Writing on the back of a whale @stesierra - Tumblr Blog

Writeblr ReIntro!

I'm posting a new intro because now that I've been on Writeblr a little while, I realize how much information I left out! Hi, I'm Stephanie, I live in the desert with my husband and baby and three cats, and I'm an ace, bipolar fantasy writer! When I was a kid, they said I had ADHD but then I got my Masters degree in biology, so they claim I can't have it. Online tests say I'm probably autistic.

I used to write sci fi twelve years ago but only low tech sci fi about weird aliens, which nobody likes. Now I write fantasy novels! Lots of fantasy novels! I am beginning to post them on my website so if you want to read them, please keep an eye on this post.

My books often but not always have some romance (either m/f or f/f because I prefer female protagonists.) Since I'm ace (and demiromantic), my interpretation of romance and attraction is not exactly what you'd expect from, say, a romance novel.

I am not going to tell you about all my books! I've written eighteen! Four of them are shelved forever! Here's some recent ones (written or revised since 2018) that I haven't given up on. Please ask me questions about them! I LOVE talking about my books! Also, if you want to be added to my taglist for writing samples let me know! Please also tell me if you're interested in alpha or beta reading and for which book! Mutuals only, please!

My books are beneath the cut! As I add WIP intros, I'll update this list with links.

#writeblr intro #oh my god this is long #why did I write so much #why did I do this to myself #writeblr #writing #writing community #creative writing #fantasy #writers of tumblr

alchemillaatnight

actually as a woman I still think misandry makes you an unpleasant person and if you’re just out there saying shit like “all men should die” or “men’s mental health doesn’t matter” then you’re the type of person I want nothing to do with. also this is not what feminism is about btw, you’re not being a strong girl boss with this ideology, you’re just a bully

bisexualcreature-deactivated202

ao3 writers what's your average word count? go to the statistics page on your dashboard and find your total word count then divide that by the number of fics you've written. mine is 3,728.

sprinkledsalt

At the end of week 4 of the semester, my mom has already clocked two AI-plagiarized summaries. She makes students do in-class quizzes each day on the given assigned reading to make sure they actually read it, but nope, asking grown ass adults who chose to register for an English class to read an essay and summarize it is apparently too much to ask for the ShitGPT generation!

The thing is that it's week 4, so these two students have already submitted work and my mom can very clearly see that the AI summaries do not match the previous work they turned in at all lol, in addition to AI writing just generally not sounding like student writing (which she's been grading for about 40 years), and the AI got things like page numbers wrong (my mom uploads PDFs of all the assigned readings, so everyone is using the same versions of the text). She failed their quizzes and told them they'll fail the course if they submit AI again, and she plans to go into her classes this week, put the university's anti-AI policy and her own syllabus' anti-AI policy up on the board, and say to the class, "So, you can all read that, right? So you know there's nothing stopping me from failing you if you submit AI garbage. Do you know what a 4-credit F will do to your GPA?? Do you seriously think you'll be able to get through 4 years of college if you can't even write a summary on your own?"

I'm a broken record but we need to stress how lazy and shameful this shit is. ShitGPT cheaters remind me a lot of the adults who brag about not having read a book since like 8th grade, with the way they think they're sly and clever somewhoe while the rest of us are staring at them like "ah ok so you're dumb"

theeclecticlibrary

Telling students they're dumb or bad or lazy for using chatGPT does nothing to help them figure out how to do better. It just makes them want to engage less with the subject material, because shame is a paralysing emotion.

Perhaps rather than trying to change behavior by motivating people via shame, it would be better to consider why students are using chatGPT to write their essays.

Are they feeling overwhelmed by the quantity of homework they're being assigned? Do they have an understanding of how writing the paper will help them develop a skill? Does that skill seem valuable to them? If not, why not? Is there a better way to help them develop that skill than writing an essay?

I firmly believe laziness does not exist. Rather, behaviors being referred to as lazy are often due to a lack of communication about why a task needs to be done in a particular way or because an access need is not being met.

sprinkledsalt

Girl, get over yourself. Of course laziness exists, and I'm tired of this fake deep bullshit acting like it's not. Students are not victims because they're choosing to cheat in college. Why are they choosing to cheat? Because they don't feel like doing the work. End of story. These are adults who have been in school for over a decade--they know how it works--and they should not expect educators to hold their hand and tell them "uwu it's actually really, really important that you do this assignment and that you actually do the readings pwetty pwease." Like what fantasy world do you live in where lazy students will suddenly stop dicking around on their phones and stop having a "the customer is always right" attitude towards higher education if their professors just passionately explain the point of the assignment enough? The point is that if the professor tells you to write an essay, you need to write an essay. Period. It doesn't matter if the individual student finds "value" in the assignment or not because part of growing the fuck up is doing tasks you're not always thrilled about doing sometimes! Welcome to adulthood. It's childish to go "but professor I don't wanna :( this just doesn't SPEAK to me." Also, this was about writing summaries, not an essay, but people who choose to sign up for an analytical reading and writing course should expect to write essays. Professors don't have to differentiate their assignments to help cheaters "develop" their writing skills in a better way by having them do some other kind of writing task which they'd probably just cheat on anyway

It is not professors' faults if students have hectic schedules and are overwhelmed--professors are not school counselors or students' mommies--and it's complete infantilization to act like "uwu these grown ass adults can't help but cheat cuz maybe they're stressed :(" First of all, learning how to manage stress but still do work without cheating and on time is a life skill that people need to learn, and do you really think they'll be able to get away with this shit in the workforce? "Sorry boss, I had ChatGPT mess up this task you gave me because I'm just overwhelmed :///"

These students have agency, and it's completely fucking dishonest to act like 99% of teachers don't have stories of students just being lazy--yes, lazy--and apathetic in class. Coddle these overgrown children all you want and they still won't stop cheating because at the end of the day, they're using ShitGPT as a shortcut because they don't give a shit about the class and have zero respect for their instructors, not because their professor didn't personally ~inspire~ them enough.

I can add red text to posts, too: people should be ashamed of cheating. These students are dumb and bad. Get over it.

cowperviolet

Yeeep. It’s particularly infuriating to me, because - like, if they are able-minded adults and English is their first language, I have zero sympathy for their 'struggling to express' their thoughts without Al writing the text for them.

For God's sake, English is very much my *second* language (and the first one, namely Russian, is not like it at all), and I can't recall anyone fretting that I might have trouble writing essays in it at school, then at university (at eighteen) or while writing my debut historical novel (at twenty-one). I was just expected to shut up, work hard, and bring my writing and my command of the language up to the expected level without complaint. Why should people with far fewer obstacles be set lesser expectations?

Hell, honestly, not even ‘expected’ - I was downright bloody told to shut up, stop complaining about it being hard - life in general is hard - and work.

The notion of adult Americans et al. getting more grace than struggling foreign teenagers like my younger self ever did is mind-boggling.

apollosfallen

The only way forward is to stop treating masculinity as synonymous with harmful, monstrous, or dangerous.

apollosfallen

There is a fundamental difference between "men are dangerous" (wrong, bioessentialist) and "the patriarchy allows dangerous men to exist unchecked" (true).

doubleca5t

"male loneliness epidemic" is misleading because it implies that men are suffering because they can't get girls when I feel like the actual problem is that pretty much any online content that's aimed specifically at men conceptualizes the masculine ideal as what I call the Buff Scammer. there are only two things in this world that matter, says the Buff Scammer: being jacked and making money. how you get to either of those things doesn't matter, you just need to be as rich and as buff as possible or you have failed as a man. Get into drop shipping. Eat nothing but raw meat. Rugpull a memecoin. Remove seasonings from your diet. Sell an online course. Go to the gym daily. Starve yourself so your body will achieve ketosis and start burning fat. Attend a seminar on real estate investing. Work 80 hours a week. Take steroids but don't let anyone know about that part. Flip a YouTube channel after 10xing the subs. Sell AI art on Etsy and AI audiobooks on Amazon. What's that? You're trying to do this to get girls? Why would you care about women? Women are all stupid whores who don't help you get richer or buffer. The only people you should be paying attention to are other rich, buff men. If you do hang out with women you should be pimping them out on Chaturbate so you can at least get an ROI off your time spent not thinking about men. Male friends? You don't have time for friends. You should be hustling and grinding 24/7 365. And if you absolutely do need to spend time around other men you should only be spending time with other buff scammers so you can collaborate on entrepreneurial ventures. Like Jesus Christ even writing this is exhausting I feel like trying to be this dude would be fucking miserable like not only did you turn yourself into a friendless, materialist, misogynistic asshole who can only conceptualize the world in terms of value extracted but you're NOT EVEN HAVING FUN DOING IT!!!!!!

redeless

At some point in my transition, the "hate yourself, get an eating disorder, buy product" messaging I get switched from woman flavor to man flavor, and omfg. What the hell is this shit!

The "woman" version would often disguise itself as self care. There's this facade of softness and gentleness. ("indulge yourself: buy skincare! do what's right for YOU: starve yourself and smile emptily at zucchini noodles! this is empowering. your body is a temple, divine feminine chakra mother!!!") In the man version, no such thing. Self compassion is not allowed. You've got to brutally grind yourself into the shape of a Real Man or die trying, but you don't get to *enjoy* being the Real Man because comfort is for girrrrrrlllssss.

My dangerous trans gender ideology is that being a man should be enjoyable. If there's nothing fun about it, change your approach or stop being a man.

overfedvenison

I think this is an important aspect to look at broadly Male isolation and the male loneliness epidemic are real. The issue is not that men can't get women, the issue is men have no companionship or outlets for emotion - Especially not emotion expressed in ways men are comfortable with. For years, men were just sort of expected to deal with their emotions in silence. This compounds with a lot of societal trends. Our culture's gender roles are such that men have traditionally defined themselves by their careers, their wives, and their work. Well, how does that play into a society where a worker is increasingly transient? When work does not value your loyalty in the same way it did 50 years ago? Other issues also exist culturally, such as male sexuality being seen as uniquely predatory and regressive while others are seen as empowering, creating a lot of issues in people. So men feel isolated - that's what the 'male loneliness epidemic' actually is. And, when people bring this up, it is often dismissed - "Oh, boo hoo, the mens are so oppressed because they lack companionship" kind of stuff. The idea that a man could feel isolated for their gender's anxieties, or face problems because of that societal role, is a concept which a lot of people are quite uncomfortable with. Some people think that sort of thing gets in the way of a feminist view of the world; others think that men being emotional is a sign of weakness and of men no longer being the 'Real Men' which existed in the past. It sorta seems like no matter where you look, a whole lot of voices are telling men they are inadequate...

So, a whole lot of people exploit this status quo. Political grifters emerge, selling this idea that what you are missing is a tradwife and property and right-wing traditional values. The "Manosphere" gives people a lot of legitimately terrible advice about how this is all feminism's fault. Techbros are 'bros' for a reason - This thing where you live for the grind and invest all you have is absolutely appealing to a certain type of man who needs this kind of goal in his life. Men have a lot of spaces to tell them how to be masculine, but seldom are those spaces actually healthy So it's like... If a man is lost and needs emotional support (and a lot of them are,) they may have to turn to these spaces for any support at all. And these spaces don't actually exist for men's benefit, even if some have the illusion of it. Many of these spaces are very right-wing and reactionary, and men can easily fall into them because these are the places you find if you need affirmation in your masculinity at all. I think the solution cannot just be about men being able to expand their gender role. I'm not saying to discount that - Of course we need spaces where men can be caregivers, or creatives, or countercultural femboys or whatever. But we also need spaces where men can be traditionally masculine and not have that be a weird radicalization chamber created with the goal of exploiting them. For example, if a man wants to improve physically and grow stronger... You know, there's no reason that has to be about deadlifting and eating raw meat and not like, cleaning a river or learning home improvement.

whetstonefires

an awkwardly big part of the Male Loneliness Epidemic is that male homosocial relationships used to be an important part of masculinity, and have been severely pruned back over the last several generations in reaction against the increasing visibility of homosexuality. setting up that status quo discussed in the above addition.

the idea that emotional intimacy between men is de facto kind of gay is a relatively modern product of homophobia. which served to increase male emotional dependency on female romantic partners, even as the modern convenience age cut down on the traditionally high level of practical dependency.

like, the idea that Man Is Stoic isn't new, but the That's Gay reaction to being close with male friends is a late 20th century phenomenon. it's abnormal. it's reactionary. it's modern.

this is something i keep seeing people struggle with; there's this teleological view of history that assumes all social developments move along a given vector consistently always, so if a given view is old-fashioned it's obviously also ancient.

(a lot of old-fashioned approaches to 'male friendship good' were deeply misogynistic, ofc, but due to various historical forces you don't see a lot of modern sexist reactionaries pushing the idea that because women are intellectually inferior you can only have a really satisfying, emotionally meaningful personal relationship with another man. except in parody, where the joke is that the only reason a guy would say that is because he's secretly gay.)

but concurrently with this pathologization of male friendshp, feminism was reducing the practical dependency of women on men, so even as the need for female emotional support got thoroughly locked in as a social norm, the supply of women willing to do that kind of work for a partner unreciprocated was dropping.

leaving increasingly large numbers of guys crammed into an impractical corner where there is no realistic, survivable course that doesn't give them some kind of goddamn gender dysphoria.

so anyway i think one of the most important things we can do as a society, that doesn't even require anyone to take on the burden of Managing Dudes' Feelings For Them, and which is conveniently a much smaller target than Fix Manhood Systemically, is to stop validating the unhinged reactionary narrative that Male Intimacy Is By Definition Gay.

because like. it's funny when it's fiction. but when a real guy who is not gay, which is statistically gonna be most of them, is getting barraged from both sides of the political aisle with the message that he can't have an emotional connection of any significance with a male friend without Proving that the world Knows Better Than He Does and he's clearly gay and just lying to himself about it.

that creates a context where a significant chunk of young people are getting gaslighted into either giving up on having any kind of emotional support ever, or getting radicalized into bigots just to stop feeling insane.

that's bad. we shouldn't be doing that.

rainydayscore

women really don’t think men are capable of emotion

cookingwithroxy

You know, some people obviously have never talked to men because i honest to god hear this concern from men so often it makes me want to cry.

antelopian

when men talk about their issues, people tell them it’s emotional labor to listen and that they’re actually just speaking over women and therefore oppressive assholes. or tell them that they can’t have it bad because they’re men. or that they should actually like it, because they’re men. or act like it’s some sort of revenge for historical sexism. the list goes on.

cheshireinthemiddle

Also I have spoken to quite a few women (radfems) here who definitely think men arent capable of basic human emotion.

siryouarebeingmocked

And that men are always just selfish, hateful, and lustful. Any appearance to the contrary is a facade.

riflebrass

Apparently October is National Domestic Violence Month. A local community page made three posts about domestic violence. The first one was a gender-neutral statement about how we need to put a stop to the violence. Don’t allow it. It got huge support. The second post was a statistic of how many women are victims of abuse. Again people loved to see the support. The third post was a statistic of how many men are victims. That one got a lot of negative feedback because more women are victims but of course we’re not going to speak up for the women! Nobody cares about the women! Those selfish men want to make everything about themselves!

uncle-beanbag-mojave

This is why I don’t talk about it

kawaii-pigeon

A lot of leftist spaces suddenly stop being about support as soon as a guys involved.

A domestic abuse shelter turns away trans people, and we’re all gonna be hearing about it for weeks. A domestic abuse shelter turns down men? Crickets.

Men talk about how they used to be awful and changed? Nobody cares, still evil, still get death threats.

Recently i saw a post about how a guy dealt with a lot of guilt around purity culture and how that messed him up, how he felt deeply hurt about being perceived as some hormonal sex beast who hurts people and how that fucked him up, nobody cared, “WELL WOMEN HAVE IT WORSE-”

No man is supposed to be an island, but we expect it out of them and then get mad about men not acting in a perceived role.

Men can have body dysmorphia but nobody cares if they’re cis.

Men can have self image issues, nobody cares if they arent gay.

And even in these spaces its like talking towards a child a ‘thats nice honey ’ or ‘excuse me the oppressed people are talking’

A guy is lonely and nobody comes at them with suggestions, nobody tries to empathize, they just go 'lmao who cares’

Nobody cares that amongst men suicide is higher, and *successful* suicide is higher still, because when they do reach out, they get laughed at. They KNOW that nobodys going to come and give a shit about them.

And how fucking awful is that.

writing-prompt-s

It’s the birth of a new universe, and you’re trying out to become a war god. But, that role was already filled, and you got booted to a fertility god. At first you’re upset, not sure where to start, but then you start to get an idea. After all: “love is a battlefield”

writingamongther0ses

“I can’t believe you.”

“I can.”

The god of war ignored the god of laughter, turning to the god of fertility. The god, wearing red- which should’ve been their color as a symbol of rage and bloodlust- simply smirked back.

“They’re supposed to be fighting over land!” A particularly loud moan made War flush and Laughter howl.

“Well, fighting gets blood rushing,” Fertility cooed. “And there are attractive people of all kinds in war. So, things lead to other things…” They shrugged as if they weren’t staring at a full battlefield orgy.

War gaped. Feritility smiled and stepped closer. War felt their breath catch, despite their rage, as they leaned close.

“This is what you get, line cutter~”

dilf-din

The most important thing you can do in this life is write hyper-specific fanfiction for you and six other people. Don’t believe anything else you read.

eldritchwyrm

very funny when people describe naomi novik's scholomance as dark academia because yes of course it's a critique and subversion of dark academia as a trend in fiction & as an aesthetic about desiring certain forms of power and prestige. so yeah i guess it's dark academia in that it's participating in the genre, except for the fact that the novels consist of the protagonist hitting the genre with a steel chair until the genre gives up and admits that colonialism is bad maybe.

but also like yeah it is dark academia in the sense that the light conditions in the scholomance are fucking terrible. broken lights constantly. also everything is grimy. no one is showering properly and nobody has brushed their teeth with toothpaste in 4 years. dark academia in the sense that the characters are barely visible under a layer of dirt. just try turning THAT into a pinterest board

oshadefiant

Saw a comment saying character X can't be a pervert because he's ace. Bro. Bro. Bro. BRO. BRO. BRO. BR

boingmann

THIS

theonehitwonder

It fucking astounds me how many people completely understand “being treated like a child is horrible” but never reach the very logical conclusion of “we should not treat children like that”

maidenvault

Not “Only my reading of canon is correct” or “Interpretations are subjective and all valid” but a secret third thing, “More than one interpretation can be valid but there’s a reason your English teacher had you cite quotes and examples in your papers, you have to have a strong argument that your interpretation is actually supported by the text or it is just wrong and I’m fine with telling you it’s wrong, actually.”

screaming-till-im-numb-deactiva

I want someone to write a book where Mermaids are the women thrown off ships when the sailors got afraid because having a woman on the boat is bad luck. And as they sink to the bottom, legs tied together, they change slowly until they can breathe, until they can use their tied up legs to swim. And they drown sailors in revenge, luring them in by singing in their husky voices still stinging from the salt water they breathed.

fndungeonmom

someone please write this

jinxmyride-deactivated20161103

“Please, don’t do this!” her voice comes out hoarse, cracked. The men leer at her, their gazes cold.

“Storm is comin’ now” the captain says. He is the worst, because in his eyes there is regret. Compassion. Pity. He doesn’t want to do it. Not like the others do. But that won’t stop him.

“Told your father a ship is no place for a girl,” he says. “Told ‘im to find another vessel, told ‘im to just keep you home, if e’ had ta. But did he listen? If you want someone to blame, miss, blame him. Tha ocean is cold, cold and cruel. And she ain’t gonna let us through this without payment, without a cost.”

The wind blows his gray hair back from his face, and he nods at one of the crewman - the one who’s eyes always linger on her for too long - and he steps forward and jabs Alice in the side with a paddle from one of the rowboats. She cries out, even though she doesn’t want to, even though she wants to scream instead, scream and curse the way a lady of her standing is never meant to do. She wants to curse them all to a watery grave and watch as they suffer.

She tries to move, tries to run past them, to break the rope binding her legs at the ankles through sheer power of will. She fails.

The crewman jabs at her again, and she spits at him. The glob of saliva hits him on the face, spittle clinging to his sun-tanned skin. His crewmates laugh.

Alice realizes her mistake too late.

His eyes darken, he steps forward - and he strikes her across the face with the paddle so hard she’s twisted around, so hard she sees black and careens of the gangplank and plummets to the dark, thrashing water below.

The captain was right: the sea is cold. Colder than any hell she’s ever imagined. Colder than the time she fell face first into a deep puddle on the street in the dead of winter. She feels the ice flood her mouth, fill her lungs, turn every vein and bone bitter blue with frost. She can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t move.

The water tosses her against the hull of the ship and she feels her skull crack against the worn wood. The world fades, and she begins to die…

She remembers the sea, through the darkness. Remembers tossing her friend Lydia into the waves at the beach, remembers their laughter as Lydia pulled her in as well. She remembers dunking her head under, feeling the rush of cold fill her up as she became lighter than she’d ever been, became part of the water.

‘The sea is cold,’ she remembers the captain saying. Yes, she thinks, but I am colder.

And the ocean? she realizes. The ocean is her sister.

She feels it filling her up, feels it caressing her body, enveloping her. Not killing her, but cradling her. A sister holding up her own blood, a mother, soothing her wailing child, kissing the hurt away. A goddess, hearing the prayers of her devoted believer, and answering them.

I have salt and seawater in my soul, Captain. I will show you how cold these waters can be.

She feels the edges of her body fading, feels herself stop being a me and become a we, become an us, become every drop of water and every clump of foam and every weed and every wave. Feels herself changing.

Her dress is pulled away by the waves, button by button, seam by seam. The sea strips her, soothes her skin. She feels herself swaying, feels her injuries healing. Feels herself become something more than a scared girl or a single spot of death in a pool of life, as her body flares like a fire, as her legs brush together, as they begin to fuse…

She feels herself heal, and she feels herself change.

When it is over, she is bare, but she feels no shame. Her tail twists in the water beneath her, swaying, more natural than her legs ever felt. Stronger, too. She runs her hand over the dark blue scales, the same shade as the surface in a storm. She feels herself smile.

Siren, she thinks, mermaid. Sister of the sea.

The captain was right; a ship is no place for a woman. This is the place for a woman.

And when she drags him screaming down into it, he will realize: the ocean may be cruel…but her sisters are worse.

Alice smiles again, and begins to swim after the ship fading into the distance.

ofgalaxxies

“The ocean may be cruel…but her sisters are worse.”

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD I NEED MORE PLS

bludraws094

i love fake plot holes

little inconsistencies that at first you assume "oh, the author must have fucked up", but then later on you realize that no, it was on purpose, they wanted you to think they fucked up but they hadnt

masterboa

related: when you think "this has Implications the author didn't think about" and then it turns out the author was thinking about them the whole time

iwilleatyourenglish

"sometimes you absolutely ARE required to do things in life for the good of other people, even if you hate it" loud incorrect buzzer noise

pure individualism is a disease that kills communities, isolates individuals, and leads to things like the anti-vax movement.

you are not so important that you aren't bound by social responsibility and decency.

others are not so insignificant that they don't deserve help and sacrifice.

caz-the-yarncromancer

I hate that every writing meme has to immediately be followed up with "but actually writing it is too hard" maybe you'd all have less problems writing if you don't reinforce your belief that writing is too hard 15 times per hour. Consider that. Stop repeating to yourself that you can't do it.

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