wen-yi lee

she/her - 23 - writes sff (angry girls, ghosts, feral nature, yearning)

[bywenyilee]

hi! i'm wen, i'm from singapore, and i write things, often sff. my debut novel THE DARK WE KNOW (a queer ya horror inspired by spring awakening) is coming out next year, but here's some of my favourite short pieces that you can currently get online:

— "the lighthouse keeper’s guide to pulau belakang mati": flash fic, war trauma (specifically the sook ching massacre), ghosts on beaches

— "hundred-handed one": ocean body slipstream strangeness, anti-shark finning, environmental themes or religious trauma? you decide.

— "lady macbeth, the pontianak, and the compelling power of the monstrous feminine": essay on monstrous girls, girlboss queens and southeast asian female ghosts

— "lay my stomach on your scales": tw eating disorders; a teenage girl who detaches her head from her body crosses paths with the pretty popular girl who steals body parts

— “the 74th district”: bureaucracy's next top model: necromancy

— "laura lau will drain you dry": jennifer's body esque teenage girl rage & mosquito vampire revenge on shitty ex boyfriends

other links: twitter ❇ instagram ❇ website

[bywenyilee]

she is a haunting by trang thanh tran

in this house of dreams i can have anything i want. his protection and care, a girl to love, a mark on vietnam. so many things whispered at the altar to burn into ash.

[bywenyilee]

the dark we know as travel photos from london & paris

[malewifegradyruewen]

writing is so fun

[malewifegradyruewen]

i hate writing so much

[malewifegradyruewen]

this is so frustrating

[malewifegradyruewen]

i’m a literal god at writing

[laurelindorenan]

I love how different forms of art are all obsessed with each other. A book tries to capture the feeling of music, a painting tries to depict a scene in a book, a song tries to paint a picture. And it's always insufficient. No single form of art can encapsulate another form of art and capture the essence of it – but it tries, and its attempts are impossibly compelling. All the forms of art are in love with each other and spend so much time trying to express what makes the other kinds of art so lovely.

[sitpwgs]

i hope i never lose you / everything you lose is a step you take

[cinemagal]

this interview with greta gerwig made me want to sob-throw-up

[juniperseph]

neurodivergent and queer people how are we feeling?

[say-hi-intrepid-heroes]

we are fully crying

[desinteresse]

It’s never been more lonely or isolating to be a young person than these last 5 years. Meeting actual people you can connect with takes a lot of energy and time so at the end of the day it’s the vulnerable people that are being left behind

[desinteresse]

And sometimes I lay awake and think ‘’What if I will forever be this lonely little thing? What if I die like this?’’ so im putting effort into preventing that. But I know not everyone is able to do that. I guess what im trying to say is that I suspect there are a lot of lonely people and these numbers will only increase. So if you’re lonely rn I just wanna say that you’re not alone in this. It’s just really hard

[animentality]

[insert-funny-url-here]

Just the other day I was chatting with an older woman about this exact thing. She's retired so she enjoys going on almost-daily walks around her neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods. Well she told me that it was really weird that in the newer constructions where the younger families live, EVERYONE has their blinds closed all the time. In fact she can tell a younger family lives in a house based on the simple fact of whether or not their blinds are closed in the middle of a sunny day. It's to the point where she can't even tell if they're even HOME and available for a visit to welcome them to the neighborhood!

When she said that, I realized that I do that too when I live in a more publicly visible apartment. I told her that I think it's because of the internet. Younger people feel like we're constantly being watched, observed, and JUDGED for merely existing. So when we're home, we just want to be alone, unbothered, and unobserved because it's the one place we can control that. She was very surprised to hear that I felt like that and she was VERY concerned for us young folk (and to be honest after talking with her I became pretty concerned too...)

People from her generation will have their blinds open all day, hang out on their front porch, and randomly visit/enjoy random visits from neighbors and strangers. If a stranger knocks on my door it's scary and if they want to stay and chat? It's a huge inconvenience and it feels super awkward and weird and I'm stuck wondering why exactly they're talking to me, when just a few decades ago welcoming someone new to the neighborhood was just what you did! In fact to not do so was rude!

It made me really worried that as the Panopticon sinks its teeth deeper into our psyches, we are losing the very essence of what makes us human and got us this far as a species: community. I find that being on the internet for hours a day tends to almost trick my brain into thinking "I've been social all day, my social need is full" when in reality I've only talked to one, maybe two people I know from my real life all day, and only for short bursts, not REAL conversation.

I find it hard to have the energy to invite friends to hang out, and when I want to I feel like I'm a big inconvenience for asking them to take a break from their busy lives for me (not that they would ever say that's the case, but it's this nagging feeling internally). I feel like while we used to be a series of large islands of local community, our islands splintered apart and started drifting away from each other. Now your island is just you, your immediate family, and maybe a couple close friends. Those living physically closest to you feel like they're miles away and unreachable, to the point where you might as well not even bother.

I guess I just have one question for you: Do you know the names of your next door neighbors?

[cheritzssebba]

That makes me think about how the rate of paranoia of being watched must be so much higher now than it used to be and must only be increasing, which is very concerning,,

[bebewrites]

woop there it is

[sitpwgs]

eras tour is just prom but for girlies in their 20s

[sitpwgs]

begging people (authors, publishers, etc.) to realize that there is more to classic retellings than just taking the tropes in a book and lifting up very basic character information from the original plot without also trying to expand upon the original author's intended themes/social commentary

[sitpwgs]

exactly @goodwitchs

[sainamoonshine]

A note to all creatives:

Right now, you have to be a team player. You cannot complain about AI being used to fuck over your industry and then turn around and use it on somebody else’s industry.

No AI book covers. No making funny little videos using deepfakes to make an actor say stuff they never did. No AI translation of your book. No AI audiobooks. No AI generated moodboards or fancasts or any of that shit. No feeding someone else’s unfinished work into Chat GPT “because you just want to know how it ends*” (what the fuck is wrong with you?). No playing around with AI generated 3D assets you can’t ascertain the origin of. None of it. And stop using AI filters on your selfies or ESPECIALLY using AI on somebody else’s photo or artwork.

We are at a crossroad and at a time of historically shitty conditions for working artists across ALL creative fields, and we gotta stick together. And you know what? Not only is standing up for other artists against exploitation and theft the morally correct thing to do, it’s also the professionally smartest thing to do, too. Because the corporations will fuck you over too, and then they do it’s your peers that will hold you up. And we have a long memory.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking “your peers” are only the people in your own industry. Writers can’t succeed without artists, editors, translators, etc making their books a reality. Illustrators depend on writers and editors for work. Video creators co-exist with voice actors and animators and people who do 3D rendering etc. If you piss off everyone else but the ones who do the exact same job you do, congratulations! You’ve just sunk your career.

Always remember: the artists who succeed in this career path, the ones who get hired or are sought after for commissions or collaboration, they aren’t the super talented “fuck you I got mine” types. They’re the one who show up to do the work and are easy to get along with.

And they especially are not scabs.

*that’s not even how it ends that’s a statistically likely and creatively boring way for it to end. Why would you even want to read that.

[cardassiangoodreads]

Some of you might remember a couple of years ago when Scarlett Johansson sued Disney because she was making significantly less money for Black Widow than was guaranteed in her contract because so many more people watched it on streaming than in theaters, how there was a massive misinformation campaign from Disney that a ton of people on this website (and Twitter and other social media) bought into: That she was a greedy bitch who didn't respect people who needed to stay at home during the pandemic (I believe the word "ableist" was thrown around with aplomb) as opposed to someone who just wanted to be paid what she was owed. What was literally in her contract!!! And where everyone who took more than a couple minutes to actually look into and think about the situation could figure out that her issue wasn't with streaming itself, but with how little streaming was allowed to get away with paying her and other actors. But of course, a lot of people just saw the chance to dunk on a rich woman, and didn't think about it beyond readying some snarky tags and hit reblog. And in doing so, threw their support behind a much wealthier, greedier studio head who is already using similar language to describe the current strike.

Anyway we're going to see a lot of that from studios now, especially now that actors have joined the WGA and it's easier to sell them as rich and greedy than writers, because of this cultural stereotype we have of all Hollywood actors as celebrities. Don't fall for it. SAG-AFTRA represents people like Tom Cruise and ScarJo but it also represents the kind of people who played a Borg in two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager in 1997 or who had one line in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as an enthusiastic audience member. Most actors are not crazy wealthy, and in fact, if you're a big TV fan (especially older TV and genre TV) that likely includes some actor names that you know, who played supporting roles in your fav shows, or who were even a star in something decades ago but haven't done anything major since. The AFTRA side also represents people like radio broadcasters. But even beside that, all workers deserve to be fairly compensated for the work they do, and the threat of replacing them with AI, or real actors being required to sign contracts to allow their likenesses to be used by AI forever without paying them, is an existential threat to acting as a profession in general. The actors are in the right. The writers are in the right. The studios are in the wrong. The studios have exploited new technology to get away with horrifying labor practices for years and their feet need to be put to the fire. Circulate the articles about how poorly the Orange is the New Black cast was compensated for making one of the defining shows of the early streaming boom, and of the studios saying they want to force writers to starve and lose their homes. Don't get distracted by propaganda aping progressive-sounding language about wealthy celebrities. Focus on the real enemy, the truly greedy fat cats who care more about money than people and art: the studios.

[thoughtcascades]

I come from a long line of people with something wrong with them

[dilf-din]

Wringing my hands and rattling the bars of my cage over the writing for this show. They brought so much depth to to Cassian. His quick reactions and cold nature at the beginning of Rogue One make so much more sense when you see the unimaginable loss that he has suffered.

But what I’m stuck on, is that he spent his time in prison building the Death Star. What a cruel addition to his storyline. He’s already dead, but the writers said “you know what would be fucked beyond belief?” They really said his government name is Cassian Doomed-by-the-Narrative Andor