I Once Wrote Upon a Dream

so much to chew on w how joint suffering Makes People after they get out of it. this is especially juicy to me if your characters were introduced to each other as a direct result of the horrors. you learned everything about me at my worst and against my will so how do i get better again if you’re watching. there’s no one else in the world who understands a fraction of what you know of me. i see your wounds beneath your shirt. you know how i scream. your face is in all of my nightmares. if anyone tried to take you from me i would be undone. no notes !

sex pollen is OUT, honesty pollen is IN. Expose your characters to alien chemicals that make them actually talk to each other

twist-- what if the pollen does both. so sorry, not only are we in a noncon/dubcon hellscape but THE TRUTH SERUM TROPE IS HERE TOO. gonna take hours for that dick to soften and you're confessing eVERYTHINGGGGG

X

I feel like when I say ‘relatable’ what I really mean is ‘resonant.’ I don’t want characters who I feel are like me, I want characters who have emotions so strong I can feel them through the page.

I think this is important because a lot of us forget the power of stories to make us feel things about characters who are not like us, who have experienced things that we never will. The purpose of listening to someone else's story should not necessarily be identification, but understanding.

taking off a mask to reveal what lies beneath as a romantic gesture is overdone, and besides i want to see the romantic or even platonic potential of protecting someone's identity beneath the mask, without any expectation of ever being allowed to see what's under it. picking it up and holding it gently to their face when it's knocked off and they're in danger of being exposed, without trying to catch a glimpse of what they "really" look like under there. throwing yourself in front of them to hide them from view while they put themselves back together without taking advantage or looking back to see what you're protecting. learning to read them by body language, tone of voice, and behaviour so well that you never need to see their face to feel like you know and understand them.

and needless to say. the mask stays on during sex.

I'm just saying, if you're going to worldbuild magic being a "raw, primal force, akin to and interweaving with nature itself" you gotta explain to me why animals don't use it

I know the normal answer is "they just aren't smart enough for it" but idk I've seen enough media where a character uses a spell in a moment of brain-off panic ilI feel like animals could probably stumble into a spell or two like, accidentally

when James Baldwin said I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive

when James Baldwin said to be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So I am forced to be an optimist. I am forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive.