IceBot

"Es sind 30 Grad!"

I’ve long made peace with the fact that as western LGBTs you are more than content knowing that the price of the advancement of your rights is silence when the symbols of your movement are used to justify the murder of my people and my neighbours and comrades across the globe.

One of the only asexual activists is Yasmin Benoit, a Black woman. She has raised so much awareness for the community. She was the first asexual person to lead Pride in London, she started the #thisiswhatasexuallookslike movement and is THE leading voice for the community.

And you all will celebrate international asexuality day on April 6th but we wouldn't even have that if she hadn't cofounded it.

Edit: why are you all too scared to repost this. Cmon. Be vocal about being against racism

Edit 2: if you feel the need to announce in the comments that you're not reblogging for whatever reason just know that I genuinely do not care.

Heres a not so friendly reminder, as an lgbt metis person, i dont give a single fuck what your blog is themed or if this is too painful for you to look at. Reblog this post. Reblog this post with the sources of the 751 children who were found.

Your compliance and silence as well as the compliance and silence of your ancestors is what allowed these schools to open and kill first nations children. The children of MY people.

Dont follow me if you cant reblog this post or the one with sources to your political blog or your most popular blog. Add trigger warnings if you must but if your political blog is only focused on the harms you personally face like being lgbt then you need to see some bigger pictures and stop being afraid of angering your racist mutural or actually saying some shit about racism. If you can reblog some antifa graphics or add blm to your bio to be a surface level ally, you can reblog some sources on the genocide first nations people faced and still face today.

They were CHILDREN.

I’d like to add this photo I took last night in Victoria of the statue of Captain Cook. Though I myself am not indigenous, I 100% agree that these murderers, kidnappers and rapists shouldn’t have huge statues and plaques that decorate them and say how “great” they were.

Here’s another photo of the legislative assembly from yesterday. Later on there were more items, candles and signs at the memorial, as well as a big poster with 1505 painted on it but I didn’t get a picture

People need to see this. Not just quickly glance at the photos and keep on scrolling. They need to see this.

I went to a “Cancel Canada Day” event and burst into tears - not because I was surprised to learn of the unmarked graves (survivors told us they were there. Our government pushed it aside, and we let them), but because seeing all the people gathered in mourning drove it home: They. Were. Children.

This is my country’s legacy - and it’s not history. The last schools closed during my lifetime. My Father went to school with students who lived at the local residential school, after it was changed to a boarding house (read: holding centre) for indigenous youth who went to local schools.

“But Rue, where will these kids stay? Do you want them on the streets?”

of course not. In an ideal world, a kids would have multiple adults other than their parents they could look to for care, but I recognize that that will never be a reality for every single child. So: youth shelters, if they have nowhere else to go. There should be clean, warm shelters where anyone under 18 can stay for as long as they need, no questions asked. (And of course shelters that aren’t just for kids, but we’re talking about youth rights right now)

“But Rue,” I hear you say, “what if some moody teenager runs away after an argument?”

First of all, I’d rather a thousand moody teenagers run away than one abused child be trapped. Second, so what if one does? A kid needs time away from their parents, so they leave. The vast majority of them will get some time to cool down and then go back home, and if they don’t want to go back, period? Then nine times out of ten, they have a good reason. (Because yes, as hard as it is for you to believe, kids are humans who have common sense.)

“Okay, but what about the one time out of ten the kid doesn’t have a good reason?”

hi there it's princess/nova back again, i'm really sorry i have to come here like this but me and my wife are still struggling abandoned by our families and unable to reach any of our friends. we've been trying to survive without me being exposed to harassment but at this point we're going hungry. we don't have any income and need help affording food for ourselves and our kitties please if you can, donate. I would be so truly thankful

v3nm0: @Crow-Forgemaster , @Prince-Nova

c@sh@pp: $dragonforgedbutch , $StrayNova

I've spent weeks writing, rewriting, questioning, deleting, crying, and trying to find the courage to tell this story honestly.

This isn't an attack. It isn't an exposé. It isn't a manifesto.

It's a memoir.

It's the story of what happened to me.

It's the story of why I am the way I am.

It's the story of Dashcon 2.

I wrote it because, for weeks, I struggled to explain what this experience felt like.

Eventually, I realized I couldn't explain it.

I had to invite you to live through it with me.

Whether you've known me for a while or have never heard my name before, thank you for taking the time to read it.

Whatever you take away from these pages, I hope that, by the end, you'll understand me a little better than when you began.

This is, without question, the most personal thing I've ever written—and I believe it's the most important thing I've ever created.

Welcome to Memoirs of a Tranny.

"The Affini are not gods either."

My issue is that I can’t figure out a good equivalent to that kind of practice with writing ? Like idk. Do I do a bunch of object descriptions ? Do I do a scene with a restricted vocab ?? I don’t knowwwww

Grinding would be word sprints. NaNoWriMo was killer for this before their whole operation went to shit, but the good thing about that is that they never had copyright over the concept of writing fast. The numbers you go for can be a little arbitrary at first as you figure out what specifically works for you, but 15 minutes is usually the average from what I've seen? Maybe you can get 500 words in 15 minutes. Maybe you can only get 200. Either way, you're exercising the muscles that get ideas from your brain out onto paper.

Here's some other ideas I came up with for more specific exercises:

Wordsketching for Settings

Go outside (or stay inside?), practically anywhere. Sit down and angle yourself in a way that lets you get a good view of where you're at, and then pick the first things that jump out to you about the place you're in and describe them in 2-3 sentences. Then, figure out what you're drawn to next and write sentences about that. Make sure you add what you feel in that moment (Is the atmosphere uncomfortable? Is the place hot or cold? Humid?), what the place sounds like (People talking, or cars, or animal noises...), so on and so forth. This is very similar to the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique, so you can even work off of that structure if you'd like, but this is specifically to help you get better at describing settings.

As far as fanfic is concerned, I think the genre as a whole skimps on atmosphere and setting a SHIT TON. If you want to elevate yourself, let the pacing of your work slow down for a second and dedicate some time to really orienting your blorbos in a specific space. It does a lot for the tone of the work, and... if you want to play ball with the big boys you need to start thinking about things like tone and atmosphere when writing.

Transcription for Dialogue

This can entail you writing down what your family says at the dinner table like a creepy weirdo, or transcribing movie dialogue or anything of that nature. The purpose would be to get used to how conversation naturally flows between two or more people (turn-taking, interruption etc.), and furthermore getting a sense of how human beings naturally talk to each other. I've written down things I've heard people say in public before for no better reason than thinking "Oh! I could totally see [X Character] saying that!". Whatever hangups you may have over this sick linguivouyeristic perversion are much less important than the tragedy of filling your work with Incorrect Quotes -style unreadable garbage. It's like eating your vegetables.

Wiktionary Challenges for Word Choice

Just spamming the "random word" button on Wiktionary will give you instances in every language Wiktionary has in its database, so this one requires a little more work to be helpful, but in lieu of that you can look through stuff like Categories or Thesaurus Entries!

Let's gather a few fun words to demonstrate.

Okay, this should be more than enough for some sentences describing a setting out in nature! Blunket is making me think this takes place at twilight... And I like alliterating, so let's mash it to make the semi-redundant phrase "blunket-blue" just for some flair.

The copse laid still. On the bank of the meandering creek, the rabbit flattened herself out against the soft grass, her luculent eyes darting back and forth over her surroundings. What she could see of the copse looked mostly the same: Twisting shrubs the color of ash, blunket-blue grasses, an invisible wind brushing over all that stillness and pressing flat everything it could. Her nose twitched. Until the last blushes of rose drained from the evening sky, the rabbit would keep herself fixed in that spot on the riverbank and wait.

Unlike with art, there isn't an organized consensus about them and accepted practice excercises. I've consumed a lot of writing theory and advice content in my life, so I'll do my best to try and make a list of possible excercises based on stuff I learned as well as my own judgement for useful skills.

The most important thing to remember is that writing is the art of communicating your intent. A lot of writing is just figuring out ways to get across the experience you want to create, and so a lot of the excercises are about learning to do that in different ways.

Descriptions

Start out with picking random things and describing them in writing. This is mostly to get used to translating sensory experiences into verbal descriptions. Try describing experiences or things that aren't visual too.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time you're not allowed to use any of the previous descriptions.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time create a different connotation for it (an easy trio to start with is good/bad/neutral).

Go people watching. Pick something that's happening in front of you and describe it three different ways. Each time in a different genre.

Play taboo. Describe an object, action or an emotion without naming it or using closely associated words.

Exposition

Play storytelling Mao. Write a scene where the world and characters act according to a weird and arbitrary rule but never explain it directly or indirectly. Try to communicate the rule with only the character's actions, dialogue and environmental storytelling.

Write a scene with conflict and a twist, then analyze it to figure out what information the audience must know in order to to understand what's going on. Rewrite the scene as a mystery, each time omitting one of those pieces of information and framing it as the answer to the scene. This is mostly to practice awareness of what information you're giving the audience and how its presence or lack of it changes things.

Write a scene with an unreliable narrator. The narrator's perception of what's happening is completely mistaken, but the audience must still be able to understand the truth of what's actually going on.

Atmosphere

Write a story with a beginning, middle and end without any dialogue or actions. Use only descriptions to create environmental storytelling.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time try to evoke a different emotion.

Dialogue

Write a scene with only dialogue.

Write a conversation where the characters never state what they actually mean.

Pick an emotion. Write as many one line dialogues as you can that convey the character is feeling that emotion.

Character voice

Write a scene with multiple people using only dialogue. You can't state any of the characters' names, yet each speaker should be distinct.

Write a piece of exposition for a character to deliver and have a few different characters say it. Analyze how the character's backstory, culture, status, worldview and personality would change the delivery. What parts would they emphasize and what would get downplayed? How would they frame the information? What's their opinion on it? Would they deliver it factually or insert their opinion? How would their mood change the way they deliver the exposition?

Prose

Write poetry (and look up excercises for those as unfortunately I'm not familiar enough to give any).

Write a 1k story. Then rewrite it to be less than 500 words while still telling the same story.

Write a two sentence story. Write a three sentence story. Write a five sentence story. Compare them and analyze the things the extra length allowed you to do.

Pacing

Look up story structures. Pick a story and try to map it to said story structures. (A good place to start is Snyder's save the cat structure and hollywood movies. Most of them use that structure as template).

Write a story using only sentences with 3-4 words. Then do it with 6-7 words, and then with 10-11 words. Read those stories aloud and analyze the differences between how they sound and feel.

Plotting

Go people watching. Pick something that's happening in front of you and describe it in three different ways. Each time add a different twist in the end. What different setup did each twist need?

Write the same story in five sentences, then in three, then in two. What had to remain in order for the story to be the same? What was lost? In what ways did it change the resulting story?

Pick a story and read/watch it all the way through. Then go back and analyze each scene seperately. In what way did the scene contribute to the story?

Use a random word generator. Pick one word for theme, two words for plot and three words for characters. Figure out a way to write a coherent story that includes all of them. This one can be changed with any number of words for any category. The important thing is that there would be enough words you need to use that it acts as a constraint rather than a freeform prompt

Write a scene. Then rewrite it so that it starts as late as you can make it and ends as early as it can.

Character

Look up character arc structures. Pick a story and try to map it to a fitting character arc.

Practice debate. Pick a topic and write as many different viewpoints on it as you can. Try to give each viewpoint strong arguments to support it.

Pick a character. Figure out what plot would challenge them the most and what antagonist would cause them the most trouble.

Pick a character and decide on one trait of theirs. Write a foil character to highlight said trait.

Metaphor and subtext

Pick a couple of characters and have them argue. The argument can't be stated directly in any way and instead must be communicated through metaphor.