the stars are the same as ever

i have crossed the face of the universe, i poison it to match my grief 27 - she/her - nonbinary butch lesbian 🏳️‍⚧️

[thisaintasceneitsfob]

[wafflewarrior111]

So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

[missroserose]

I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that...” in prose writing I immediately think “how?  How does he know it?”  Interrogate your witnesses.  Cross-examine them.  Make them explain their reasoning.  It pays dividends.

[heck-in-a-handbasket]

All of this, but also feels/felt. My editor has forbidden me from using those and it’s forced me to stretch my skills.

[ineedthesons]

This is your "show not tell" advice explained!

[tarysande]

Editor here.

First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.

What we’re talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, “thought” words are included. But so are “heard, saw, looked, tasted, smelled” etc.—most words having to do with the senses.

This isn’t black and white advice; sometimes you’ll use these words and that’s okay. They’re not WRONG. They’re just weaker. And they’re weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*

If you want your reader to feel like they’re experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.

*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes they’re seeing through and thoughts they’re privy to. So you don’t need to tell them “I saw X.” Or “I heard X.” Or “I thought Y.” You can just jump into the action/observation as it’s happening.

This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.

“It was rainy.” Versus: “The rain pounded against the roof.” Or “The rain howled like an injured animal.” Or “The rain tapped against the window like an anxious lover.” All of these are inviting the reader deeper into the experience of the story by using stronger verbs and similes. And, at the same time, they stir feelings (instead of TELLING feelings). And feelings keep your reader engaged. Engaged readers keep turning pages; engaged readers become FANS.

[the-haiku-bot]

This is also where

you want to pay attention

to verbs of being.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[defilerwyrm]

The most valuable advice that Author Ex gave me through the years that we wrote together was this: the problem with all these filter words is that they create distance in the POV.

That means that when you read a line like

John saw that the curtains were open.

It immediately takes you OUT of the character's perspective and instead tells you what they experience as a secondhand observation.

You don't have to get fancy or purple with how you rephrase things like this. Not everything needs a ton of breathing room.

You wanna know what's perfectly impactful while keeping a tight POV?

The curtains were open.

Simple as that.

[songlin]

This was one of my all time most powerful writing lessons! This mindset shift makes you a stronger writer immediately in a way that just keeps getting easier and better for you.

[nepenthean-sleep]

france, spain, and england? my god this is really the colonizer cup

[romanceyourdemons]

horror concept: you are a woman and you are getting married

[nepenthean-sleep]

when people make jokes about the state of ohio being empty or boring or hellish or whatever i can never tell if they're saying this because of the genocide that created this situation or for some other reason. because if you think about the history of the land that the "state of ohio" is on, the shawnee were there. the osage and the omaha and the ponca nations were there. the entire cultures of the people who lived in this midwest republican rust belt "hell is real" billboard state were systematically wiped out. "ohio sucks" well yeah, it's a grave

[nepenthean-sleep]

"we can't let the christofascism win" yall there are churches all over north america since the 1800s. the christofascism did win

[nepenthean-sleep]

when people make jokes about the state of ohio being empty or boring or hellish or whatever i can never tell if they're saying this because of the genocide that created this situation or for some other reason. because if you think about the history of the land that the "state of ohio" is on, the shawnee were there. the osage and the omaha and the ponca nations were there. the entire cultures of the people who lived in this midwest republican rust belt "hell is real" billboard state were systematically wiped out. "ohio sucks" well yeah, it's a grave

[rockandstone]

[lightandloveandrage]

Heather Cassils, Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture, 2011. 

I’m tired of crying whenever I see this.

[marilearnsmandarin]

[seattletorrents]

i don't like how quiet the torrent is being compared to other teams and i dont like how with all of the moves happening across the league, no one seems to want to come to seattle. despite an awful first season, it felt like we ended on such an optimistic note with a team that loved the city and that the city loved as well, and they threw it all away for hypothetical greener grass. girl the grass is not greener. it feels like we are dead.

[balaclava-trismegistus]

if i dont respond to a message from you i can basically guarantee its not because i dislike you. im just getting attacked by imps and shit all the time genuinely.

[feldfrog]

[charl0ttan]

im glad we're in the internet backwaters i think if dove chocolate or something replied to my post i would just keep reporting them for terorism again and again and again

[rosenkranz-does-things]

some more plein airpril paintings

[sabertoothwalrus]

maybe this is not my place to say because I am monolingual, and I'm sure it's part of a larger, more nuanced discussion about visibility and accessibility on the internet, but I think it'd be cool if people posted in their native languages more instead of in english. I see people do it way more on other platforms than on tumblr which is almost exclusively in english

[minothtime]

El problema es, como bien has dicho, la accesibilidad y la visibilidad.

Tumblr en concreto es muy anglocentrista y un gran número de los usuarios no habla más que inglés. Si quieres que tus cosas lleguen a gente con gustos u opiniones similares, escribirlo en inglés asegura que la gente por lo menos lo pueda leer. Suma a esto el hecho de que bastantes series y tal son originalmente de habla inglesa (y a veces ni se traducen a tu lengua madre), lo que crea un fandom principalmente angloparlante.

Más allá de eso, también hay que tener en cuenta las diferencias culturales que surgen entre fandoms de distintos idiomas. Por ejemplo, durante mucho tiempo el fandom de Vocaloid angloparlante y el hispanohablante han chocado con respecto a temas como la piratería. En ocasiones es complicado manejar estas expectativas, y si sabes varios idiomas, peor incluso.

A mí me gustaría subir cositas en español y encontrar a gente que comparta mis gustos, pero en Tumblr en concreto es casi imposible. Tumblr ya es de por sí mucho más «nicho» en espacios hispanohablantes que otras RRSS como TikTok o Instagram, y si tus intereses no son muy populares, despídete.

La lingüística de los espacios de fans también está hipercentrada en el inglés. No es una pareja, es un ship; no es un universo alternativo, es un AU; no es destripar, es hacer spoiler, etc. Incluso las siglas: en español es LGTB, pero lo que sueles ver es LGBT. Parece una tontería, pero esta disonancia cognitiva hace que resulte muchísimo más complicado hablar en tu propio idioma en un fandom. Por no hablar de las innumerables referencias a posts o a memes... en inglés todo, por supuesto. Como te atrevas a hacer cualquier referencia cultural no inglesa, no te entiende nadie. Pierde la gracia.

Casi todo esto se puede achacar al imperialismo cultural estadounidense. El inglés es útil para comunicarse con gente de todo el mundo, pero su omnipresencia sirve de barrera para todos los demás idiomas. Quizás habría que reflexionar un poco sobre por qué coño el resto del mundo tiene que tragarse años de clases de inglés para hablar del juego que le gusta en una red social mientras muchos angloparlantes no se dignan ni a meter un texto en un traductor automático y prefieren pasar de largo.

[qvarr]

This piece has been rotting in my art folder for months now and I finally figured out how I Wanted to color/render Dinraal.

I want to make a piece for each of the dragons, so consider this part 1 of the set.

[monkeyislandtwo]

what kind of example sentence is this

[strawberry-crocodile]

lack of women and fat people = nightmare whats so complicated

[meshugenist]

btw the US federal rule that will funding-denial-style effectively ban most trans healthcare and mandate funding recipients to discriminate against trans ppl will go into effect by October 1st, 2026

[nepenthean-sleep]

if this gets tied to medicare reimbursement, it will effectively mark the end of trans healthcare in the united states (hospitals and hospital groups will always pick medicare funding over any annoying or inconvenient policy/law). i can’t tell by the article whether or not it will be related to CMS/medicare reimbursement, though.

[meshugenist]

it is ALL federal funding. that includes medicare and medicaid. also like tbc it is not really bc hospitals and clinics are just cowardly or something (which is generally true); many of them existentially depend on federal funding and effectively have no choice but to implement these kinds of policies. this is why transphobic politicians have been laser focused on these kinds of policies, since they are both easier to pass and implement than legal bans and allow for extreme and collective extrajudicial punishment for violation

[pixeljade]

just to be clear here.

THIS RULE HAS THREE DAYS OF COMMENT PERIOD LEFT.

Meaning that you still have three days to tell the government that this is horrific.

👉Here is the comment link👈, theres also one at the end of the Erininthemorning link up there at the top.

At the risk of sounding alarmist: If this passes as is, it will kill people. PLEASE COMMENT.

[meshugenist]

just to be clear here.

the OMB does not fucking care what you say to them and you are delusional if you think they will back down due to any amount of public comment. they don't even read that shit let alone care.

[pixeljade]

Just to be extra clear here: Thats no reason not to fucking try. Worst case you justify future action, best case they realize the pressure against this is immense and water it down temporarily. Many such rules have been stopped by coordinated action. I get thag its easy to give into despair, but please stop being a defeatist, its extremely harmful to any movement.

[meshugenist]

i am not being defeatist or giving in to despair lmao you are literally wasting your time and energy and misleading ppl into thinking that they are doing effective resistance by doing jack shit. public comment is not coordinated action in this country, the govt has no legal obligation whatsoever to abide by it. this is also not a post about how to do effective resistance, this is a post abt when a rule will go into effect and what it will do

[nepenthean-sleep]

speaking as someone who often has to utilize the federal register and eCFR for my field, if you aren’t some kind of professional in the field in which the proposed regulation is overseeing, public comments on the federal register are meaningless. this is true regardless of administration, but it’s especially true during THIS administration because they don’t even care about what the professionals think. leaving comments on the federal register during this administration is not an effective form of action as a regular citizen.