you know what trope pisses me off the most? when the protag is pointing a gun at somebody and they’re like “you won’t do it. you’re too good” and the person holding the gun is like oh shit i am and they slowly lower the gun while the other person laughs. WHAT THE FUCK. if i were there, and somebody told me “you won’t do it” i would immediately shoot them dead without hesitating. who are you to tell me what i wont do. musty bitch
Keep in mind that there is almost always a third option, most especially when the person talking is vague about what, precisely, it is that you “won’t do.”
If it’s noodles, pour them on your sister instead of on her computer, or if the noodles are quite hot, pour them on her pillow or in a great spattering arc around her room.
If you have a supervillain at gunpoint and *they* say you’re “too good” and “won’t do it,” shoot them in the leg/foot or the shoulder. The former allows them to think they’re right while you lower the gun only to be confronted with sudden understanding and regret when you blow their metatarsals to kingdom come, while the latter is instant and avoids giving them even a moment’s satisfaction or any time to charge you while you’re lowering the gun to shoot them in the leg.
Door Number Three usually exists and is often your friend. Endeavor to cultivate awareness thereof.
Ethical dillemas are rarely reducible down to a clear binary.
“The female writers, for whatever reason (men?), don’t much believe in heroes, which makes their kind of storytelling perhaps a better fit for these cynical times. Their books are light on gunplay, heavy on emotional violence. Murder is de rigueur in the genre, so people die at the hands of others—lovers, neighbors, obsessive strangers—but the body counts tend to be on the low side. “I write about murder,” Tana French once said, “because it’s one of the great mysteries of the human heart: How can one human being deliberately take another one’s life away?” Sometimes, in the work of French and others, the lethal blow comes so quietly that it seems almost inadvertent, a thing that in the course of daily life just happens. Death, in these women’s books, is often chillingly casual, and unnervingly intimate. As a character in Alex Marwood’s brilliant new novel, The Darkest Secret, muses: “They’re not always creeping around with knives in dark alleyways. Most of them kill you from the inside out.””
I actually got chills reading this article, because this is someone who gets it. I mean, “The female writers, for whatever reason (men?), don’t much believe in heroes.”
Realistic Stuttering: “Sorry, I uh… I didn’t mean- I didn’t mean to do that…”
When people stutter, they usually reword what they’re saying as they speak, and subconsciously insert “filler words” such as “uh, like, you know,” and etc.
*puts on speech therapist hat*
ACTUALLY! It depends on why they are stuttering.
A Nervous Stutter results in what is called Mazing, or rewording the sentence. That is the classic “I, um… well I… look it’s just that… so we…” that @hellishhues is talking about. When someone is mazing their words you’re seeing a form of Speech Apraxia where the brain is having trouble forming verbal speech. This can be brought on by brain damage, memory loss, anxiety, nerves, and several other things.
The root cause of a nervous stutter is a disconnect between the mouth and the brain.
With this you will also sometimes see the classic “S-s-s-sorry…” especially if the person has been training to speak clearly and is now at a point of fatigue or stress where they are not mentally capable of forming the words.
The other kind of stutter is a Physical Stutter, sometimes referred to as slurring, and another facet of Speech Apraxia. This stutter is caused when the muscles of the mouth, tongue, and throat are physically unable to form certain sounds. This is most often seen in the very young and victims of brain trauma.
Sounds are acquired at different ages, so a 2-year-old will probably not be able to clearly pronounce certain words (which is why toddler sound so off when they’re written with developed dialogue). These mis-pronunciations are sometimes referred to as lisping, but only if the sounds are run together. If the person starts and restarts the sound because they got it wrong, it can also sound like the classic sound stutter.
But it all depends on why the character is stuttering!
Do they have Speech Apraxia, Audio Processing Disorder, muscle dysfunction, or another medical reason to stutter? (1)
Are they stuttering because of anxiety, stress, or fatigue? (2)
Does the stutter stem from intoxication or blood loss? (3)
All of those will sound different!
1 – Will have mazing, repeated sound stutters, and be the classic stutter that annoys OP.
2 – This is where you’ll see the repetition stutter, mazing, rephrasing, and filler words.
3 – This is where you are more likely to see starts and stops and slurring of words.
My mum has apraxia and I just wanted to say that’s one of the most concise and clear ways I’ve seen it explained, thank you!
I was in charge of feeding the prisoners. This had been my task since the Queen had taken me and 2 dozen other Murania as hostages. The others had not survived long, but I adapted. Obeyed.
The Queen had taken a human. A rare being this far into the Deep, but one feared from one end of the galaxy to the other. According to the Encyclopedia of Sentient Beings Capable of Space Travel, humans needed a diet of roughly 2000 calories a sol served in traditional 3 portions a sol. Which meant that I had to approach the human three times a sol. I could not fail my duties.
The first attempt at feeding the large being ended with a tray thrown at my head with enough force that it would have caved my skull if I had not ducked in time. The human was raging, slamming their entire body against the containment bars with enough force to shake the floor and… and roaring. I cleaned the mess of nutrient paste as fast as I could and fled.
But five hours later found me trembling in front of the human’s cage with another tray of nutrient paste. The human had calmed and was glaring at me intently. I knew they did not speak Murania, but still I spoke my native language as I offered the food again. I did not get to speak it often and missed the sound. “Guria?”
The human tilted their head and to my shock, repeated the word, then repeated it again until they mimicked the sound perfectly, even with the slight whistle at the end.
I offered the tray. “Guria.”
They eyed it suspiciously so I tasted it, showing it to be safe. “Guria.”
They held their hand out and I gave them the tray, scuttling to a safe corner before they could attack me with it again.
They tilted their head again and scowled, then spoke in broken Common. “I thank”
I fled, claws scratching against the shiny floor.
Another five hours passed all too soon and I was back at the human’s cage with the final meal of the sol. They were moving slowly around the cage with their ear pressed to the wall, tapping with their knuckles. I watched them for a moment, confused at the erratic behaviour, but only managed a few seconds of observation before their head swiveled directly towards me and they stopped to face me.
I walked closer and offered the tray. “Guria.”
They took it. “How talk thank in you mouth talk?”
“Meesh Meesh.”
They opened their mouth and let out a loud, short bark, a laugh according to the ESBCST. (I studied it dutifully when they were brought aboard.) “Meesh Meesh!” They pointed to themselves. “Michael.”
My wings ruffled, the sound was so similar! I pointed to myself, “Mikel”
The human shook their head and pointed to themselves. “Me Michael.”
I jerked my head in an upward motion called a nod. “Yes, you,’ I pointed to them, “Michael.” I pointed to myself. “I, Mikel.”
They laughed again. “Michael, Mikel. Much same.”
I chittered. “Very similar, yes.”
Their eyes narrowed. “You work here?”
I bobbed sideways, a bit noncommittal, “As I must.”
“Must work?”
I searched for the simplest way to translate what I meant across the language barrier. “No work, in there.” I pointed to their cage. “Work, out here.” I hopped encouragingly. “You work soon, yes?”
The human bared their teeth and snarled. “No work. Fight.”
My wings flattened against my spine and I fled. Humans were so aggressive.
The next sol I completed my first duties and then found myself lingering outside the containment hall. I was apprehensive about what mood I would find the human in this time. I fluffed my wings out to convey confidence and clicked in with the human’s first meal.
“Mikel! Guria?” They were bouncing on the front part of their feet, hopping up and touching the ceiling, then dropping to the floor and pushing themselves up with their arms repeatedly.
“Yes. What are you doing?” I slid the tray to where they could reach and backed to a… well not safe but safer, distance.
“Work body. Stay strong.” They flopped over onto their back and turned their head to look at me. “Meesh Meesh.”
“Zuan.” I bobbed sideways before deciding to ask them the question I had been mulling over. “You’re Nice, mean, nice, mean.”
Michael laughed. “Yeah. Head bad.” They hooked their fingers like claws and shook them around their head. “Scare, tired, Fight.” They gestured to the bars and glared. “Not like.”
I nodded. “I know that feeling.” A chime sounded, signaling the Queen’s approach. I flattened myself to the floor and made way.
The Queen slithered in, her scaled body scraping against the floor with a sound that made my feathers stand up. She reared to her full two meter height and flicked her tongue out to taste the air.
“Human. You are mine now, you will serve the glory of me.”
Michael looked her up and down and whistled lowly then pronounced in exact Common. “Ugly. Mother. Fucker.”
I gaped at them in horror. They dared insult the Queen to her face?
The Queen hissed, but smugly coiled. “You will serve me, human. I know your kind. You are loyal. I feed you, I provide you shelter. I give you safety. You will love me.”
The human backed up, crouching into a fighting stance. “No love, mother fucker.”
The Queen wiggled and slid towards the exit. “You will serve me.” They paused to pat me on the head. “You have duties, tiny one.”
The next several sols passed in the same manner. I did my duties, I fed the human, we exchanged words. At night I tended my secret garden grown in glasses of water and composted nutrient paste from seeds and cuttings I snuck from the Queen’s hoard. The human was learning not only Common but Murania at a breathtaking pace. We could hold whole conversations now and I was no longer… completely apprehensive about approaching their cage. Michael had not acted aggressive towards me at all since the Queen’s visit.
The rare human plant called a “green bean” plant had fruited after several months of care and pollinating with the tip of my own feather. I was ecstatic over the first fruits of my secret labor and I felt that Michael would appreciate my excitement and maybe a taste of his home planet. Humans were said to be incredibly empathetic and sentimental.
That morning I secreted a pair of bean pods in my uniform and headed for Micheal’s cage. They seemed to notice something was different right away, peering at me with concern. “All okay, Mikel?”
I nodded and nervously whispered. “Secret, right?”
They lowered their voice and moved closer to the bars. “Yeah, secret.”
I showed him the beans. “I grew these. It’s the first harvest from the plant! It’s a huge secret, but I wanted you to have them.”
Michael stared at the beans with an expression I didn’t recognize for a long time before whispering, their voice strangely rough. “You get trouble for these?”
I nodded and tried to shove the beans into their hands. “Yes, a lot of trouble. Take them!”
They took them and smiled. “Meesh Meesh, Mikel. This…. This mean lot to me. I can’t say enough. Meesh Meesh.” They bit into one and grinned, crunching happily. “Very good! You do good!”
I chittered and ruffled my wings, pleased with the praise. “Zuan, Michael.” I gave them their tray of nutrient paste and fled.
The next day (human word for sol) I found a broken something in the Queen’s trash bin. It was silvery and had a lot of moving parts and made me think of Michael. I shoved it into my uniform and snuck it to Michael. They were overjoyed and immediately began fiddling (another human word I find pleasant to use) with it.
I found I enjoyed making Michael happy and kept my eyes out for things to gift them. A broken flute, a torn book, a shiny rock shard, a discarded pipe, a bit of string. It all was random junk, but Michael was still so happy for each item. It… was a pleasant feeling, almost like being back with my brood mates.
Then… Then the alarms sounded one morning and the ship rocked with an explosion. Frightened, I grabbed my precious green bean plant and rushed instinctively towards Michael’s cage.
Only to find they weren’t there. The bars were broken, bent outward and a piece of the wall was torn open, exposing sparking wires and smashed circuits. The lights were flickering and I could hear screaming. I decided to run for the escape pods and hoped that the Queen died in that explosion.
I had barely skittered into the hallway when I found Michael. They were fighting with a guard twice their size, but easily leaped around it’s bulk and stabbed it in the base of the skull with some sort of spear. A primitive weapon, but still deadly in the hands of the human. Michael rode the body of the guard down to the ground and leaped off, brandishing the spear at me.
Frozen in fear, I distantly realized the weapon was made from the shiny rock tied to a piece of pipe. I was to die from a weapon I provided then.
Except, Michael lowered the weapon and smiled. “Mikel! I find you! Come on! We get out of here!”
“Out… Escape?”
“Yeah! C’mon, I stole codes for ship!”
I followed them numbly, too scared and shocked to process that not only had a single human escaped a 1st class prison cell with just bits of junk, but had also destroyed the Pirate Queen’s ship, and was taking me with them.
It wasn’t until we were flying fast and far from the wreckage, headed towards a Trading Station, that I found my voice. “Why… Why would you save me? I…” I didn’t know how to express the fact that I was nothing, tiny, worth only for cleaning while the human was strong, big, and apparently a fearsome and brilliant warrior.
Michael glanced at me from the corner of their eyes. “We friends, Mikel. Friends no leave friends. Also, you trapped like me. On other side of bars, but trapped same.”
“Friends? But Queen provided for you, you were supposed to bond with her?!”
The human looked at me incredulously before laughing long and loud, his head thrown back with the effort of it. “No Bond with Queen, she put me in cage. You! You give me food, you talk, teach, you bring me presents. You good friend. Queen Piece of Shit.”
“Oh.” Michael had bonded with me. And.. I with them it seemed. And we were free. “Meesh meesh, Michael. You’re a good friend too.” I hugged my green bean plant. “What now?”
“I thinking I turn in Queen head for bounty, use money buy good ship again. After, you want go home or you want explore?”
My wings flared in excitement. “Can I have a garden room on our ship?”
Michael grinned and tossed his arm (gently) around my shoulders. “Yes, you have garden room. Grow lots plant in space. Explore! Garden! New Planet! New Seed!”
“we didn’t know any better,” the crewman says, and swallows, presenting the chest to the captain. “what do we do now?”
“kill it,” the captain says, but the ice is melting in his eyes.
“we can’t,” the first mate says desperately, praying she won’t have to fight her captain on this. “we can’t. we – i won’t. we won’t.”
“i know.”
x
“daddy,” she says, floating in a tub of seawater in the hold, “daddy, la-la, la-la-la.”
her voice rings like bells. her accent is strange; her mouth isn’t made for human words. it mesmerises even the hardiest amongst them and she wasn’t even trying. the crew has taken to diving for shellfish near the shorelines for her; she loves them, splitting the shells apart with strength seen in no human toddler, slurping down the slimy molluscs inside and laughing, all plump brown cheeks and needle-sharp teeth. she sometimes splashes them for fun with her smooth, rubbery brown tail. even when they get soaked they laugh. they love her.
“daddy,” she calls again, and he can hear the worry in her voice. the storm rocking the ship is harsh and uncaring, and if they go down, she would be the only survivor.
“don’t worry,” he says, and goes over, sitting next to the tub. the first mate, leaning against the wall, pretends not to notice as he quietly begins to sing.
x
“father,” she says, one day, as she leans on the edge of the dock and the captain sits next to her, “why am I here?”
“your mother abandoned you,” he says, as he always has. “we found you adrift, and couldn’t bear to leave you there.”
she picks at the salt-soaked boards, uncertain. her hair is pulled back in a fluffy black puff, the white linen holding it slipping almost over one of her dark eyes. one of her first tattoos, a many-limbed kraken, curls over her right shoulder and down her arm, delicate tendrils wrapped around her calloused fingertips. “alright,” she says.
x
“why am I really here?” she asks the first mate, watching the sun set over the water in streaks of liquid metal that pooled in the troughs of the waves and glittered on the seafoam.
“we didn’t know any better,” the first mate says, staring into the water. “we didn’t know- we didn’t know anything. we didn’t understand why she fought so viciously to guard her treasure. we could not know she protected something a thousand times more precious than the purest gold.”
she wants to be furious, but she can’t. she already knew the answer, from reading the guilt in her father’s eyes and the empty space in her own history. and she can’t hate her family.
“it’s alright,” she says. “i do have a family, anyways. i don’t think i would have liked my other life near as much.”
x
her kraken grows, spreading its tendrils over her torso and arms. she grows too, too large to come on board the ship without being hauled up in a boat from the water. she sings when the storms come and swims before the ship to guide it to safety. she fights off more than one beast of the seas, and gathers a set of scars across her back that she bears with pride. “i don’t mind,” she says, when the captain fusses over her, “now i match all of you.”
the first time their ship is threatened, really threatened, is by another fleet. a friend turned enemy of the first mate. “we shouldn’t fight him,” she says, peering through the spyglass.
“why not?” the mermaid asks.
“he’ll win,” the first mate says.
the mermaid tips her head sideways. Her eyes, dark as the deep waters, gleam in the noon light. “are you sure?” she asks.
x
the enemy fleet surrenders after the flagship is sunk in the night, the anchor ripped off the ship and the planks torn off the hull. the surviving crew, wild-eyed and delirious, whimper and say a sea serpent came from the water and attacked them, say it was longer than the boat and crushed it in its coils. the first mate hears this and has to hide her laughter. the captain apologizes to his daughter for doubting her.
“don’t worry,” she says, with a bright laugh, “it was fun.”
x
the second time, they are pushed by a storm into a royal fleet. they can’t possibly fight them, and they don’t have the time to escape.
“let me up,” the mermaid urges, surfacing starboard and shouting to the crew. “bring me up, quickly, quickly.”
they lower the boat and she piles her sinous form into it, and uses her claws to help the crew pull her up. once on the deck she flops out of the boat and makes her way over to the bow. the crew tries to help but she’s so heavy they can barely lift parts of her.
she crawls up out in front of the rail and wraps her long webbed tail around the prow. the figurehead has served them well so far but they need more right now. she wraps herself around the figurehead and raises her body up into the wind takes a breath of the stinging salt air and sings.
the storm carries her voice on its front to the royal navy. they are enchanted, so stunned by her song that they drop the rigging ropes and let the tillers drift. the pirates sail through the center of the fleet, trailing the storm behind them, and by the time the fleet has managed to regain its senses they are buried in wind and rain and the pirates are gone.
x
she declines guns. instead she carries a harpoon and its launcher, and uses them to board enemy ships, hauling her massive form out of the water to coil on the deck and dispatch enemies with ruthless efficiency. her family is feared across all the sea.
x
“you know we are dying,” the captain says, looking down at her.
she floats next to the ship, so massive she could hold it in her arms. her eyes are wise.
“i know,” she says, “i can feel it coming.”
the first mate stands next to the captain. she never had a lover or a child, and neither did he, but to the mermaid they are her parents. she will always love her daughter. the tattoos are graven in dark swirls across the mermaid’s deep brown skin and the flesh of her tail, even spiraling onto the spiked webbing on her spine and face. her hair is still tied back, this time with a sail that could not be patched one last time.
“we love you,” the first mate says simply, looking down. her own tightly coiled black hair falls in to her face; she shakes the locs out of the way and smiles through her tears. the captain pretends he isnt crying either.
“i love you too,” the mermaid says, and reached up to pull the ship down just a bit, just to hold them one last time.
“guard the ship,” the captain says. “you always have but you know they’re lost without you.”
“without you,” the mermaid corrects, with a shrug that makes waves. “what will we do?”
“i don’t know,” the captain says. “but you’ll help them, won’t you?”
“of course i will,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. “i will always protect my family.”
x
the captain and the first mate are gone. the ship has a new captain, young and fearless – of the things she can afford to disregard. she fears and loves the ocean, as all captains do. she does not fear the royal fleet. and she does not fear the mermaid.
“you know, i heard stories about you when i was a little girl,” she says, trailing her fingers in the water next to the dock.
the mermaid stares at her with one eye the size of a dinner table. “is that so?” she hums, smirking with teeth sharper than the swords of the entire navy.
“they said you could sink an entire fleet and that you had skin tougher than dragon scales,” the new captain says, grinning right back at the monster who could eat her without a moment’s hesitation. “i always thought they were telling tall tales.”
“and now?”
“they were right,” the new captain says. “how did they ever befriend you?”
the mermaid smiles, fully this time, her dark eyes gleaming under the white linen sail. “they didn’t know any better.”
i have just scrolled by yet another one of those “how to write queer characters if you’re straight” posts and they fucking exhaust me. because they’re almost always just a list of things not to do, and most of it is fucking wrong. and they always put in this caveat ‘you can do these things if you’re not straight :)’ and it makes me want to flip a table, because guess what, i don’t look up an author’s sexuality because i don’t give a fuck, and someone shouldn’t be required to out themselves in order explore certain themes.
so let’s go through some common advice that i fucking hate, and what i, personally, would suggest instead. i am one person, and do not speak for the whole community, just like no one person of any group ever speaks for the whole community. note that i use gay as an umbrella term for not straight
bad rule: don’t have a gay character have close friends who are all straight
in my group of seven very close friends, i am the only one who’s not straight. the idea that is is unrealistic and ridiculous and means the character is a throwaway is stupid. i went to a notoriously gay school and have lived in multiple major cities, so it’s not like i lacked opportunity. it just turned out that all my really close friends are straight. it happened to me, it’s happened to others, sometimes it just happens.
better rule: don’t have your gay character be the only gay character in the story.
what is unrealistic is when the gay character is the only gay character. just because they don’t hang out with other gay people, and so other gay people aren’t in most of the story, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. the pretty lady at the bus stop is waiting for her girlfriend, someone’s dad is gay, two girls on a date past them in the street, the history teacher talks about his husband, they’re playing a game of spin the bottle and a girl plays on both sides because she’s attracted to multiple genders. unless part of the queer character’s story is that they feel like the only gay person on the planet, they shouldn’t be portrayed the only gay person on the planet.
bad rule: never kill gay characters
sometimes, people die. we are all so, so sick and tired of watching ourselves die on screen and in books, but the idea that we don’t die is silly.
better rule: try and only kill gay characters in the same percentages as straight characters
i think it’s important to think in percentages rather than just numbers. the thing is if you have eleven major characters in a story, and only one of them is gay, and then you kill them and one straight character? you have killed 100% of the gay characters, and only 10% of the straight ones.
so say you have two gay characters, and eight straight characters. if you kill one gay character, and four straight characters, you have killed 50% of the gay characters, and 50% of the straight characters.
think about the movie mad max. there was a lot of women in that movie, and so when some women died, it didn’t feel like the end of of the world. because there were more women. in your writing, don’t let death come off as a “punishment” for being gay. if death happens, it should happen indiscriminately. so if you’re doing a dystopian novel, and lots of people are dying, but you’re killing off a much, much higher percentage of gay characters then straight, it doesn’t look great.
this is not a perfect system, but hopefully by keeping it in mind you avoid falling into the trope where the gay characters always die.
bad rule: don’t show problematic gay relationships, fighting within a relationship, or characters who have “too much” sex
we are not all pure uwu babies, and every time i see someone telling people to portray us this way i want to scream. we have shitty relationships, we’re shitty people, we like having sex, and some of us like having it a lot. who we’re attracted to doesn’t change the fact that we’re people, and even people with the best of intentions are far from perfect.
better rule: do not reduce characters to their faults, or to their sex lives
if all we’re told about a character is that they’re gay and in a shitty relationship, or that they’re gay and have a lot of sex, then those two things become muddled together. write well rounded characters!
first of all, sometimes people in perfectly healthy relationships fight, or have disagreements, and accidentally hurt each other. there is nothing wrong with portraying this, because most relationships are’t one hundred percent happy and peaceful all the time.
moving on. yes, the roommate brings home someone new every night and has loud sex with guys and gals and whoever, but they also bake pies and hate the taste of cilantro and have a boss they like and coworkers they want to fling into the sun.
he’s too controlling, and he looks through his partner’s phone, and he gets mad when he doesn’t know where his bf is. his bf isn’t financially stable enough to leave him, but hates feeling constrained. it’s just not going to work. he’s an exec at a hedge fund, bf is a barista, he hates his job, bf loves his, they have mutual and different friends, they watch movies, and he went straight to college, and bf spent a year roadtripping instead.
bad people are still people. don’t reduce people to bad and gay. bad and gay and a shitty boss and rich and a sore loser gives your audience more to work with, and then you haven’t drawn a clear line between gay and abusive. as long as you’re writing well rounded and complex characters to begin with, this shouldn’t be a problem.
you should take care when portraying sensitive subjects, and do your best to portray it well. but that’s true regardless of the gender or sexuality of your characters.
i would note that having only abusive/abused gay characters is probably not great. remember, gay people are everywhere! try and include them in small, casual ways in other parts of your story if possible. this is easier with longer fiction, but if you’re doing a shorter piece where the only characters are the couple in question, then it’s not option, and that’s okay too. just try and be careful that you’re giving people more to work with than gay and abuse.
if you want to portray happy and pure love, that’s totally fine!! sometimes all we want is to sink into a story of happiness and comfort. but if you don’t want to write that, and want to explore darker themes, that’s okay too.
bottom line:
giving people a list of things not to write isn’t helping them to write better. it’s just telling them not to write.
also, don’t demand that authors out themselves to you so you can “decide” if they’re allowed to write about certain things. either something is poorly written and offensive, or it isn’t, and i don’t get to know personal and private details of people in order to decide if they’re allowed to do something. it’s none of my fucking business, or yours.
as writers, we write about things that we’ve never experienced and will never experience. the only way to get better at things is to keep doing them. will you mess up and write something insensitive or upsetting?
probably.
i sure have. but the answer here is to learn how to do it better, to be more authentic in our stories, and be willing to listen and learn from people who know more than we do.
the answer is to write more and write better, not to not write at all.
Hairdresser: We’re going to have to use a color remover to take out the blue pigment, then apply more pigment to allow for the proteins in the hair to adhere to it. Then possibly mix three different types of toners to reach the goal of your natural hair color.
Hairdresser: pretty simple
Me: this is chemistry
Hairdresser: yeah, but people don’t like when we talk that way
Hairdresser: so you’re a mortician?
Me: apprentice
Hairdresser: do you know why formaldehyde is used in clothing?
Me: I didn’t know that was a thing
Hairdresser: I think it’s due to the preserving qualities? But I don’t think that’s right.
Me: It’s not just a preservative, it’s also a disinfectant ‘cause it destroys bacteria as well as their food supply. It’s also a dehydrator.
Hairdresser: why not just use alcohol?
Me: good question. Formaldehyde is super cheap, so probably to cut costs
Hairdresser: is it really a carcinogen?
Me: yeah, I’m going to have so much cancer
Hairdresser: so you’re going natural to work at a funeral home?
Me: yeah
Hairdresser: while still in school?
Me: well we work in the funeral homes so we have uuuuh … experience with cases
Hairdresser: you can just say bodies it’s fine
Me: oh thank god
Five Minutes Later
Me: yeah so we don’t do autopsies it’s one of my pet peeves
Hairdresser: what if someone wakes up while you’re embalming them?
Me: there’s a huge difference between a living body and a dead one
second hairdresser: I think we should add more toner, but yeah I think rigor mortis would make it pretty obvious
Me: that and being in a fridge for a few days you will be dead by the time you get to us
Hairdresser: I think pumping them full of a carcinogen would help with that
and it’s… fine. The prince is great! They’re in love, he’s very sweet and passionate, writing her poems and songs, giving her anything she wants. The time she spends with her husband is great.
but cinderella is not royalty, her family was noble but she never spent time in those circles. She’s used to being busy, she’s used to cooking and cleaning and mending. There are hours, days, where she has nothing to do.
time passes. cinderella learns the fancy lady type of needlework. Learns to ride horses. Reads a lot.
as is normal for royalty at the time, they travel and are hosted by nobles or stay at castles owned by the king. But even that variety begins to become routine. The prince is distracted, there’s a lot of young women living and working on their route. Daughters of nobles. Younger and prettier with soft hands that have never done a day’s work.
cinderella needs something to spend her time on, and there’s a part of her thinking a couple-only trip might get her husband’s attention again, so she suggests making an old castle that’s fallen into disrepair their “project.” It was built in the time when castles were made to be defensible, so it’s quite sturdy, but it’s overgrown and secluded. The prince doesn’t know why his family stopped living there either. A hundred years ago it was their summer home.
so they go. And they work. And for a while it’s great! But when they leave for winter cinderella’s husband forgets her once again. cinderella resolves to make the best of her life and stop worrying about a man who has gotten what he wanted from her.
summer comes again and this time cinderella goes alone to the old castle (minus staff, of course, but cinderella manages to narrow it down to only repair workers and one maid). She can cook and clean and mend again, but this time it’s her own choice. She is happy.
this summer they make more progress on repairs. The workers say that most of it can be salvaged, except one tower that’s been completely overgrown with vines and briars. It will have to come down, eventually, but for now it can be safely ignored.
cinderella has more free time now. The old castle has a surprisingly untouched library, though time and moisture have damaged many of the books. Behind a collection of greek poetry cinderella finds an old diary. Very old, in fact, at least a hundred years. It’s rude to read a diary, of course, but whoever wrote this is long dead, and cinderella is bored, so…
from the description of activities the author looks to have been nobility. Maybe even a princess. She’s sensitive and sweet and smarter than she seems to realize. If circumstances had been different cinderella wishes they could have been friends…
after the summer ends cinderella returns to her husband. He’s spending a lot of time with a young musician and cinderella can’t even work up the energy to care. She does some research about the castle and the family she’s married into, finds out the name of the princess who wrote the diary.
aurora. Cursed and forgotten. She died young, they say, in a plague that also took out the castle staff and her own parents. Luckily they avoided a succession crisis, but not so lucky for the dead.
time passes. cinderella goes to the old castle again and again, even out of season. Soon enough all that remains to be done is the old tower, and the builders say they should tear it down and fill the gaps before it gets cold.
one night cinderella is restless. The princess from the diary had been fond of that tower, and cinderella is far more attached to a dead woman than she ought to be. She gets out of bed, reads by candlelight, and finally goes to walk the empty halls.
she finds herself going to the tower. Pushing past the vines that don’t seem so troublesome really. They almost part before her. The stairs are perfectly intact, the door at the top is already cracked open. As if she should have done this years ago, cinderella steps into aurora’s bedroom.
she’s as beautiful as the stories say. And sitting under her hands, crossed across her stomach as it rises and falls, is a book of greek poetry.
years later, people will tell the story of cinderella as a cautionary one. Don’t seek above your station. Don’t marry for prestige. After all, a girl who grew up as a servant once married the crown prince, and disappeared after only three years. She ran away, they say, she couldn’t handle the lifestyle.
two old women who run a bookshop together agree with the lesson. Marrying for the wrong reasons never ends well. It’s best to wait for someone you have things in common with, shared interests.
or, failing that, the more linguistic of the two says, wait a decade or ten for someone to fall in love with you from your diary.
her partner laughs and hits her with the socks she is mending.
A cunning vampire door-to-door salesperson who stands in people’s doorways and talks until they can find a convenient moment to drop their pen and the person picks it up and the vampire says oh “Thank you” and the person says “you’re welcome” and the vampire smiles a big fangy grin and steps inside
And that’s this vampire’s modus operandi for decades And then the language starts to change and suddenly millenials have homes and the vampire thanks them and they say “oh, no problem” and the vampire is like ???????????????? this was not the plan
Millineals Are Killing the Vampire Industry
honestly the most unbelievable part of this is where millenials can afford to own homes
the second most unbelievable part of this is millenials answering their front doors for people they didnt know were coming over
THIS. I saw a post the other day that literally said if you do it to a fictional character, you’ll do it in real life.
No. Just NO.
I’m so glad someone put it into words.
Post reads:
“I find that, for me, the work is a safe place to put all the stuff you don’t want to put in your real life. I don’t want to be a crazy, manic asshole. I don’t want to have an affair. I don’t want to have a fucking gunfight. But! There’s a prt of your brain that wants to experience everything, and so work’s a safe place to explore it all. Both in the writing and in the performing. I get to write bout an affair. I get to have the guilt and the feeling of that without having to fuck my life up. [laughs] Art is the place to safely explore all those other sides of you, because the side you want to bring home is the side that wants to be a good father and be a good husband and be a good son. In art we can be fucking nuts.”
– Lin-Manuel Miranda pretty much nailing why all art and means of creative expression is so important
wupacing 