after hearing "simply having a wonderful christmas time" by paul mccartney 74 times while working in retail, I came to the conclusion that they shot the wrong beatle
the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.
sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.
you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.
it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.
but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.
they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.
they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.
barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.
and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.
but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.
they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!
this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.
"tomato is a fruit" people piss me off so bad. Yeah and. Lettuce is a leaf. Carrot is a root. Potato is a stem. Vegetable doesn't exist in nature we made that up. And aren't you glad🥬🥦🥒🥕🥔🥕🌽🍅🍆🫑🫛🍠🥑
This might seem like an "old man yells at cloud" situation, but it's just wild growing up and being told how dangerous distracted driving is - how, at highway speeds, you can traverse the length of a football field (100 yards, 91 meters) in a matter of seconds - how one split second sending a text while driving could result in a potential fatal crash, and then getting on the road as a driver and being surrounded by billboards. Their entire purpose is to catch one's attention, so they're lining major roads, which tend to be highways. How is it that you're told how important it is to never be distracted while driving, but still being advertised to?
At best, this type of advertising is an eyesore to pedestrians and motorists and a general waste of electricity to light it, and at worst, it is an active danger considering they are there to advertise and therefore, must catch people's attention.
I'm not even against advertising in theory, but this particular mode bothers me so much and I hate how pervasive it is - especially in large cities or highways.
things you can say instead of "I'm bad at writing" or "my writing sucks"
What's wrong with saying those things? First of all, you're insulting yourself and you don't deserve that ❤️ Second of all, those statements aren't going to get you any kind of reassurance in response. The only thing anyone can really say is "no, you're/it's not" - and that will almost certainly just sound patronizing to you when you're in a funk.
Focus in on your actual feelings and thoughts instead of dumping it all under the umbrella of "bad." Even if you're only talking to yourself, you'll get a better understanding of what's actually happening and a more realistic impression of yourself and your work.
I'm not satisfied with how this story turned out.
I feel like the ending is kind of weak on this one.
I'm feeling really uncertain about my characterization in this story
Is this plot too simple? I'm worried no one will bother reading it.
Is this plot too complex? I'm worried it's meandering and that my readers will get lost or bored.
Reading my own story doesn't give me the same sense of awe that I feel when I read [another author]'s story.
I don't think I achieved what I was aiming for with this story.
I'm worried no one will like this story, so I want to tear it down preemptively before anyone else can do so.
I'm worried I'm going to disappoint the people who liked [another story I wrote]
This story is really difficult to write. It's so much harder than I thought it would be / than my last story was!
I don't seem to write stories in the same way or with the same speed or length as other writers.
I feel like no one pays attention to my writing.
Feel free to add more examples in the notes. And please remember that you don't suck at writing and your writing isn't bad. You're just being your own harshest critic. ❤️
hey guys, i know you all want updates to my bakery enemies comic! i AM still going to finish it, i have NOT given up on it, and i'm sorry this hiatus has been so much longer than i anticipated. getting the second wind i need to work on it can be kind of tough (especially since we're in the final stretch, so when i start working on it again i want to make it all the way to the FINISH), but it is still absolutely in development!
anyway, this is also to say, you don't need to tell me you want updates. I know you do, and I can't give a clear answer as to when the next update will be, because i'm not sure when that inspiration will strike... but... if you're going to ask for updates, please don't do it on my other works. It's kind of disheartening to have comments on a new, unrelated work say "but what about beau?". If you want to ask about beau, at least ask it on a beau-related post, please!
Some way, somehow (up to you), Dan, Danny, and Dani all end up living with Vlad.
Vlad is ecstatic. The three D's aren't, but it's not like they have a choice.
To push things forward, they end up begrudgingly going to a Wayne Gala with him, and like most gala kids, they were subjected to forceful, nosy, uncomfortable, and unnecessary questions from adults they don't like, and they know, don't really care.
One of the few obvious questions would be, 'How old are you?'.
Dan, despite being in a clone body of Danny, grows just a bit faster and taller than him and refuses to be the same age as that twerp. So he says that he's one year older than Danny.
Danny, who is absolutely pissed that his clone body is growing faster than him and also refuses to be the same age as that asshole, uses his actual age.
Dani, on the other hand, is having some internal struggles about being a clone and how her body and mind were basically forced to become more mature than she actually is. How she desperately wishes to be a child but will never have the opportunity to be. Or how she wants to be her own person but doesn't know how, and is simply borrowing from everyone around her.
She gets the dreaded question, 'How old are you?'. She doesn't want to be too close to Dan or Danny and 'copy' them. But she doesn't want to be too far off from them because she's really not much smaller than Danny, and also finds comfort in being close to them even if she is just 'copying' them. So she says she's a year younger than Danny.
The Gala goes on, yada yada yada. Then they go home.
A few weeks later, one of the D's (I'm thinking Dan) finds an online article about the Masters family and begins laughing their ass off.
Apparently, Irish twins were one thing. But Irish triplets? That had the general public and social elite in an uproar for weeks to come.
at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
finding out how many minutes of music people listen to in a year is so interesting especially as someone whose stats are comparatively low. how do you 60k minutes per year people focus on anything. that’s a skill you should put on your resume
Everytime I go into the Zosopp tag, I just see people SCREAMING CRYING SOBBING about the lack of posts IN the Zosopp tag. THE ZOSOPP ECONOMY IS IN SHAMBLES