- Pantyhose, tights, leggings, and stockings are each different.
- Waxing hurts and leaves red skin for a while afterwards while shaving leaves stubble
- Most can’t run in heels unless they have been VERY worn
- Insecurity in appearance doesn’t mean “buy me a drink”
- EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT TASTES IN EVERYTHING
-Having large breasts sucks. It sucks beyond belief. If a garment happens to fit your large chest, odds are it won’t fit the rest of you. Underboob sweat is real and terrible. Bending over for extended periods of time will tweak your back out. Running can be painful due to boob turbulence. Bras are hella expensive. Big breasts are not fun.
Putting a tampon in isnt a quick bend-poke-done kinda deal. It involves cubicle yoga, messy hands, numerous curse words as you realise it isnt in correctly and have to take it out and start again with a new one.
If her hair is in an updo, one does not simply remove a hairpin to send her hair cascading down her back. No. If her hair is an updo, it will take at least an hour and an extra set of hands to remove the 137 bobby pins that are holding her hair in place. Furthermore, there’s probably a can’s worth of hairspray in there, intended to withstand category 2 hurricane winds. There’s no cascading happening here - the best you can hope for is a misshapen nest of hair to clump and poof unattractively in the back while it still remains flat against her scalp.
This is one of the funniest posts I’ve seen in a while (especially if you read all the comments), but also really depressing because at 42 I still judge myself as having failed for not matching up to all these mythical stereotypes despite knowing they’re impossible
The odds of a woman having smoothly shaved legs and armpits are directly proportional to the amount of skin her clothing bares and/or the amount of fucks she gives at that particular moment.
GLASSES ARE NOT COSMETIC. If we whip them off, we do not become gorgeous fashion models. We become squinty.
-most women wear bras. Yes, even when they are trying to dress sexy. Because bras make boobs look perkier and rounder, which is something men apparently find sexy, so being a seductress or femme fatale is not an automatic reason for a female character to not be wearing a bra.
-a good bra will hide headlights, or at the very least drastically reduce their noticeability. A women with enough pointy nipple issues will opt for a padded or molded bra to hide them.
-women’s nipples do not automatically become hard pyramids visible through any and all layers of clothing the second they become even slightly aroused. They are not the female equivalent of boners. And even if their nipples do get hard, the bras they are almost certainly wearing (because even a goddamn succubus with big, honkin’ knockers for seducing men is gonna have those painful puppies in some kind of boob sling) should keep those pointy nipples from being visible to every other character in the scene, JIM BUTCHER. YES, EVEN LARA RAITH WOULD WEAR A BRA ONCE IN A GODDAMN WHILE.
if you’re being tied up and tortured in a freezing underground dungeon, then you probably have more important things to pay attention to than how hard somebody’s nipples are, jim butcher
- Wearing a bra that doesn’t fit HURTS. It’s not sexy to wear a bra that’s “two sizes too small”, it’d make your clothes hang oddly and you’d have a weird, uncomfortable “quad-boob” effect and your back would hurt, BEN AARONOVITCH.
Also, after removing a too small bra, there’s gonne be angry red lines on the boobs and ribs and the lady is not going to want them to be touched by anyone for a good long while
-Lips aren’t just naturally red “as if she’d been drinking wine but they were just like that without makeup cause she’s so perfect,” my dear little Kvothe from ‘Name of the Wind’. Also, girls do not naturally smell like fruit or flowers, it’s either perfume or something she’d been eating recently.
I’ve been appreciating this post but now it’s back very specifically calling out my problematic faves and I don’t think those male authors realize how much it totally takes me out of the story for a moment when they commit these errors. It does nothing useful for the plot and is annoying for half of the audience
(Most) Women do not look at themselves in the mirror and compare their breasts to fruit. Any sort of fruit. Especially melons. Please save us from the melons.
Also we are not aware of our breasts at all times. I do not walk down a flight of stairs and think “oh golly my breasts are bouncing so much right now”. They are as much as natural part of our bodies as arms. Do you constantly think about how your arms are moving? Sure you may be aware of them, but paying full attention? Doubtful.
Also: women working out are almost never sexy. They’re not glowing or glistening or (kill me) *sparkling*. They are red and sweaty and gross just like all the dudebros doing their time with the dumbbells. Stop ogling fictional women at the gym, TOM WOLFE.
I never understood why men feel the need to address all this telltale “feminine” awareness when writing women. Like once in grad school one of my male colleagues wrote from a female character’s POV and was like sure to notice how her feet felt in high heels and all the women’s lifestyle magazines on the coffee table and also that like, her breasts were “heavy” or some shit. I write male characters all the time. Not once have I ever stopped to make sure they notice the weight of their own balls or been hyper aware of their chest hair or some bullshit like that. ????? why????????
Love this. I’ve been cackling to myself for good 20 mins reading all the comments as well but the last reblog had me dying like can you imagine!!
“Chad was late. He had an important meeting to get to and was mad at himself for oversleeping.
He quickly washed and brushed his teeth and then ran downstairs, his balls bouncing playfully in his pants.
Do I have time to make a coffee? he thought. He decided he did so went into the kitchen and switched the kettle on. As he was waiting, he noticed his thick, curly chest hair was poking through the button gaps of his shirt. He giggled to himself and tucked his manly fuzz back in, hoping it wouldn’t happen during the meeting.”
Someone tagged me a while back (sorry, I lost the post and searching tumblr is a nightmare). The challenge was to pick my five favorite stories I've written. I can't. While I love some of my stories more than others, I'm continually revising my preferences.
But at the end of the year I always look back over what I've done and draw some lessons. This year, the fic that taught me the most was The Secret of Agra.
So here are five personal lessons I learned from that one story, along with five takeaway lessons for anyone who feels stuck on a story. (Yes, I see you.)
One: I can only write things I enjoy writing. Not necessarily the same as what other people will enjoy reading.
This seems self-evident, but it's always worth asking myself, do I really want to write this? Why do I want to write it? Is there something else I need to write more, before I write this?
There were (literally) a hundred stories I needed to write before I was ready to write The Secret of Agra. If I hadn't felt drawn by this weird idea, it would still be sitting in the wip pile.
We do this for ourselves, right? Stop thinking you have to please everybody.
Takeaway: If you love an idea, you should write it. If you don't, it will haunt you.
Two: It's worth waiting to get a story right. More time does not make a story worse, it shows me what it's worth to me.
I started writing this story in 2020. All I had at the beginning was Sherlock in a weird headspace, thinking he was back from his Reichenbach Adventure and wondering why he was sitting alone in 221B, no John, a pile of unfamiliar books, and phone calls from a strange woman.
There was a lot of inertia in that idea, and it predictably went nowhere. It became the story always at the bottom of the WIP pile, a dog-eared thing that I pulled out every now and then, scratching out a few parts, adding some parts, and then wandering off after some more promising idea.
But I liked what I'd written, and kept poking it, and it gathered more ideas, and at the end of 2024, I was ready to write the last chapter.
Five years is a long time. In the end I finished it because it wouldn't leave me alone and I was too stubborn to give it up.
Takeaway: Be patient. There are no deadlines. Never throw any story away. Let it haunt you.
Three: My best stories start with a character, mood/aura, not with a problem, a conflict, or a cool plot idea.
This surprises me because I always think it's the idea, the scenario and the plot that draw me. But many stories I've most enjoyed writing begin with a character and a mood:
Solstice begins with Sherlock looking at his phone and having the melancholy realisation that it's been a year since he talked to John. I imagined a slow reunion, but no idea how that would happen. A case? A crisis? None of that, as it happens.
The Losing Side begins with a very angry Watson who kisses Sherlock before refusing to watch him fall. He does fall, but how would that kiss change him, how would he return differently to that angry John? I had feelings about that before I had a plot.
Accidental Magic begins with a dream I had: an old house filled with books, a dead man, his widow. The dream left me with an eerie feeling and a burning desire for John and Sherlock to search through all those books. (And there would have to be ciphers.)
The Secret of Agra was like this, too. It gave me a gut feeling, and that was why I kept coming back to this: Sherlock, wondering where John was, why everything seemed so strange.
Takeaway: If an "idea" is going nowhere, look for an aura, consider a character's mood. Follow that.
Four: Point of View is the most important decision I make when writing a story.
I used to just start writing, going with a gut feeling about whose story it was. I kept it limited, through a character's eyes.
The Agra story started with Sherlock, sitting in his flat in that mood. Visitors, phone calls, nothing moved it forward. Even when I finally got him out the door, it still felt stuck.
Two additional POVs got the story unstuck. John's POV answered questions about where Sherlock was and what John was doing about it. It became an Orpheus story. Once John was in Agra, adding Greg's POV grounded the story in reality and brought them home.
I don't like adding other character POV's just for something to do, but this is an exercise that has worked for me, more than once. Especially with a long story, one POV can be limited and boring.
Takeaway: Try writing a stuck story from another character's POV. Even if you don't use it, this can very often show you what a story is missing.
Five: In the end, I finished The Secret of Agra because I was writing it for myself.
The best job, somebody said, is the one you'd do for free, but you do so well that somebody pays you to do it.
I am well-paid by my readers, who give me kudos and lovely comments. But that's not something they owe me.
And I've done a lot of writing that never had an audience. After five years, I'd decided that Secret of Agra had to be written, if only for myself. I gave up wondering if anyone would read it and just did it. For me, the story had become the Big Reichenbach Return Story that fixed Everything. Many people have written that story, but this was mine.
The Secret of Agra is probably not my best or favorite story, but I am so grateful for the readers who read, commented, and made it more than a personal journey for me.
Takeaway: Write it for yourself. That story you imagine? No one else is going to write it for you.
These are all fairly obvious, but still warrant saying.
I'll just add one more: Ask someone to read what you've written.
Even if your story is a mess and you're embarrassed to show it to anyone. That reader might not kick you in the pants, maybe won't even say more than a few words, but you will immediately be seeing your whole weirdly personal project through an outsider's eyes and you will begin to see how to make it better. You will imagine people reading it and not walking away.
In your own head, there is an echo chamber that keeps you from moving ahead.
💕 Many thanks to @friday411 who read a few chapters and gave me a needed kick in the pants to finish The Secret of Agra! 💕
PS Writers, I am interested in what story of yours taught you some lessons. Please share, if you can!
OKAY EVERYONE, as promised a couple days ago, I finally updated and fixed the fic rec permalink masterpost. It has gone from 3 to 5 pages, so hopefully I won’t have to do this again anytime soon. Some stuff got shuffled around, so check out below for the new locations of the sections:
[PAGE 1]
- TOP “XX” LISTS/ FAVE LISTS
Fandom Fics
“Last XX Bookmarked” Lists
Word Counts
Fave Fics
Five Fics Friday
- EPISODE SPECIFIC/FIX-IT FICS
- KINKS AND SMUT
- FLUFF
[PAGE 2]
Holidays
Tropes
Slow Burn/Dev Rel.
[PAGE 3]
Established Relationships
Angst / -ish
Health Related / Illness / Death
[PAGE 4]
- CHARACTER CENTRIC LISTS
Sherlock Holmes
John Watson
John and Sherlock Combo Lists
Mycroft Holmes
Harry Watson
Other Characters
[PAGE 5]
- SHERLOCK AU’S
Books / Franchise AU’s & Fantasy
Magical Realism
Alternate Futures/Timelines
Supernatural
Alternate Canons
- T-RATED AND MISCELLANEOUS / OTHER FANDOM LISTS
—–
I know it doesn’t look like a lot condensed like this, but there are at LEAST 50 lists per page, so… huh, wow I didn’t even think of how many I have done over the years, LOL. Hopefully I’ve re-arranged some lists to more logical places, but yeah, if you don’t find a list where you think it should be, look under either “characters” or “miscellaneous”.
Sorry again for the delay in fixing this… not even sure if it’s used all that much, but I hope it’s helpful anyway.
And a reminder, if there’s a list you want to see, I also have a HUGE list of lists I currently have saved in my offline folder, and I haven’t been asked for many of them since I posted it, so if you want a guaranteed list within a month or two, choose from that list above :) And as always, don’t hesitate to ask for a list and I’ll see what I can do.
One day I’ll finally post up the community recs posts and masterlists… it’s just that this one is such a HUGE thing to manage that the idea overwhelms me.
Observe their demeanor -deduction is the art of reasoning backwards determining a cause from an observable effect
Use the process of elimination- find different factors that have a chance of being correct then deduce clues to reach the conclusion of which one is the most plausible
Structure your deductions- ask questions to yourself and others then try to find evidence to validate those questions
Don't disregard simple problems-solving the same simple problems to build up the habit of focusing on the same logical thinking
Sherlock Holmes: "The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes"
Cecil had his eyes removed when he was a kitten. Nothing could be done & they were hurting him. He's been happier since & is greatly loved by his owners.
Like the old card catalogs? Like their esthetically pleasing impression? Well, Hobby Lobby has furniture that looks like them for $188.99. I bought one a few yrs ago & use it to hold greeting cards, wedding invitations, "In loving memories", letters, theatre booklets, etc
baratheonpilled
romaincrisis
ellievsbear
snowghoul
