#laughroditee rambles

[laughroditee]

Okay so one of my new favorite tropes is definitely asking your best friend to take your virginity.

That is all. 😌

[laughroditee]

Guess who just signed up to go to clown college.

[laughroditee]

Fanfic authors, what do you do when you want to write something really, really dark and doesn't necessarily fit in with the rest of your work?

Do you make another name/handle to separate it out to keep to a genre, so your followers will get what they expect in both instances (i.e., reg content for your reg followers, dark content for your dark content followers)?

Or do you just throw everything together because you're labeling it anyway and if people don't read the labels and still choose to engage, that's on them?

While I do have a lot of silly-funny-angsty stuff, which I would say is the majority of my writing, I do also have a dark underbelly and that's been making some noise as of late. Not sure where to put things.

Any input is much appreciated!

[laughroditee]

Once upon a time (specifically last year in 2024), I was finally writing a novel.

Again.

But this time would be different because I was prepared. This one wouldn't end up like all the other projects I've abandoned over the years because I've Learned Things™.

And then came my entrance into the COD fandom. Fanfiction became both my new shiny object and a way to practice exposure therapy, showing my work to the ether, and it was anxiety-inducing.

Fanfiction, for me, was a joy and an exploration, but also my way to try to break through my creative blocks that have been holding me captive for the past few decades. Words do not come easily to me anymore, like something's gummed up the cogs that used to be so well-oiled. That kind of loss of self-expression feels like a kind of crippling self-abandonment and has left me clawing and grasping for something that, in the past, had been almost too present. I feel abandoned by the muses I once had, who had always been with me, and I am left wondering how to get them back.

I have WIPs that are outstanding (as in not fulfilled, not excellent in quality lol), and I had to stop taking part in things like WIP Wednesday because I always end up feeling like they're broken promises to myself and just remind me of how much I'm struggling to write.

There's no real point in this post I guess, except to say that I'm struggling. Fanfic was supposed to be haha fun, but it's become hard, just like any other writing I do, or try to do.

My very first drabble (and entry into fanfiction) will turn one year old at the end of this month, and my first serial fanfic ("Your Ghost" - tw it's an exploration of grief) will follow in June. I haven't updated it since June 26th last year. The last chapter I wrote took a lot out of me both cognitively and emotionally (it's a very, very emotional chapter), and though it was rewarding to have written it because it was my first published sex scene (something I struggle with), it was SO HARD LOL!! I feel so bad for not being able to update it in an entire year!

While I did start writing further chapters, I had to put it on pause because I had to figure out where I wanted the story to go instead of getting myself into the usual situation of writing myself into a corner and then abandoning ship.

And now I'm wondering if it's even worth it, if people would read further chapters, or if I'd be wasting my time. (But then I remind myself that I'm basically writing this for myself to process things, so that's its value to me; it shouldn't matter what other people do or think.)

My fanfic experiment has basically failed is what I'm trying to say. Because it was supposed to help me be able to write my novel by providing a safe space to practice and have fun (my sandbox), while getting feedback sooner on shorter works. And I haven't touched my novel at all during this whole time. All my spell slots were eaten up by fanfiction.

Or maybe it has worked, just on a very fucking prolonged timeline, which is kind of par for the course with me as a perpetual late-bloomer. (Thanks, Saturn complex.)

It's frustrating to have all these things I want to say and write, and then when I get to the blank page, my mind is just as blank.

Anyway, that's it. That's the post.

I'm not looking for productivity hacks or anything like that; believe me I've got plenty. Just wanted to see my blog have some kind of update because I feel bad for also neglecting it.

Be excellent to each other.

🖤🤡🖤

[laughroditee]

I had a dream last night that I was at some kind of bowling alley or that type of communal building, and I was a clown. I met another, more veteran, clown there, and the problem was that I had no makeup. I had no face. As in, I had no clown face. This felt not distressing, but unfortunate, like a sad regret. And it wasn't so much that I forgot to put my face on, as that I didn't know what my face was yet.

I feel like I'm at that point in my life now. That I don't know which potential path to choose, because the act of deciding cuts off potential. And that is scary. The "what ifs" come pouring in. We as humans want to be secure in knowing.

But we can't know. We just have to decide.

I just have to remember that no matter what I decide now, I can always change my makeup later; it's removable after all, and I have plenty of paint left to experiment with.

[laughroditee]

I am wearing my sad clown face, nesting in my sad clown den, thinking sad clown thoughts.

[laughroditee]

Every time I'm on Tumblr, my phone burns. I think this site is giving it gonorrhea.

[laughroditee]

The simultaneity of being seen and being unseen is so uncomfortable. Like, "witness me, but not too closely." "Witness me not, but hello I'm here." "Oops I said too much again; I am going to go hide now."

Does anyone else experience this online?