pink and gold and glittering

writers really will spend twenty minutes pacing around the kitchen thinking “this scene is genius” and then sit down to type and suddenly remember approximately three words and one emotional vibe

i don't really want to weight in on the "using big words in your writing is ableist" discourse happening on tiktok because i'm like 90% certain it's an anti-intellectual psyop to stir up drama in online circles to promote the use of ai to summarize literally everything and thus feeding the LLMs and lowering the populace's mistrust of such tools but i also have to say: dictionaries and thesauruses are the most accessible they've ever been. if you use an e-reader of any kind you can look up a word without leaving the page. there's a plethora of online dictionaries and if you just type a word + "meaning" into google it'll usually give you a definition. we used to have pocket dictionaries we used when reading in class. i have two on my shelf right now that i used in high school. stop letting the fascists purposefully misuse anti-ableism rhetoric to trick you into never thinking again.

I've seen a lot of posts about how Julien pretends not to care but clearly cares about Occtis, which is very delicious, but I also think Occtis' whole "I am tired of pretending I give a shit about you" thing is equally fascinating. I can't stop thinking about how right before that he says, "I am tired of trying to placate your anger towards me. I am tired of trying to do the things that I think you want me to do so you'll stop trying to kill me." Occtis, as has become very clear, was abused growing up, and probably learned to do exactly that - placate people's anger, do the things they want him to do - to try to avoid the abuse. That could be a whole other post but I think it's really interesting that he snapped and said that to Julien. He's afraid that Julien is going to hurt him, maybe even kill him, presumably because of him being a Tachonis. I wonder if that had anything to do with him asking Julien not to kill Koral - he was desperate for proof that a member of his family didn't despise him, but I wonder if any part of him wanted to see if Julien was capable of forgiving a Tachonis enough to let them live. And all of this after Occtis saying that only two people care about him and Julien not saying anything to contradict that. I don't think Julien is the only one trying very hard not to care. I think Occtis is terrified of caring about other people he is not certain already care about him (Thaisha and Thimble) because he's terrified of being hurt (again), so it's a whole lot easier to tell Julien and to tell himself that he doesn't give a shit. But like Julien, he certainly didn't act like someone who doesn't care - he jumped right back into his family's house to save Julien when his shadow dragged him back. Two people who are starting to care about one another and refuse to admit it because they're terrified of caring and I think that's very fun.

pop health science is so annoying bc it'll be like "did you know? eating strawberries will give you mega cancer" and you're like pfft whatever begone influencer. but sometimes then you'll see a reasonably credible article like "Study Shows Possible Link Between Strawberries and Mega Cancer" and you're not usually the type to follow that kind of thing religiously but idk maybe you should consider not eating strawberries? but then there's another article saying "Strawberry/Mega Cancer Study Debunked" and it turns out the original study had a sample size of 3 and was funded by Big Blueberry, and strawberries may have a small connection to mega cancer but only if you are genetically predisposed to mega cancer and eat 50 strawberries every day. so you return to your strawberry eating life. but whenever you eat strawberries in public someone tells you about the mega cancer.

like the betrayal’s always going to be worse if they cared about you and it didn’t matter. someone discards you because they didn’t give a shit, then you can be angry about that, you can feel vindicated in that, you can get over it. but if they can look you in the eyes and say “I love you. I would make the same choice again.” You will never sleep peacefully again, is all.