i'm gonna live, i'm gonna fly

@everliving-everblaze: kotlc + other bookish things

@q-nihachu: mcyt, dropout, and other improv-ish things

@quivering-quill: nonfandom; art, memes, serious stuff

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

“Liar.”

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

64 or lower

65-67

68-69

70-72

73 or higher

No preference

i wrote this while working in a program for new writers. on wednesdays, two of the teachers would be contractually obligated to read our writing aloud to the group of 300+ teens. i had never read my work in public before. i had something like 6k poems and was panicking about it. none of them are good enough. sometimes the train is howling. it is hard, actually, sometimes, even as an adult.

and then i thought - what is one thing i wish i could tell all of them. each of these 300 kids. what did i need to hear, at 16?

i wanted to tell them about the day you wake up, and the sun feels warm finally. i wanted to tell them about carving a life out of soapstone, your hands turning bloody. i wanted to tell them that sometimes yes - it actually does feel easy. i wanted to tell them about weddings and cookie dough and long road trips. about albums of new music and old friends laughing and the sound of snow falling.

you will learn the pattern of the train. you will learn to close your eyes when you hear the engine rumbling. you will learn to let yourself have the grey days in their lily-soft numbness. sometimes it will feel like life is wet paint, and god has smeared your canvas across a sewer grate. sometimes it will be so boring it isn’t even pronounceable - the tenacious, soundless blankness. survival isn’t just ugly nights and wild mornings. it is also the steady, unimportant moments. it is just driving with your seatbelt on. it is calling a friend on the way home. it is burying your face into the fur of your dog.

when i had finished reading this poem aloud, the auditorium was silent for a solid minute. someone stood up to take a picture of where it had been projected onto a screen, and then three more people followed the action, and then - like a bad internet story, people remembered they were supposed to be clapping. kids came up to me after it - thank you for writing that. i think i hear a train coming.

i would write this differently now, i think, but it has been 7 years. i still live by the tracks. i also haven’t picked up a blade in over 10 years. the scars are still there, but these days i only pick up scissors to cut my hair. i know why you can’t tell your mom about it. i know how the numbness slips over everything, a restless horrible cotton. i know how when you dropped the dish, you weren’t crying about the broken glass. i know about feeling like all the roads have closed their exits, that you aren’t supposed to still-be-here - and yet.

i am still here, and still yours, and i haven’t forgotten. what i’m saying is if any hope is calling to you - i know it’s hard, but you have to listen. i’m saying keep driving, but slow down the car. sit down in the shower, i’m not judging you. we can stay in the dark with the good hot water and do nothing but stare. notice the stab wound. make it through another tuesday.

i know what it is like to miss yourself. do what you need to. come home to me. i am writing to you, my past self, from the future. i’ll be waiting for you.

For this week's Off Topic Tuesday, I'm choosing a darker and less pleasant topic, but one that's important for me to raise awareness for: sibling abuse.

Sibling abuse is one of the most common forms of domestic violence, and it's also estimated to be the most under-reported due to how incredibly normalized and accepted it is. Despite how common, under-reported, and normalized sibling abuse is, it is equally as traumatic and damaging as parental abuse.

It's normal for siblings to argue, it's normal for siblings to tease each other, it's normal for siblings to have some rivalry. It is not normal / healthy sibling rivalry for one sibling to repeatedly harm and terrorize the other, especially when the sibling repeatedly doing the harming and terrorizing has some power dynamic tilted in their favor (such as being older, larger, stronger, etc.)

This is important to me because I am a survivor of sibling abuse. I have been completely non-contact with my siblings for over ten years now, and I have also spent those ten years in trauma therapy to try to recover from the things my siblings did to me and put me through. I feel very passionate about the cause of sibling abuse because all the while I was enduring abuse the adults around me dismissed it as "sibling rivalry" instead of helping or protecting me.

It's not normal sibling rivalry that I spent my childhood and adolescence covered in bruises from being assaulted by my older siblings (and couldn't fight back because they were bigger than me). It's not normal that as a teenager I couldn't sleep at night because I was so afraid of my older siblings, and ten years later I still need to take sleep aids at night because despite all the trauma therapy and being no-contact, that terror of my older siblings still lives within me which still makes it hard to sleep at night. Someone might have intervened earlier and taken the abuse seriously if it had been an adult, such as a parent, aunt, uncle, grandparent who was harming and terrorizing me. But because it was "just" my siblings no one really cared or intervened.

So here's what you can do: stop contributing to the idea that abusive behavior between siblings is in any way normal or acceptable. If it would be wrong for a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, etc to do it to a child, it's wrong for a sibling to do it. This is especially the case when power dynamics come into play, such as one sibling being older / bigger / stronger than the other sibling they're harming and/or terrorizing.

Not to say younger siblings never abuse older siblings, it is true that the majority of sibling abuse cases are an older sibling abusing a younger sibling, but if a younger sibling has some power dynamic or advantage tilted in their favor (such as the older sibling being disabled while the younger sibling is able bodied) a younger sibling can still abuse an older sibling.

This was definitely a major contributing factor in my case. I can't really say that the adults in my family really ever taught or enforced boundaries on my older siblings. Nobody taught or enforced to my older siblings that they actually need to respect words like "stop" "no" and "don't", so if someone smaller and weaker than them (such as a younger sibling) tried to use those words to them it was completely meaningless.

By the time we were teenagers and eventually young adults and their behavior had escalated into what was undeniably domestic violence, when the (older) adults in my family at this point *finally* started thinking "hmm, maybe we should tell the older kids to back off a little in how much they physically assault and verbally abuse (my name)" at this point it was essentially too late. They had been getting away with it for too long, and they couldn't suddenly learn to respect boundaries and the words "no" or "stop" as easily a younger kid might be able to.

Another thing the article mentions that I think is a good point is that preventing sibling abuse means making sure kids are getting age appropriate adult supervision, because kids not getting enough age appropriate supervision can be a risk factor for sibling abuse developing. Violent and inappropriate behavior should be nipped in the bud as soon as adults witness it, but that's not always possible if adults aren't present to witness it in the first place. Lack of age appropriate adult supervision can lead to violent and inappropriate behavior to continue without being properly addressed by an adult.

As mentioned I've been completely no-contact with my siblings for over a decade. However, I've still heard bits and pieces here and there about my siblings and how their adult relationships and marriages are going, and I've heard more than a few questionable and concerning things about how my siblings treat their partners.

To me I guess it just makes sense, if someone spends their formative years getting away with abusing their sibling, no one intervening or teaching them that it's wrong, what's to stop them from repeating that same behavior as an adult with their partners and/or children?

Sibling abuse of course is important to stop and prevent for the sake of the sibling they're abusing (trust me, I know), but preventing and stopping abusive behavior between siblings is also really important for the sake of their future partners and/or children.