Sure, why start being sensible now?

Slightly uncomfortable dump

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 23:09:08 +0300

catchymemes:

OP I think we need to have a talk about your definition of “slightly uncomfortable” because my levels of rage skyrocketed faster than it took Thanos to snap his fingers

russdom: forestwildflower: thenatsdorf: Keanu Thieves (via...

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 23:07:22 +0300

russdom:

forestwildflower:

thenatsdorf:

Keanu Thieves (via mushroombirdornaments)

The people running after him makes it funnier

HE LOOKS SO HAPPY

Photo

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 23:06:47 +0300

babyspicegf: babyspicegf: controversial opinion kermit the frog popularised the *looks into the...

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 23:05:37 +0300

babyspicegf:

babyspicegf:

controversial opinion kermit the frog popularised the *looks into the camera like ur on the office* gag before john krasinski could even walk and he deserves his dues

*looks into the camera like im on the muppet show*

How to put “wrote fan-fiction” on your résumé:

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 20:27:41 +0300

fivewrites:

fivewrites:

xeno-lalia:

resumespeak:

Leveraged an inventory of established fictional character and setting elements to generate a disruptive custom-curated narrative entertainment asset.

I worked in HR, handling applications and interviews, and if someone turned in that string of techno babble nonsense, I would have rejected them out of hand.

A resume doesn’t need to sound fancy or overly technical, it needs to tell us why we should hire you.

“Independent novelist/writer” is more than sufficient here. If you want to express the skills that fan fiction taught you, something like, “creative writing, editing, and publication,” will get you a lot further than… Whatever that just was.

A resume should be tailored to the position, if you can afford the time and energy for that. But if not, then just think about what writing got fandom taught you. How to respond to criticism, how to present a professional pubic face, how to correct punished mistakes, creative thinking, project planning, persuasion via emotional leverage, html formatting, office suite fluency.

There are a lot of actual, marketable skills that go into fan fiction.

How to put “I was in a zine” on your resume

Writer:

Published short fiction stories for anthology collection

Able to write short fiction within a designated word count for layout purposes (900-1500 words, 1500-2000, 3000-5000)
Wrote short articles for independent publication

Assisted with editing short stories for publication

Able to reduce or expand written content based on layout needs

Able to check for basic spelling, grammar and syntax

Familiar with Microsoft Office and Google docs

Artist:

Produced full-colour digital illustration for independent magazine

Able to produce digital illustrations optimized for both online and print display
Produced full-colour 2-page spread for art anthology

Published 4-page short comic in anthology collection for charity

Able to transfer traditional art to digital illustration
Illustrated the cover (always brag if you’re on the cover) of an independent art publication

Familiar with professional illustration tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Clip Studio Paint and stylus tablet

Merch artist / graphic designer:

Designed 2″ clear decorative double-sided keychain charm as bonus sale item

Designed 5″ x 6″ sheet of graphic stickers included in art anthology

Able to design bold graphics that are measured for laser cutting production
Designed layouts for 65-page art and writing magazine, focusing on (art placement, text layout, etc)

Able to keep layout design simple and in accordance with the project director’s chosen theme
Created promotional art, icons and banners tailored for social media sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, etc

Familiar with professional layout and design software such as Adobe Illustrator and InDesign

Running a zine

Produced an independent art and writing collection for sale / for charity

Managed (10, 20, 30) independent artists and writers out of over 500 applicants to create a short-run independent magazine

Worked in online sales and social media promotion selling an independent comics anthology

If it’s really spectacular you can brag about specific numbers

Our book raised over $4,000 for charity in under six months of production

We sold over 750 copies in two weeks of online sales

Produced a digital PDF and printed version of anthology, mailing to recipients all over the world

Communicated with printers and manufacturers of plastic accessories and paper goods, assembling professional packages of our merchandise for mailing.

Built a custom digital storefront and navigated professional market and payment systems including Paypal and Tictail / Bigcartel / Wix etc

Created promotional events to boost sales, including raffles and giveaways over social media

Organized participants through mass emails and use of social media posts on tumblr and twitter

Familiar with organizational software such as Microsoft Excel, Google spreadsheets and Trello

Added some more

stellarvisionary: ficcyshit: s t o p

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 17:54:44 +0300

stellarvisionary:

ficcyshit:

s t o p

professionaltimemeddler: Never was there a tale of more woethan that of Juliet and her Romeo Never...

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 09:10:26 +0300

professionaltimemeddler:

Never was there a tale of more woe
than that of Juliet and her Romeo

Never was there a tale of more strife
than that of Macbeth and his stabby knife

Never was there a tale of more sad
than that of Hamlet and his spooky dad

bisexuael: this is so sad alexa play despacito

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 23:23:37 +0300

bisexuael:

this is so sad alexa play despacito

01101010-01100100:before i disappear under mysterious circumstances whos gonna admit they have a...

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 23:21:21 +0300

01101010-01100100:

before i disappear under mysterious circumstances whos gonna admit they have a crush on me

monkeysky: please refrain from levitating when you touch the...

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 23:21:01 +0300

monkeysky:

please refrain from levitating when you touch the miraculous corpse of McQueen

laaylic:Mood

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 23:18:28 +0300

laaylic:

Mood

luidilovins: spreezpz: spreezpz: Therapists are just…. Common sense filters Me: yeah so I just...

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 23:17:15 +0300

luidilovins:

spreezpz:

spreezpz:

Therapists are just…. Common sense filters

Me: yeah so I just don’t have the energy to get up and make myself a sandwich or wait for something to cook so I just. Don’t

Her: why don’t you just eat the sandwich components without putting them together

Me:

Her: you can just eat a handful of cheese and some sandwich meat. You don’t have to make a sandwich.

Me:

Me: what

You dont have to make the sandwitch

arealemergency: barbex: gettingdinnerandpossiblythinner: My favorite is people who send me...

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 23:16:34 +0300

arealemergency:

barbex:

gettingdinnerandpossiblythinner:

My favorite is people who send me unsolicited dick pics and then they’re like, “uh, hi? Are you ignoring me?”

It’s just so funny to me. Like one minute I’m designing bioreactors and getting published for heat dissipation in polymers and then I open this godforsaken app to dudes hanging brain who can’t even pronounce “saponification” calling me a slut because I won’t give attention to their limp excuses for existence.

3 billion years of evolution and the greatest form of communication you can conjure up in your fermented omelet of a conscience is submitting your wrinkly ball sac to a stranger on the Internet to substitute the attention your parents never gave their mistake of an offspring.

This is poetry.

This is my fucking resurrection

sapphicsabine: who would win? my long-lasting love for harry potter versus my hatred for jkr

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 21:07:57 +0300

sapphicsabine:

who would win? my long-lasting love for harry potter versus my hatred for jkr

It literally…says “choose life?”??? how is it not a pro-life shirt?????

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:34:47 +0300

it was originally worn by george michael in the music video for wake me up before you go go, back in 1984. at the height of the aids crisis.

even before he came out as gay himself, he was a big proponent for gay rights and awareness of the aids crisis. not to mention the shirt was designed by katharine hammett, a designer known for her leftist political statements in her works. here’s a relevant snippet from her wikipedia page.

Hamnett has spoken out several times against the slogan’s use by prolife activists in the U.S. She wrote on her website, “It’s not about the anti-abortion lobby. The US anti-abortion lobby attempted to appropriate CHOOSE LIFE. We are taking it back and promoting its real meaning. Ours is authentic and I believe in a woman’s right to choose.”

so yeah, its not a pro life shirt, and the meaning has become heavily misconstrued over the years.

taliabobalia: fuckyeahyonicsymbols: Am I … being invited into...

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:28:30 +0300

taliabobalia:

fuckyeahyonicsymbols:

Am I … being invited into the Underworld?

go

You’ve heard of flaming homosexual now get ready for

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:24:19 +0300

gayandstressedout:

krawall:

lightning bisexual

i have an addition

eeli-ah: x

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:19:47 +0300

eeli-ah:

x

moyurukoda: pokemon-brofessor: snarthurt: i know the well of thanos jokes has run dry but this is...

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:17:46 +0300

moyurukoda:

pokemon-brofessor:

snarthurt:

i know the well of thanos jokes has run dry but this is such a fucking funny gif its probably the funniest punch ive ever seen. he just lays into him so hard and his ultra high tech suit does fuck all like its a bouncer just putting all his weight into hitting a drunk guy in the jaw i love this fucking gif so much i could write a dissertation about it

This looks like that giant mushroom gif

Cinematic parallels

You’re writing PTSD dreams wrong

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:11:44 +0300

jumpingjacktrash:

romancingthebook:

But don’t worry, most writers are and I’m here to help because reading them is making me cRAzY.

I’m writing this because I’ve read three otherwise great romance novels back to back featuring characters dealing with PTSD (or PTSD symptoms) and each one of them made the same dream mistakes. I honestly can’t think of a fiction book I’ve read that didn’t make these mistakes, so I thought I’d compile a handy dandy list of mistakes and how to fix them.

Lucky for you, I have PTSD and a ton of fellow veteran friends who deal with these symptoms.

*This is based on my experience and things told to me by friends. This is not to say that the below doesn’t happen in real life, only that it’s not as common as you might think.

The issue with these dreams is twofold: on one side is the psychological accuracy of the dream and on the other side is how you’re using the dream within the narrative.

Oh an Black Sails spoilers-ish ahead.

1) Stop writing the dream as a shot-by-shot accurate retelling of Traumatic Event.

Listen, not only do dreams seldom follow reality, but our own memories are tricky at best. I don’t remember getting beaten up because a) it was horrifying and we block stuff like that out and b) I was going in and out of consciousness. It would be pretty strange for me to dream something I don’t even fully remember. Our brains are simply not wired to do these vivid factually-accurate cinematic retellings.

My friend dreams things that did happen, but in his own words those dreams are always wrong in some noticeable or bizarre way. For instance, he’s getting chased through the streets of Iraq by a werewolf.

2) Dreams are informed by reality, not direct reflections of it.

It’s entirely likely my friend dreamt of a werewolf in Iraq because I got him binge watching Supernatural and the two ideas merged in his dreamstate. But see, that’s how dreams work.

The trauma event exists as a constant in his subconscious, but he has all this other information right there in his conscious mind all day, every day. In dreams, there isn’t a clear delineation between that information.

My dreams are often dependent on whatever I’ve fallen asleep watching on television. The themes are consistent, but not the content.

In Black Sails, Captain Flint’s trauma dreams feature his dead partner and friend following him around his empty ship. You have an element of the trauma (the animated corpse of his friend) + his daily existence (his ship). The two things intersect to form these unsettling nightmares as expressions of his fears and grief. He never once relives the event itself in his dreams as shown on screen.

Speaking of…

3) Trauma dreams often revolve around feelings, not necessarily the events themselves.

The PTSD package generally includes heaps of shame, guilt, anger and fear. As someone who survived a beating when I should have had control of the situation, my dreams tend to revolve around fear that people will know I’m a fraud or being unable to act in a dangerous situation.

Again, it’s entirely common for trauma victims to not remember large chunks (or the whole thing) of the trauma event. So why should their dreams be stunningly accurate? What we remember are feelings. Real strong feelings.

You cannot go wrong if you write your trauma dream around feelings, not a specific event.

4) If you present trauma dreams as expressions of themes, you can let go of the trauma dream as an exposition dump/way overused suspense trope.

You know you’ve read this: MC has dreams that are a shot-by-shot retelling of Traumatic Event that always cut off right before Traumatic Event, so that the Big Reveal must happen by a discovery later in the novel.

If I were the MC in a book, the easy and common thing would be to use the “dream sequence” as an expository retelling of Traumatic Event as a way to give some backstory to why I might be surly, mistrustful, afraid to try something new, whatever, and to clumsily shoehorn in suspense where there doesn’t need to be.

The much more interesting thing might be if my dreams were inconsistent in content but consistent in theme. In one I’m on an alien planet (because I fell asleep watching the Science Channel again) and the ground opens up and I fall into a pit from which I can’t escape because I am helpless. In another a man is watching me while I sleep where I am again frozen and helpless. This would force the reader to think: what is the recurring issue in these dreams? Why is it important? What is this telling me about this character and what happened to her?

It could be a personal preference, but I’d rather see the Traumatic Event either told in narrative flashbacks (not dreams) or verbally retold by the character in question. Let the dreams tell me something deeper about the character. It’s not that I was beat up, it’s that I feel like a failure because of it. One of these things is a shallow factual detail, the other tells you something about me as a person that I’m sharing with you, gentle reader, because talking about this stuff is healthy.

5) The Traumatic Event doesn’t have to be a big secret.

In Black Sails, we know what happened to Captain Flint’s partner. It happened in real time in the show. That didn’t make his uber disturbing dreams less disturbing or mysterious. Fans still debate exactly what the symbolism was and what they were telling us about James Flint in those moments. We do know from the dreams that he was disturbed, obsessed, and also monumentally guilty and blaming himself for what happened.

The mystery was perhaps more heightened by the fact that the dreams weren’t direct reflections of reality. We know who this person was, what she believed, and why she died. That Flint is imagining her screaming silently in his ear is horrifying and discordant with what we know to be factual. This adds emotional complexity to his character and the decisions he’s making while suffering these dreams.

^^^this didn’t happen. It was a dream. A real unsettling dream.

Once you let go of the concept of the trauma dream as a literal retelling and exposition dump, you have the entire dreamscape to work in other narrative elements, like symbolism, metaphor, foreshadowing, etc.

*1st gif source: @idontwikeit

a good post. particularly that the traumatic event doesn’t have to be a secret. frankly i’m getting real tired of ptsd being used as a cheap plot device.

everyone knows my medical phobia comes from the surgery i had last year. it’s not weird. it’s not shocking. there’s no Big Reveal. if i were a viewpoint character in fiction, you could show me having nightmares where i was portioned out in plastic-wrapped cuts in a deli case, and it wouldn’t even be exposition, because obviously that specific thing didn’t happen, but just as obviously, the white tile and whirring machines in the deli shop have a distinctly medical flavor, and the theme of being cut up and helpless isn’t exactly hidden.

so why would you show protagonist-me having this dream at all? what’s the point if his medical phobia isn’t the key to some clever plot twist?

well, there’s the fact that this is a really common thing a lot of people deal with, and you can illustrate the character’s personality and motivations really well by showing him reacting to stress. how does he deal when he wakes up? does he cry? does he gruffly tell himself it’s just a dream and try to go back to sleep? does he wake up his spouse for cuddles? what i usually do is turn on some lights, get a cup of tea or a soda, and read a fanfic. this tells you i’m a self-sufficient sort of person but i don’t try to pretend i’m not affected. that’s valuable information to impart about your main character.

my older ptsd comes from emotional abuse in grade school, and while that’s not a secret either, i don’t talk about it as much. you could theoretically make a reveal/twist out of it. but again, that’s a very common situation a lot of people have dealt with, and it seems kind of shitty to write about it like it’s so outlandish no one would ever guess it might’ve happened. if protag!me has dreams about being stuffed in a trash can and forced to eat crayons, half your readers will instantly guess that school wasn’t much fun for him. they get it; it wasn’t much fun for them either.

this has been pretty rambly, sorry for my incoherence. i’m on a lot of painkillers rn. i guess what i’m trying to say is, making ptsd into a Shocking Twist Big Reveal is othering, it’s kinda cheap, and it’s not as surprising as you think it is.