Fanfic/Fandom/Writing blog that used to be a side blog of the same name. My most recent work is definitely 18+ I actively write for The Mediator (Meg Cabot) but have written (by which I mean abandoned) things for YuYu Hakusho (and ages ago DBZ and Harry Potter, too). Find me on AO3 and Fanfic.net
261 posts
Ss10009 - Deads Not My Color - Tumblr Blog
september 8th... 1973. september 8th, 1973. it was 11:07 here. it would have been 9:07 in san francisco. armand called me. were you there? did you hurt yourself?
三船敏郎 // MIFUNE TOSHIRO 醉いどれ天使 // Drunken Angel (1948)
I just think people write out of obligation too often.
"How do I motivate myself to write through the boring part of my story?"
"How do I make this boring scene not boring?"
Don't write it.
Don't write boring things just because you think the structure of the story demands it. I promise it doesn't need to be there.
If your characters need to have gone shopping for a later part of the story to make sense you can just have a sentence about how they went shopping and move on.
You are not obligated to write the boring parts. No matter what those parts are.
You are not obligated to make the parts of your story that you're not excited to write interesting somehow.
You can just write the fun and interesting parts and gloss over and summarize boring things.
Your audience will thank you and you will thank yourself.
Hello friends!
I know it's only August, but I thought I'd start early:
If you have the legal right to vote in the United States, there is no benefit to you in not voting. All that not voting does to you is remove your most powerful legal ability to impact the identity of those who represent you in the government.
By the time you reach the election, by the time ballots are printed and you are filling in a bubble or pressing a button or flipping a lever, your only meaningful choice for who to vote for are the people who are listed on the ballot.
Because we live in a two-party system, in the vast majority of jurisdictions*, you are choosing between members of two parties. If you vote for someone who is not a member of one of those parties, you are throwing away your ability to meaningfully impact who wins that election. It sucks. it's shitty. It's unfortunate. But if you want a third party candidate to have a chance in a major race, it starts years before the election, not when you are standing in front of your ballot in November.
And if you think, they're both the same as each other--they're not. For literally any policy that you care about, there will be differences. Pick the policies you care most about, find the one who sits closer to you and vote for them. That is the only way that laws will move in the direction you want, by electing people who vote for policies that are closer to what you want.
I studied game theory in college, and from my standpoint it was one of the most useful and educational classes I took during my entire academic career, because of this key idea: If you want 10, and your options are 0 or 5, 5 is a better option for you. Something gives you more than nothing, even if you want a lot.
You will not get a politician who agrees with everything you want, unless you run for office yourself. Pick what you care the most about, and vote based on that. See voting as harm reduction. See voting as public transportation. See voting as whatever gets you out to vote.
But vote.
*There are a few independents in office. An independent or third party candidate will not win the Presidency in 2024.
HELLO if your area does not have a public library i would just like to make it known that some libraries offer free cards to people who aren’t in the area! i currently have two cards on Libby, one for my local public library and one for QLL (queer liberation library). search “free out of state library cards” and a few different lists should pop up :)
edit: you can also search “free libby libraries” for digital cards!!!
I've been reading Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, and it's gotten me thinking about how worldbuilding is multilayered, and about how a failure of one layer of the worldbuilding can negatively impact the book, even if the other layers of the worldbuilding work.
I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, so I'm going to talk about it more broadly instead. In my day job, one of the things I do is planning/plan development, and we talk about plans broadly as strategic, operational, and tactical. I think, in many ways, worldbuilding functions the same way.
Strategic worldbuilding, as I think of it, is how the world as a whole works. It's that vampires exist and broadly how vampires exist and interact with the world, unrelated to the characters or (sometimes) to the organizations that the characters are part of. It's the ongoing war between Earth and Mars; it's the fact that every left-handed person woke up with magic 35 years ago; it's Victorian-era London except every twelfth day it rains frogs. It's the world, in the broadest sense.
Operational worldbuilding is the organizations--the stuff that people as a whole are doing/have made within the context of that strategic-level world. For The Hunger Games, I'd probably put the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and even the existence/structure of the districts as the strategic level and the construct of the Hunger Games as the operational level: the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and the districts are the overall world that they live in, and the Hunger Games are the construct that were created as a response.
Tactical worldbuilding is, in my mind, character building--and, specifically, how the characters (especially but not exclusively the main characters) exist within the context of the world. In The Hunger Games, Katniss has experience in hunting, foraging, wilderness survival, etc. because of the context of the world that she grew up in (post-apocalyptic, district structure, Hunger Games, etc.). This sort of worldbuilding, to me, isn't about the personality part of the characterization but about the context of the character.
Each one of these layers can fail independently, even if the other ones succeed. When I think of an operational worldbuilding failure, I think of Divergent, where they took a post-apocalyptic world and set up an orgnaizational structure that didn't make any sense, where people are prescribed to like 6 jobs that don't in any way cover what's required to run a modern civilization--or even to run the society that they're shown as running. The society that they present can't exist as written in the world that they're presented as existing in--or if they can, I never could figure out how when reading the book (or watching the film).
So operational worldbuilding failures can happen when the organizations or societies that are presented don't seem like they could function in the context that they are presented in or when they just don't make any sense for what they are trying to accomplish. If the story can't reasonably answer why is this organization built this way or why do they do what they do then I see it as an organizational worldbuilding failure.
For tactical worldbuilding failures, I think of stories where characters have skillsets that conveniently match up with what they need to solve the problems of the plot but don't actually match their background or experience. If Katniss had been from an urban area and never set foot in a forest, it wouldn't have worked to have her as she was.
In this way (as in planning), the tactical level should align with the operational level which should align with the strategic level--you should be able to trace from one to the next and understand how things exist in the context of each other.
For that reason, strategic worldbuilding failures are the vaguest to explain, but I think of them like this: if it either 1) is so internally inconsistent that it starts to fall apart or 2) leaves the reader going this doesn't make any sense at all then it's probably failed.
“There’s a legend about a Chinese painter who was asked by the emperor to paint a landscape so pristine that the emperor can enter it. He didn’t do a good job, so the emperor was preparing to assassinate him. But because it was his painting, legend goes, he stepped inside and vanished, saving himself. I always loved that little allegory as an artist. Even when it is not enough for others, if it is enough for you, you can live inside it.”
— Ocean Vuong, from an interview with Zoë Hitzig in Prac Crit
Incorrect sayings that I use so often I’ve almost forgotten that they’re not the originals:
I have bigger fish to fight
We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it
You can lead a horse to water, but if you drown it you have to walk home
Opening a can of whales
You made your bed, now shit in it
Combining the latter two into the phrase “you opened this can of whales, now lie in it”
"Kamala Harris raised 50+ million dollars after Biden dropped out!" you fools.... that's the money she got from selling Biden to One Direction :(
Well folks I've been sitting on this little script for ages and finally decided to just go ahead and publish it. What does it do?
you can enter any ao3 link - for example, to your bookmarks or an author's works page - and automatically download all the works and series that are linked from that page in the format of your choice. if there are multiple pages, the script will page through results for you until there are no more fics to download
you can check your fanfic-savin' folder for unfinished fics and automatically update them if there are new chapters. you can also check for new fics in series!
if you're a dinosaur who uses Pinboard, you can back up all the Pinboard bookmarks you have that link to ao3
don't worry about crashing ao3 with this! this baby takes forever to run, guaranteed. anyway ao3 won't let me make more than one request per second even if I wanted to so it's quite safe
I've been working on this for about two years and it's finally in a state where it does everything I want and isn't breaking every two seconds, so I thought it was time to share! I hope y'all get some use out of it.
note: this is a standalone desktop app that DOES NOT DO ANYTHING aside from automate clicking on buttons on the ao3 website. Everything this script does, can be done by hand using ao3's regular features. It is just a utility to facilitate personal backups for offline reading - there's no website or server, I have no access to or indeed interest in the fics other people download using this. No plagiarism is happening here, please don't come after me.
The Causal Chain And Why Your Story Needs It
The most obnoxious thing my writing teacher taught me every story needed, that I absolutely loathed studying in the moment and that only later, after months of resisting and fighting realized she was right, was something called the causal chain.
Simply put, the causal chain is the linked cause-and-effect that must logically connect every event, reaction, and beat that takes place in your story to the ones before and after.
The Causal Chain is exhausting to go through. It is infuriating when someone points out that an event or a character beat comes out of nowhere, unmoored from events around it.
It is profoundly necessary to learn and include because a cause-and-effect chain is what allows readers to follow your story logically which means they can start anticipating what happens next, which is what is required for a writer to be able to build suspense and cognitively engage the audience, to surprise them, and to not infuriate them with random coincidences that hurt or help the characters in order to clumsily advance the author's goals.
By all means, write your story as you want to write it in the first draft, and don't worry about this principle too much. This is an editing tool, not a first draft tool. But one of the first things you should do when retroactively begin preparing your story to be read by others is going step by step through each event and confirming that a previous event leads to it and that subsequent events are impacted by it on the page.
this pride, i learnt about the Palestinian trans woman Oscar Al-Halabiye, dancer and resistance fighter against the israeli occupation in Southern Lebanon. she named herself Oscar after Lady Oscar from the "The Rose of Versailles", a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Riyoko Ikeda.
her story is documented in Cinema Fouad(1993). zionists use pink washing to reinforce their genocidal terrorist narrative when queer Palestinians have been fighting against the occupation since the very beginning. you can watch it here with english subtitles. long live the intifada!
Pieces of media to watch to educate yourself on Palestine’s long history of suffering from the zionist Israeli occupation :
“Jenin, Jenin” a documentary by Mohammad Bakri (available on Youtube)
“200 meters” a movie by Ameen Nayfeh (available on Netflix)
“Born in Gaza” a documentary by Hernán Zin (available on Netflix)
“Samouni Road” a documentary & animation by Stefano Savona (available on Netflix and Palestine Film Institute’s website)
“Edward Said on Palestine (1988)” a TV documentary style film by Christoper Skyes (available on Youtube)
“To My Father (2008)” a documentary style film by Abdel Salam Shehada (available on Palestine Film Institute’s website)
“Salt of this sea” a movie by Annemarie Jacir (available on Netflix)
“Children of Shatila” a documentary by Mai Masri (available on Netflix & Youtube)
“The Present” a short movie by Farah Nabulsi (available on Netflix)
“Frontiers of Dreams and Fears” a documentary by Mai Masri (available on Netflix & Youtube)
“The Crossing” a short film by Ameen Nayfeh (available on Netflix)
“Tantura” a documentary by Alon Schwartz (available on Youtube)
“3000 nights” a movie by Mai Masri (available on Netflix)
“Farha” a movie by Darin J. Sallam (available on Netflix)
“Arna’s Children” a documentary by Juliano Mer-Khamis (available on Youtube)
“Ma’loul celebrates it’s destruction” a documentary by Michel Khleifi (available on Youtube)
“A World Not Ours” a documentary style movie by Mahdi Fleifel (available on Netflix)
“Like Twenty Impossibles” a movie by Annemarie Jacir (available on Netflix)
“Omar” a movie by Hany Abu Assad (available on Netflix)
“Mars At Sunrise” a movie by Jessica Habie (available on Netflix)
“5 Broken Cameras” a documentary by Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi (available on Youtube)
“Aida Returns” a film by Carol Mansour (look for upcoming screenings through this link)
[this list will constantly be updated with more movies & documentaries that i’m reminded of, or with new pieces that i find and watch… if you have any suggestions please send them my way]
PS ; as this is a personal list coming from a Palestinian person, i will only be adding the movies and documentaries that i feel are MOST important and effective in transferring the message of the Palestinian cause… so all recommendations are highly appreciated yet this is just a personal list and doesn’t include all types of Palestinian (or Palestinian related) visual media 🙏
🍉 Queer Palestinian Books 🍉
🇵🇸 The algorithm is going to keep silencing my posts, but they're not going to silence me. I grew up with little to no books that made me feel seen as a queer/bisexual Palestinian Arab American. Today, it's still not easy enough to find those books online, even though we have thousands of lists, posts, and directories to guide us. To make your search a little easier, here are a few queer Palestinian books to add to your TBR. Please help me spread this by reblogging. Consider adding these to your least for Read Palestine Week (click for resources)! 💜
🍉 The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher 🇵🇸 A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar 🍉 Hazardous Spirits by Anbara Salam 🇵🇸 To All the Yellow Flowers by Raya Tuffaha 🍉 You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat 🇵🇸 The Specimen's Apology by George Abraham 🍉 Birthright by George Abraham 🇵🇸 Nayra and the Djinn by Iasmin Omar Ata 🍉 Where Black Stars Rise by Nadia Shammas and Marie Enger 🇵🇸 The Twenty-Ninth Year by Hala Alyan 🍉 Guapa by Saleem Haddad 🇵🇸 From Whole Cloth: An Asexual Romance by Sonia Sulaiman
🍉 The Philistine by Leila Marshy 🇵🇸 Love Is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar 🍉 Shell Houses by Rasha Abdulhadi 🇵🇸 Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique by Sa'ed Atshan 🍉 Belladonna by Anbara Salam 🇵🇸 Confetti Realms by Nadia Shammas, Karnessa, Hackto Oshiro 🍉 Blood Orange by Yaffa As 🇵🇸 The ordeal of being known by Malia Rose 🍉 Decolonial Queering in Palestine by Walaa Alqaisiya 🇵🇸 Are You This? Or Are You This?: A Story of Identity and Worth by Madian Al Jazerah, Ellen Georgiou 🍉 This Arab Is Queer: An Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers 🇵🇸 My Mama's Magic by Amina Awad
this has been discussed before but reducing female characters to the girlboss braincell holder in the name of combating misogyny in fandom is ironically also a form of misogyny
As a rule of thumb, don't reblog donation posts or people asking for donations unless they've been vetted and reblogged by Palestinian bloggers. We usually go to lengths to verify this shit because we know scammers have been faking to get people to send them money, using the urgency of our genocide as bait.
It's disgusting this is what we're dealing with, but people are losing money because of some truly evil people out there.
Accounts don't just randomly spring up on tumblr without gofundmes while asking for someone to help them create a campaign. Fuck out of here with that shit.