i'm helping out at a creative writing workshop for uhhh i think 10-12s? 10-14s? idk. but that age range. and anyways
a) i forgot how fun this is
b) it's really hard not to like, re-write for them and stick to just "hey add descriptions here, change this grammar, really cool ideas!" bc i'm an adult and not trying to talk over/railroad these kids, but i'm just so excited for their ideas!!!
c) little boys write cool stuff like "what if we went to mars but it sucked so we left, but left behind all our technology and the technology rose up and created its own society and then went to war with us for abandoning them? what if transformers had 100x the war crimes? what if the earth blew up. what if we were the robots all along?"
d) little girls out here writing like "aunt melanie's skin was sloughing off the bones as her beloved dogs tore her apart, turning on her in blind animal instinct. the second she stopped providing food, she became food." and a lot of body horror and dark themes about group pacts and betrayals and ritualistic murder/sacrifices. like a lot
me, turning to the teacher who is also doing this: hey so, i'm personally really cool with the tone and direction these girls take, but is any of this? how you say... a red flag?
teacher: little girls have really rich inner lives to combat the way they're puppeted by society in real life. they'll learn to censor it out in a couple years, but it doesn't go away.
me, who was also a weird little girl who phased in and out of weirdness depending on social settings: nice.
Have you ever tried to explain to someone not on tumblr the tumblr tagging ecosystem? You sound bonkers. They look at you like you explaining a 5 lane highway designed by frogs to optimize lily pad travel.
like you’ll be like okay so the tags are kind of for your own blog sorting, right, like #myposts or #reblogs so you or someone else can find them later, hopefully, or people can just wander into a tag for a show or character and see a bunch of posts about that
but also sometimes the tags are just… commentary, like a little side whisper you attach to the post that only lives in your corner of the swamp unless someone else decides to pick it up and carry it with them like a note in a bottle that has somehow developed opinions
and there are actual comments, which follow the post, but tags don’t, so tags are like speaking into a parallel dimension where only people who specifically go looking for it will hear you, and also the original poster, sometimes
so you can react to something without technically adding to the post in a way that propagates, unless someone sees your tags and goes “no actually this deserves to be part of the text” and manually copies them onto the post like a form of peer review, tags so good they achieved publication
and then it can also function as a PS on your own post, like an afterthought that didn’t quite fit into the main body but you still needed to say it, so you just tuck it into the tags like “also btw [unhinged addendum]” and send it drifting downstream
and at this point the person you’re explaining this to is just staring at you while the frogs continue building their infrastructure in the background and you’re like no I promise it makes sense once you live here long enough
fyi there is no such thing as “getting back on track” after the holidays because you were never “off track” you were simply living life because you are a human being and you deserve that
a bop is something light or something you casually enjoy. you don’t mind it/it’s cute in the moment.
a banger is something that goes hard (sometimes unnecessarily) can invoke deep emotions. can fizzle out after some time has passed.
a jam is something that can be considered as nostalgic. it is a song that is a personal anthem, no matter what you are going through you just respond to it. it is immortal.
thinking about buck with maddie one day watching her play with jee holding nash in his arms and eventually saying 'hey, sorry.'
and she looks at him all confused and he explains: 'i was just thinking -- it must've been hard on you, when we were kids.'
maddie laughs a little and goes 'well, it wasn't a walk in the park for either of us,' but buck shakes his head.
'no, like--' he sighs. 'you were going through a lot already, and i was always so-- difficult, you know?'
that makes maddie's brows furrow and she does her sad brown eyes thing that buck has never known how to defend against. 'buck, what's all this about?'
and buck sighs and says: 'it's stupid. connor and kameron came over with theo, before...you know. and they, ah, they asked me...'
'what?'
'they asked me what was...wrong with me. as a kid. because apparently i'd passed it onto theo.'
maddie's lips purse and she goes: 'there was nothing wrong with you, buck. you were a kid.'
'a kid who was destined to cause trouble to his parents, i guess,' buck tries to laugh it off. 'like, i thought all the-- the acting out, was because mom and dad were shit parents. but i guess it was just me.'
and maddie snorts so loud that buck stares, and she meets his eyes before she goes: 'buck, the first time jee stayed over at your loft, she destroyed all the toilet paper in the house.'
'yeah, but--'
'she literally pulled apart furniture. she was two.'
'that's just--'
'denny lied to hen multiple times, too.'
'well, that was--'
'and mara lashed out so much that it drove them crazy--'
'she was--'
'didn't chris break a salad bowl once, also?'
'okay, but that's because--'
'and sneak off with his friends?'
'hey,' buck snaps. 'chris is a good kid. they all are.'
and maddie cups his jaw all gentle and sisterly and she has done this hundreds, thousands, millions of times. back when she could push his entire little face away with her palm when he was being annoying to now, sitting in her house together, holding her baby who is sleeping in the crook of his elbow.
'so were you, buck,' she says, all faith, the first and only person in his childhood that taught him patiently about love, the same way she taught him shapes and colors and the letters of the alphabet. 'you were a menace, sure, but all kids are, in their own ways. you were also-- the kid that made pinkie promises with me and always kept them. the kid that defended me to mom and dad even when you were scared. the kid that--' she looks at nash, sleeping in his arms. 'the kid that i've always been proud to be a family with. you were never bad, buck.' she brushes her thumb over his birthmark. 'and neither is theo.'
and buck swallows and looks down and thinks about how he didn't think of theo as bad, not even once, not until it became an excuse to think of himself as the one who was the problem.
'so you think--' he hesitates. 'you think that theo's going to be okay?'
and maddie, as always, hears the little kid question behind his words and smiles. 'yeah, buck,' she says. 'i think that as long as someone loves him, theo's going to turn out just fine.'
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