#how my brain works

[strangelittlestories]

Today I plan to tell you That I love you.

The words lurk all day Lurching, lost, round my stomach Rattling up my throat Occasionally threatening To rock up early And open themselves to strangers.

I keep them on track Barely.

Finally, After dinner, (Vodka fog from ill-advised cocktails  Thickening in my eyes) I open my mouth Heart pumping pure sincerity And what comes out (those sweet three little words) is:

“I hate buses.”

“What?” You’re not angry (Yet)

“I really mean it.”  This is true. But in a minute My brain will catch up to my heart.

“What?!?” You repeat. Louder. Amused, but perturbed. The bartender is watching us Like dinner theatre.

Currently, this is an amusing non-sequitur. I could brush this off Let the ill-timed thought wend  its lopsided way onwards And this will be a cute anecdote.

Instead, I run after it. I chase that thought down Like I am fleeing justice.

“The thing about buses, right? Is that you never know when they’ll turn up.”

“There are literally schedules On the bus stops.” You reply, Carried along in the slipstream Of my accelerating rant.

“Schedules are at the mercy of traffic And traffic is god of chaos That calls judgement down from uncaring skies In a blare of horn honks. Don’t talk to me about schedules.”

“*Fine*. I won’t.” The tenor of that ‘fiiine’ Is a warning light. I ignore it.

“Buses turn up when they feel like it, They always take longer than you think (Because - again - traffic exists And none of us are free of sin) They don’t go where you think half the time, There is So Much Waiting And every part of the journey Is out of your control. I would rather walk for hours, I would rather cancel plans, I would hire an e-scooter Even though I think they’re Very Silly Rather than take one bus. I’d say that buses are my own personal hell But at least with hell, I know I will *get there* And I’ll be on time.”

“Sweetheart…” You say. And the warning light in your voice Flashes red Klaxons are sounding Someone is calling the president And texting their family To tell them - ironically, given how this started - That they love them. “...what the *flip*?”

I puff myself full of indignance Ready to let these fiery feelings Run their route When the right words Finally wend their weary way To my stop. I deflate And flag them down.

“I got a bus here.” I say. “Even though I hated it. I repeatedly get buses to see you Because you live far away Near no good transport And it’s quicker than walking. Just.”

“What are you trying to say?” You take my hand And it’s like you know The map of me.

“I don’t know my own feelings Most of the time. They roam where they will They keep no schedule They conform neither to the laws Of gods nor mortals

I spent a lot of time waiting for them When I was young And eventually I worked out I’ll only know they exist When they’re taking me somewhere. Often where I don’t want to go.

I know that I love you When I realise I am willing To go out of my way If it brings me to you In the end.

Because love is not just a thing That squats in your chest It’s actions you choose to take And I only notice it When I verb the noun And realise I’ve changed my life To fit it On purpose.

And I took a bus to get here To you Even though I hated it.”

And you say: “Gods you’re so fudging weird. ... I’d get a bus for you too.”

#writing #poetry #verse #slam poetry #valentine's day #feelings #how my brain works #how my heart works

[dei2dei]

Ideas: Gotta Catch 'Em All!

(look, I know one whole Pokemon reference and I'm gonna use it.)

I was tossing around ideas with @calypsid about writing events and coming up with ideas and how to write for big events - in fandom, for the monthlong ones especially, but also if you're someone looking at submitting original fiction to a themed anthology or to a zine, or when you just want to WRITE dammit but the ideas won't come. When the idea hutch is empty and the plotbuns won't come, when the creative spring is trickling or you're at the bottom of the well of inspiration, hope is not lost. We put our heads together and came up with a baker's dozen ways to get ideas and look at prompts to get new inspiration when you need it. So if you want 'em, jump below the cut!

Stop looking at words.

Look at art! Listen to music! Maybe what you need is some song lyrics to get your brain going, or art. Play Sudoku. Go to a coffee shop and watch people. Change your mental or physical environment and see what happens.

Prompt lists

Don’t limit yourself to whatever event you’re writing for! If it’s for a fandom ship week, hit up a themed month prompt list (such as Fluffuary, AUgust, or Whumptober). If you’re trying to think of ideas for a zine pitch, trawl prompt lists from fandom or creative writing websites. Mash the TVTropes random trope button until something clicks.

Tarot spreads

Even if you don’t read tarot on your own, you can find websites where you can do tarot readings. Treat it as a story prompt generator: pick three cards, one that is your protagonist, one that is their goal, one that is their obstacle. Look up the meanings. Go wild! You can use the cards for protagonists, antagonists, story arcs…

Lists

Not prompt lists - but every idea you can think of adjacent to a prompt. Tropes, colors, sayings, characters, types (e.g. species of apple, types of wildflowers, names of cocktails)...

An alphabetical list with an idea for each letter of the alphabet.

A list of 20 ideas, as close or as absolutely wild as you want.

A timed list (write ideas for 5/10/15 minutes). The first chunk may be easy, the last few minutes impossibly hard, but right in the middle where your mind is starting to stretch? That may be perfect.

Once you have a list of any flavor, start looking for patterns: that’s a sign your brain is interested in SOMETHING. What ideas/symbols keep showing up?

Look for unexpected intersections

Ideas or prompts may have unexpected links. Randomize your list! Consider resonances between different prompts; they may seem different in a different order. Pick a not obvious combination of two prompts and follow it to the end - what if you put together “pirate” and “arranged marriage”? Use a wheel spinning picker and see what two things the computer matches up.

You can also take a pair of commonly-associated opposites, pick out their most common stereotypical traits. Now swap them. 

Play with other media

Take characters from one piece of media, the setting from a second (hey look, a fusion/AU!). What resonates between them? Grab a non-fiction book about a topic you’re interested in and read that. Ideas might percolate from a number of unrelated sources into one Super Cool Idea.

Change the setting

Turn a sci-fi show into a fantasy setting, or vice-versa. Add monsters. Add gods; add gods with reality-bending dice; add gods with reality-bending dice who are malicious. Flip your characters' genders. Remove the concept of gender entirely. Send your characters to the dimension next door, where only one thing has changed. Or many things. Or everything. Take the characters out of the plot of your fandom, or replace them with side characters; what changes?

Change your mind

Take the prompt at face value. Or, treat it sarcastically. Subvert the trope - or don't subvert the trope. Write the thing you've always wanted to see, even if you think it won't work. Turn everything about the prompt on its head and look underneath for spare ideas. Come at it from every angle you can think of.

Other people

Talk to people about the prompt. Read Reddit or Tumblr conversations, even ones only vaguely associated with the prompt. Let your mind go in new and interesting directions. 

Cool words

Have you run across an awesome word you wish you could use in a story, or a turn of phrase? Write a story around that. Or if you have a list of cool words you keep anyway, flip back to it, see if there are any that might come together in a story.

Titles

If you have a title you've always wanted to use, let the title inspire the fic instead of the other way around. 

First Sentences

Just start writing first sentences, whatever ones come to mind. Don’t be precious about them; the goal isn’t perfect sentences, the goal is something to get your brain moving. Don’t worry about continuing the story yet! Try and get a bunch down without writing any more of the story. If one speaks to you and demands to be written, go back to it after you’ve got your list down.

Deconstruct a story you love and then rebuild it!

Retell a favorite story (or a hated story you thought you could do better). How did they do X? Why did you love (or hate) something so much? Can you do that with some of your ideas? Take out the main character and their sidekick; how does the story read with just the secondary characters? What if you add someone new? How would the story look different as a documentary, a chatfic, an epistolary collection?

Some Links:

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (https://sf-encyclopedia.com/) - includes almost 15,000 entries for words associated with sci-fi. Scroll through, pick (3, 5, 7…) and shove them into a story. Or learn about new tropes/concepts/ideas.

Deep Water Prompts (https://deepwaterwritingprompts.tumblr.com/) - some Weird Prompts (several hundred) you can twist and interpret to your heart’s desire.

Kathleen Jennings’ short story “Some Ways to Retell a Fairy Tale” (https://www.tor.com/2023/11/08/some-ways-to-retell-a-fairy-tale-kathleen-jennings) is also a great list of ideas for ways to, well, retell any story.

#writing advice #writeblr #creative writing #writing prompts #ficblr #dei thoughts #calypsid thoughts #how my brain works #making words for fun #and rarely profit

[sapphicgoblinblog]

My three braincells

Source: Yuyushiki (anime)

#thoughts #my brain #how my brain works #Yuyushiki #anime #google it #if you dare #lol #lesbian #LGBT #cute #funny

[edge-oftheworld]

red desert->red line->starting line->flatline->bloodline->bloodhound->greyhound->greenlight->daylight->midnight->waste the night

someone play this game with me

#yes I know youngblood also has blood in it for the Easter egg bloodhound stans but it’s in the wrong spot #and I would need a proper flowchart for that with branches and stuff #can’t wait for new songs simply to fill in whatever this is #it’s like that game where you change one letter at a time to make a new word #5sos #5 seconds of summer #could do another one with the word ‘out’ with outer space/out of my limit/gotta get out/over and out/over and over? #and the words words ‘broken’ and ‘catch’ or smth else on sgfg I think #how my brain works

[whumpster-dumpster]

Thoughts at occur to me at four AM: Out of context, making spaghetti sounds like a pretty whumpy process 🤔

Bend them to your will

Break them with your bare hands

Force them underwater

Stir the pot, shake things up a little

Have patience. You’ll soften them up eventually

Voila. Now they serve and satiate you

Any limp, sad little leftovers are tossed away or left to be forgotten in the cold

Hmmm

#whump #food #how my brain works

[its-eliza]

#how my brain works

[shapeshiftershenan1gans]

#how my brain works

[number1abbasupporter]

i gotta put faces to ppl so like whatever your pfp is that’s how i see you. if it’s a person i think ur that person. if it’s a random picture i attach that picture to a stick figure and call it a day

#how my brain works

[calmmyfears]

i ordered way too much stuff online 😳 let's ignore that it's all stuff i actually do need, i've spent too much money and therefore i should be send to hell.

#adulting #how my brain works

[kninedlog]

Me: No brain! We go to one fandom a day, do you wanna look werid!

Brain: Hehehe...ninja Turtle meets sneaky raccoon...hehehe

Me: Stop!

Brain: New OC baby...hehe

Me: Enough! We have to focus!

Brain: Ooooh that game looks interesting

Me: Nooooooo

#fandoms #how my brain works #how its working today at least #like take a chill pill yo #tmnt #sly cooper #oc's #videogames #video games #tv shows #internet

[muzaktomyears]

I'm sleeping loads (probably some long covid thing + the heat) and earlier I woke up from a very vivid dream that Paul killed someone with a hammer when he was younger but he never got found out, and he wrote 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' in the same way that Taylor Swift wrote all those songs about her and Harry Styles killing someone in a car accident

#how my brain works

[dei2dei]

Are there any kinds of soulmate AUs you're particularly fond of? Me, my favourite has to be the one where your soulmate's injuries show up as markings on your own skin, there's just so much to play with there; "you have what will be your soulmate's first words to you, written on your body" is a guilty pleasure, because it's fun but also breaks down for me whenever I start thinking about it too much.

I am not a huge soulmates fan because I tend to find a lot of flaws in the premises and then want to dive into how it all works. The only type I've written so far is the colorblind AU one which I had a lot of fun with (and the sequel is living in unfinished WIP land, but has notes for finishing)... but my brain started doing things like: How does cinema work in a setting where a large percentage of people may only see in monochrome? But how do you film, or DO you film, for those who might also be panchromatic? How does medical care work when your doctor may not be able to see color differences? What hierarchy do you get with medical professionals and who can/cannot see color - can only certain panchromatic people be doctors of certain types, or would they have nurses who can see color and advise accordingly? What about traffic signals, the fashion industry? Military, with camouflage and map-making? At what point would you just *need* panchromatic vision to be able to do a certain role? And my brain just does not want to dive into something without all that, and when it's something like the Mortal Kombat fandom where colors are important, and two of my faves are in very visual-detail-focused careers... oof. The ones about first words interest me, but things like "born with a matching symbol" - well, why wouldn't you have a database of those symbols/birthmarks? I know we have one person for the MK fandom bang doing a soulmate AU so I'm very curious to read that and see if they convert me to a new type!

#mortal kombat #but not exclusively #soulmate au #headcanons #dei thoughts #how my brain works

[upsidedownwithsteve]

Wasn't going to say anything because I know how your brain works.... but I saw someone mention reading WTTW to help with the camp steve pain and boy I am SO happy it was SDMC that was chosen and not WTTW cause brooo. Idk if I can handle that kinda pain lol

but who would win custody of Bruce though 🥺

#how my brain works #😭😭😭 #ask

[edge-oftheworld]

tbt that time I followed someone on main bc their username reminded me of ydgtp and for some reason I managed to solve their technology problems even though I am the least technologically savvy person born after 2000. I still think of that person sometimes

#ydgtp shitpost I guess #how my brain works #one thing I do be knowing is ‘paste with source format’

[flamingredanon]

𝓦𝓱𝔂 𝓷𝓸𝓽 𝓳𝓾𝓼𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓲𝓽 𝓽𝓸 𝔀𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮 𝓪 𝓯𝓲𝓬 𝓲𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓶𝓸𝓻𝓷 𝓲𝓷𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓸𝓯 𝔀𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓭𝓾𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓾𝓷𝓰𝓸𝓭𝓵𝔂 𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓼 & 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓽𝓸 𝓮𝓭𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓽 𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻? - 📬

Because sometimes I'll forget the cool idea or dream I had, people will see my fics whenever they see it and editing a fic later isn't a huge hassle for me.

#lizzyask #also that cursive type lettering is hard to read to me #and sometimes the morning doesnt give me fic writing vibes #so yeah #how my brain works

[roses-and-whisky]

According to personality-database.com, Bakugo is an ENTJ. I'm an INTJ. Which helps explain why I find him relatable. So if Katsuki is like a grenade, would an INTJ be like a volcano?

And now I'm wondering what an implosion quirk would look like. Would it look like Thirteen's quirk? Or a quirk that makes things implode by increasing the surrounding pressure, like a submarine that's gone too deep? That's kinda cool. That could also be pretty dangerous. UA would definitely put limits on /that/ quirk. Omg this gives me so many ideas!

#bnha headcanons #mha headcanons #text post #how my brain works #I'm an ♒ ☀️/🌙 & ♐⬆️ so I feel like that quirk would suit me #personal #kit's hcs