I Lay In The Darkness Dreaming

Pirates use this innate fear to their advantage to protect themselves from mermaids, hence the iconic beards and hat:

I found some of my old editing work on a flash drive, and there was one novel which grabbed my attention and I immediately started screeching like a pterodactyl . Thankfully It never actually made it to publication because it was so bad, and the editor above me got fired for letting it get past the vetting process.

Mostly I’m just reading through it and cringing, but then I came across some of my own commentary at the side.

It starts out pretty tame. And yes, some people DO forget the names of their MC’s half way through a book. (Or the second chapter in this case, switching back and forth between Karen and Kate so much I eventually gave up.)

Then starts to become a little bit eeeeeh, and I have to make several of these changes and suggestions, mostly prompting for the language to be removed and rewritten entirely as it was VILE.

But then about chapter five I have lost my mind and well…

Basic anatomy lessons should be a requisite of all erotica writers.

noPE.

*hysterical/horrified laughter*

And finally.

Watch: Faith’s school lectured girls about makeup and “sexy selfies,” so she shut them all the way down.

The girl’s school, instead of lecturing the boys about treating their female peers like objects and posting pornography of girls as young as 12, decided to lecture the girls about makeup and and skirt length.

Woody Allen is a hugeantic piece of shit so if you want to rag on him, let’s focus on the true things:

- He pursued a sexual relationship and eventual marriage with a young woman he helped raise for 12 years and described his relationship with her before the marriage as “paternal.” (The way that tweet should have been worded.)

- He included jokes in his stand up comedy routine about his first wife’s sexual assault.

- He definitely more than likely sexually abused his adopted daughter, Dylan. You can read about the case and decide for yourself. But come on.

- He has always romanticized gigantic age differences in relationships in his films with girls that are barely-legal. (Juliette Lewis was 19 when she played opposite him. He was 56.)

- He has most of Hollywood wrapped around his skeevy finger and it’s gross. No one wants to let Dylan Farrow have a voice against him because he’s so “loved” and celebrated as an icon in Hollywood. Much like Bill Cosby was…hmm…

- Seriously Dylan has been trying to talk about this for 25 years and people won’t listen. He had been in therapy for inappropriate behavior toward her before anything was presented to the police.

- 2 babysitters and a tutor backed up Dylan’s claim.

Nowadays, with DSLR’s and a variety of lenses, we are able to depict a wide range of focal lengths by using one kind of camera.

So that is why most people on social media may seem to look thinner than they do in person (especially in selfies because the front facing camera on phones especially have short focal lengths).

Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; they’re taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or have flareups of their chronic health problems; stuff is basically working out. Then a small thing about their routine changes and suddenly they’re barely keeping their head above water.

(This happens to me all the time; it’s approximately my dominant experience of working full-time.)

I think one thing that’s going on here is that there are a bunch of small parts of our daily routine which are doing really important work for our wellbeing. Our commute involves a ten-minute walk along the waterfront and the walking and fresh air are great for our wellbeing (or, alternately, our commute involves no walking and this makes it way more frictionless because walking sucks for us). Our water heater is really good and so we can take half-hour hot showers, which are a critical part of our decompression/recovery time. We sit with our back to the wall so we don’t have to worry about looking productive at work as long as the work all gets done. The store down the street is open really late so late runs for groceries are possible. Our roommate is a chef and so the kitchen is always clean and well-stocked.

It’s useful to think of these things as load-bearing. They’re not just nice - they’re part of your mental architecture, they’re part of what you’re using to thrive. And when they change, life can abruptly get much harder or sometimes just collapse on you entirely. And this is usually unexpected, because it’s hard to notice which parts of your environment and routine are load bearing. I often only notice in hindsight. “Oh,” I say to myself after months of fatigue, “having my own private space was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a scary drop in weight, “being able to keep nutrition shakes next to my bed and drink them in bed was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a sudden struggle to maintain my work productivity, “a quiet corner with my back to the wall was load-bearing.”