Hollow Darkposting

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13983048/chapters/32194689

[rimonoroni2]

the christian veneration of the lamb has always been terrifying to me in ways i can’t explain

[rimonoroni2]

here’s this figure that is vulnerable and easily abused and what’s admirable about it is that it doesn’t fight back and it doesn’t try to defend itself and it’s suffering is noble because it just sits there and takes it. pain is beautiful when you surrender to pain, suffering is godly when you don’t question or try to protect yourself and survival is ugly… like it is just me or is anybody else’s fucking skin crawling rn!!

[millenari]

do you ever re-read your own wips like 'damn the bitch that wrote this oughta finish it'

[mxrderscenes]

writing is so funny because i could write nonstop for 9hrs and then hit a block where im like "how do i transition between this moment and the next?" and then i just dont touch it for 6 months

[galadrieljones]

Serious advice tho if this happens, it's likely because you already wrote past the end of the scene and wandered too far from the more logical transition point, and you should go back to the last time the writing felt "unforced" and cut everything after.

You can also just skip the transition. Really good writing can span years in a single sentence, like you can just authoritatively state fact and your reader will go with it.

[xalphafox]

This is GOLD! You just saved me like thousands of therapy costs lmao

[headspace-hotel]

When I was writing my fic last few months the strategy I used was "just skip all the scenes I don't want to write" and it worked great in my opinion

[alvallah]

“The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what one has lived through. Most people had not lived—nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died—through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain.”

Another Country, by James Baldwin

[victusinveritas]

Meet Pando, not a forest but a single tree. Every trunk of the Quaking Aspen is genetically identical & connected by a single 80,000 year old root system, making it one of the largest and oldest living entities on Earth!

[foone]

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk through the body of a God?

[great-american-chapel]

Emerging dragonfly at 1am

[tyrian-red]

my erotic fanfiction is more historically accurate than yours. here it claims that shes moaning 'yes,' however classical latin didn't have a word that corresponds to Modern English 'yes,' i.e. an affirmative answer to an interrogative. You could have easily avoided this glaring implausibility by allowing her to moan plus, 'more'—as exemplified in my critically acclaimed fic with an unprecedented number of kudos (eleven). I recommend that you log out of AO3 and return only after acquiring satisfactory knowledge of the subject matter.

[jester-nonconforming]

btw i love when dubcon is used in fiction as a way to explore characters. i love when characters don’t understand how to “properly” ask for consent because they have never had their consent respected in their lives. i love when traumatized adult characters make potentially unwise choices about what to do with their bodies because they have the autonomy to do so. i love when characters make choices that i personally wouldn’t make, but i can totally understand how they got there. i love when characters have complex, fucked up, unhealthy dynamics, but still care about each other and want to do better. i love when writers trust audience members to read between the lines instead of spoon feeding them moral lessons. i love when characters are allowed to actually fuck up and have mistakes to learn from!

[great-american-chapel]

Emerging dragonfly at 1am

[concerningwolves]

i am so so gently asking abled storytellers to try this little exercise: consider that maybe the main character doesn't miraculously get through traumatic event number 8277 with minor injuries. maybe they don't make a full, narratively-convenient recovery. there are tangible, long-term effects on their health. they are disabled. there are lots of ways to be disabled, and you can pick whatever makes the most sense. the point is that because they're the main character, they have to stay at the heart of the narrative. what happens to your story after that? just for the sake of this exercise, you're not allowed to have them spiral into helpless depression, or collapse under self-loathing, or turn their story into a quest for a cure or an uplifting recovery narrative. think it through instead. how can you tell this story with the character's disability? what needs to change? are there any reasons why these changes can't happen?

at the end of it, you might change nothing. but I think this is worth doing, because sometimes you'll find that the reason you didn't want your character to have a limp, or lose a limb or sense, or have some kind of SFF-appropriate fantasy disability is because of internalised biases. those are worth challenging & i truly believe that creators miss out on richer stories when they view disability either as a fate worse than death or as nothing more than a catalyst for tragedy.

[astranemus]

“The best thing for anthropocentric dread, for individual anguish, for heartbreak, for illness, is interrupting your individuality. When you cannot walk, cannot move, cannot leave your bed you do not need to find a tree or landscape or butterfly to be. You can be a mote of dust. A potato bug vaulting across the room. The ten fungal spores that scintillate in each one of your inhalations. The anarchic bacterial legacy that melted into your very molecular makeup. The yellowjacket tapping his armored body against the closed window. Sometimes the answer is not to problematize your wounding, but to slip through it like a doorway into otherness. Other minds. Other types of anguish. Other animals and insects going extinct. Birds singing out courtship songs to mates that will never arrive.”

— Sophie Strand, The Birth of The Flowering Wand

[havingapoemwithyou]

God by Langston Hughes

[what-even-is-thiss]

I think a lot of writers might benefit from giving themselves permission to get weird with format.

Use second person, drop classic rising action and climax format, write backwards, just sit in a moment, tell all you want and refuse to show, make an entire book that’s just one run on sentence, reject tropes, use all tropes, cliche yourself to death, produce something that’s completely gibberish. Break all the rules of marketability. Become ungovernable.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Write a story that just takes place inside one pathetic little person’s head. Do it. It’s enrichment in your enclosure.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Do the writer’s equivalent of playing with finger paints. Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it

[what-even-is-thiss]

It’s the middle of the night and I should be sleeping but listen. Listen. Just get weird with it. Open your soul up a little bit. Like actually don’t worry about it being palatable. I’m serious. Get weirder. Get weirder right now. I’m demanding that you get weirder right now. It’s not your responsibility to make your reader feel good. It’s your job to make art, goddamnit. Make art. Make weird art. Open up your third eye and eat an entire cheesecake.

[ieatratsyummy]

They could never make me hate you, complex female character whose reaction to trauma was not pretty and digestible like how people think it should be.

[allthewhumpygoodness]

Hey so I know we All Know This but I will NEVER be over a character being feverish and delirious and making No sense. I will never be over a glittery-eyed, shivering, distressed character weakly gripping another's arm and asking them questions they don't know the answer to, and probably don't mean anything at all. I will never be over characters calling out for people either long gone or right next to them, but unrecognizable in their delirium. I will never be over a character crying in frustration and fear over something in their head they can't explain to whoever is helping them, and all they can do in return is stroke their hair and shush them gently.

[fantasyfiend222]

merlin getting accepted by arthur for his magic is nice and all but that twink is so dependent on his little crown man that it makes me a little sad that this dependency is only reinforced by a happy ending. merthur to me is canon but i want a fanfic where they’re an angry, toxic, divorced couple, arthur annoyed because he’s literally changed the laws and laid down his life and merlin rolling his eyes because arthur wants to talk about about sacrifice? he doesn’t even know the meaning of the word, merlin has lost more than arthur can fathom, starting with his sense of self etc etc. like yes merthur is cute but i want them to address the elephant in the room (merlin’s toxic level of trust in arthur). the fics where merlin is like ‘if you call for my execution i’ll go willingly’ make me scream a little. the line between loyalty and obsession is a fine one, and merlin has wrapped it around his neck like a noose. so yes, i want those medieval gays to have beef, if only to explore merlin’s character more

[abyssal-ilk]

i love hitting characters with the disability beam. we should all be hitting characters with the disability beam. my favorite activity

[abyssal-ilk]

annoyed that your favorite character canonically receives a grievous injury that they seem to walk off without issue? oh do i have a solution for you.