Lurking in the Background

[woodsdyke]

thinking about a lake i hiked to last year that was so small and cute. i jumped in to cool off and swam out to the middle, then looked down and saw trunks of entire dead trees dozens of feet below me and this is how i learned this particular lake is 100ft deep despite looking like a pond

[woodsdyke]

my immediate first thoughts were 1) damn im glad im a strong swimmer because this is a lake that eats people who can't swim and 2) i thought i had gotten past my fear of open water until right now

[woodsdyke]

it looks so nice and deceptively shallow. but she'll get you

[gentlewordsdaily]

There is a very specific kind of sadness in realizing your parents loved you, and still did not always know how to meet your emotional needs.

Because it is confusing. It would almost feel easier if there was no love there at all. But sometimes there was love. In the way they tried to protect you. In the sacrifices they made. In the ways they worried about you, cared for you, wanted a good life for you.

And at the same time, there were still things missing.

Maybe comfort did not come in the way you needed it to. Maybe your feelings were not always understood, or noticed, or handled gently. Maybe you learned to keep certain parts of yourself quiet because it felt easier than trying to explain them.

That kind of hurt is difficult because it does not always come from cruelty. Sometimes it comes from people who loved you deeply, but did not know how to emotionally connect in the ways you needed. People carrying their own wounds, limitations, fears, or ways of surviving.

And you are allowed to acknowledge both truths at once.

You are allowed to recognize their love and still grieve what you needed but did not receive. Those things do not cancel each other out.

Forgiveness, for a lot of people, is not pretending nothing hurt you. It is slowly accepting that someone can love you and still fall short of understanding you completely.

That does not make your pain dramatic. It does not make them monsters either. Sometimes it just means everyone was trying with the emotional tools they had, and some of those tools were not enough.

And I think many people quietly carry guilt for still feeling hurt by parents they know tried their best. But being loved imperfectly can still leave wounds. It makes sense that it affected you.

At the same time, you do not have to stay trapped only in anger forever either. Sometimes healing looks like understanding that your parents were human before they were parents. People shaped by their own experiences, their own upbringing, their own emotional gaps.

That understanding does not erase your feelings. It just softens the sharp edges around them a little.

You deserved emotional safety. You deserved gentleness. You deserved to feel understood, comforted, and emotionally close to the people raising you.

And if they could not fully give that to you, it is okay to mourn it.

But I hope you also know this: the love you needed is still something you can experience in your life. Through other people. Through chosen family. Through the way you learn to treat yourself now.

The story does not end at what you did or did not receive growing up.

You are still allowed softness after all of it 🤍

[flamingkorybante]

My friend worked with the People With AIDS Coalition in 1990 and found this while cleaning out some old folders. I can't stop thinking about it.

[xeansicemane]

"especially if they've made it to 40" fucking Christ.

[daisy-if-u-do]

Yeah. That. I spent my formative years in DC for Reagan's terms, and never thought I'd make it to *twenty* much less this far beyond. And when I realized I would be? I found myself suddenly without any real, actionable plan for the future.

The AIDS epidemic was monstrous. Not only for the lack of cure, but for the easy excuse it made for 'good people' to rid themselves of those disgusting gays.

The national willingness to discard an entire generation of (at first) gay men and then any queer persons has done immeasurable damage to every single one of us who survived it. The horror stories you might have seen in tabloids or online memorials only scratch the surface. We were unpersoned. We were named dangerous simply by our existence, and our presence was a herald for death and disease.

Our joy was not in spite of this. Our mad parties, the tendency to live in the moment, the stereotypical 'cattiness' and sex-crazed outlooks that media showers us with us even now, these were survival techniques. We dance because we lived another day. We craved physical contact from a world that feared us even in the same room, or touching the same door handle, or gods forbid us holding your hand.

And it's happening again.

If you notice your queer elders seem a little agitated beyond their usual baseline with what's happening with their trans peers this time around it's because we all recognize it from the 70s, 80s, 90s.

Name it a disease. Imply it's contagious, made-up for attention, or masking the 'real' problem (it's always pedophilia, always), often in the same breath. Consistency doesn't matter, only fear and hatred.

Say trans folks aren't worth the same considerations that good, upstanding people are. Deny them the medical care that, were they not trans, they would otherwise qualify for. Gender affirming care. Hormone treatments. Comprehensive therapy. Acceptance.

(Hell, even those lucky enough to escape obvious open discrimination find it on the back end, with medical care suddenly not being covered after being prescribed. Ask me how I know.)

And it's not just the right-wingers. Ask your Democratic or NP rep, if you have one, their thoughts on transgender rights. Listen close. See if they actually say anything of substance.

And then when trans people start dying off in droves, vanishing to forced detransitioning, assault, murder, or worse, well, that's just proof there's something wrong, isn't it? Not with the system. With us.

This is why we ask that the newer generations of queer folks learn the history. It's not *all* about Stonewall and Pride. It's about the lengths that those in charge will go to in order to ensure our deaths.

[anothercrankyblogger]

What they aren't telling these kids that's really dangerous is that if you do make it all the way to the heart of a Scientology building, the autosave will lock you into entering the Tom Cruise boss fight chamber, and you won't be able to leave until you defeat him in combat.

[only-cat-memes]

[aethersea]

another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!

(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.

actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)

a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.

deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.

the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.

and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.

however.

you do have to know which one you're doing.

the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).

and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.

the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.

the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.

point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.

[beacon-lamp]

hello beloveds ☺️

[iceslushii]

made an alternate version for the mutuals ive never spoken to

[thetreeofliberty]

You are appreciated

[dateamonster]

you could never make me hate magitech/scifantasy settings. fantasy and scifi are two beuatiful women to me and they are kissing with tongue.

[ozempicofficial]

[lycanshelby]

Starting a collection

[draconym]

The eye doctor is the most fun doctor you can go to. They never steal your blood. They never make you get naked and put on a paper dress. They're just like, "Can you see these letters? It's fine if you can't, we can fix that." And they don't even spell anything.

[draconym]

[prokopetz]

A thing about the lack of institutional continuity in indie video game development is that everybody is figuring everything out from first principles every single time, and if you've been around the block enough times you start to recognise common technical fuckups on sight. "Oh, this game's scrolling is all juddery because they anchored the camera directly to a physics object with no smoothing and their physics frame rate doesn't divide evenly into their screen frame rate – classic rookie mistake" sounds like it ought to be an unhinged thought to have, and yet.

[vigilskept]

anyway. for anon. everyone reblog with Images of your black sheps/mass effect ocs :) i will start with my beloved aaliyah shepard

[razrogue]

Ryal Shepard 🥰

Earthborn/Sole Survivor, vanguard

Zala Shepard 🥰

Spacer/Ruthless, adept

[leysendris]

Akeelah Madaki

Colonist - Soldier

[frownyalfred]

Sorry if you've talked about this before but... Can I ask why you don't rate the vast majority of your works? I've read some of them and absolutely loved everything and I wondered why almost none were rated

It’s a fair question, and I don’t want you to take this as defensive or about you at all, but my real answer? I got so fucking tired of the rating/warning police, and the comments, and the anon messages.

To be clear: at no point was I mis-rating or warning my fics, either on purpose or unintentionally. But even with perfect tagging, even ao3 staff admit in documentation that there are grey areas in some fandoms, and situations where we have to use our best judgement because the interpretation is so varied across readers. And readers proved that. They asked for warnings based on how they felt, rather than how the fic fits into the tagging of the site itself.

When my fics first started getting a little traction, the rating/warning folks popped up and would argue with me about. everything. They didn’t like the rating and thought it should be something else, or they suggested certain warnings or archive tags I hadn’t included. I evaluated these requests and figured I was being nice indulging them, even though I genuinely didn’t think the tags were required or even in some cases, helpful.

At first these felt benign, but they got so much worse. I was bending over backwards changing the rating/warnings on a fic because one person asked. Some people were nice and phrased it as a request. Other people threatened to report me. They talked shit about me on tumblr if I didn’t make their changes, suggesting I was causing harm. They asked for highly specific additional tags that nobody had ever used or didn’t exist, which only created more confusion.

Then the requests got more and more bizarre — tagging sexual assault/rape because, for instance, in borderline Tim enters Bruce’s mind “and that’s basically mind rape.” People would complain about a rating on a WIP because that rated/warned content hadn’t been posted yet. People would insist that additional tags are mandatory (they’re not) and that I wasn’t doing enough.

We would be splitting hairs on if the death of the Waynes (mentioned briefly in passing, like almost all DC media does) needed the major character death warning (in my opinion, it doesn’t). Same thing for Jason - I understand if it’s on screen or vividly recalled, but do you need that warning for a fic where Jason makes a joke about having died? No.

Younger readers got freaked out about sex scenes and requested ratings that didn’t match the archive guidance (explicit vs mature, etc). Largely because I don’t think they understood the ratings in the first place. Teen rating is the equivalent of PG-13 - this doesn’t apply to my fics, but you can have a fade to black implied sex scene and that’s still Teen according to ao3’s tags.

I once got told I didn’t understand ao3 because I tagged a fic as “gen” even though a couple/pair appeared in the fic itself briefly. Which is ridiculous — gen rating doesn’t mean there isn’t any romance or romantic relationships. It just means the pairing isn’t the focus of the work.

I got so fucking tired of getting these comments. It really was nonstop for a few years. It made me stop replying to comments on my works. At no point was I ever tagging or warning in bad faith; I consulted ao3 guidance frequently and used my best judgement. And that still wasn’t enough.

“Just block them” — I know. But with dozens of fics up, it was impossible to keep up. Nobody would hear out my explanations. If they did, they rarely apologized for what they said before. It felt like every time I posted, I was bracing for something to be wrong with my fic. That felt awful :(

So yeah, I bumped up everything to the highest ratings/warning possible just for that to stop and to have peace of mind. Most of my fics are now unrated, and I use the “creator chose not to use archive warnings” warning on everything.

Why? Because no matter what the fic contains, or what a WIP develops into, I’m covered. I have warned to the highest possible degree, and there is no genuine issue with my tagging that can be reported or criticized. If someone has a problem, it’s because they clicked on the fic, not because I didn’t tag right. It shifted the onus to the reader.

I know this would come with a drop in readership and/or a lack of trust in me, and I accepted that. I know people feel like they’re taking a chance with me when they read those fics, and being wary is their right.

I also, for what it’s worth, tag explicitly chapter by chapter for works I know contain heavy subjects. Almost all of my current WIPs have those warnings, so people can make chapter by chapter decisions on what they’re comfortable reading. I also have provided ways for readers to contact me and ask additional questions about a warning or even to spoil the chapter for them before they read it. I’m more than happy to do that.

But in a world where a super personal, graphic fic about rape that I wrote which IS fully tagged, uses warnings, is warned for in the author’s notes, and has a rating, STILL gets comments about how they didn’t realize the rape would be so graphic or that I needed multiple types of rape tagged in the additional tags…I just can’t.

In short: I’m sorry, I wish I could tag as I see fit, but criticism from readers has exploded in recent years, and not just in this area. It’s too much of a cognitive load for me, it frustrates me, and I waste time I could be writing. So I have defaulted to the best option for my situation for the time being.

[meangirlnurse]

someone has apparently been having a year-long tantrum in the notes of this post because of something that i absolutely did not say at any point in this post or anywhere else

[meangirlnurse]

tumblr moment

[meangirlnurse]

update: i have been informed that i am an "ignorant, ableist classist piece of shit"

[meangirlnurse]

update: i have also been informed that i am a "eugenicist" because of this post

[meangirlnurse]

[meangirlnurse]

scream

[awritersbro]

More people should ask folks who are Angry Online to define the terms they're talking about because there's probably a good chance that the answer is gonna be as revealing as it is utterly bizarre

[cometcrystal]

the term "child soldiers" gets used a lot in regards to animorphs and they are soldiers that are children but i don't know if elfangor breaking the law and telling them to protect their planet before getting eaten counts as officially being enlisted by the andalites. if you wanna be technical about it, they're not child soldiers, they're children engaging in covert guerilla warfare without any official orders and they're better at this than the majority of the actual army that's allegedly fighting the yeerks because they're driven by soul-crushing pressure, responsibility, and guilt. which is immeasurably tragic for them and incredibly embarrassing for the andalites

[importantcatpics]

[moghedien]

I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with

But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy

[moghedien]

Here he is, the Aldi Cowboy