Wow, maybe there's something to that old stereotype about *everyone* in the USSR playing chess for fun...

this is (trans) positivity!

Reject the idea that there is such a thing as high art and low art!!! Read smut! Write horror! Watch low budget shorts! Listen to a local garage band!!!

Read challenging classics! Write poetry!!! Watch foreign films!! Listen to experimental music!!!!!! Let a thousand blossoms bloom motherfucker!!!!!

Real thing that changed how i write: I started asking "what does this character think is wrong with them" and separately "what is actually wrong with them." Those two things are almost never the same. She thinks she's too much. She's actually terrified of being too little. He thinks he's bad at commitment. He's actually just never met someone he trusted enough. The gap between their diagnosis of themselves and the real thing, that's your character arc right there. you don't have to explain it. just write both.

I don't know how to articulate this well, but I really fucking hate the way a lot of thin writers write fat characters. Like how men write women "breasting boobily" there is something so dehumanizing about how fat characters are often written. "He waddled", "he lumbered", the writer of the book I'm reading always mentions this characters "fleshy hand" when he does something with his hand. Like, we already know that he's fat. There is no need to describe everything he does as "doing it fatly".

I have one of these and I keep it in my IT toolkit because that teeny little screwdriver is the right side for laptop casings, but because it lives inside a large object it’s harder to misplace than a standard tiny screwdriver. Also because the look on a client’s face when you bring out a brass hammer to fix their laptop is absolutely wild.