Reread your old writing, especially those scenes you’re most proud of
Write something silly. It doesn’t need to be logical, consistent or included in your story. Write something dumb
Compare your old writing to your new writing. Seeing how much you’ve improved can be very motivating
Explore different storylines, those type of storylines that would never make it into your story, but you’d still like to play around with. Create AUs!
Choose one of your least favorite scenes and rewrite it
Act out your scenes
Read old comments from people praising your work
Create a playlist that reminds you of your wip
Team up with a friend, write AUs for each other’s characters
Create playlists for your characters
Draw your ocs/make memes of your ocs
Draw/make memes of your friend’s ocs
Don’t push yourself to get back into writing the thing that made you stop writing in the first place, try writing something else!
Write what you wanna write, no matter how cliché it might be. If you want to write it, write it
Take a break, focus on another hobby of yours. Consume other pieces of media, take a walk to clear your head
You don’t have to write in chronological order if it isn’t working for you! Sometimes a scene you aren’t interested in writing can become interesting after you’ve explored other scenes in the story
Read bad reviews of books or TV-shows. You’ll unlock appreciation and motivation for your own writing
Create a new storyline, or a new character! Anything that helps bring something fresh into your story. Could even be a completely new wip!
Not writing every day doesn’t make you a bad writer. Take a break if you feel like you need one
Remind yourself to have fun. Start writing and don’t focus all your attention on following “the rules.” You can get into the nitty-gritty when you’ve familiarized yourself with writing as an art. Or don’t. It’s fiction, you make your own rules
Go to sleep, or take a nap. Sleep deprivation and writing does not go hand in hand
Listen to music that reminds you of your characters/wip
Remember why you started. Know that you deserve to tell the story you want to tell regardless of the skill you possess
We all know the push at the start of last year. We wanted to be recognized. We wanted to be talked about. We wanted to be taken seriously. We helped change the popular definition of aromantic to be “little to no romantic attraction” to include more people. But at the beginning of last year, there was another push. A push to push aros who have romantic attraction out of their labels.
It started off pretty small. Individuals getting sick and tired of “aros and arospecs” but getting told they were using arospec wrong when they claimed this identity for themselves. “Arospec is for anyone who is on the aromantic spectrum! Including aromantic people!” Then why are you calling us that. Then why are you using it to distance us from your community.
I am using that word because you called us that, to make us seem like we aren’t one of you. You gave us a label, thank you. But also, fuck you for trying to take it away. I get told again I can’t use it that way. I give up, I have no label, and I feel isolated.
Thanks, aros.
The argument continues. I call myself aro. I get told that the word only means no attraction ever. I get told it’s not my word. It’s not my word. I get told I don’t belong under that identity. I get told to use arospec. I dont want to use arospec, you told me I was using it wrong. I start hearing things you dont realize you are saying.
“Arospec is for the whole community, use that if you want to talk about the community as a whole. You aren’t aro. Don’t call yourself that. Aro is not an umbrella term, and arospec doesn’t mean you. It’s not your word.You have no language. The common language we use to refer to ourselves and you isn’t for you. It’s not yours.You can’t call yourself what we’re calling you, and you can’t use the only word we use to talk about the community.”
Again, I have no label, I feel isolated. But this time, I get angry. I get PISSED. I stand my ground, and I defend us. I flip the script, aros get pissed, and then… And then. The post. The damn fucking post.
A word lost to discourse: greyromantic. “This is what you are.” This damn post was sent to me every time I talked about being shoved out of the aromantic community. “Look! There is a word for you!” This damn post was sent to me every time I talked about being told my language was wrong. “You can use this word instead! No need to use ours.” This damn post was sent to me any time I brought up the treatment of partnering and sometimes-romo aros. “Why don’t you just use this word instead? See? We’re listening to and supporting you.” This damn post was used again and again and again by people who HAVE NO PLACE to tell me what my identity can be.
This post specifically was used to talk over me. This post was used to silence my voice. OUR voices. This post was used, primarily by aros who have never experienced romantic attraction, primarily by aros who will never fall under this umbrella, to tell me what I am. To tell me what I can and cannot be. To tell me that my language was wrong and I cannot use the language I had been using for myself.
and I won’t fucking use that label.
So what labels do I use? What label do I like? Why do I like them?
I go by romo aro. It was a private word me and my microcommunity had been using this whole time, that by the end I started promoting and making content for. This is my favorite and preferred label, because it can cover anyone who fits outside of the stereotypical aro alignment. Sometimes-romo, romo favorable, partnering, polyaff/polyam, queerplatonic aros, aros who enjoy romo content. and Anyone who would’ve been shoved under that “arospec” umbrella instead of aro. This word is inclusive, this word is radical, and this word can mean me, no matter what that means for me in that moment.
I use this word mostly because it is the only label that no one else forced onto me, and I will never force it onto anyone else. I prefer it because it is, and always has been, mine. I always had a choice, and it never belonged to anyone else. This word is mine, and I will not let anyone take it away from me.
I also use aro. While people kept arguing against me, for I while I just dropped talking about my identity as a romo aro altogether. I went by aro because it was easier and because it can be an umbrella term. The definition started shifting to mean “little to no romantic attraction” and I am forever grateful. This is a word I’ll keep, because no one forced it on me, and because people told me I couldn’t. Using this word was an act of defiance, and using this word was an act of belonging and assimilation. And now people recognize that this word can also belong to me.
And finally… I use arospec. It took me months (and by months i mean about 7 to be able to comfortably use it again) but this word was the first word I identified with. Public perception of this word has shifted, and people recognize that it can mean multiple things. People recognize that arospecs are allowed to talk about their experiences under this label, including how aros have wronged them. Slowly, people are able to recognize that this was a word used for aros to distance us from themselves, and that this was the first word a lot of us had. This word is a good label, and while it started as a reclamation, now it’s solid identity that people can recognize as being separate and different from the umbrella term. And that’s really really good.
I want to say I don’t hate the creator of that post. I don’t hate aros and greyros. But you NEED to start listening to romo aros and arospecs.When we say something is hurting us, people need to believe us and learn to start recognizing damaging language. And there CANNOT be tolerance in the aromantic community for people who will talk over people- especially aromantic minorities. And the aromantic community as a whole HAS to shut down and learn to STOP telling people if their identityandlabelisvalid or not. I HAVE to stop seeing people in my notifications saying that my words are wrong. It HAS to stop. There was a mass exodus of arospecs last year around this time. My whole microcommunity is gone, and a huge portion of the community is missing, with most aros not even noticing. We HAVE to fix things for them. We NEED to make sure that will never happen again. We NEED to make sure that arospecs of all sorts belong.
This community does not have the time or space or numbers to be exclusionary and perpetuating erasure. It’s needs to stop. It’s time to start listening to arospecs. It’s time to start respecting people who have long since been ignored. It’s time the aro community takes a stand with us.
The aro community has grown, but it’s time to start doing more than what passive little it has recently learned to do. It’s time. Grow more. Take a stand.
This is completely right. When I started this blog, there were absolutely no resources for aromantics who weren’t strictly no-attraction. And since then I have seen pushback against aromantics who do.
The most important thing about a label is not what it means to other people. The most important thing is what it means to you. None of us experience life the same way. None of us experience attraction the same way. None of us experience non-attraction the same way. We don’t even experience the things we see and hear and taste the same way, let alone something as complex as the hormones that our brains sent hurtling throughout our circulatory systems.
I am reblogging this in solidarity for people who don’t feel comfortable identifying as grayromantic or arospec rather than just aro. Your journey is your own. Your self belongs to you, and you are not hurting me or anyone else by using a different word to describe yourself. You are not hurting non-attraction aromantics by using the same word. You have my support.
Hello everyone! I’d like to announce that everything is in place for NedCan Week 2022. The event will be taking place from May 23rd-30th. Below are rules and prompts just so everything is together in one pinned post:
Prompts
May 23rd:Tulips/Flowers
May 24th: Historical
May 25th: Living Together/Domestic
May 26th: Royal Au
May 27th: Nicknames/Terms of Endearment
May 28th:Parents/Family
May 29th: College/High School Au
May 30th: Free Day/Language
Rules:
Please tag your submissions for the event as #nedcanweek2022 and feel free to tag the blog @nedcanweek to be sure I see it.
Fanfiction, fanart, headcanons, moodboards and any other creative outlet will be accepted. Just please tag any necessary content warnings (ex. Gore, certain subject matter, etc.). If there is any confusion, feel free to message me or send in an ask
NS/FW will be allowed but must be tagged as either ns/fw or nsft. But No rape, non-con, incest, underage, etc.
Side ships/past relationships are allowed in your content, but please try to keep NedCan as the focus
Please no ship hate, discrimination, racism, homophobia or any other form of hate.
You don’t have to do every day and late submissions will be accepted throughout the year.
Interpret prompts as you will and prompts don’t have to be the main focus of the work; the prompt just has to be a part of it in some way. For the free day you can do whatever you want, but the prompt of language is there for those who want a bit of guidance.
Don’t post prompts before the designated dates.
If I don’t reblog your post please give me at least 24-hours before messaging me about it because it might be that I’m just busy that day. But if there is an issue do reach out.
Have you made a sim who needs an appropriately ethnic surname? Well you’re in luck!
Hey guys I’m back today with a list of ethnic surnames! Obviously I couldn’t include all ethnicities, as it would’ve taken probably a lifetime but I’ve included a few that I’ve needed when naming my sims. Beware, some are umbrella terms (African surnames for example) as I couldn’t go so in depth into the certain countries, provinces, tribes etc. I hope this helps out and I hope I’ve done a decent job at this!
You dont have to be rich to do a bit of this actually
RIP Medical Debt is a charity (and therefore takes donations). They buy the rights to medical debt and then forgive them. So far they’ve forgiven over 1B in medical debt.
So a little ray of hope for someone out there today.
Oliver then proceeded to detail how with $50 and knowledge of the law he was able to successfully apply online to create a debt buying company named “Central Asset Recovery Professionals,” or as Oliver put it, “CARP” named after “a bottom-feeding fish.”
After setting up a rudimentary website for CARP, the satirical, but still real company was offered a $15 million package of medical debt for $60,000.
Oliver explained that the debt was out of statute, which means it is the kind of debt that a collector can only continue to collect, but not sue the debtor for.
Then, instead of chasing down the 9,000 debtors in the debt package as a normal collection agency would, Oliver decided to stage the largest one-time giveaway in television history and work with the nonprofit RIP Medical Debt to forgive the $15 million with no consequences for the debtors.
something about the wave of Alfred Molina thirst makes me think of that “Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny” essay. shan’t elaborate right now but give me a moment.
I’m sorry, the what essay?
so glad you asked
it was this article, “We All Simp for Alfred Molina” by Chingy Nea, that made me think of it, particularly this paragraph that one assumes the Nea must have composed whilst drooling like a cartoon wolf:
But gravity isn’t all Molina brings to the role [of Doc Ock]; he carries with him a stunning degree of raw sexual magnetism. As a larger man, Molina really carries his massive appendages, moves deliberately with a menacing cool and delivers one-liners in a sultry arch tone. The physicality of the role also plays into it with Octavius in an open trench coat with his titties out and with a bit of his paunch hanging over the metal tentacle corset around his waist, letting us really take in the beauty of his body.
it’s Nea’s appreciation for Molina’s physicality, specifically the fond attention drawn to his visible paunch, that made me think of R.S. Benedict’s essay “Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny.” it’s a good read but also a long one, so I’ll summarize: Benedict posits that current standards of American attractiveness stem from post-9/11 anxiety - “When a nation feels threatened, it gets swole,” she writes - and has created a national mentality of bodies as commodities to be honed to perfection without indulging in any of the pleasure a body can bring, a vessel disjointed from any sense of self and meant only to be looked at with awe.
she opens particularly by noting the very particular brand of sexless-ness that pervades mainstream media, leading to action heroes whose beautiful faces and implausibly sculpted muscles are attractive in theory but also seem to exist in a world apart from anything like genuine sensuality. their bodies are inhuman in their perfection, and this comes at the cost of doing anything as human as fucking. to quote:
In the films of the Eighties and Nineties, leading actors were good looking, yes, but still human. Kurt Russel’s Snake Plissken was a hunk, but in shirtless scenes his abs have no definition. Bruce Willis was handsome, but he’s more muscular now than he was in the Nineties, when he was routinely branded a bona fide sex symbol. And when Isabella Rosselini strips in Blue Velvet, her skin is pale and her body is soft. She looks vulnerable and real.
Benedict mostly speculates about the neutered nature of DC and Marvel’s movie characters, but they’re hardly the only blockbusters falling into this trend. Alison Wilmore’s “Why Doesn’t The Rock Get to Make Out More Onscreen?” calls attention to this with a particular focus on Disney’s new Jungle Cruise movie, describing Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt’s roles as “characters who are to Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen as Funko Pops are to people,” with their inevitable kiss playing out “as though they’re dolls whose heads are being smashed together by a child enacting a rudimentary idea of passion.”
similarly to Benedict’s point, Wilmore notes that “There’s a striking divide between the body that Johnson is so famous for and the characters who are supposed to inhabit it… his characters rarely if ever seem to take pleasure in this physicality beyond its capacity to intimidate and serve as a spectacle.”
and by now you’re probably saying okay Makenzie that’s swell, but what the fuck does this have to do with people thirsting over Alfred Molina? well, look at him.
take in the tits and paunch Nea loves so much, and compare Molina’s body with the kind that have dominated the biggest movies of the last decade or so, since the MCU set the tone for the future of the superhero genre. Quoth Benedict again:
Actors are more physically perfect than ever: impossibly lean, shockingly muscular, with magnificently coiffed hair, high cheekbones, impeccable surgical enhancements, and flawless skin, all displayed in form-fitting superhero costumes with the obligatory shirtless scene thrown in to show off shredded abs and rippling pecs. And this isn’t just the lead and the love interest: supporting characters look this way too, and even villains (frequently clad in monstrous makeup) are still played by conventionally attractive performers. Even background extras are good-looking, or at least inoffensively bland.
Molina’s Doc Ock isn’t bland; he has character in the form of features that are, increasingly, written off as too ugly or undesirable for film. I think the reason people may be reacting so strongly to him nearly two decades after the movie’s release is that a pretty-normal looking body has now become a spectacle unto itself, by virtue of being so normal.
the current crop of superhero stars are exercised, waxed, dieted, dehydrated, and quite probably steroided into something the average person could never achieve on their own, a body that’s fun to look at but is ultimately alien to anything most people will ever experience. whereas what we’re looking at with Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock is something like a body that many people actually have, a body that many people have known and loved, a body that, frankly, many people have had sex with - certainly more than have ever had sex with, say, Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers all hairless and shiny fresh out of getting shot up with super soldier serum.
it’s a sexy body because it’s a palpably human body, in a genre that increasingly shuns exactly that.
plus, you know, those are just some nice tits.
Both of these articles are worth a read, but this post sums them both up pretty nicely.
got my first positive review lads :)
Ok I now have one (1) thought to add to this sorry for any typos I’m wearing two (2) wrist braces.
So, another thing about Molina’s physicality is that he is a stage actor. I’ve noticed that stage actors, because of the fact that stage is about the ‘single take’ and there are no cuts, no post-processing, no close-ups, coupled with backstage being communal and stage acting generally having this higher requirement for the present and the reality of inhabiting a human body in a physical space, means that stage actors are a presence on screen that is more magnetic and more sensual, not even sexually just inhabiting the senses.
And not only that, but when you’re backstage you have to get comfortable with your nudity and everyone else seeing it real damn quick, because unless you’re in a really modern theatre building (not very often, most theatres are pretty old and labyrinthine), the space backstage is limited, and there are sometimes super-fast costume changes required. Theatre, also, has always been far more rauncy, liberal, and risque than cinema. There was never a Hays Code for theatre, and the MPAA has no power there.
So I would be surprised if a significant part of how Molina carries himself isn’t to do with the fact that he’s a stage actor, and has had vastly different training and experience with that intense ‘you inhabit every inch of a body’ self-awareness without the societally-normalised shame or intense discomfort with one’s own body–a lack of anxiety that the viewer twigs as intensely attractive (after all, confidence is the core of ‘sexy’ as a concept).
this is an excellent and insightful addition, thank you for typing through the pain!
It always kind of startles me when the Everyone Is Sexy But No One Is Horny essay gets mentioned, because I can’t help but remember that the same person wrote that stunningly terrible “fanfic is a terrible form of literature, actively erases queer stories, and if any of you really cared about social justice you’d be going after Amazon’s working practices rather than disagreeing with me” take, and then have to reconcile this knowledge with how she wrote such an honestly bloody insightful treatise on sexuality and sensuality in modern media as well. It’s one thing to say, “I am large; I contain multitudes,” it’s another to see such a stark example of it.
