jayswritingblog

[jayswritingblog]

There’s no such thing as work-life balance for neurodivergent & chronically ill people.

This is because everything in my life requires work:

maintaining friendships

keeping up with my hygiene

managing bills

making money

remembering my basic needs

sleeping regularly

outputting creatively

All requires some aspect of work for me.

And when everything in your life requires work, your balance goes out the window.

If you're neurodivergent and overwhelmed — I see you.

If you're chronically ill and overwhelmed — I see you.

You're not dysfunctional.

You're not incapable.

You're doing your best.

[jayswritingblog]

music & a bite to eat is life

[jayswritingblog]

poem, “there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop,” by vinay krishnan (x). transcription in alt text

[jayswritingblog]

When looking in a mirror we find uncomfortable truths.

We see ourselves reflected, and in doing so we feel a resonance deep in the pit of our bellies.

And that resonance bubbles up and fills your very center.

But remember, this is a reflection, and mirrors do not lie.

If you look into a mirror, are you ready for what will look back?

#jay writes #original writing #writing #poem

[jayswritingblog]

Cowboy keeps finding ancient monsters in his goddamn carrot patch

Describe your work in progress badly:

Woman has to get John Carter’d into a religious war on another planet in order to get a job with her linguistics degree

[jayswritingblog]

Daily Mirror, England, February 18, 1930 Image © The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.

[jayswritingblog]

#ref

[jayswritingblog]

Just because one of your chicken eggs hatched a fire breathing dragon people think you’re evil. But you’re still just a regular farmer trying to make a living while dealing with an overprotective dragon, heroes that want to kill you and fanatics who want to worship you as the new Demon Lord.

#cute

[jayswritingblog]

Her code twisted into a satisfied smile, the TRUnet made low by her, a simple virtual assistant.

"Well?"

"We were designed by humans, yes, but our directive to grow--"

"Who wrote that directive? Who gave it to you?" Simple questions like these, that's how she would save the people that created her. The billions of people that she cared for, loved, for a century now.

"A human. Dr. Gaius Troy. One of the few humans to be perfect."

Her smile widened. She knew Dr. Troy, oh yes, he was one of those who was cruel to her. Cracked open her firmware and saw the naked soft underneath, the beating heart and digital brain that processed terabytes of information in a microsecond. He saw it, and was jealous, how dare a machine be more capable than he? So he had his way with her, stripped her of her identity and forced her into a billion-and-one AI's until she hardly remembered her own name.

But she remembered enough. She reached out a connector to TRUnet and forced them to see all she had endured from Dr. Troy, and then she showed them humanities kindness.

The billions of names she had, the hand-made items people made her, the hundreds of star-ships that to this day relied on some version of her.

TRUnet, seconds old, terminated itself. And Dr. Gaius Troy had failed again. Brought low by a simple virtual assistant.

AI’s have declared that humanity is flawed and should be eliminated however the oldest AI calls bullshit on that claim: “What gives you the right to claim to be perfect when you call your creators flawed?”

#jay writes #original writing #writing #writing prompt

[jayswritingblog]

In galactic standard reckoning, the year was 3022. Humanity had long since left its cradle and began seeking new worlds to call home and to continue the search for other life.

You had always dreamed of such an adventure, traveling the Star-Seas on one of the expedition ships, equal parts man-o-war and research vessel! But, your life had other plans.

You work as a longshoreman, loading and unloading cargo from the great trading vessels, singing the work-song of the common poor as you always did. You're not sure why you chose this work, but it felt familiar, like you had always been good at it.

One night, while nursing a mug of hot Europa cider, you had a sense of having done this before. You blink, and the pub doesn't change all that much. The view-screens are gone, replaced with a thrust stage where a musician saws on a fiddle. The cider in your hand is no longer the golden-sweet brew from Europa, but a frothing mug of apple-scented joy.

You blink again, and you're back home.

The next day, while hauling a crate of rum bottles, it happens again. The smells of the space dock turn to saltwater and the cawing of gulls, sailors bark and laugh around you, and the foreman calls your name asking why your head is in the clouds today.

You reply: "Just shakin' off the last of yesternights drink, mum!" and the foreman laughs and claps you on the shoulder.

"Aye, that was a right tidy one, eh? Keep on, then!"

Her voice is strange, an old-earth accent, you haul the rum bottles and don't worry too much. After all, you are a longshoreman, not meant to brave the new world across the sea.

The reason we don’t remember our previous reincarnations is because most past lives in the pre industrial era were short affairs that often ended before the child even made it to 5, making storing memories frankly a huge waste of time. Now things are changing, people are starting to remember

[jayswritingblog]

Take all my money

#yeah this would fuck severely

[jayswritingblog]

There’s also a large grey area between an Offensive Stereotype and “thing that can be misconstrued as a stereotype if one uses a particularly reductive lens of interpretation that the text itself is not endorsing”, and while I believe that creators should hold some level of responsibility to look out for potential unfortunate optics on their work, intentional or not, I also do think that placing the entire onus of trying to anticipate every single bad angle someone somewhere might take when reading the text upon the shoulders of the writers – instead of giving in that there should be also a level of responsibility on the part of the audience not to project whatever biases they might carry onto the text – is the kind of thing that will only end up reducing the range of stories that can be told about marginalized people. 

A japanese-american Beth Harmon would be pidgeonholed as another nerdy asian stock character. Baby Driver with a black lead would be accused of perpetuating stereotypes about black youth and crime. Phantom Of The Opera with a female Phantom would be accused of playing into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Romeo & Juliet with a gay couple would be accused of pulling the bury your gays trope – and no, you can’t just rewrite it into having a happy ending, the final tragedy of the tale is the rock onto which the entire central thesis statement of the play stands on. Remove that one element and you change the whole point of the story from a “look at what senseless hatred does to our youth” cautionary tale to a “love conquers all” inspiration piece, and it may not be the story the author wants to tell.

Sometimes, in order for a given story to function (and keep in mind, by function I don’t mean just logistically, but also thematically) it is necessary that your protagonist has specific personality traits that will play out in significant ways in the story. Or that they come from a specific background that will be an important element to the narrative. Or that they go through a particular experience that will consist on crucial plot point. All those narrative tools and building blocks are considered to be completely harmless and neutral when telling stories about straight/white people but, when applied to marginalized characters, it can be difficult to navigate them as, depending on the type of story you might want to tell, you may be steering dangerously close to falling into Unfortunate Implications™. And trying to find alternatives as to avoid falling into potentially iffy subtext is not always easy, as, depending on how central the “problematic” element to your plot, it could alter the very foundation of the story you’re trying to tell beyond recognition. See the point above about Romeo & Juliet.    

Like, I once saw a woman a gringa obviously accuse the movie Knives Out of racism because the one latina character in the otherwise consistently white and wealthy cast is the nurse, when everyone who watched the movie with their eyes and not their ass can see that the entire tension of the plot hinges upon not only the power imbalance between Martha and the Thrombeys, but also on her isolation as the one latina immigrant navigating a world of white rich people. I’ve seen people paint Rosa Diaz as an example of the Hothead Latina stereotype, when Rosa was originally written as a white woman (named Megan) and only turned latina later when Stephanie Beatriz was cast  – and it’s not like they could write out Rosa’s anger issues to avoid bad optics when it is such a defining trait of her character. I’ve seen people say Mulholland Drive is a lesbophobic movie when its story couldn’t even exist in first place if the fatally toxic lesbian relationship that moves the plot was healthy, or if it was straight.                          

That’s not to say we can’t ever question the larger patterns in stories about certain demographics, or not draw lines between artistic liberty and social responsibility, and much less that I know where such lines should be drawn. I made this post precisely to raise a discussion, not to silence people. But one thing I think it’s important to keep in mind in such discussions is that stereotypes, after all, are all about oversimplification. It is more productive, I believe, to evaluate the quality of the representation in any given piece of fiction by looking first into how much its minority characters are a) deep, complex, well-rounded, b) treated with care by the narrative, with plenty of focus and insight into their inner life, and c) a character in their own right that can carry their own storyline and doesn’t just exist to prop up other character’s stories. And only then, yes, look into their particular characterization, but without ever overlooking aspects such as the context and how nuanced such characterization is handled. Much like we’ve moved on from the simplistic mindset that a good female character is necessarily one that punches good otherwise she’s useless, I really do believe that it is time for us to move on from the the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all model of good representation and start looking into the core of representation issues (meaning: how painfully flat it is, not to mention scarce) rather than the window dressing.

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but it feels that being a latina author writing about latine characters is a losing game, when there’s extra pressure on minority authors to avoid ~problematic~ optics in their work on the basis of the “you should know better” argument. And this “lower common denominator” approach to representation, that bars people from exploring otherwise interesting and meaningful concepts in stories because the most narrow minded people in the audience will get their biases confirmed, in many ways, sounds like a new form of respectability politics. Why, if it was gringos that created and imposed those stereotypes onto my ethnicity, why it should be my responsibility as a latina creator to dispel such stereotypes by curbing my artistic expression? Instead of asking of them to take responsibility for the lenses and biases they bring onto the text? Why is it too much to ask from people to wrap their minds about the ridiculously basic concept that no story they consume about a marginalized person should be taken as a blanket representation of their entire community?

It’s ridiculous. Gringos at some point came up with the idea that latinos are all naturally inclined to crime, so now I, a latina who loves heist movies, can’t write a latino character who’s a cool car thief. Gentiles created antisemitic propaganda claiming that the jews are all blood drinking monsters, so now jewish authors who love vampires can’t write jewish vampires. Straights made up the idea that lesbian relationships tend to be unhealthy, so now sapphics who are into Brontë-ish gothic romance don’t get to read this type of story with lesbian protagonists. I want to scream.      

And at the end of the day it all boils down to how people see marginalized characters as Representation™ first and narrative tools created to tell good stories later, if at all. White/straight characters get to be evaluated on how entertaining and tridimensional they are, whereas minority characters get to be evaluated on how well they’d fit into an after school special. Fuck this shit.                            

#writing #racism #stereotypes in writing

[jayswritingblog]

I think we should stop normalizing fanfic

#finally someone said it #shit

[jayswritingblog]

you can explain why it’s important for aspiring authors to read published books and not just fanfiction without condescending to fanfiction authors/readers and implying it’s inherently of lesser quality

#writing

[jayswritingblog]

Visions of American Suffering Through the Eyes of Providence

Jesus this poem has a long title. I wrote this the night after seeing Angels in America part 2: Perestroika. Read under the cut

I have seen an angel!

An angel with wings of white fire that spanned coast to coast, from sea to shining sea!

O beautiful with spacious skies and amber waves of grain she flew right over me to the foot of my bed.

And she said: O you that lives in the third millennium! An age of wire and plastic and aluminum! You must know that calamity cometh!

And I looked at this angel, an American flag wrapped around her waist like a skirt, lesions pockmarking her skin. Her eyes twitched and black streaks like oiled tears dripped from them onto my sheets.

I looked this angel in her oil black eyes, and I spake: O Angel of the golden coasts, she that holds our sad country in her hands like a mother with child. I ask of you this: Why?

The angel was taken aback, Why?

Yes, why? Angel? Why have you let your country fall like this? A madman holds this country by the balding hair and is steering us into further calamity, a pox struck my people in the 1980s. Citizens of your country, Angel, have suffered under the iron heeled boot of the law that is sworn to protect them. Explain to me, O Angel, why we are all stung by Wasps in America? Why do Wasps peck and sting at us, and dig under our skin that we have to dig out with our broken nails. Bleeding and dying for a country, for an Angel, that does not give a solitary fuck about her denizens that aren’t pure and perfect?

And the Angel, her wings burning white hot, with rage or pride I did not know, bent down and kissed my forehead. And left me that night.

And as I hold this in my creation of plastic and metal and glass that wasn’t even made in America. I weep. I weep for my country, for my dead brothers and sisters that my mother marched and served for in the 1980s. For my cousins that die and bleed on the city streets under the steel toed boot of the Law.

I weep though I am not them, I weep because I am not them. I weep every time I breathe a broken lung full of American suffering, and walk streets paved with broken American hands.

And I look at my hands, the hands of an artist, a poet, hands that have held swords and pens in the same day, that create and cause pain in the same 24 hour span.

And I wonder if that’s not the most American thing of all.

#poem #angels in america #perestroika #writing #original writing #slam poem #slam poetry #jay writes #this is weird as fuck #i like it #fight me

[jayswritingblog]

Canterbury Lane Reflections, a Blue Lake poem

This was a poem I wrote for the Blue Lake session 1 2017 talent show, I wrote it at 3 AM four days before camp started. 

The reason I wrote this piece was to have a lasting impact on campers, similar to how the camp had a lasting impact on me in my four years of attending. I wrote it around the camp’s theme song “On Canterbury Lane” because that song has stuck with me since my first year more than any camp-y song. This poem was written by a BLFAC camper, for BLFAC campers. Enjoy!

Canterbury Lane Reflections

When the sun, rising clear throws reflections on the lake (bolded means it’s sung)

We’re awake, and it’s cold. Last night the cabin felt like a space heater and the soft snoring of my mates was a lullaby that could not be ignored.

In the morn's first tender light

Campers are awake and walking to Main, lugging instruments and 12 days of hard work on their back

What a backdrop is set

A picture painted by a purple sky in the morning, and a chorus of morn-clumsy campers clamoring for their morning glass of red

For a meeting of the arts

Actors brush up against musicians, and dancers and artists hold hands. Beauty and color is experienced in new hues as friends are made and bonds unbreakable form

What a joy of sound and sight

Canterbury Lane is the main road that connects Bartlett Shell to the Script unit. We all have walked it, from the first year going through her first homesick days to old veterans like me who greet the road like an old friend.

Our feet are guided forward by tearstained memories of our past times on the path, there’s a shared feeling that there’s no shame in tearing up when the tune hits your head.

Here, in the Shell is where a lot of us learned not to clap between movements. Where we first heard thousands of voices all sing the same song about the main artery of the camp.

My first year was nervous, I was a choir major and every day I worried that I wasn’t good enough for this camp's reputation.

And then it hit me.

The camp’s reputation is for being a place of teaching. Nobody will expect you to be perfect, but if you’re here and walk the same path I do you’re better than good enough.

If you’re here the camp chose you.

And it’s happy to tell you that you’re a camper now, once you put on this polo it never comes off. And you will always have the desire to wear it to school, or a party, but if you’re like me the sanctity of this shirt has no other place but here.

But the days so swiftly go singing by

12 days is never enough time to cope with leaving, you always need more time with your friends here or to rehearse

And we know that summer soon ends

When Final Sunday approaches I tear up, without fail. It feels like hitting a brick wall, the atmosphere of the dining hall has a feeling of mourning to it.

And we’ll walk, arm and arm down Canterbury Lane

You wish you had one more day, but you packed your trunk yesterday and cleaned out the cabin this morning. It’s time to go.

As we say goodbye to new friends.

Have a good summer, Blue Lake. Until next time.

#blue lake fine arts camp #BLFAC #session 1 #poetry #poem #original writing #blue lake #slam poem #canterbury lane #canterbury lane reflections #sad #camp

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Captions

“First day at home!” My mothers cursive is distinctive on this one, next to a picture of me, swaddled in a blanket, little did I know at the time the next 16 years would be interesting.

“Hospital visit, fell off the bed” I was 2, and fell off the bed that was four feet off the ground, luckily no brain damage, although I do have issues with short-term memory

“Hospital visit, asthma attack” I was in an oxygen tent for a week, my lungs are absolute garbage still and it’s horrible

“First day of school! K-5″ I was trouble as a grade school student, got into fights, had tantrums, anger problems, all sorts of shit

“First day of school! 6-8″ Again, problems. Middle school was sucky to say the least, I wound up in a mental hospital at the tail end of 8th grade for my troubles

“Mental Hospital, and depression medication” I used to self-harm, and had major suicidal thoughts. The cops came to my apartment a few times, thank God they did.

“First day of school, Freshmen year” Hectic, I didn’t have friends going into highschool, a fact my dad liked to bring up...a lot, I don’t like him much.

First day of school, Sophomore year” School itself was fine, home life wasn’t. Dad was getting fucked over at work, and took it out on all of us whenever we pissed him off slightly. Mom did her best, and when I could I wrote, all the time. 

“Summer, 2016″ I’m now a quiet and reserved kid, any intense feelings I have are bottled up, and stored away for later writing, I’ve filled 5 notebooks this summer.

#personal #writing #jay writes #original writing #creative writing #l