elle writes

dark litfic, horror, + magical realism 30s, they/them main: @prettytothink-so

[catchingbigfish]

about + nav

elle (they/them)

30s - minors dni

dark litfic, horror, & magical realism

main: @prettytothink-so

personal tags: sometimes i use #about elle to journal, call myself out when a meme is too relatable, or otherwise think something is very me-coded; #wip: all of them is a tag i very occasionally use to indicate something is a major theme in my work as a whole

writeblr intro wip masterlist (+ links to intros!)

[loki-zen]

has anyone considered that it was probably her house too. where else was she supposed to put her chintz?

[yay-bunnies]

christian bunny: god himself guided my faithful .nose to this leafs 🥬

agnostic bunny: it's impossible to know how i found thid yumy food ☘️

athiest bunny: the material confitions of my sniffy nose allowed me to find a berries 🫐

[jame7t]

tumblr is like an abandoned space station & you all are the thing in the vents

[jame7t]

not me though. im girl with tanktop

[plaguehundr]

Dear god somebody please read Nicked by MT Anderson it's such a good book about the theft of a saints body. It's a fun romp with mishap after mishap and a gay romance and there's no discussion about it. At this rate I'm going have to start creating fan art for my own enjoyment

[encrucijada]

personally i find it very queer to write stories where romantic love doesn't factor in at all. dethrone the hierachy of relationships from your mind. love loses. romance loses ✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️

[aidashakur]

You literally just have to get really good at continuing.

[sailyourshipsaroundme]

I will never understand parents who say they grieve the old versions of their trans/nonbinary child. They are supposed to grow and change no matter what, and the joy of parenting is finding out who they are and making space in your heart for new memories amidst the past.

My preschooler who loved caterpillars and fairy wings and Paw Patrol didn't die. They grew into a clarinet-playing anime nerd who creates incredible art, cracks truly hilarious jokes, uses words like "omnipotent" and "uncouth" in conversation, and sings along to the Six soundtrack with me on the way to school. The only things I would ever change about them is their propensity to leave dishes in their room and their insistence upon stealing my good scissors.

I carried that child in my body and saw the first breath they ever took. They are laughing and smiling and learning and growing each day. There is nothing to grieve. There is so much to celebrate.

[softwaring]

moon and rainbow at sunrise by mark ham

[dragon-in-a-fez]

[kaijuerotica]

save me, rice mixed with some bullshit

[petaltexturedskies]

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

[pinniposting]

everyone knows what a baby harp seal looks like, but here’s an adult! this one’s tracker makes it look like a live bomb

photo: W.J. Grecian, SMRU

[littleguysdaily]

[hug-your-face]

via @swatercolor [insta]

[hug-your-face]

This is the best tag I've ever received on a post, I think

[bodyofdeath]

crossfaded on what no longer is and what remains to be seen

[libationbearers]

the sexiest thing a man can be is only an extension of someone else. the sexiest thing a woman can be is angry. this is true

[twiststreet]

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Edited down a long tweet. (x)

[raylangivins]

has everyone seen the website that gives you a rothko for your local weather?