The Thornwood Estate @ladythornwood - Tumblr Blog

We need more gothic fiction where men are going mad and running around in billowing nightgowns and women are brooding, byronic, and morally dubious

corpseprize

the reality of being a writer

heres how to fix it

everythingistandfor

what if i don't want to fix it

what if the process is the point and the struggle while writing is an allegory for living and finishing it would be like -- oh well i mustn't say

like yes the relief and satisfaction of finishing the story is what seems to be the reward but what kind of a artist would i be if i wrote only to publish and not to simply write?

i'm getting far too much into this – apologies if i'm ruining the delivery of a post with a much lighter intended tone – but i gotta say this:

we don't write our stuff just to say we have written it, we write because it feels good to (or at the very least, it feels less good not to)

it feels good to have someone read your word and go 'yeah good shit' but also, admit it, it secretly felt a little satisfying writing it at 3 AM, too

peri

digital selfharm is real. do NOT check up on that ex-partner/ex-friend. do NOT reread those old messages/conversations that you know will hurt your feelings all over again or that will otherwise make you feel like shit. do NOT block evade to see if you’re being talked about. inhale. exhale. let it pass and you’ll be better for it.

cautionary-4

Rainwing based on a photo of a red macaw that I saw

anthonycolonthree

(guy who's not getting anything done voice) I need to learn every skill and all information

anexperimentallife

Also applies to "AI" "artists" and "musicians."

m-bbert

i agree with this but i'd probably rephrase the "as a pudgy 47yo woman" because holy hell is that fatphobic. fat people can run marathons, and often do. it could have been literally anything else, "as a person who's never run a mile in their life", for example

wokeuptraveledstraightintothesun

I think she was making fun of the AI bros who claim that disabled people use/need AI in order to keep up with the better, able bodied people. Because as we all know, pudgy people can't run marathons and disabled people can't write or draw, those are gatekept by the athletic and artistic people of the world. I am being sarcastic if it isn't clear.

m-bbert

i can definitely see that, and i'm not trying to read in bad faith or call op fatphobic at all, but the way it reads can definitely be fatphobic and could easily be disheartening to fat people. the message is one i completely agree with, and those excuses are made frequently, but a lot of the people who use ai under the excuse "disabled people can't draw so it's making art accessible" are often not disabled. it would probably be more effective to pose the person, under the post's metaphor of running a marathon, as someone who's never tried to run

#rb’ing this for the conversation cause it’s a necessary ine thank you #typo: one #as a disabled person who won’t touch genai with a pole of any length and wishes it would hurry up and crash already #(<- a big understatement but these are casual tags)#i was really annoyed at the wording used by op (or would it be oop?)#so often people who are abled use disabled people only as a means to an end and then discard us after. they don’t actually care.#that could have been more clearly a part of the metaphor but instead they stuck with the hateful version

perennial-lee

Anti-revenge narrative this, anti-revenge narrative that, I personally think that Inigo Montoya had the right idea when he stabbed Count Rugen in the gut and said "I want my father back, you son of a bitch"

galwednesday

A lot of revenge arcs end with the hero saying "there's nothing you can do to bring my loved one back, so me seeking revenge is pointless." The Princess Bride's revenge arc ends with Inigo Montoya saying "there's nothing you can do to bring my loved one back, so there's nothing that can save you."

sevserez

Soup incident

lazer-t

Lumholtz's Tree-Kangaroo for a Ko-fi supporter (more info)

Prints

morteraphan

It will be a long journey 🐎

[our characters with my co-author]

redstonedust

i understand (on paper) why companies are anti-piracy but its funny when random individuals are also strongly anti-piracy. like how does it negatively affect your life if someone you know downloads a cracked torrent of sims 4. you dont work for EA. EA isnt gonna pay you for this. you lose nothing. its fine. chill out.

thats-what-sidhe-said

I have different stances on piracy depending on what you're pirating. And look, I'm not going to judge you for pirating, because I've broken my own rules before. But the reality is that some pirating is harmful and some is not.

Big company? Go for it. Pirating the Sims isn't going to stop a new Sims game from being greenlit.

Harry Potter? No. It's not about money, you just need to purge that shit from your life. It's okay to have fond memories, but it's time to move on.

Textbooks? God, yes.

Not available legally in your language/region? Yes, absolutely. This can even help things get distributed to new regions when publishers see there's a demand. And yes, they know what's getting pirated.

It's out of print/unavailable/about to be wiped from the company's system? Yes. Download it, save it, and make sure you've got the hardware to play it, or have an emulator that'll run it. Sometimes piracy is the only way to save media that would otherwise be lost.

Authors who aren't Stephen King-popular? Comics with small circulation? Other media that's teetering on the edge of cancellation? No.

Go read Maggie Stiefvater's post about how piracy almost killed her series. A lot of media that isn't super popular is always teetering on the edge of survival, and piracy can tip the scales.

But I can't afford it. Totally get that. Have you checked your library? If you don't have Libby loaded with every possible library you can access, you aren't trying. Have you checked if you can get library cards from other libraries in your region, or from libraries that don't require residency, like the Queer Liberation Library?

The library doesn't have it. Request it! You can ask libraries to buy the books you want to read and lots of times they will!

But the wait's too long. Learn patience? Okay, yeah, I know sometimes a popular book has a months' long wait. Sometimes that goes much faster than you'd expect. If you absolutely can't wait, then at least put a hold on the item and when it comes due, check it out and return it, so the author gets paid and the library will buy their next book. You can even reread it.

But I can't do any of that and it's queer/culturally significant! Okay, first, those are the books and media that need to be financially supported the most, or else they don't get made. But these are also usually from creators who have a very personal reason to want you to read their stuff. Ask them if they have extra copies! Or see if they or their publisher will donate to your local library/school/organization. Don't be a dick about it. Don't demand it, or say, "well, I'm gonna pirate if if you don't", just ask, politely.

If you pirate it anyway, don't redistribute it publicly (ex. on Reddit). And don't go to cons and tell authors you steal their shit. And buy their stuff as soon as you can afford to.