NYC Data Stories: Allyship

Let’s Have Another Bullet Point Story, Courtesy of a Friend

So I have a friend that used to be in the tumblers troupe at the renfaire as a contortionist

We were chatting online and she told me to tell you all this story.

I love Kat dearly

but she forgets that she's stupid strong and hypermobile

so one day she throws her back out

bad enough that she needed painkillers and couldn't stand upright

"But also I needed Tampons and like.  A Burrito, real bad."

she's flat on her back in her apartment when she decides this

and, in an

impeccable

leap of reasoning, decides

"I can't roll my back forward to sit/stand up like normal.

But I can ARCH my back just fine.

SO 

I'm going to do that and get on my hands and feet in a stomach-in-the-air this-shit-belongs-in-a-horror-movie-type pose,

And amble on down to the 7-11"

"And get me that Burrito"

It is, 

for context, 

after midnight in July during a wildfire so it's hot as satan's own asshole and the moon is red and shit's already generally cursed.

Imagineyou are some poor sap working nights at the world's deadest 7-11, and you hear the door jangle but you don't see anyone's head over the counters.

Whatever.

Except you keep hearing noises like there's someone in the next aisle over.  

Fucking around in the burrito section

It's also worth mentioning that Kat

1. sings whatever earworm is currently running through her head when she's not paying attention

2. sounds EXACTLY like some kind of creepy child from a horror movie when doing so

tonight's song is something from veggietales.

DUDE ACTUALLY STANDS HIS GROUND

and/or is really fucking high and isn't sure if he's tripping balls or notanyway

Kat goes up to pay for her burrito and tampons

She realizes the counter presents something of a challenge, and then demonstrates for me on her kitchen table at 4AM during a different july wildfire, 

exactly 

how she used the shelves to climb up the counter 

like one of the boston robotics beasties

dude stares at her for like, five minutes and says.

"Register's broke.”

“Oh No!” Says Kat. “Just Take ‘em.” "Really?  I can leave cash-you don't have to give me change I don't want you to get in trouble with your manager." "...Nah." "Oh!  OK!  Thank you!" "Yeah ok bye."

Shortly after she arrived back at the apartment, she got a text on her phone from the campus security about  "A Suspicious Individual" at tle 7-11. 

It took her 

FOUR

FUCKING 

YEARS

 to realize she was the suspicious individual

whenever you have problems with writing and worldbuilding for stories, just remember COCK

C- Does it have Creatures?

O- Does it Offend the church?

C-Is it Completely unhinged?

K- Does it Kick ass?

someone, reading my writing: wow great story!

me, sticking my hands in the plotholes: thanks it has pockets :)

I'm hilarious I promise

reframing monster stories is so empowering

like, Medusa protecting women’s shelters and turning abusers to stone? Empowering as hell

The Slit-Mouthed Woman targeting beauty industry mogels that profit off of women’s destructive poor body image? good

a ghostly three-headed dog going after people who run dog-fighting rings? hell yeah

fairy’s stealing children from abused homes and leaving deadly changelings behind that go after the parents? cool

the theme that always resonates me the most in stories is “the world is cruel; therefore I won’t be.”

Are you “enemies to lovers” fucked up or “found family” fucked up?

A really good tragedy is one in which it simultaneously seems like there are a million and one moments in which a single character could’ve made a different choice and everything could’ve ended up better, and like nothing could ever have averted this terrible end.

i thought of the ocean today; i thought of how the water playfully splashed us as we ran beside her, how good it felt to rest on the soft sand when we were tired, and how you used to smile at me, warmer than any sun....the summer brings me pain, but it also brings me you ⁎

why is it that whenever I am disillusioned with the world I go back to the epic of Gilgamesh

“It is the story of their becoming human together.”

This is it. This is the oldest written literary work that we know of, and it’s a story of becoming human together.

This is a story about love, and it’s a story about death, and we told this story thousands of years ago, THOUSANDS of years. We have always, always, always been wrestling with this profoundly beautiful existence and with knowing one another, while knowing that we all will die and be forgotten.

We become human by loving, but we also become human by knowing death.

And I’m just sitting here touching other human beings, another human experience, from across millennia, feeling a bit more human too through it, and I am trying very hard not to cry.

“I’m heavily inspired by all the women in my life, especially my grandmother. Growing up I heard amazing stories of her craftsmanship and how she built her house in the village with her bare hands. These hands represents strength and power, and so does the @romeandtale virtus bracelet she’s wearing. I’m happy I was able to create this moment with her, while I was in Nigeria.” —Prince Aday

NIGERIA. Lagos. 2018. A capture of Mama Aduké’s hands. © Prince Aday

me, daydreaming: stop - there’s a plot hole

me: whatever, it doesn’t matter, nobody’s gonna see it

me: mmm-buuuut-mmmm-plOT HOLE sToP

A helpful How to guide for embedding images on AO3 (yes, I even included the HTML this time)

AO3 Guides Part 1

two of my sisters think that writing fanfiction is a shameful and embarrassing hobby. So please reblog if you disagree because honestly i have to hide a piece of who i am just because they dont like it.

Family

Remember being a kid and writing a story like “yeah I’m going to make my protagonist 14. That’s a good age to join a rebellion, fight in a war, and assassinate an evil ruler. Having them be 12 just wouldn’t be realistic.”

me, reaching the part in the story where I have to kill off my favourite character even though I’ve known it was coming since the beginning: