You do what is best for you Cloud, and I hope that you can come back to the fandom some day but I’ll love you and your works no matter what you do.
@highabovethecloudssomewhere
I’d wanted to do this several months ago, when I first returned from my break through the month of February, but at the time I was wound to the point of snapping, exhausted, and overall in a pretty rough state of mind creatively. I’ll go into why in a moment, but either way, now, I think enough time has passed for me to be able to articulate my thoughts in a readable way that makes sense.
Before I get into it, let me start by saying:
A lot of this is personal. A lot of you will agree with me; a lot of you will disagree with me. Overall, please take this as my own personal thoughts and experiences. I’m doing this in the hopes that you can at least understand my mindset and where I’m coming from. I’m not attacking anyone particularly. I just want you to be able to understand, because you’ve all stuck with me this long, and feel you deserve an explanation.
This is not a callout post. This is just me, a tired writer and creator, explaining my mindset in a way that I hope you can understand. And maybe even relate to.
This has been long overdue. Here we go.
Keep reading
‘ want me to stay? ’
‘ we’re almost home. ’
‘ you should be in bed. ’
‘ we can share it.’
‘ stay there. i’m coming to get you. ’
‘ shh, shh. you were dreaming. ’
‘ grab my hand. ’
‘ i’m just going to pick you up. ’
‘ everything okay? ’
‘ i won’t leave you behind. ’
‘ don’t worry. better out than in. ’
‘ who did that to you? ’
‘ sit down and rest. ’
‘ sweetie, i would never think that. ’
‘ come lay down in my lap. ’
‘ i know you think you’re all alone out there, but you’re not. ’
‘ call me when you get home. ’
‘ we should change those bandages. ’
‘ you’re safe here. ’
‘ honey… ’
‘ of course we love you. ’
‘ wait here. i’ll go run a bath for you. ’
‘ take my bed for tonight. ’
‘ i promise. ’
‘ you’re always welcome here. ’
‘ don’t talk like that. ’
‘ bad dream? ’
‘ talk to me. ’
‘ it’s okay to cry. ’
‘ you need to be more careful.’
‘ we should hug this out. ’
‘ i worry about you. ’
‘ can i hold your hand? ’
‘ because i care about you. ’
‘ it made me think of you. ’
‘ take care of yourself. ’
‘ put your seatbelt on. ’
‘ where did you go? ’
‘ i didn’t mean to worry you. ’
‘ i made breakfast. ’
‘ sing something for me? ’
‘ open it and find out. ’
‘ how long have you been like this? ’
‘ you look nice. ’
‘ here, take my jacket. ’
‘ close your eyes and try to get some rest. ’
‘ focus on my voice. ’
‘ i meant every word. ’
‘ i was here all night. ’
‘ look both ways before you cross. ’
‘ you don’t have to talk. ’
‘ this is your favorite, right? ’
‘ you’ll feel better in the morning. ’
‘ you have a nice laugh. ’
‘ here, take my jacket. ’
‘ you could stay here. with me. ’
‘ we’ll figure it out together. ’
Since joining Tumblr, I’ve met a lot of young queer people. Look, I’m a bisexual man in a gay relationship, and I’m approaching 30. I was still a kid when Matthew Shepard’s story was being covered on the news. I remember thinking, “I better keep my mouth shut about these feelings I’m having.”
And then I met Dominic when I was 12, and people could see how in love we were. And we got the shit beat out of us. The year I met him, some kids in the grade above me held me down against the bleachers in our gym and stomped on my hand until my fingers broke. Instead of sending me to the nurse, the teacher sent me to the assistant principal to explain the situation. She asked why the kids had beat me up. I said, “They were calling me gay.”
Her response was, “Well, are you?”
My, “I don’t know,” earned a call to my parents, and I was outed. Efforts were made to keep me from seeing Dom. Throughout high school, Dom’s stepmother intensified these efforts. He slept in the basement of the house. Although he was an incredibly talented student, he was prohibited from participating in any extracurriculars. He suffered a lot of physical abuse during those years.
The day he turned 18, he packed up everything he had and walked to my house, and we’ve lived together ever since. Things are better, but they’re not perfect. I’ve had trucks pull up next to me at stoplights and, seeing the pride sticker on my car, through old drinks and garbage into my window. I no longer speak to my dad’s side of the family. I haven’t been to see them for Christmas or Thanksgiving in years. One of my uncles had cornered me at Thanksgiving when I was 17 and said, “I’m not going to judge you, but I’d be happy to break your neck so God can do the judging a little sooner.”
I joined a support group for trans and intersex people. When I joined, 40 people attended regularly. Within the year, the group was half the size it had been. Some couldn’t make it anymore, because they were staying at the shelter, where their stay hinged on them agreeing to instead to attend homophobic sermons. Some were put in correctional therapy. Five of them died. Three of those, I didn’t know, but I knew Alex, the 19 year old who was fag-dragged in Kentucky and died a day later in the hospital, and I knew Stephanie, who went home to Alabama to care for her mom in hospice and was beaten to death with a baseball bat by her mom’s boyfriend.
Tumblr is not reality. The dynamic here does not reflect the dynamic out there. Here’s the part where I finally make a point, and it might be extremely unpopular - but guys, value your allies. Value each other. We are met with enough hate in our daily lives to enter an online safe-space and meet more hate from our own, over petty things. Don’t go after one another over every little thing you find problematic.
Learn to see nuance. Maybe the word “queer” bothers you, and you see a gay man using it as an umbrella term. Maybe someone called a trans man a trans woman because they’re confused about terminology, but the post where they did it was voicing support for the trans community. Maybe someone is just asking a question, wanting to learn more. Stop. Attacking. These. People.
Allies are being driven away. Members of our own community are being ostracized. Others are feeling nervous and estranged, and it’s largely because of places like Tumblr, where the social justice movement is quickly becoming violent and radical. I am begging you, stop nitpicking “problematic” things and start directing your efforts to create real change. When it comes to comes to your allies, forget the “social justice warrior” mentality and put down your torch. Educate calmly. Be respectful. Be understanding. Be forgiving. And I’m certainly not saying that your anger doesn’t have a good place - when you are met with bigots on the street, congress members who want to pass hateful laws, violent protesters, abusive parents, prejudiced teachers, that is when you need to be a warrior. That’s when it counts. In the real world. When you have the opportunity to protect people from real harm. Attacking your would-be allies via anonymous asks is just going to lose us ground in the long run. And we don’t have time for that, not when trans women of color are being murdered every day, not when states are still fighting against marriage equality, not when there are politicians in office who believe that trans people are possessed by demons, not when we’ve just lost 50 brothers and sisters to one gunman, not when the media won’t even admit that the attack was homophobic.
Please step back. Look at the big picture. Look at where we are, globally. Don’t just log on to your safe space and attack your allies over small missteps. That’s like washing the dishes in a house that’s on fire, kids. Let’s fight on the battlefield, and when we come home to each other, let’s just focus on bandaging up our wounds so we can go out and win the war.
There is a trend I’ve noticed that smut fics tend to be much more popular than anything else and honestly I just want to have something to look at to remind myself and that writing doesn’t have to have sex to be worth putting out into the community.
yes and you feel so sick and just want to scream at your parents to stop being such major dicks but you can’t because you know that they will take it out on you later!
you know when u have to misgender a friend in front of ur parents and you can like physically taste copper
The thing with the Mari Lwyd, though, is that it's being... I don't know, 'appropriated' is the wrong word, but certainly turned into something it isn't.
Thing is, this is a folk tradition in the Welsh language, and that's the most important aspect of it. I feel partly responsible for this, because I accidentally became a bit of an expert on the topic of the Mari Lwyd in a post that escaped Tumblr containment, and I clearly didn't stress it strongly enough there (in my defence, I wrote that post for ten likes and some attention); but this is a Welsh language tradition, conducted in Welsh, using Welsh language poetic forms that are older than the entire English language, and also a very specific sung melody (with a very specific first verse; that's Cân y Fari). It is not actually a 'rap battle'. It's not a recited poem. It is not any old rhyme scheme however you want.
It is not in English.
Given the extensive and frankly ongoing attempts by England to wipe out Welsh, and its attendant cultural traditions, the Mari is being revived across Wales as an act of linguistic-cultural defiance. She's a symbol of Welsh language culture, specifically; an icon to remind that we are a distinct people, with our own culture and traditions, and in spite of everyone and everything, we're still here. Separating her from that by removing the Welsh is, to put it mildly, wildly disrespectful.
...but it IS what I'm increasingly seeing, both online and in real world Mari Lwyd festivals. She's gained enormous pop-culture popularity in recent years, which is fantastic; but she's also been reduced from the tradition to just an aesthetic now.
So many people are talking/drawing about her as though she's a cryptid or a mythological figure, rather than the folk practice of shoving a skull on a stick and pretending to be a naughty horse for cheese and drunken larks. And I get it! It's an intriguing visual! Some of the artwork is great! But this is not what she is. She's not a Krampus equivalent for your Dark Christmas aesthetic.
I see people writing their own version of the pwnco (though never called the pwnco; almost always called some variant on 'Mari Lwyd rap battle'), and as fun as these are, they are never even written in the meter and poetic rules of Cân y Fari, much less in Welsh, and they never conclude with the promise to behave before letting the Mari into the house. The pwnco is the central part to the tradition; this is the Welsh language part, the bit that's important and matters.
Mari Lwyd festivals are increasingly just English wassail festivals with a Mari or two present. The Swansea one last weekend didn't even include a Mari trying to break into a building (insert Shrek meme); there was no pwnco at all. Even in the Chepstow ones, they didn't do actual Cân y Fari; just a couple of recited verses. Instead, the Maris are just an aesthetic, a way to make it look a bit more Welsh, without having to commit to the unfashionable inconvenience of actually including Welsh.
And I don't really know what the answers are to these. I can tell you what I'd like - I'd like art to include the Welsh somewhere, maybe incorporating the first line of Cân y Fari like this one did, to keep it connected to the actual Welsh tradition (or other Welsh, if other phrases are preferred). I'd like people who want to write their version of the pwnco to respect the actual tradition of it by using Cân y Fari's meter and rhyme scheme, finishing with the promise to behave, and actually calling it the pwnco rather than a rap battle (and preferably in Welsh, though I do understand that's not always possible lol). I'd like to see the festivals actually observe the tradition, and include a link on the booking website to an audio clip of Cân y Fari and the words to the first verse, so attendees who want to can learn it ahead of time. I don't know how feasible any of that is, of course! But that's what I'd like to see.
I don't know. This is rambly. But it's something I've been thinking about - and increasingly nettled by - for a while. There's was something so affirming and wonderful at first about seeing the Mari's climb into international recognition, but it's very much turned to dismay by now, because she's important to my endangered culture and yet that's the part that everyone apparently wants to drop for being too awkward and ruining the aesthetic. It's very frustrating.
what @beaniebaneeine said
shout out to ace and aro kids who are constantly bombarded with the opinion that sex and romantic love are directly connected to living a happy life.
yeah, and 59 or 99 which ever you have been sitting at, it’s still just one step away from a full blown meltdown and all it takes sometimes is bumping into someone or something to send you over the edge
quick protip: if someone is crying or freaking out over something minor, eg wifi not connecting, can’t find their hat, people talking too loud, do NOT tell them how small or petty the problem is to make it better. they know. they would probably love to calm down. you are doing the furthest possible thing from helping. people don’t have to earn expressions of feelings.
Hey guys! As a writer myself, it’s hard to have a lot of resources for writing in one place. That’s why I decided to create this masterpost, and maybe make more if I find future resources. I hope you like it, and expect to see more masterposts like this in the future!
Character
Appearance Generator
Archetypes Generator
Character Generator
Character Traits Generator
Family Generator
Job/Occupation Generator, (II)
Love Interest Generator
Motive Generator
Name Generator
Personality Generator, (II)
Quick Character Generator
Super Powers Generator
Names
Brand Name Generator
Medicine Title Generator
Name Generator
Quick Name Generator
Vehicle Generator
Town Name Generator
Plot
First Encounter Generator
First Line Generator, (II)
Plot Generator, (II), (III)
Plot Device Generator
Plot Twist Generator
Quick Plot Generator
Setting/World-Building
City Generator
Fantasy Race Generator
Laws Generator
Pet Generator
Setting Generator
Species Generator
Terrain Generator
Prompts
Subject Generator
”Take Three Nouns” Generator
Word Prompt Generator
Misc
Color Generator
Decision Generator
Dialogue Generator
Journey Generator
Title Generator, (II), (III)
Just a few I found from the writing tips tag!
Writing action / @berrybird
How to create a strong voice in your writing / @collegerefs
How to plot a complex novel in one day! / @lizard-is-writing
8 ways to get past writer’s block / @kiramartinauthor
psa for writers / @dasakuryo
”Write Using Your 5 Senses” / @ambientwriting
How People Watching Improves Your Writing / @wherethetransthingsare
Writing Science Fiction: Tips for Beginners / @fictionwritingtips
Creating Likeable Characters / @authors-haven
Descriptive words / @somekindofstudent
Words to replace “Said” / @msocasey
Obscure color words / @mintsteelpeachlilac
Words to spice up your stories / @busyibee
Words to describe someone’s voice
Words to Use Instead of Very / @gaybybirth
Touchy Feely Words / @gaybybirth
Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writers
”But my plot isn’t UNIQUE or BIG enough!” / @youreallwrite
8 Things Every Creative Should Know / @adamjk
(How To) Get Over Comparing Yourself to Other Creatives / @adamjk
How to Get Over Common Creative Fears (Maybe) / @adamjk
14 Tips From Stephen King On Writing / @i-can-give-you-prompts
Electronic Thoughts / @eruditekid
“Mix About Writing” An Instrumental Mix / @shadowofemirates
Shut Up, I’m Writing! / @ninadropdead
Chill / @endlessreveries
Breathtaking Film Scores / @tweedskirts
Music to Write to Vol. 1: Starlight / @crestadeen
Music for Written Words / @ghoulpatch
Dead Men Tell No Tales / @scamandersnewt
Fatale / @dolcegf
All These Things that I’ve Done / @referenceforwriters
Feeling Soaking into Your Bones / @verylondon
I Can Feel Your Pulse in the Pages / @rphelper
Morally Ambiguous / @scamandersnewt
Wonderwall / @wheelerwrites
Pythia / @mazikeene
Ballet: To Dance / @tanaquil
For Writing
ZenPen: A minimalist writing website to keep you free of distractions and in the flow.
The Most Dangerous Writing App: A website where you have to keep typing or all of your writing will be lost. It helps you keep writing…kind of. You can choose between a time or word count limit!
Evernote: An online website where you can take notes and save the product to your laptop and/or smartphone!
Writer, the Internet Typewriter: It’s just you and your writing, and you can save your product on the website if you create an account.
Wordcounter: A website to help check your word and character count, and shows words you’re using frequently.
Monospace: An Android app for writing on the go when you feel the inspiration, but you don’t have your laptop on you!
For Productivity
Tide: An app that combines a pomodoro-esque timer with nature sounds and other noises! (Google Play / Apple Store)
ClearFocus: An Android app with a pomodoro-type time counter to let you concentrate easier and stay productive.
Forest: An app with a time counter to keep you focused and off your phone, and when you complete the time limit, a tree grows in your garden! (Google Play / Apple Store)
SelfControl: A Mac downloadable app that blocks you from distracting mail servers, websites, and other things!
@writeworld
@dialouge-prompts
@oopsprompts
@prompts-for-the-otp
@creativepromptsforwriting
@the-modern-typewriter
@theprofessionalpromptmaker
@writers-are-writers
@otp-imagines-cult
@witterprompts
@havetobememes
@auideas
@putthepromptsonpaper
@promptsonpaper
@fyotpprompts
@otpisms
@soprompt
@otpprompts
@ablockforwritersblock
@awritersnook
@writeworld
@anomalously-written
@awritersnook
@clevergirlhelps
@referenceforwriters
@whataboutwriting
@thewritershelpers
@nimblesnotebook
@slitheringink
DO NOT DO THIS.
This makes me so angry.
If you work in a movie theater and you do this I have no respect for you.
My younger brother is Type 1 Diabetic.
When we go to a movie theater, we always get him diet soda. If he were to get regular when we asked for diet, we would not give him the insulin he would need for it. If that happens, his blood sugar level could go so high he could go into a coma, go blind, or even die.
If somebody gave him regular soda instead of diet without telling us, that person could be responsible for a nine-year-old being killed or blinded.
Just thinking about that makes me so angry. I get scared every time we take him to a movie in case the people working there saw this picture and decide to do the same thing.
Please signal boost this so people know.