#dovahnicky

I’ve drawn, deleted and then redrawn this one So Many Times. So take the two I liked the best

"It's been two hours." Sam groaned into her pillow.

"I mean, he was fighting Skulker. Do you think we should go look for him? Make sure he hasn't been flayed?"

"Tuck, it's Danny."

"Right." He fiddled with the game controls. "Why do we have to wait on him, anyway? Can't we just play until he gets here?"

"What? Us playing Doom? Alone? No, we always play with Danny."

"So? He can join later—we don't need him to be here for everything."

She hefted herself into a sitting position. "I guess you're right. We don't need Danny's permission."

He grinned. "That's more like it, sis."

"Call me sis again and your PDA is going out the window."

"Wha—"

"Kidding. You can call me any endearing term you can think of as long as you let me beat you. Then it'll be like you're kissing my ass."

Temporary Blind Ask Game

1: How long did you lose your sight for?

I was fully 100% pitch black no vision for only like a week I think, and then the medication started working so by the next month I was totally fine. So it was pretty quick!

3: Do you still have vision problems?

For this prompt.

Passage from Simulacrum (ffn | ao3 | tumblr)

This was a fun one to write! I wanted to show the horrible, painful violence of Danny’s death, and to leave no room for doubt: Danny is dead. He is dead, and he died horribly.

More importantly, I wanted to show this from a perspective that shows two major things: what he personally was experiencing as he died, and the significance of what was happening to him and to his corpse.

For the former, I wanted to focus on sensory details: what did he hear as he died? What did he feel? I might have gone into sound and taste as well if the section weren’t wrapping itself up as I wrote it. Not sight, though - sight feels less personal than sound or touch, or even scent or taste. Perhaps because I rely on and focus on sight so much for everything, and the other senses only tend to draw attention when either I’m deliberately focusing on them, or when something is strong enough to draw my attention to them.

But ye! Regarding sound: when I was little, my sister and I would go in the basement and scream high pitched together, because when we both screamed next to each other, we would hear this buzzing tv-tuner-like sound. So, knowing that Danny was screaming and his friends were screaming, that’s what my mind turned to first. Hence his scream buzzing with the screams of his friends. And of course, that’s not the only sound he experienced: I wanted to focus on the machine that killed him and destroyed his body, and on the ectoplasm that saved his corpse for someone else to take his place; so I put those things in there as well.

And that was what I focused on for feeling as well! I wanted to show the major somatic sensory things he felt and could process as he died (hence the heat of the electricity and the cool of the ectoplasm). And I wanted to show what was going on in his body as the electricity destroyed his cells and the ectoplasm replaced them, so I tied that to those major senses.

As for overall structure: I like parallelism, and I like threes, and I like occasionally breaking those threes with a four (for something finished) or a two (for something unfinished). And this passage and the passage it comes from demonstrate that. For the passage it comes from: there’s a single sentence starting things off with the finality of Danny dying. The next three paragraphs (really sentences, but they worked better as separate paragraphs) take the form of “He died [insert what he felt here, slowly leading into implications].” The next two take the form of “He died, [insert implications here].” I don’t know if others feel it the same way I do, but groups of three feel like their own complete phrase, but not quite an ending phrase. Groups of two feel like incomplete threes/fours: they can work as a phrase, perhaps even as an ending for a section, but they feel like they have to lead into something else, or else leave a feeling of incompleteness. Groups of four feel like threes with something tacked onto the end to signal the stopping of some flow. Of course, like any art form, these are not absolute, objective rules or feelings or anything like that! These are just the feelings I get from these sorts of loose groupings.

Regarding the structure of these two particular sentences: the first sentence was a set of three leading directly into a four: what he heard (screams, portal, ectoplasm) leading into the portal opening behind him, before him, and through him, and ending in the finality of him unable to hear anything in death. The second sentence is both the end of a three (the third “He died [insert what he felt here, slowly leading into implications]”) and a group of three in and of itself: the ectoplasm fused with him/fixed his body/replaced pieces of him. I didn’t want a four or a two here, especially at the end of such a large structural three: I wanted this to continue straight into the implications of how he died, and a four or a two would feel like a stop or a hiccup in the flow I had built.

So, yeah! Those are my thoughts on this passage! Sorry for the wait - I was gathering my thoughts, and I wanted to write this on desktop where formatting would be a lot easier.

13 - do you hate anyone at the moment?

Nothing comes to mind! There are some people I had issues with before but I just don't talk to them anymore, and I don't think about them much these days.

42- what the heck???

I went to check the list and there is no 42! What happened! I wonder if it's a mobile glitch.

You're right. Part of the problem is that there's no paid leave or even ant leave for Father's. Which takes a huge toll. Because in other countries where there's family leave you get so much more time to adjust to family life. Where in America mom's have to go back to work after 6 weeks and dads maybe get the day off and thats it

marshmallowliquidpride

I became a mom last February and I've always wanted to be a mother and I love my child. I really don't have any complaints about Parenthood because I knew what I would be in for. However going back to work and dealing with all that stress takes way more out of me and it's the same for my partner. So coming home and not getting a minute to relax and then staying awake until 2am with a teething baby is hard. And if you're late to work too many times you'll lose your income

THAT’S SO TRUE, like.... maybe that’s also part of why other cultures (generally) tend to have a much smoother parenting experience? I didn’t even think about that but you’re so right, like it’s culturally reinforced here in America, it’s super fucked up, isn’t it? Good luck to you and your partner!

dovahnicky

I’m autistic but my mom treating raising me as this horrible messy nightmare and the way she talked about how awfully tiring and messy and stressful and shitty it was to be a parent to others fucked me up and made me feel terrible for years for being “hard to raise” and like I was a terrible kid

That sucks!! Like omg! gjhgjhgjh Heaven forbid you learn and adapt to neuroatypical children (like there aren’t countless resources from people who have also raised neuroatypical children gjhgh) and/or at least find a therapist or something to talk to if you really need to vent, I can’t even imagine saying stuff like that in front of my child, that’s fucked

protokol

yeah, i think another big part of it is the mentality that youre supposed to do it "all on your own" without enlisting the help of other people. there are some circles that look down on you if you work and send your kid to daycare, for example

TOTALLY!!! And it’s so weird too, like you hear that phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” and like, it’s so true isn’t it? I know some people can’t necessarily afford daycare or other assistance so they’re kind of stuck, but I feel like when you see those couples who are maybe able to... pass their kids to the grandparents for a night or two a week for a date night, or people who live communally and are able to all raise their kids together basically, like... I feel like they generally have an easier time than parents who just go it alone (whether by Foolish Choice or force)

Because sitting down is seen as lazy if it’s a retail job and you’re not a manager also it’s a sneaky way for them to get you to disclose that you’re disabled and need the chair so they can legally pay less or a legal way to reject you because you technically can’t do the job as they outlined

.... ?????? w h A T THO