Wordsmith Of Doom

Creative Writing, Fan Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Neurodiversity, Autism, LGBTQ+, Gender, and musings about life in general.

[wordsmithofdoom]

This image was created with Picrew’s “makowka character maker II“!!

Yours truly: WordsmithOfDoom

I'm a writer, artist, and geek. I enjoy Science and Humanities in almost every form, as well as Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror in literature, cinema, tv, art, and other media. I also have been a long-time fan of Dungeons and Dragons, videogames, art, and the occult/supernatural/spiritual. (I know, right? Science and Spirituality coexisting in the same brain? "Nonsense!" you say, yet here I am.)

English is actually my second language, so you will probably notice my writing here does not usually sound very natural. I am neurodivergent as well, which only adds to the weirdness.

Many of my characters are like myself: neurodivergent, queer, and woke (as in the proper sense of the word, not the slur some groups are actively trying to turn it into). If you don't like any of those, feel free to ignore my publications or even better, block me right away.

I welcome criticism if, and only if, it is well thought, respectful, and constructive. I will block anyone who comments saying things like "yuo sux!" and similar (bad spelling intentional). If you don't like the kind of stories I write, or the subject matter, or any of the elements that I've clearly tagged, then just ignore and scroll past.

Oh and one more thing: FUCK AI! I write and create art because I enjoy it, not because I want to show off without having worked for it. If you use generative AI to write for you, you have no right to call yourself a writer. Furthermore, you are actively harming artists everywhere in the world, as well as yourself by delegating your own human creativity to a thieving slop machine. Your brain is rotting right now thanks to AI, so don't look for any respect from me. I will block you if I see you publish AI slop. (Human-made slop is ok, though. My writing probably is, too.)

Be yourself. Be weird. Stay woke. And write on!

--WoD

PS: You can find me at AO3 by this same username, but I haven't published anything there, yet.

PSS: I have GOT to learn how to format these posts to make them look more appealing.

PSSS: How do you like my picrew self-portrait? XD

[dreamycastaway]

The original pride flag and the sewing machine it was sewn on

[iwriterobots]

[wordsmithofdoom]

ORIGIN

Gilbert Baker was an American artist and activist known for designing the rainbow flag. Born in 1951 in Parsons, Kansas, Baker served in the United States Army from 1970 to 1972. After his discharge, he learned to sew and became involved in the gay rights movement in San Francisco.[7]

Influenced by his friend and gay rights activist, Harvey Milk, Baker adopted Milk’s call for openness and truth among gay people. He saw the flag as a direct way to express presence and identity.[8] At the urging of filmmaker Arthur J. Bressan Jr., Baker created the rainbow flag to serve as a symbol for the movement.[9]

The first flags appeared on June 25, 1978, during the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade celebration.[10][11]

According to a profile published in the Bay Area Reporter in 1985, Baker "chose the rainbow motif because of its associations with the hippie movement of the Sixties but he notes that the use of the design dates all the way back to ancient Egypt".[12] People have speculated that Baker was inspired by the Judy Garland song "Over the Rainbow" (Garland being among the first gay icons),[13][14] but when asked, Baker said that it was "more about the Rolling Stones and their song 'She's a Rainbow'".[15] Baker was likely influenced by the "Brotherhood Flag" (with five horizontal stripes to represent different races: red, white, brown, yellow, and black) popular among the world peace movement and hippie movement of the 1960s.[16][17][18][19]

The first rainbow flags commissioned by the fledgling pride committee were produced by a team that included artist Lynn Segerblom.[20] Segerblom was then known as Faerie Argyle Rainbow; according to her, she created the original dyeing process for the flags.[21] Thirty volunteers hand-dyed and stitched the first two flags for the parade.[22] The original flag design had eight stripes, with a specific meaning assigned to each of the colors:[23][24][25] Hot pink Sex Red Life Orange Healing Yellow Sunlight Green Nature Turquoise Magic/Art Indigo Serenity Violet Spirit

The two flags originally created for the 1978 parade were believed lost for over four decades, until a remnant of one was discovered among Baker's belongings in 2020.

Source: Wikipedia

Rainbow flag (LGBTQ) - Wikipedia

A literal piece of history. Happy pride! --WoD

[sillypuppy-stuff]

Happy pride month chattt!!! :D

I hope everyone has an amazing and wonderful month full of happiness and love!!! (although pride should be celebrated all year)

I know things might not be the best rn for some, but I just wanted to remind you that you are LOVED and APPRECIATED, you are so so so VALID and I am so so proud of you that you’re simply existing, please remember that your life matters and that you’re worth being in this world!!

Here are some numbers if you or anyone else is struggling:

SAMHSA: 988 or 1-800-273-8255

The Trevor project: 1-866-488-7386

Trans lifeline: 1-877-565-8860

[wordsmithofdoom]

Photo by Tong Su at Unsplash

On Choice

We don't choose who we feel attracted to, but we can choose to pursue or not a relationship with a specific individual.

We can choose to be ourselves or to pretend being something we're not. And we can choose to remain in the closet or come out in the open.

And thanks to advancements in medicine, some people can also choose to be who they really are, which was impossible before, and that is beautiful.

Some day in the future nobody will have to pretend, or to remain hidden, and that too will be fantastic.

Until then, we still have a choice that nobody can make for us.

Happy Pride!

--WordsmithOfDoom

[wordsmithofdoom]

BEAUTIFUL PERSON AWARD!

Once you are given this award you're supposed to paste it in the asks of 8 (or more) people who deserve it. If you break the chain nothing happens, but it's sweet to know someone thinks you're beautiful inside and out <3

Awww thank you so much! How sweet of you. XD

[theinternetarchive]

Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life North American; United States, pub. 1994

[nudatralemascheredicarnevale]

[depsidase]

[intothenightandbeyond]

This…this is beautiful

[wordsmithofdoom]

Yup. Throw genAI into the mouth of a volcano already!

[redstonedust]

idk how to explain it but im never truly comfortable with the way people insinuate that all older folks are inherently bigoted. it always feels like it kind of hand-waves away personal responsibility like ohhhh grandpa cant help homophobic, hes old. well ive met plenty of older folks who are normal about gay people. i think grandpa could be better. i think we should hold grandpa to higher standards.

[wordsmithofdoom]

Louder for the people in the back: being old does not justify your homophobia, transphobia, racism, misogyny, ableism, or any other form of bigotry. You could have done better before, and you still can do better now when you are still alive. --WoD

[wordsmithofdoom]

Photo by Garrett McQuown at Unsplash

Never Destroy Your Work!

If you’re a writer or creative of some kind, you’ve probably had the experience of creating something that turned out to be below your expectations. The words just don’t sound right. The drawing doesn’t look anything like the picture in your head. The idea falls flat. The design just can’t be made to work. Disappointment gives way to impostor syndrome and you suddenly feel an urge to delete and destroy.

Don’t do it!

This happens even to great artists. Franz Kafka was such a perfectionist writer, never satisfied with his work, that he considered it disgusting. He wanted to destroy everything he’d written and even asked his friend Max Brod to burn it all without even reading it once he died. Thank goodness Brod did not fulfill Kafka’s wish but instead went and edited then published much of the material he left. That's how the world knows about The Trial and so many other amazing stories. Sadly, Kafka still destroyed about 90% of what he wrote during his lifetime, but what survived proved he was a great writer, with a legacy worth preserving.

All artists must familiarize themselves with imperfection, practice and rework. A musician must rehearse a song a thousand times to get it right every time. An artist must sketch and correct and re-draw constantly to develop their skill. A writer must re-write and revise countless drafts, and so on.

You may think your work is worthless now, but if you keep it and come back to it after a few years, you may be surprised by how much of it can actually be turned into a good story or some other art form. Even if in its current shape it seems lacking, the content, the idea, the vision can still be preserved and reworked once you have acquired more experience.

You can also go back to your old works, even the failed ones, and compare them with your newest creations, to see how much you have grown as an artist.

If after all considerations you still prefer to get rid of it, at least know that no creative effort is ever wasted. What you wrote, what you drew or sculpted or composed or designed, even if you don’t like it now, has made you a better creator. The struggle is what makes you grow.

—Wordsmith of Doom

[depsidase]

[wordsmithofdoom]

No actual art has ever been made by AI, though, only disgusting slop, stolen from thousands of real creators and mashed together by a mindless, soulless machine. AI-generated pictures, text and sounds are no art, literature or music, and will never be.

--WoD

[wordsmithofdoom]

"I have a great idea for a book, but I think I don't have enough experience as a writer to do the story justice."

This is precisely the best reason to actually go ahead and write it anyway, because this is how you gain the experience you lack.

And yes, your first draft will probably not be up to your expectations. That is why after you finish it, you have to go on and keep writing other stuff. In a few years, with more experience, you'll be able to go back to that first draft and make a much better second draft. But you need to write it now or you'll forget it or simply no longer care.

The same will happen to any other idea you get. You will still feel inadequate until you have actually done the ground work to gain the experience, and you can only gain it by writing.

--WoD

[weepingpussywillowtree-deactiva]

sometimes I think about how far we still have to go with consent

my worst relatives try to sneak meat or meat products into my food despite the fact that I'm a vegetarian

my ex's brother gave his mother an edible without her knowledge and when she got freaked out and paranoid they laughed, and people I've told that go "yeah that's shitty but it's just weed"

when I go to the doctor and ask them to describe what they are going to do before touching me they get frustrated

when I ask a friends of a friend who is a small influencer to keep me out of frame in videos they film for social media in public they look at me like I've pissed in their cereal

idk man, we've got a long way to go.

[rabbitscreams]

we need to invent a way to explain how deep running and pervasive and subliminal racism and antiblackness is without immediately sounding like an insane conspiracy theorist

[rabbitscreams]

female characters are always lighter than male characters. strong characters are almost always dark. aggressive characters are almost always dark. peaceful and intelligent characters are almost always light. even amongst darker characters the lightest one is usually either the leader or the girls. dark is evil and light is good.

[rabbitscreams]

if you try to explain this to a white person they look at you like youre insane

[gay-milton-quotes]

briefly pursuing a career in animation radicalized me on this. So many stories from the industry about how you have to start with your character design as dark as possible, because INEVITABLY you'll get "notes" from higher-ups asking you to make them lighter.

In a class about making a pitch bible my teacher once role-played as a shitty executive with a classmate, pressing them in intentionally abrasive ways about why they made their characters diverse. He emphasized that we had to learn to defend these things, because the racism in the industry is extremely deliberate.

[vforvalensa]

Ronald Wimberly's comic essay, Lighten Up, stays evergreen

[wordsmithofdoom]

what does the P stand for. I have never seen it in the LGBT letters before

The Pansexual flag, source: Wikipedia, svg file created by : KiwiNeko14

"What does LGBTQIAP+ mean?

LGBTQIAP+ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual or Aromantic, and Pansexual, with the + including the wide range of other sexualities and identities that are part of the community, alongside Allies of the community."

(Definition taken from the SASH London webpage; the color emphasis is mine: https://www.sashlondon.org/inclusive-support/lgbtqiap)

I would personally also include Polysexual and Polyamorous under the P. The reason you probably hadn't seen it before is this is a fairly recent addition. As more diverse identities are recognized in the Queer community, more letters are added to the list. After all, we are all about inclusiveness and diversity.--WoD

[wordsmithofdoom]

"Is there a correlation between LGBTQIAP+ and neurodiversity?"

My personal hypothesis is… most neurotypicals are at least a bit living in denial about their true identity (and not just in terms of gender and sexuality, but about many other things as well).

Neurotypicals are much more prone to living within society's arbitrary rules handed down from previous generations in terms of religion, politics, gender expectations, and so many other areas.

In contrast, we neurodiverse people tend to be more honest about ourselves, about what we truly feel and think, and we often have a hard time understanding, accepting or following social norms.

So IMO, it is more likely for a neurodiverse person to accept themselves as non-straight or non-cisgender, than it is for a neurotypical person.

If anyone knows of reliable scientific studies about this please share them in the comments. I'd like to learn more.

--WoD

[conis1234]

i’m just tired

[wordsmithofdoom]

If you struggle with depression, please tell someone and, if you can, contact your local help line. You are not alone.

--WoD