Crazy Cat Lady with a Pen

everyone's "well-adjusted" and "mentally healthy" until the "sometimes I wish I'd never been born at all" part of Bohemian Rhapsody comes on

I'm not saying you'll always find what you're looking for on ao3, but I am saying it's always worth checking just to see

this post was inspired by finding fic for a 1976 prog rock sci-fi album

What does it declare???

The two wolves inside every writer: "this is genuinely the best thing i have ever written. i am gifted. i am changed. this paragraph alone justifies my entire existence on this planet." and then five minutes later, same paragraph: "who wrote this. who allowed this. this reads like a golden retriever trying to describe grief. i need to lie down and reconsider everything." both wolves are always wrong. the paragraph is fine. you need a snack.

my toxic writing trait is imagining the scene in my head in long, full cinematic detail and then writing: “they fought. it was intense.”

Close enough welcome back Chekov's gun.

ID: A screenshot of tags left on the tumblr post. They read "#it's actually kind of a reverse Chekhov's Gun #Chekhov's Gun says "If there is setup there must be payoff" #Asimov's Tail says "if there is payoff there must be setup" #and I think the tail is also important #a tail is not something you'd expect to see on a character unless explicitly pointed out #someone stepping on the tail not only reveals its existence but also tells us things about it #eg it's floor length sensitive and the character either can't or won't keep it out of the way of foot traffic #the upshot seems to be "acclimatise your audience to things they don't understand before you use them" #you don't need to explain how a gun on the mantelpiece works in the same way you need to explain how your protagonist's tail does" End ID.

Promethean task: opposite of a Cassandraean task. You have the right information, and SOMEONE has to share it. But it's all in the delivery and if you're the person to identify the problem you WILL be hated forever.

Oedipal Task: (1) Attempting to avoid an unspeakably awful outcome and in doing so creating the circumstances that will bring it about. (2) Trying to solve an problem and discovering that you are in fact the problem you are trying to solve.

Odyssean task: you’ll complete it but it’ll take 20 times longer than it should and involve multiple side quests and mini-adventures

Medean Task: Doing this is going to destroy you and what you love just as much as the person you're trying to destroy. Everyone is telling you this, and you already know this. But your "fuck that guy and what he thinks he can do to me" instinct is just that strong. Also admittedly you get an extremely badass exit when all's said and done.

i LOVE the idea of "i can't win, but you can lose" in fictional confrontations it is SO fucking tasty. the human nature to self destruct and the human nature to survive by any means necessary combined at its finest.

there’s wip (active development) and wip (stuck in development hell) and wip (oh you’re not even getting funding for this one)

I think I am officially Fandom Old. I am so worn out from the arguments on who's the top or the bottom (who cares), what is allowed to be written (anything you want, bejeebus), what is Problematic (I know, just tag it), what other people Should Do (they Should live their lives free of judgment). There isn't a Right Way to do things. Tag your stuff appropriately, don't read stuff you don't want to read, and leave other people (me) alone.

There is nothing quite like the freedom of having gone through all of the Discourse and come out the other side into the promised land of Not Giving A Fuck.

The three keys to the promised land are “Block, Unfollow, and Do Not Engage” 

I have been in Fandom spaces for 20 years. It is LOVELY once you become the bog witch that no longer gives a fuck.

Happy Birthday to Vanilla Extract.

A non-writer asked me "but where do you get your ideas" and i genuinely did not know how to explain that it's not a place. it's not a website. it's not a folder. it's that i was on the bus and a woman was holding a paper bag very carefully and something about the way she held it made me need to know what was inside and then i needed to know why she was sad about it and then there was a whole person and then there was a whole story and the bus had already stopped and i missed my stop. that's where.

One of the best things about being a writer is thinking of something small you can add to your work that’s just. Devastating. Like you’re sitting there going. Oh. That would be diabolical. People would get really riled up about that. Exquisite. Let’s do it.

@d3-iseefire you

Accurate. 😆😆😆😆