When you wish upon a star
Do not think that violating your boundaries for other people is selfless!! If anything that would eventually lead to nothing but resentment towards the people you violated those boundaries for. It comes back to bite you in the ass sooner or later. It’s not the grand gesture you think it is. The more firm you are on your boundaries, the more intact you keep your mental health, and so the more emotionally available you are for other people. True selflessness comes from knowing what you have to do for yourself in order to give to other people, not from excessively pleasing only to end up feeling bitter and dismissed
I think i met an angel on the train
This older man moved my skirt aside and I absent-mindedly said "oh sorry" for being partially in his seat and he said "dont be sorry, this is new york" and then showed me all his poetry about observing the world and living as a restaurant worker during the pandemic and we talked about how i worked in a grocery store and as a bartender so i resonated with his work and he told me "i may never meet you again but it's nice to meet someone worth talking to. I might sound like a world class idiot sage, but you can't be afraid. That's no way to live. You have to trust your humanity." Then he shook my hand and got off the stop before me. Hello. Hello . Hello.
There is a forbidden type of magic out there. It isn’t forbidden because it’s inherently evil, or forces you to lose your humanity, or requires human sacrifices - it’s just forbidden because it’s annoying as heck to fight against.
“Ma’am, I really must insist that you pay for the room and board I’ve been giving you! It’s been a week!”
“Fine, fine,” I grumble. “I have a few options for payment: I could give you paper money, cheap gaudy jewelry, chocolate coins, spiders, some pretty seashells-”
“Spiders????” he repeats, baffled.
“Spiders it is, then,” I agree equitably, and with a wave of my hand the bed I’ve been sleeping in for the last week turns into a writhing mass of various spiders.
Worth it.
—
“Stop right there! You’re under arrest for fraud, destruction of property, and-!”
I yawn. “Didn’t ask, don’t care.” A few gestures, and the guards’ swords are all transmuted into spiders, and then they’re too busy to worry about little ol’ me.
—
“You have insulted my honor and humiliated me in front of my children! I demand satisfaction! I demand a wizard’s duel!”
Shrugging, I say, “Sure, okay, whatever. Right here and now okay?”
The pompous wizard-noble blinks. “I- you don’t want to prepare? Get your wizard’s staff or anything?”
“Nah, I’m pretty good with somatic gestures.”
“Well, if you’re sure… here and now then! Have at you!” He slams his staff down on the ground dramatically, a small shockwave of fire radiating out from the impact.
So of course, I turn his staff into spiders.
“AHHHH WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK”
“So if you’re too busy screaming to cast spells, does that mean I win?”
“AUGH ONE OF THEM BIT ME”
“I’m taking that as a yes.”
—
After that, they start coming at me in waves, with cheap wands and staves and swords and bows bought in bulk, hoping to exhaust my magical reserves so they can get close enough to put a magic inhibitor on me.
They did not expect my reserves to be as vast as they were, not did they expect me to be able to transmute the inhibitors themselves into spiders.
“Didn’t you take Magic Basics in wizard college?” I yell at the panicking mages. “Inhibitors aren’t immune to magic until the moment they activate! Serious weak point in the design, tell your magitechnicians to fix that!”
—
So of course they try assassins next.
Poison fails, because I transmute any food and drink I get into spiders and then transmute them back. Pretty easy way to get rid of poison.
So then they try knives in dark alleys. The knives bruise through my full-body spider-silk outfit, but do not penetrate, and they only get one shot before they have bigger problems.
Next is killing me in my sleep. None live to report back that the human-shaped lump under the blankets is actually a mass of highly venomous spiders.
The kingdom throws everything it has at me, and I continue to walk away, heralded by the chittering of spiders and the screams of everyone else.
—
Finally, I stand before the king himself in his overly opulent throne room, and by now he is a broken shell of a man in the face of my unorthodox tactics.
Good.
“What do you want?” he practically sobs. “You’ve singlehandedly redirected the entire crown’s budget for the next three years into replacing every weapon you’ve turned into spiders. Much more and we’ll be invaded by our neighbors! We wouldn’t be able to resist being annexed! So what can I give you to make you stop doing this?!”
I pause and pretend to consider, tapping a finger against my chin thoughtfully. “You know, you sent my brother off to war a few years back. That conflict with the Yughs up north, I believe. He didn’t want to go, so your guards forced him at spearpoint. I haven’t seen him since.”
He seizes on that, as I expected. “Yes, yes, I’ll have him returned right away! Tell me his name and I’ll honorably release him from duty and have him escorted safely home!”
“Oh?” I raise one sardonic eyebrow. “Are you able to bring back the dead now, oh wise and glorious king?”
He pales, and it’s the most satisfying thing I’ve seen in years.
“You have nothing I want,” I growl, letting the anger slip through for the first time in years. “You cannot bring him back, you cannot make up for my loss with all the riches in your kingdom. The only thing I want is to take everything from you, the way you did to me. Your kingdom will bleed out of resources, one of the neighboring countries you’ve been trying to conquer for decades now will take advantage and annex this place, and you will either be executed or forced to work for a living for the first time in your life.”
I glare at him, and he refuses to meet my eyes. “You will lose everything you ever cared about in your life. One spider at a time.”
I transmute his throne and crown into spiders (non-deadly; he doesn’t get to escape my wrath that easily), then turn and walk away, ignoring his screams and sobs.
—
And that’s why, when the Yughs finally annexed the kingdom I grew up in, they preemptively made Transarachnomancy a forbidden magical art. Not sure how they intend to enforce that, mind, but I’m not looking to challenge that. I’ve gotten what I wanted; if some other aspiring mage wants to try and follow in my footsteps, that’s not my problem.
Besides, in terms of magical skill, I’ve always been an outlier anyway. Most mages would be lucky to turn just one knife into a spider at a time; I can turn ten thousand with a few gestures. I doubt anyone will outdo my legacy.
But hey, if you want to try and surpass Georgia of the Spiders? Feel free. I’ll welcome the competition.
I’ve often wondered if Supernatural, especially the more bro-y early years, doesn’t constitute kind of a masculine equivalent to those old-school bodice-ripper novels, where the author obviously wasn’t able to and/or interested in deconstructing the virgin/whore stuff, but also wanted there to be lots of sexy bits. So you’d have these elaborate rape-adjacent fantasy set-pieces that were like, okay, Our Heroine and obviously You, Dear Reader are very good girls, but just like...IF you had no choice but to have rough sex with a pirate king...well, hypothetically, that would be...what? How would that go? Kind of exciting, maybe? Kind of like being given access to a part of you that you can’t fully admit you’d like to access?
Supernatural was very obviously always (at least in part) about the traumas of masculinity, its violence, its ruptured relationships, fathers who couldn’t take good care of their sons, sons who couldn’t live up to their fathers, brothers who would die for each other but would die before they’d say that out loud, the thrill of power and freedom and also the horror of having no one to turn to for help. And there was so much of that bodily vulnerability -- having your body invaded and violated, being driven to your knees, being forced to the point of blood and tears, it always seemed to me like there was a little edge of that same kind of fascination -- not literally about sex, but erotic in how tangled up it was with the idea of submission.
Our Heroes and obviously You, Dear Viewer are very strong men, but just like...IF you had no choice but to be exposed and dominated by powers stronger than you...hypothetically, that would be...what? How would that go? Kind of cathartic, maybe? Kind of like being free of something you can’t fully admit is a burden?
Extremely nitpicky but I hate white wedding gowns in fantasy, especially when they make absolutely no sense in the setting. No, that culture in the far north that prioritizes function over form and mostly wears heavy furs would not have the means, ability, or desire to make a sleeveless ivory silk gown with a semi-sweetheart neckline. Please be sensible about this and use your creativity instead of just slapping a Kleinfeld wedding gown into a medieval fantasy setting.
Here's some tricks to making interesting fantasy wedding dresses:
- Focus on the things that indicate wealth and prosperity in your fantasy culture.
- What materials would your bride have access to and what would make the most sense for her to wear?
- What colors are not only beautiful and culturally significant, but also require expensive or rare dyes?
- What imagery could be used in patterns that are relevant to the culture (animals, plants, family crests, etc)?
- What skills could be displayed in the making of the gown (beadwork, embroidery, fabric painting, etc)?
- What interesting and unique materials can you add that are relevant to the culture (fur, leather, bones, plants, shells, etc)?
- Would your culture be more focused on the amount of material, things like trains and heavy lairs, or on the quality and detail?
- What will happen to the gown after the wedding (worn for other events, turned into household materials, turned into other clothing, etc) and are there details to it that make any other functions easier?
- What other things make the bride stand out (veils, headdresses, jewelry, makeup, body paint, hairstyles, outerwear, etc)?
- Is it more important in your culture for the gown to be made by other people (showing off wealth) or by the bride and/or her family (showing off the bride's talents)?
For a quick example:
If your wedding ceremony requires the bride to walk through a cold and snowy forest for cultural or religious rites, she would freeze her poor tits off in a sleeveless silk gown. Instead, consider a heavy wool gown in rich colors with elaborate embroidery and a thick cloak, maybe hooded, made of fine furs to show off her family's wealth. Jewelry, headpieces, and detailing on the gown could be made with things carved from stones, wood, antlers, and/or bones, especially if it's a culture that prizes hunting skills. Maybe a heavy veil that isn't just beautiful but also helps protect her face from biting winds during the journey.
I just had a discussion with my friend about fanfiction and how we tend to assume that women are the writers without any actual proof. Then I said, hey, I know fanfiction written by gay and trans dudes. But then I remembered, wait, I think I know one writer who just must be cis het based on his work. Anyway, all writers, be honest, who are you?
Please reblog if you're interested in the results.
Oh please answer this poll, it might be semi-representative if the number of responses is high enough
whenever they put Spock in all black it’s like. slut.
whore.
Kayleb Rae Candrilli, from Water I Won’t Touch
[ID: This poem -
‘On Travelling Together’, by Kayleb Rae Candrilli
In a Super 8 just outside Iowa City, two twelve-year-old boys
cuddle on the lobby couch, scrolling on their phones.
It’s four in the morning, and they don’t expect me, or anyone,
in the holy space they’ve drawn for themselves.
Their parents are asleep on the third floor, resting
before a hockey tournament or some other rough-and-tumble game.
It’s clear by the way the boys jump as I walk by;
their parents know nothing. The floor is lava.
The continental breakfast will start soon.
The couch they’re on is an island I’ve been to.”
/End ID]
finding someone who shares your unpopular/niche opinions on Special Interest is literally like finding water in the desert. like thank fucking christ someone else has actually thought through this thing
as a general rule. if what we’re calling ‘cultural appropriation’ sounds like nazi ideology (i.e. ‘white people should only do white people things and black people should only do black people things’) with progressive language, we are performing a very very poor application of what ‘cultural appropriation’ means. this is troublingly popular in the blogosphere right now and i think we all need to be more critical of what it is we may be saying or implying, even unintentionally.
There is nothing wrong with everyone enjoying each other’s cultures so long as those cultures have been shared.
Eating Chinese food, watching Bollywood movies, going to see Cambodian dancers, or learning to speak Korean so you can watch every K drama in existence is totally fine. The invitation to participate in those things came from within those cultures. The Mexican family that owns the place where I get fajitas wants me to eat fajitas. Their whole business model kind of depends on it, actually.
If you see something from another culture you think you might want to participate in, but you don’t know if that would be disrespectful or appropriative, you can just…ask. Like. A Jewish friend explained what a mezuzah was to me, recently. (It’s the little scroll-thing near their front doors that they touch when they come into their house. It basically means “this is a Jewish household.”)
“Oh, cool,” I said. “Can I touch it? Or is it only for Jewish people?”
“You can touch it or you can not touch it,” she said. “I don’t care.”
“Cool, I’m gonna touch it, then.”
“Cool.”
It’s not hard.
You want to twerk, twerk. I’ve never heard a black person say they didn’t think anybody else should be allowed to twerk. Just that they want us to acknowledge that they invented that shit, not Miley fucking Cyrus.
It really boils down to three simple things:
- Consent. Is the culture open to sharing this thing? (& don’t cheat by finding one person who consents while most of the culture disagrees.)
- Context. If a culture is open to sharing a thing but it is a thing of great religious significance, take the time to learn what is a respectful way to treat the thing. Probably don’t use it as random decoration or sexualize it unless that’s what it’s for.
- Credit. Give credit and if possible, buy from the original creators so the money goes where the credit should be.
This is really useful to me personally because I’ve definitely caught myself losing sight of what cultural appropriation actually is, and why it matters, so thank you, and everybody else pay attention too
i have three responses to "how is your writing going"
1) it's not
2) it's going
3) i am ENTHUSED. i have been BLESSED with the POWER of the MUSES. i am an UNSTOPPABLE FORCE OF CREATION i am the MOST ULTIMATE OF ALL WRITERS
Pie chart showing the proportion of time each answer is used: