typhoidmeri:

dizzy-redhead:

geekandmisandry:

someoneintheshadow446:

catsfeminismandatla:

geekandmisandry:

laughlikesomethingbroken:

thatgirlonstage:

laughlikesomethingbroken:

laughlikesomethingbroken:

wearevengeancenow:

the-thorster:

fozmeadows:

These horrific, sexist, racist paragraphs - screenshotted and shared for posterity by James Smythe, to whom we are all indebted - are the work of one Liam O’Flynn, a writer and English teacher. Evidently, they come from his book Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English, and are intended as examples of good writing.

UM.

Dear white male writers: DO NOT DO THIS SHIT. IT IS SUPER GROSS AND FETISHISTIC AND ALSO TERRIBLE WRITING. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS. 

Like I just. “Her virility-brown eyes -” WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? How can you have an “Amazonian figure”ON a“wafer-thin body” when “figure” is a word that describe’s a body’s shape, and Amazonian means pretty much the DIRECT FUCKING OPPOSITE of “wafer-thin” in the first place?  What the shitting fuck does ANY of this mean, apart from “I am only nebulously familiar with the concept of women and completely at a loss if I can’t compare their various bodyparts to jewels, animals and footstuffs”?

STOP 

GO TO WRITING JAIL

GODIRECTLY TO WRITING JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200

tag yourself i’m the two beryl-green jewels in the snow

if her ears frame her nose do they like, grow directly beside her nose? how does she see from them? 

*facepalm*

“Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English“

lovers of english

oh my goddddddd

i can’t get over this fucking post

“I loved her nebulous, eden-green eyes which were a-sparkle with the ‘joie de vivre’. They were like two beryl-green jewels melted onto snow.”

1. what the fuck is joie de vivre

2.melted jewels?

3. beryl green

eden green:

WHICH ONE IS ITTTTTTTTT

@laughlikesomethingbroken “Joie de vivre” is a French phrase that literally translates to “joy of living”, while it IS one of those phrases that gets used in English in this context it is SO EXTRA AND UNNECESSARY OH MY GOD. Don’t use French to make yourself sound sophisticated when you’re NOT I don’t know where to even START. Curvilinear waist? Sugar candy-sweet? What the FUCK are seraph’s ears? Voguish clothes? What the everloving fuck is “constellation blue” supposed to mean??? Like forget the objectification, this writing is horrifying enough before we even get to the embedded sexism

seraph’s ears are ears that you can’t see bc they’re hidden behind her 6 wings

Oyster white teeth?

holy purple prose batman

Female writers do this too. Have you read a Mills and Boon novel? Have you read high school girls’ yaoi fanfics?

Uh oh, we were focusing too much on how a grown man is selling this shit and not enough shitting on teenage girls. Egalitarians here to put an end to that shit.

Guess what? I’ve read A LOT of Harlequin novels and a LOT of fanfic and I have never ever seen anything this horrible at description.

Also, none of those stories were trying to hold themselves up as high examples of the craft

I disagree

Billy Butcherson from Hocus Pocus IS Billy Butcher from The Boys.

A Supe sends him back in time to the 1600s to get him out of their way. To blend in, he shaves his face and changes his vernacular to match the times. The Supes become witches, and the cunts become wenches.

Trying to find a way back to his own time, he starts hanging out with three spellcasting sisters, hoping they can help him. Alas, he cannot keep it in his pants, so they murder him.

Or, semi-mini. Characters can elevate what might otherwise be a simple plot, or even an overdone plot, and make it into something entirely unexpected. Characters are impactful. They collide with the prose and leave craters.

When writing, communicating character voice is pivotal, whether it’s a cast of first person POVs or a removed third person omniscient narrator. Voice and style humanizes the characters and leaves a lasting impression, giving a unique feel to a writer’s story that can’t be found in any other story, or that separates one similar story from the next.

So, how can we build up the voice in our narrative? How do we infuse that soul into the words and really bring the story to life? Here are a few things to consider:

• Personality.

Imagine two characters picking up a photo. They’re not going to see the same photo – or, at least, they’re not going to see the photo in the same way. When we observe things, we tend to assign traits, such as, “The light was warm and inviting,” or, “The ridges of the shoe cut into my flesh, as if the shoe refused to fit,” as two basic examples. The way we assign traits depends upon our personalities, which impacts the overall mood of the writing and, consequently, the story.

Imagine that, of the basic examples I used above, I flip-flopped the personalities. Instead of the light being “warm” and “inviting”, the character might think, “The light stung my retinas. I turned my face away.” Instead of the shoe refusing to fit, the character might think, “The ridges of the shoe cut into my flesh, as if to tell me I’d have to survive breaking in my feet before I was worthy enough to wear it.”

So, how do we get a grasp of how a character’s personality will affect the narrative? That question leads us to –

• Outlook and Perceptions.

Think of the character’s past, their history, the way they’ve been influenced by their surroundings. A person is part nature, part nurture, so how do these two parts form the character’s makeup?

One character might walk a mile to the next crosswalk in order to safely avoid traffic. The other character might brave dodging into the street in order to avoid making the long trek. Why? There’s always a reason behind actions, so why do these particular characters make these particular decisions? And how does this affect their outlook on things around them? How does the character who takes the safer route see the traffic? How does the character who takes the risky route see the traffic?

Take a character who’s had food poisoning. Because of this point in their history, they might think, “It snuck up on me. The salty, low-tide tickle in my nose. The acid in my stomach turned up to a boil as the creeping aroma stroked the fancy little muscle at the back of my throat. The gag muscle.” See how this character regards the smell of fish as “low-tide” and “creeping”? The character’s history has affected their outlook and perception, which is reflected in the narrative. If you have trouble expressing character, try charting them out.

• Inner Reflection.

Inner reflection is a pretty sweet tool when conveying a character’s thoughts, emotions, and where they stand on a particular subject. It’s almost diary-like, where a writer can express the various levels of the character’s thought process, which can provide an interesting dynamic (especially if the character’s thoughts contrast their actions in some way).

As an example, “I used to like fish. I used to like fish a lot. But all it had taken was one plate of questionable sushi in a big-name restaurant that I thought I could trust. I’d always heard never to touch fish that smelled too pungently of the ocean, but this restaurant had never let me down before. It almost felt personal now. Like betrayal. I could never trust a flake of fish again.”

All of that is inner reflection, and it reveals characterization and a little tidbit to their past, however relevant to the plot it might be. Inner reflection is a chance to unload action and unpack newly discovered plot advancement. However, beware of too much of a good thing.

• The Five Senses.

This relies upon a character’s skills of observation, which depends upon the character’s personal experiences (as mentioned above). Think of their relationship to their environment/surroundings, and also why they have this relationship. As with the photograph example mentioned earlier, one character who enters an unfamiliar room won’t see the same room the same way as the next character.

As an example, an extrovert who finds comfort in people might enter a room and search out all the faces, looking for someone familiar. Someone who’s experienced something traumatic might walk in and take notice of all the exits, how much space there is to move around, how high the ceiling is, imminent dangers, so on. The first character might first notice the smell of perfumes and hairspray. The second character might first notice the smell of cigarette smoke or anything unusual.

“The familiar aroma of perfume and cologne inspired a sigh of relief,” versus, “The stink of smoke inspired a glance around in search of fire alarms.”

• The Sixth Sense.

This one’s a little different. Think intuition. Think everything the character senses that’s not physical, but rather “feelings” and “guesses”, which is often also related to their past (or, you know, uncanny abilities and whatnot).

Taking the two characters in the previous section, let’s say the first one sees someone approaching them like this, “His eyes lit up when he spotted me. He trotted over with clumsy feet, wearing almost-shock on is face in a way that said he might have recognized me, and I thumbed through my Big Mental Book of Faces in search for any memory of him.”

Then, taking the second character, “His eyes widened when he spotted me. His feet shifted with hesitation as he made the first step in my direction, fingers hovering by the pockets of his jacket. I tried to remember him. Couldn’t. But, with the way he tripped all the way over to me, I knew he was probably harmless.”

• Speech.

Speech isn’t just for dialogue. Especially in close POV, colloquialisms, idiosyncrasies, personal phrases, cursing, and swearing happen outside the dialogue when the story is told from the mind of the character.

Think of inner reflection, a character working through a problem. “I had no idea why I’d just said that. My lips were loose around her, and—crap. She probably thought I was some sort of creep, cracking jokes like that. What if she saw me as just some pervert? Well, I mean, I was, but not like that, and—crap, crap, crap.”

In a way, inner reflection is like having dialogue with the reader, a voice that the reader can hear as if the character is a real person really telling the story to them, even if the reader is envisioning the events as if they’re actually present for them. If ever you’ve had a moment where you were like, “I was just talking to someone who said something similar to that…oh, wait, that was a character,” natural inner reflection is a great big cause of this weird feeling.

• Standing Out.

Lots of literary agents want characters that stand out and are memorable, which can be incredibly daunting, but there’s no real formula for this. Everyone relates to characters differently. Some readers might say, “I totally understand this character and feel them,” whereas other people might say, “I didn’t like this character very much and thought they were silly.”

You have to remember that it’s all subjective. The key is practice and getting lots of outside opinions from appropriate sources (as in, don’t ask your cat if your supernatural detective is an interesting character, as tempting as it might be). Read critically, see how other authors do it successfully, and practice, practice, practice.

angeltiddies:

@spnprideweek day 3 || trans/acceptance

[ID: Three art panels, depicting Dean Winchester and Jack Kline. There are very few colors in the art, and the backgrounds are blank. Jack is a very small child, standing beside Dean and holding his hand. Jack is wearing an oversized Led-Zeppelin t-shirt and a black skirt, as well as tall yellow rain boots. He has a tiny halo over his head. Dean is much taller, most of his height in the legs. He is wearing a black t-shirt and black boots, as well as jeans and a jacket. He has makeup on, accentuating his eyelashes and giving him a heavy blush.

In the first panel, Jack looks up at Dean with a worried expression, while Dean calmly smiles back. A pink speech bubble from Jack reads, “Papa, what does gender feel like?”.

The next panel is pink, with three large white thought bubbles in the middle. One shows a very young Dean, blushing. He is wearing a suit that is way too large for him, and a small blue speech bubble from him reads, “Mommy, look!”. The next bubble shows an older dean, possibly teenaged, using electric clippers to cut his hair short. A blue speech bubble from him says, “Fuck yeah”. The third and final thought bubble shows a young adult Dean, his back faced to the viewer. He is looking into a full-length mirror, which shows him pulling his shirt up to his chin. He has two thin scars across his ribs. Two blue speech bubbles show him saying, “Huh… nice.”

The final panel returns to the present, where Jack no longer looks as worried. Dean smiles down at him, and another blue bubble from him reads, “Home”.

End ID]

a serious series of questions: do cis boys ever stop screaming? do they know what an inside voice is? 

Graduate School of Business, Stanford

The Relationship Between Profanity and Honesty

(Link to thesis)

judestims:

|crookedcalligraphy

I feel like an absolute bastard. (cw gender stuff, names, pronouns, family drama)

As a way to update my parents about Janelle Monae saying in an interview that their pronoun is “free-ass muthafucka” (because gender goals x infinity!!!), I casually led into it by mentioning that my new therapist wanted to know my preferred name/nickname and pronouns—all as a means of getting to my stupid punchline, “they/them seems so much easier now, doesn’t it!” ha ha ha I thought we were cool, I’ve been making pronoun jokes since I came out to them last September because I know it’s weird for them to go from having a daughter to having an adult child / offspring / neither daughter nor son. I get it. And I’ve really tried to be cool about them continuing to Female me while also trying to gradually/gently push them with things like… my Kirk haircut, sharing trivia or articles about NB stuff with them (e.g. the Janelle Monae news), etc. Anyway, I didn’t think any of that would come up again, but I’m clearly an idiot because I’ve spent 32 and a half years with one parent who Never Forgets Anything and Never Lets Any Little Detail Go Unnoticed.

Six hours later, my mother asks me what my answers had been when my therapist asked me to pin them down more concretely than “either way, whatever you prefer.” ((Aside: apparently therapists want to know the Real You? and having other people decide who the Real Me is… is not what they mean by that??)) I knew I was trapped but I never want to lie to my mom, right? So I told her honestly that my therapist will be referring to me as “they/them” and “Jim” (aka Not my legal name/what my family calls me, as well as a name which traditionally is given to people who are the “opposite” of my agab). (I also reminded her that my previous therapist knew me as Jim, too, hoping that might soften the blow.) Again: I get it. I knew before I said it that it was going to hurt her because I’m choosing to have certain people call me by a name that’s not the one she and dad gave me when I was born. I understand that it’s hard for them. I understand why it’s hard for them.

(And this makes no never mind, but… it’s hard for me, too. But I know, that’s beside the point.)

After a long, very uncomfortable silence, she said, “Is it okay if I keep saying she/her?” So I counted to five in my head and said it’s fine, because I honestly never expected her or my dad to be fully understanding of any of this. But now (and not for the first time) I’m very much wishing I’d just never come out to them at all, because at least that way I wouldn’t have gotten my hopes up when they responded by claiming that my being NB was fine and claiming that they would be totally supportive/accepting of it. My expectations were low before they knew because I assumed they would be honest with me about how it made them feel, which I assumed would be along the lines of “betrayed,” “inconvenienced,” “confused,” “disappointed,” “skeptical,” “disrespected,” and/or “we failed our child.“ It seems that when they were so chill about it up front, I forgot to keep expecting those reactions in delayed forms, and I guess I let myself believe that they would actually make the effort to shift some of their thinking about me, maybe even start using they/them for me, etc.

Turns out they were enthusiastic to declare their support (which I greatly appreciate, don’t get me wrong) but putting that support into practice has proven to be harder than I think they realized. “Too much has changed too fast” is what I’ve been told now… even though I’m not transitioning to male, I’m not doing HRT or having surgeries, I’m still dressing the same on a daily basis (just changing my “fancy” wardrobe), and the only thing that’s physically different is that I’ve stopped shaving my legs (which neither of them has even noticed because I only wear long pants).

Anyway she just happened to ask me all this as she was on her way to bed. So there was another awkward silence before she said goodnight, and if 32 years’ experience has enabled me to read any of her moods correctly, then she started crying as soon as I was out of earshot. (I would have confirmed and/or tried to get her to talk to me about it but I’m running, like, a spoon deficit at this point.)

So is my lack of much visible change the problem, then? Is this breaking my mom’s heart because I’m not different enough from my “old” self? Would this be easier in some way if I was transitioning and she could, idk, genuinely mourn the daughter she no longer has? And despite losing a daughter at least she would have a “replacement” kid whose gender still Made Sense to someone entrenched in the gender binary for almost seven decades? Or would it just make things worse?

Should I have simply lied and said I’m going by my legal name with my therapist, because how will my mom ever know that anyway? Has this name thing crushed her so bad because not much else has changed about me otherwise, so she didn’t see it coming? Or am I genuinely the asshole for expecting her to be more supportive/validating too soon, and I just need to be more patient?

((Tangent: she witnessed a really bad impostor-syndrome meltdown of mine a few months ago. I was trying to figure out what to wear to a church function and eventually got so frustrated—and convinced that I’m not really NB, just a pathetic ugly female who hates herself/her body—that I told her to pick out a damn dress for me and take me to a wig shop so I could try and undo everything I’ve done to try and hate my biologically female body a little bit less. And she responded by telling me to wear the pants/button-down/sweater aka “masc-ish” outfit I’d started with. So… is it only if I’m in crisis/panic mode that she can get on board with my being NB? Did my meltdown help her put her own misgivings about this aside? Or was she only okay with my being NB before it included having new people in my life call me by a different name??))

I keep trying to pinpoint what I’ve done wrong, and every time I re-do the math I still can only come up with, “…I was born.” But that wasn’t even my fault. I just feel incredibly selfish for trying to get them to see me the way I see myself. I keep thinking that if I don’t feel female, that’s my problem and I should have kept it to my damn self. If my identity is, in fact, Jim + they/them + non-binary, fine, but I feel like I should have known better than to reveal—to the people who named me and raised me—that I don’t really feel, and never really have felt, like I actually am the person we all assumed I was for 31 years because there didn’t seem to be an alternative.

And this is precisely why I started things off with my new therapist by trying to make her decide whether to call me she or they, Jim or my real name. More than anything—more than being sane, healthy, or alive—Iwantnotto be a burden on others.

But that’s all I ever seem to be able to do without fail.