The idea of dragons in modern times is so fun because imagine a hot summer day on your vacay and go to use the hotel pool and staff is like "valued guests we regret to inform you that the pool area is out of service at the moment, we apologize for the inconvenience"
And people like "wtf why" looking out their hotel room window and there's this. This dragon just curled up in the pool chilling, literally, cooling itself down
Some of the staff are trying to gently shoo him away and the dragon does a soft little "rrrrrr" like a grumpy cat and a warning puff of smoke and they're like "fuck it i don't get paid nearly enough for this" and no ones using the pool today sorry!
Love. It feels like dying, but not in the way you’d expect. It’s not a sudden blow to the head, not a clean cut that severs and spares you the torment. It’s a slow unraveling, thread by thread. You’re the bridge, you’re the tree, you’re every piece of yourself falling apart and catching fire. Every promise you held like a treasure is ash in your hands, every dream a wisp of smoke you can no longer grasp.
This pain, it’s a master of disguise. It lingers in the quiet moments, the spaces between breaths, the seconds before sleep. It pretends to be everything else—anger, numbness, bitterness—but at its core, it’s just grief. Grief for the love you’ve lost, for the future that’s slipped through your fingers.
And there’s a cruel irony in it. You think you’re prepared for the fall because you’ve been afraid of heights all along. But when you crash, it’s not the ground that shatters you. It’s the realization that you let yourself believe, even for a moment, that you could defy gravity. That you could hold on to something so fiercely that it would stay.
Yet, in this wreckage, there’s a perverse sort of beauty. The kind you find in ruins, in the way nature reclaims what’s been abandoned. You’re still here, after all, even when everything else is gone. You’re still standing amidst the rubble, still breathing, still feeling. And maybe that’s the hardest part—knowing you have to keep living with this hurt, carrying it like a shadow.
But shadows mean there’s light somewhere, even if it’s just a flicker. Maybe one day, you’ll rebuild. Maybe the bridge wasn’t meant to last, and the tree will grow again, different but resilient. Until then, you gather the pieces, patch the wounds, and learn to walk with the ache. You learn that falling apart isn’t the end; it’s just another beginning.
in general if you believe that your job is to definitively describe, capture, taxonomise, or exhaustively define reality you are going to have a bad time imo. it's far more useful to ask "which model is useful for my purposes," "does this model basically make sense with what I know of the world," "might another model be more useful for another purpose," &c.
the best map is the territory--but describing everything about the material and social conditions of each individual person on earth, besides being impossible, would be useless. in order to be useful--to describe something about the part of reality that you're interested in, to have the power to make predictions or have insights about that reality, to propose actions in order to alter that reality--you are going to have to generalise. any time you propose to reduce reality to a model you are compromising and generalising something, somewhere. the question is where do you generalise, and how much, and what do you gain from doing so, and what do you lose, and in which contexts is this model useful (i.e. how should you constrain the field in which you apply this model), and in which contexts is it more trouble than it's worth?
another Critical Thinking hack is that you must not mistake a classification or naming of something with an explanation of that thing. sorting or naming something does not have explanatory power. the phenomenon remains to be explained regardless of the fact that "this actually has a name!"
who named it? when? who sorted these discrete ideas or phenomena into one category? why? in association with what organisation, ideology, &c.? what ideas does this classification, sorting, or naming rely on? do you agree with those ideas? in what other ways could these phenomena be grouped, sorted, named, classified? what ideas would that alternate classification rely on? must these phenomena be named or sorted into categories at all?
There are a lot of people who feel an intense urge to be classified in various ways and feel personal comfort in doing so. I do understand this (sorting & characterising can be so pleasant, like doing a puzzle! Whom amongst us does not sort buttons on the floor, etc) but please do understand that there are contexts and implications to the practice of sorting/diagnosis; what is this practice for?
Her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist pioneer, her father was William Godwin the founder of anarchism. Her mother passed when she was 11 years old, Mary learned to read and write her name by tracing the letters on her mother’s grave after... which she later lost her virginity on top of. Starting her fascination with death early.
(This is known as foreshadowing, ladies and gentlemen. )
Starting at 19, She wrote her novel at 21 near Lake Geneva, Switzerland, as part of a horror story writing game between the poet Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and a young physician named John William Polidori. Of all of these already well established men, she created the first science fiction novel. Then people assumed her husband Percy did all of it to the point he had to outright refuse credit.
(Hermph)
She was considered a radical of the time, Mary's writings, including Frankenstein, have been analyzed for their feminist and communist themes.
Although Frankenstein enjoyed immense success and positive reviews, Mary Shelley didn't get the financial windfall one would expect, and she was plagued by illness, depression, and debt her whole life.
Mary was not only intensely interested by death at a young age, (Read: IE, mothers grave) but death was interested right back, following her throughout her life. She lost two of her three children at young ages.
She and her husband had an open marriage, which caused Mary no end of emotional pain and feelings of jealousy and inadequacy.
(Not sure trying open relationship with the girl who talks about death nonstop was a good idea...)
Later after his death in a boating accident at age 29, dshe kept her dead husband's calcified heart wrapped in his poetry in a drawer, along with the hair of her dead children.
Divine beings associated with large scale organized religions are arguably the most divorced from the needs of their worshipers. When you have the prayers of billions being offered in your name, over an extremely diverse range of sects and sub-cults, the entity is actively disincentivized from taking action that might alienate any one group. In fact, once a divinity passes a certain threshold of worshipers, generational momentum is typically sufficient to satisfy its needs with little if any effort to assist its faithful either personally or collectively. At this point the divinity has become irreversibly parasitic, and any individual looking for a healthy or balanced relationship with a higher power would be better served instantiating one personally, and cultivating it in privacy. This directly ties the divinity's worship and sustenance to the welfare and devotion of the single individual, strongly incentivizing a symbiotic relationship with active participation from both parties. In this essay I will-
What? What are you talking about, “don’t use the passive voice”? Are you feeling okay? Who told you that? Come on, let’s you and me go to their house and beat them with golf clubs. It’s just grammar. English is full of grammar: you should go ahead and use all of it whenever you want, on account of English is the language you’re writing in.
2. Use adverbs.
Now hang on. What are you even saying to me? Don’t use adverbs? My guy, that is an entire part of speech. That’s, like—that’s gotta be at least 20% of the dictionary. I don’t know who told you not to use adverbs, but you should definitely throw them into the Columbia river.
3. There’s no such thing as “filler”.
Buddy, “filler” is what we called the episodes of Dragon Ball Z where Goku wasn’t blasting Frieza because the anime was in production before Akira Toriyama had written the part where Goku blasts Frieza. Outside of this extremely specific context, “filler” does not exist. Just because a scene wouldn’t make it into the Wikipedia synopsis of your story’s plot doesn’t mean it isn’t important to your story. This is why “plot” and “story” are different words!
4. okay, now that I’ve snared you in my trap—and I know you don’t want to hear this—but orthography actually does kind of matter
First of all, a lot of what you think of as “grammar” is actually orthography. Should I put a comma here? How do I spell this word in this context? These are questions of orthography (which is a fancy Greek word meaning “correct-writing”). In fact, most of the “grammar questions” you’ll see posted online pertain to orthography; this number probably doubles in spaces for writers specifically.
If you’re a native speaker of English, your grammar is probably flawless and unremarkable for the purposes of writing prose. Instead, orthography refers to the set rules governing spelling, punctuation, and whitespace. There are a few things you should know about orthography:
English has no single orthography. You already know spelling and punctuation differ from country to country, but did you know it can even differ from publisher to publisher? Some newspapers will set parenthetical statements apart with em dashes—like this, with no spaces—while others will use slightly shorter dashes – like this, with spaces – to name just one example.
Orthography is boring, and nobody cares about it or knows what it is. For most readers, orthography is “invisible”. Readers pay attention to the words on a page, not the paper itself; in much the same way, readers pay attention to the meaning of a text and not the orthography, which exists only to convey that meaning.
That doesn’t mean it’s not important. Actually, that means it’s of the utmost importance. Because orthography can only be invisible if it meets the reader’s expectations.
You need to learn how to format dialogue into paragraphs. You need to learn when to end a quote with a comma versus a period. You need to learn how to use apostrophes, colons and semicolons. You need to learn these things not so you can win meaningless brownie points from your English teacher for having “Good Grammar”, but so that your prose looks like other prose the reader has consumed.
If you printed a novel on purple paper, you’d have the reader wondering: why purple? Then they’d be focusing on the paper and not the words on it. And you probably don’t want that! So it goes with orthography: whenever you deviate from standard practices, you force the reader to work out in their head whether that deviation was intentional or a mistake. Too much of that can destroy the flow of reading and prevent the reader from getting immersed.
You may chafe at this idea. You may think these “rules” are confusing and arbitrary. You’re correct to think that. They’re made the fuck up! What matters is that they were made the fuck up collaboratively, by thousands of writers over hundreds of years. Whether you like it or not, you are part of that collaboration: you’re not the first person to write prose, and you can’t expect yours to be the first prose your readers have ever read.
That doesn’t mean “never break the rules”, mind you. Once you’ve gotten comfortable with English orthography, then you are free to break it as you please. Knowing what’s expected gives you the power to do unexpected things on purpose. And that’s the really cool shit.
5. You’re allowed to say the boobs were big if the story is about how big the boobs were
Nobody is saying this. Only I am brave enough to say it.
Internal conflict is a vital tool in storytelling, enriching characters and deepening narrative impact. Understanding and effectively using internal conflict can transform a good story into a compelling, unforgettable one.
Introduction to Internal Conflict
Definition: Internal conflict refers to a psychological struggle within a character, often involving emotions, desires, or beliefs.
Purpose: It adds depth to characters, making them more relatable and complex.
Types of Internal Conflict
Moral Dilemmas: Situations where a character must choose between right and wrong, often with no clear answer.
Emotional Struggles: Conflicts arising from feelings like love, guilt, fear, or jealousy.
Identity Crises: Moments when characters question who they are or what they believe in.
Conflicting Desires: When a character's wants or needs are at odds with each other.
Examples of Internal Conflict
Classic Literature: Hamlet's indecision about avenging his father's death.
Modern Fiction: Katniss Everdeen's struggle between her survival instincts and her growing sense of rebellion in "The Hunger Games".
Film: Frodo Baggins grappling with the burden of the One Ring and its corrupting influence in "The Lord of the Rings".
Importance of Internal Conflict
Character Development: Drives growth and transformation, showing how characters evolve.
Engagement: Keeps readers invested in the character’s journey by creating empathy and tension.
Theme Exploration: Allows writers to explore complex themes like morality, identity, and human nature.
Crafting Internal Conflict
Believability: Ensure the conflict is realistic and relatable to the audience.
Depth: Give characters more than one internal conflict to make them richer and more interesting.
Resolution: Show how characters resolve or cope with their internal struggles, even if it’s not a happy ending.
Questions to Consider
What is the character’s main internal struggle?
How does this conflict affect their decisions and actions?
In what ways does the internal conflict drive the story forward?
Writing Notes: Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tenets of Storytelling
8 tips on how to write a good short story
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
Start as close to the end as possible.
Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Genuinely love the lack of the plural in so many titles. This is the book about Shark. This is the book about Mummy. This is the book about Knight. Oh, and another book about more Knight. Sorry, can’t hang out today, I’m staying home to learn more about ROBOT
When I was in elementary school, I loved these books. I would go to the library and just start Learning Things. It was great. I decided I wanted to check out the book on whales, because I wanted to finish it. I think I was in second grade, but well ahead of my peers when it came to reading. My librarian, however, disagreed that I was of a high enough level to read such a book.
I was aghast. You mean to withhold this fascinating book from me? You choose willingly to not allow me to stretch myself and gain new knowledge? You deign to force me to stay with my peer group as you simply do not believe I am capable? Wait until my mother hears of this!
(Realistically I wasn’t super interested in reading it until she decided I was not Old Enough to… fuck off lady)
My mother had a degree in early childhood development. She always encouraged me to push my boundaries of what I believed I could do, and allowed me to pursue whatever hobbies I wished to. I dragged my mom down to the library, showed her the book I wanted, expecting full support and that I would immediately be able to check the book out. Instead, I was met with the first disappointment I would receive from that woman. She had the nerve to agree with the librarian! I was shocked! I insisted and rallied against this gross carriage of injustice, and they eventually both relented.
I insisted on reading that book on the floor in the middle of the house. I read it cover to cover at least 3 times if not 5. I wanted to prove that I was more than capable of reading a book that neither woman had the palest of imagination that I could complete the task. And I wanted to do it in the most inconvenient way possible.
From then on I loved these books. Out of spite? Perhaps. But it was well worth it.
I still remember, more than 15 years later, that hairbrushes were made with whale bristle teeth, that whale fat was used as fuel for lamps, and to not FUCK with a little girl on a mission. She’ll grow up to be an equally strong-willed man.
frrrr i look at the notes and the author is always like "sorry for the late upload!!! it's my 10th anniversary and my husband took me skydiving 🥳🥳 plus i've just finished my third phD!! anyways here's 30k"
