and what if you're the cage and what if you're the leash -what then?

Then you send me away by the side of the road but I'm still not roadkill cause I'm still not that small I guess you're not that lucky so I do it again to the next moron that feeds me.

How lonely must you be to feed a rabid bitch, and then you dare to be surprised like my eyeballs aren't bloodshot red,

I bite.

Always hated that idea that if someone is abusing you, they don't love you, especially when it comes to parent-child relationships. That loving and hurting someone cannot coexist. Because, even if you truly believe that (which, how do you know? How could ever know?), saying that -telling a child that "people who love you don't abuse you", then you're making them choose. It's not even a difficult choice, really: either your parent loves you and you're not actually in that much pain, you're exaggerating, the pain you're feeling is normal, or your pain is valid, but your parent -the one person in the world who is supposed to love you unconditionally, who it is in the nature of to love you, doesn't love you. How could they even begin to acknowledge that what happened to them was wrong, if that means facing the idea that their parents don't love them? If being hurt means being abandoned? The tragedy of Succession isn't that Logan doesn't love his children. It's that he loves them, and they love him, and they can never leave.

The only thing this false narrative does is forcing the child to pick between two evils, where you should have been providing a safe space to be protected. You know what they will choose, and that's on you.

For me, the biggest proof that Logan loved his children is that he wanted them to be buried with him. Yes, it was narcissistic love, them in smaller bunk graves on the wall while he is in the majestic one on the ground, because he saw his children as extensions of himself and not as real persons, but still. People usually choose to be buried with their significant others, making space for your children to be buried with you is weird and controlling, but but but. He wanted to be buried with a picture of Rose in his pocket. He wanted his children to be buried with him, belonging to him and only him for eternity. What is that if not love. And who or what did he really have in the world that he could really call his, except his children?

"Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine."

-Neil Gaiman, American Gods

Writing tip #1

As a reader, one of my biggest pet peeves is seeing a character introduced as "clever", their intelligence treated as some sort of super power that helped them out of impossible situations off-screen or even worse, they solved basic elementary problems that I remember getting as homework in middle school and everybody is in awe of such a wondrous mind. As a reader, few things irk me more than that kind of characterization.

But as writer, I get it! I understand the appeal of writing smart character, they can be so cool and challenge our traditional perception of strength and pose interesting questions etc... and as I'm not that bright myself either, I end up with the sensation of struggling to write a character much smarter than myself.

But that's okay! Luckily for me, I study developmental and cognitive psychology, which gives me tools to help me write smart characters without having the same skillset, so I thought I would share!

#1: research cognitive psychology, because there is so much more to say than what I know and can fit in a tumblr post, so go look it up- I promise it's worth it.

#2: your IQ number is practically a myth. Unless it helps diagnose and measure a global intellectual deficiency, that number alone is generally worthless as it's nothing but the average between scores of wildly different abilities which belong to the traditional model of intelligence (around which there is no consensus today, so keep in mind that it's incomplete at best.) From that it follows that it's a terrible way to describe a character, as it doesn't refer to any specific skill -and while there is partial correlation between these scores, I can guarantee you nobody is exactly as good in calculus as they are in English as they are in geometry etc. Describe what the character is smart in, what "kind" or smart they are if you wish; the separation between book smart, street smart and people smart is a good start, but still not enough: there are many flavours of booksmart alone, nevermind the others. Again, look it up: an easy background to use is the Wikipedia page for "Theory of Multiple Intelligences". I promise it will help!

#3. Sometimes less is more. Your character doesn't have to be the best student in the country or win every prize. Did you know that Einstein was considered a bad student? Or that the incredible mathematician Euler got second place in the 1727 Paris Academy Science Competition? It's fine for your character to be second place, it's fine not to win every time, even in their own domain of expertise. If you tell me someone got the bronze medal at the Olympics, I'm still gonna assume them a better athlete than the vaste majority of people, and few would disagree with that idea; it's the same with intelligence. Your character should be allowed to fail, and simply to not always be the best -if not because it makes them more humane, because we love to project on smart characters, it strokes our ego. Think of all the stressed out straight A students on the verge of burn-out projecting on your characters: let them know it's okay! A- is still very good! You're doing great!

Anyway I'll probably make more posts about this because there's so much to say but it's probably too long already so I'll stop here. You know how it works, this is just my opinion, I'm not the authority on writing, but I thought it could be helpful so if it doesn't work for you, don't follow this advice! Let me know what you think, and please be kind

Maybe the real rites was the baking we did along the way...

“I think,” said the baker to the other shopkeepers, “That I don’t HAVE to recite the Baking Rites during the baking. Or at all. I think… it’s the heat baking things. And it might be similarly true for ALL our professions, like cooking, tailoring, and smithing.”