The Writing Owl

XX. He/They. Writer of the North-Kingdoms. This is my writeblr, enjoy!

[the-writing-owl]

A Writeblr Introduction

Hello everyone, I’m Noah! You can call me that, or Owl, or I guess anything you want to call me, I’m not that picky. I’m 18 and I use he/him/his pronouns.

As some of you may know, I have another tumblr account that I use to post my weekly sword and sorcery-adjacent fantasy series, The Northkingdoms (you can follow that here, if you aren’t already.) As of right now, chapter 5 just came out, and the whole thing is at about 15k words so go check it out if that interests you.

I decided I would make this account so that I could talk about my other, larger scale projects without clogging the Northkingdoms with stuff that is not Northkingdoms related. Forgive me if this introduction is messy, I’m still new to, and not very good at this tumblr/writeblr stuff.

I’m a really big fan of fantasy, especially epic or high fantasy, although I’m able to enjoy stories of any genre or length. My main influence writing wise would definitely be Robert Jordan’s the Wheel of Time series, but obviously there’s some other stuff influencing me as well, and the second biggest influence constantly shifts depending on whatever I’m reading or really into at the time. I’m also a poetry fan, so maybe I’ll post some of that here as well. 

THE WIPS

WIP THE FIRST: Five Wicked Stories of Darkness

This is going to be the main one I’ll be talking about. FWSoD (working title) is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It’s going to be a ‘short’ story collection thing of five different stories, about 10k words each, that are all vaguely connected, as they take place in the same world. Not dark enough to really call Dark Fantasy, more like Dark Fairytales, at least aesthetically speaking. Could also serve as the launching point for a possible series idea I have that also takes place in the same world. Since I’m aiming for each story to be 10k, I’m shooting for 50k words total.

WIP THE SECOND: To World’s End

TWE is a story about a band of would be heroes venturing forth to save the world. The idea for this came from reading about Long-time Nuclear Waste warnings. The setting is a post-apocalyptic fantasy Earth, where the monuments of our mistakes stand tall as the symbols of new religions. Pretty much if Lord of the Rings was a lot shorter and also had a lovechild with Fallout and then that lovechild had a lovechild with The Stand. I’m not sure about length for this one, I’m thinking somewhere between 75-100k words.

WIP THE THIRD: A Dark and Stormy Night

I’ll be honest, I’m not even sure how to describe this one, as I sort of just randomly started writing it like two weeks ago, and as such the plot isn’t planned out to any degree. Stands out from the other two because it takes place in modern times on planet Earth. All I can really say is that on one dark and stormy night, a woman gives birth to a very strange child, and that’s where the story begins. Somewhere around 60-70k words I think.

And that’s it! I mean, there’s plenty of other ideas kicking around in my head, but I don’t want this list to be like thirty entries long, so I’ll just keep it to these three for now. Yeah, so if anyone who sees this want’s to be on the taglist for any of these (if I can figure out how those work haha) then let me know and I’ll add you! Also, I’d love to spread my wings and meet other writers on here, so reblog if you’re a writeblr (or dm me or something) and I’ll give you a follow!

You can follow me at Obinoahkenobi on instagram or on twitter at TheNoahHBryan.

Have a good day!

[gendernoncompliantbi]

Thing is is, as much m/f that is produced in the world, as a bi woman, sometimes I want to see a man fall in love with an obviously queer woman. I want to see a man realizing that the woman he is interested in is gnc and that isn't going to change.

[gendernoncompliantbi]

And women fall for GNC men! I want women who are enamored with their soft queer lover.

I want to see masc/masc and fem/fem m/f ships. Wlm and mlw can and should be queer in media.

[gendernoncompliantbi]

You know what, Im seeing my own post again and wanna say.... I wanna see queer makeover scenes and I wanna see the love interest gush.

I want the nerdy conservatively dressed girl bestfriend get her hair done and her fancy clothes on and she appears in a pressed suit. And I want the love interest to loose his breath because she's so handsome in a bow tie and slacks.

I want the guy in a skirt or a dress, I want his love interest so blown away by the way his nylons look.

I wanna see the girl give the boy a corsage.

I want gnc bi love. I want gnc love period ngl.

[the-gnomish-bastard]

I have killed the guardian of the Sacred Tree. I have now stolen the Sacred Tree. What should I do with it? Should I burn it? Use it’s wood for something? Make a treehouse? Use it as a hanging tree for public executions?

[the-writing-owl]

King Laman starting the Aiel War be like:

[pjackk]

My girl straight up ascended and grew wings

[the-writing-owl]

This is "This Might Be The Place" by Talking Heads core and I can't explain it better than that.

[screenshotsofdespair]

[guiltyidealist]

[chikuto]

i feel like i had a massive breakthrough with understanding in hindsight how adhd has affected my relationship with art, and i sat there for about an hour just like

[chikuto]

I wanted to expand on this a bit and see if it resonated with any other artists. I do wanna preface, all of this is subjective and just me considering my own experiences. I'm not an expert on ADHD.

A huge part of ADHD, as most people who have it know, is executive dysfunction - which leads to procrastination. To cut several studies short, it basically boils down to a difficulty in regulating emotions around tasks, time management, prioritization, initiation, etc. Its why its so difficult to just get up and do the dishes when you realize it needs doing.

Because this causes us to let people down, struggle to meet deadlines, or overwhelm ourselves with TASK BUILDUP, it all sort of preemptively burdens you with feelings of guilt, shame, and stress when you have a task that needs to be done. Yes, doing the dishes isn't actually THAT hard, but its never about the difficulty of the task. Just the emotions that have difficulty being regulated around completing it.

Most people get "the good brain feelings" when they successfully complete a task like this. ADHD people rarely do, because its a matter of brute force; so no reward, and even less of an incentive to do it. The reward function in our brains is wired differently.

And that's where distractability comes in.

Yes, people who struggle with procrastination may put off priority tasks, but most of the time they're not just sitting idle. They'll start deep cleaning a room, organizing drawers, catching up on other things that fell to the wayside (thanks to procrastination whoops). I can't claim to know how the ADHD brain works or the intricacies involved. But I get most things done when I'm procrastinating doing something else important. For some reason, unlike just brute forcing the priority task, the distractions (or "branch tasks" I like to call them) do actually give me the good brain feelings. Is it masking the shame of being unable to complete the big task by completing other low-priority tasks in the meantime? Maybe.

So what does this have to do with art?

For a lot of us, myself included, we started drawing in school. Usually during class. When we had very important priority tasks to focus on. But you know what's better than learning about Henry VIII? Drawing in the margins of your schoolbook. Art sort of began as a distraction, or "branch task" for when I struggled to complete homework, or pay attention in class. It made me feel good in an environment where I otherwise felt like a failure.

Moving into college, coursework became the priority task for 2 years. That's when I started my webcomic, and oh boy did I draw a LOT. Probably because I was procrastinating on writing essays that were due the next day. It was always "I'll just finish colouring this page and THEN I'll start my essay".

When I left college and decided to become a freelance artist, I noticed it wassssss a lot harder to get pages done on a weekly basis. I started falling behind. I started getting bogged down with feelings of guilt and stress and shame for letting down readers, for not drawing enough, for - oh fuck you see what happened, art became "the priority task". Its no longer a "branch task" while I avoid something more important. It BECAME the important thing, and took on the burden of my executive dysfunction's shame and guilt. And whether I want to or not, my brain is desperately trying to drag me away from these negative feelings.

In my case, at least, I think that's why it's been difficult to pick up a pen and draw for the last few years. I finished a contract with [REDACTED BECAUSE NDA], and the entire time I was working with them (unmedicated mind you), I was like "wow i JUST want to work on my webcomic again" (it crept back into "branch task" territory). The second I finished my contract? Boom, all motivation gone. Priority task territory again. Can't have that.

Do I have an answer for this to repair my relationship with art? Not yet. Not really. There are a lot of other factors as well, not just this. But it's something I've been thinking about lately.

[thebibliosphere]

One of the really fun and interesting things about writing a polyamorous romance as someone who is ambiamorous/polyamorous is finding new ways to make sure the narrative hits the expected genre beats without just sort of... mushing it into a pre-existing monogamous romance mold, which is what I'm afraid happens a lot of the time.

Trust me, it was my job in the publishing house to make them fit that mold. I hated it.

Reading other poly-centric romances, I can always somewhat tell when someone is writing polyamory from a sexual fantasy aspect (zero shade; I'm here for all the group sex) without actually considering how it functions as a relationship dynamic, which can often come off as... well.

It's lacking for me as a romance.

Erotica-wise, it's fine. But it misses the romantic beats for me that I want as a polyamorous-leaning person.

There's so much emphasis on the polycule and never the individual dyads within the larger relationship.

For example, in a triad, there are actually four relationships to handle.

The dyad between A + B. The dyad between A + C. The dyad between B + C. And the overarching relationship between A + B + C.

With monogamous-leaning authors or authors that've been pressed into conforming to the pre-existing genre beats, there's a tendency to treat the relationship as a homogenous mass where everything is fair and equal, and you treat all your partners the exact same way.

And I get it. It's easier to write everything as peachy-keen and to have external conflict be resolved with either acceptance or a brave confrontation.

But it doesn't always land for me as someone who wants to see my style of love represented in the genre.

In healthy polyamory, either closed or open, each relationship is unique in its own way. Taking the example of a triad again, the way A acts with C likely differs from how A acts with B.

And that's a good thing!

Because C might not want the same things as B, so trying to treat them both the exact same is a surefire way to make sure someone isn't getting their needs met, and that will lead to conflict.

Polyamory isn't striving for equality between partners but rather equity.

What are your individual needs, and how do I meet them, as well as meet the needs of my other partner(s)? What do you want from the larger relationship as a whole? How do we accommodate everyone without making someone feel neglected or uncomfortable? How do we show this in the narrative? How do we make sure character A isn't just treating B the same as C in every interaction? Do they ever fall into that pitfall? How do they remedy it?

It seems like common sense when you write it out like that, but it's a major pitfall I see time and time again. The characters never alternate their approach between partners, if there's any focus on the individuals at all.

The other major telltale thing I've noticed is that taking time to be with one partner is seen as a step down from the "goal" of the greater polycule.

The narrative is framed in such a way that they might start out with individual dates, but the end goal of the romance is to eventually be together 100% of the time all the time, and wanting individual time alone with any one partner is somehow "lesser."

Which is the goal of romance in monogamy, but it's not the goal of romance in polyamory.

Granted, you do need to end on a Happy Ever After or Happy For Now for it to fit the genre requirement. And a nice way of tying that up is to have everyone together at the end as a happy polycule all together all at once. I'm not disputing that as a narrative tool. I'm just pointing out that there's a tendency to present those moments as the sum total of the relationship when in actuality, there are multiple relationships that need to end happily ever after.

The joy of polyamorous love is the joy of multitudes. It's the joy of experiencing new things, both as individuals and as a polycule. If you're not taking care of the individual dyads, however, your polycule is going to crash and burn. You cannot avoid that. So why, then, is there such avoidance of it in stories meant to appeal to us?

Is it simply inexperience on behalf of the author? Or is it that they're not actually being written for us? Is it continued pressure to meet certain genre beats in a largely monogamous-centric genre? All of the above?

Either way, I'm having fun playing around with it and doing all the things we were warned against in the publishing house.

I'm having fun with Nathan and Vlad enjoying their own private dynamic that is theirs and theirs alone. I'm having fun with Ursula and Nathan being so careful and vulnerable around each other. I'm absolutely 100% here for the chaos of Vlad and Ursula without a chaperone. And I'm here for the chaos of Vlad and Ursula together and Nathan's fond, loving eye roll as he trails after them, too enamored to tell either of them no because where would the fun in that be...

Anyway. Don't mind me. Just getting my thoughts out while everyone else is in bed.

[dogmotif-deactivated20240505]

the summer is like well what if it was unbearable outside and you can't wear any cool jackets. and everyone's going to tell you that this is the best time of the year. and you're the crazy one

[castratedvader]

thank you lgbt people who are into horror

[zzoupz]

thank you lgbt people who creates the horror

[swesq21]

thank you lgbt people who are the horror

[animentality]

[the-writing-owl]

An(other) Update

Aw jeez, gang. How long has it been?

Hope you’re all doing well, and I of course just want to apologize for the fact that I have been gone for so long yet again. Life’s been busy, and I haven’t really had the time to write anything that wasn’t school related.

However, school is calming down a little bit, so I’m hopefully going to have some time to work on some stuff. As such, I have decided that in an attempt to hold myself accountable on the projects I’m working on. So yeah, there’s that.

Project 1 (Novella, First Draft): 1,223 words.

Project 2 (Novel/Novella, First Draft): 488 words.

Project 3 (Screenplay, First Draft): 971 words.

Project 4 (Screenplay,): First Draft.

So yeah, there’s that. Gonna do an update of this post every week on Wednesdays hopefully, that way I can keep track of my work. Talk to y’all soon :)

[nitewrighter]

I’m in a YA Library-services focused class now (basically it’s a lot less “Teens like vampires!” and a lot more “Jesus fucking christ how did we get to the point where it is so socially ingrained in us to treat teenagers like shit”) and we’re on this module on teen space design in libraries and it’s like “Well, by including teenagers in the design process, we found that when it comes to spatial design, teenagers like lots of natural light, green and sustainable building praxis, clean, casual, and comfortable atmospheres,  interesting and appealing colors, and also absolutely bullshit furniture that even they have no idea how to sit on.”

So it’s like…

“Tell me… what do The Youths™ want?” 

“We still don’t know, but they seem to respond well to victorian fainting couches remodeled to look like they came out of that one time in the early 2000′s where our idea of futuristic was making everything look like it was made out of jell-o.” 

[nitewrighter]

Like in this one library, they introduced this piece of furniture that was referred to as “the disk” or “The round thing” and it was just this kind of… solid, padded squat cylinder, not a table because it was padded, too big and connected to the floor to be an ottoman, and not a couch because it was… a cylinder. And like, at first the teens didn’t use it because they thought it was reserved as like, a cushy stage for like, storytimes or something, but as soon as they realized they could sit or lay down on it and it was for them, you would have friend groups of teens literally piling on each other on it. Like that’s honestly the cutest shit.

[earhartsease]

How to build a teenarium

[the-northkingdoms]

Aw Jeeze, an Update!!

Hi there gang! Wow, it really has been like two and a half months since the last chapter came out, hasn't it?

I'm sorry for leaving you all in the lurch like that. Life has been and is really busy right now and I've had a lot of stressful things going on! Which makes it hard to find time to write!

I'm just writing this to let you guys know that I'm working on chapter 13, and the way that I'm going to handle chapters from here on out is essentially that I'm just going to write them whenever I can, and then they're going to come out a couple days after I edit them. I'm not even going to worry about word count too much. Usually I get around 3k words, but right now I'm going to just write until it feels like I hit a natural stopping point for that chapter, and I'm also gonna be posting them on whatever day of the week it ends up being, rather than the usual Monday. This will be the schedule at least until I catch up to where we're supposed to be (which might be quite a while, I'm supposed to be posting chapter 22 today) at which point I will reassess and decide if I'm in a good enough place to switch back to the original schedule.

Thank you all for the support, I really appreciate it, and I will hopefully be seeing you guys soon for chapter 13!

-NHB

[the-writing-owl]

Hello pals. I am back. With poetry.

This feller I’ve been working on over the past week. Inspired by both the Greek myth and the Goya painting of Saturn devouring his own son. I find it to be a very interesting concept for art. Anyways hope you enjoy, Marooned is coming along nicely :)

[the-writing-owl]

Hey everyone, I’m back! Been pretty busy, sorry about that. Good news is that I have something to announce! I’ve come up with a new method for writing and it’s working out pretty well for me! I’m working on this novella idea I cam up with a little while ago, so yeah :)

A cold morning. The crashing waves. Pain. Cold, numb pain. Nothing to remember, nothing to be remembered by. Only a book. Only a name. Not a name, three letters. D.E.L. Hardly a name. Hardly a memory.

This is the new WIP. This is Marooned*.

(*Working title haha)

[the-writing-owl]

Hello, I have returned. Does anyone have good recommendations for ways to make moodboards on pc? Thanks

[the-writing-owl]

Nvm I figured it out haha

[the-writing-owl]

Hello, I have returned. Does anyone have good recommendations for ways to make moodboards on pc? Thanks