There Are Not Enough Hours In The Day; How Am I Supposed To Go To Work AND Read AND Draw AND Sew AND

Bitches rant over cliffhangers in the books they read, and then turn around and cackle with Evil Writer Glee ™ every single time they put one in their own WIP

It's me, I'm bitches

i think eventually we're all just gonna have to come to terms with the fact that it's impossible to tell a story with any degree of subtlety or nuance without risking a portion of the audience taking the "wrong message", and that's ok. art isn't meant to be strictly a teaching tool, and if you're goal is just to convince people or critique an idea, just write an essay or a polemic

PACING IS ABOUT LOAD BEARING WALLS.

*staples violently to my own forehead*

relationships are so much healthier when the goal is to experience life together and not to try to make the person into who you want them to be or to make them do what you want them to do. 

reblog this if you think books should have trigger warnings. I’m trying to prove something.

Some of My Poetry

love letter to a supernova

remember when

we orbited each other like planets,

caught up in the gravity of our own innocence?

i could tell you that your eyes were like nebulas,

your heart as rapidly expanding as a galaxy,

your smile a streaking comet in a sea of darkness,

and all of it would be true

and yet not enough to describe you.

-

because, darling, you were my universe.

i could never know every part of you

but that never stopped me from trying.

-

yet the constellations are filled with tragedies,

and the stars within them mourn and die;

and when you ignited in a spray of self-destruction,

my heart collapsed in on itself.

-

perhaps stars are never meant to love;

for one moment of brilliant, burning passion is not enough

to define all the dark days after.

|

unwritten definitions

hollow. verb: to throw a stone and hear no echo; to feel nothing where something used to be; to carve out your own heart and offer it upon an altar of your own bones.

|

gen z

i am a part of a generation that died before it lived.

even before we opened our eyes to stinging air

we knew our struggle would be our story.

-

i am part of a generation that is accustomed

to things ending even as they begin,

innocence most of all.

-

i am part of a generation that inherited

the problems of the past, yet was not raised 

with the full knowledge of the mantle it stood to shoulder.

-

i am part of a generation that longs to be accepted,

and i am part of a generation that has accepted itself

because no one else will.

-

i am part of a generation that demands change.

we refuse the heirlooms of ignorance our elders offer

because we will not trade truth for tired lies.

-

and i am part of a generation that hopes to heal.

we will remember and memorialize

the tears and troubles of those who came before us,

-

and we will come to terms with our own pain.

our hearts were made to burn brightly,

but left unchecked, they threaten ash.

|

eulogy

content warning // implied police brutality, mentions of death

this is for the ones who should have lived.

this is for the ones whose deaths were what it took for people to turn their heads.

this is for the ones who never woke up from the nightmare others call the Dream.

this is for the ones whose names are mangled as badly as their bodies.

this is for the ones who did everything right.

-

this is for the ones who survived.

this is for the ones who didn’t know they were saying goodbye for the last time.

this is for the ones who are still learning to speak in past tense.

this is for the ones who live in fear.

this is for the ones who are exhausted.

-

this is for the ones who never find justice,

and for the ones who never stop trying.

dark academia book list

The Secret History by Donna Tart

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman

A deadly Education by Naomi Novik

The Decay of Living by Oscar Wilde

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Dead Poets Society by Nancy H Kleinbaum

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

The Little Friend by Donan Tartt

Vicious by V. E. Schwab

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Gentlemen and Players by Joan Harris

The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

Maurice by E. M. Forster

A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde

Vita Nostra by Marina and Serhiy Dyachenko

Poems by Oscar Wilde

The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson

Ace of Spades by Fradiah Àbíke-Íyímídé

If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

The Lessons by Naomi Alderman

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Wilder Girls by Rory Powers

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

The Bellweather Revivals by Benjamin Wood

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Truants by Kate Weinberg

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

In the Woods by Tana French

The Atlas Six by Olivia Blake

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Persuasion by Jane Austen

The Lying Game by Ruth Ware

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Love and Friendship by Jane Austen

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Bunny by Mona Awad

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

The Ivies by Alexa Donne

For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing

The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky

Emma by Jane Austen

The Watsons by Jane Austen

The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino

The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter

The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring

Confessions by Kanae Minato

Truth Exercise by Susan Choi

We Wish You Luck by Caroline Zancan

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

The Basic Eight by Daniel Handle

Confessions by Kanae Minato

Lady Susan by Jane Austen

While writing an adaptation of a character who in mythology time used a sword, I'm wondering would it be ineffective to still make them use a sword but a thinner flatter type. Or is it just better to just stick to a knife?

I'm not going to harp on it, but, "mythology time," is a weird way to phrase it. Usually you'd say, "a character who used a sword in myth," or. "in their myths," not, "in mythology time." This is because there is no fixed, "mythic era," in history.

Myths vary, but it's often impossible to pin down a specific moment they come from. The British give us a pair, one example and one counterexample. The myth of Robin Hood is remarkably easy to pin down, because it includes historical figures. It occurs sometime in the 12th century. (Worth noting, the written records regarding Robin Hood first pop up in the 14th century, so it may have been floating around in a oral form for a couple centuries before anyone recorded it, or none of the previous written records survived.) In contrast, it's basically impossible to pin down a specific timeframe for the King Arthur legends, because there's no historical frame of reference. There's a lot of academic study on the subject, but while you can say that Robin Hood is set in the 1190s, you can't say the same for King Arthur.

Mythic characters are a little tricky to work with. By their nature, they have a well established backstory and identity. Messing with that is feasible, but requires some care. It also requires passing familiarity with the myths they appear in.

For example: If you wanted to write a modern incarnation of Hercules, it would ring a bit off to have a character with a warm and loving parents.

Artificially creating a mythic character (for a fantasy setting) is a lot more complicated. This requires you to create a character who left enough of a legacy on their world that they're still a household name millennia later, conveying those stories to the audience, and then also introducing a modern version of that character in the setting, without the entire work being very heavy handed or cliché, is quite difficult, and time consuming.

And, I still haven't talked about your main question, their weapons.

The artifacts of mythic characters often have legacies that, in some cases, outstrip their owners. In spite of being inanimate objects, they're characters, with their own identities, that extend far beyond simply being, "a sword." I'm reminded of multiple starships in different settings named Excalibur, and even, just the name, is evocative.

This is where the real danger is, you're talking an artifact, where the name alone, is (supposed) to be enough to cue the reader in to the significance of the object. (Having said that, I recently had to explain the significance of Gjallarhorn to a friend, so, depending on the object in question your results may vary. There are a lot of mythic artifacts, and not all of them carry the same name recognition.)

If your mythic hero has a sword, chances are it has a name, and probably a legacy of its own. Mythic artifacts in a modern setting may be the original object, or the, "soul," of the artifact in a new object (the rules for this are dictated by the author), but, "downgrading," a mythic artifact is something you probably don't want to do without a lot of careful consideration.

-Starke

This blog is supported through Patreon. If you enjoy our content, please   consider becoming a Patron. Every contribution helps keep us online, and writing. If you already are a Patron, thank you, and please come join us on Discord.

You know. Reading is important. Because I'm like always trying to make every line I write this groundbreaking mindfucking art but like. A book is 90% just saying what happened. "I hugged him around the waist." "The chair was brown and overstuffed." "I woke up alone." Etc etc. Like normal ass lines. I just keep comparing my boring, necessary to set a scene lines, with famous authors' absolute best lines and like.... every line doesn't have to shatter the earth. Sometimes someone just sits in a chair and the lines that wreck you come later, one at a time, here and there. It's alright.

The willow woman.

Photo taken by The Henge Shop, Avebury.