A network of stories stored on a meat-based drive

person (non-practicing)

The key to writing good fanfiction is to harbor a deeply humiliating desire, and the trick there is that even pretty basic and societally-accepted desires like “being held” and “being wanted” CAN and WILL be humiliating if they’re intense enough. Become so estranged from human connection that the idea of someone playing with your hair fills you with yearning so deep you feel like you’re going to throw up and you will write some banger fanfiction. It might have some other consequences too but idrk about that.

The Murderbot Diaries are a power fantasy about being aromantic and still developing extremely important dedicated emotionally intimate partnerships where you are a top priority in a person's life, equal to their other family or romantic attachments despite your own emotional difficulties. And having guns in your arms

I need to make one for work...

Honestly, a big part of why I'm excited about @jdragsky's Seven Part Pact is that it'll be nice to have a baroquely maximalist tabletop-RPG-meets-board-game actually available in print that isn't Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine.

(Like, not that I'm sick of CMWGE by any means, but it would be good to have an example of the type I can recommend to people who would prefer to at least occasionally roll dice!)

not naming names but some of you are so creative and talented it's an honor to have you in my phone

The fastest way to accomplish The Project is to cease being afraid of The Project. The Project cannot maim you. The Project cannot kill you. The Project is more afraid of you than you are of it. It is okay if The Project turns out differently from how it was in your head, and it is okay if it has flaws. You are capable of engaging with The Project.

shane hollander could give anne's scaffold speech and anne boleyn could get drafted to the voyageurs

Imagine you jumped a real tough mf and not only you beat him up, you also removed his memories just for fun. And then like an hour later you run into the guy again, and this time he brought his bf, so you're like, oh shiiit. But he sees you and says, we're adopting you. What do you even do.

it is honestly amazing how much of writing and editing is just. logistics. like... do i use a name here or a pronoun? if i move this dialogue tag to the middle of this line and break it in half, does the end of the line hit harder that way? what if i move the tag to the front? what if i remove it entirely? ...wait, whose point of view am i in; can i reasonably say this character is appalled, or must i say they look or seem or sound appalled? is this a deliberate action or a step-removed one; is her hand closing on his shoulder, or is she closing her hand on his shoulder? environment environment environment, we need to break all this dialogue up with some narration, the scene is coming untethered. what! are! they doing! with! the rest of their bodies that are not hands! fuck fuck fuck FUCK i forgot we covered this two chapters ago and now i either need to cut this whole chunk or find a reason to reprise the conversation from earlier. name or pronoun? name or pronoun? name or pronoun? move this clause around in this sentence? oh i'll add this phrase-- nope, never mind, past!me added the same phrase two lines down. okay, if i add too much environmental narration it's going to take away from this bit, but not enough and it won't feel grounded. what if i move this to its own line? where the FUCK are their hands?

Two figures arguing on my shoulders, except instead of an angel and a devil, it's an architect and an engineer.