Happy Ghost Trick Rerelease Day!

probably my most powerful interpersonal communication hack is to, whenever possible, ask either/or questions rather than yes/no questions

for example, when chatting with coworkers, i’ll often ask if they have any fun weekend plans. but let’s be real - we all feel like friendless losers when someone asks that question and we go “uhhhhh… no.” so instead, i phrase it as “so, do you have anything fun planned over the weekend, or are you just going to enjoy having some time to relax?”

phrased like this, there’s rarely any awkwardness. you’ve presented two options & given both equally positive connotations, so your conversational partner has an automatic “out,” so to speak

but it works for higher stakes conversations too!!!! my mom was saying this weekend how she and her neighbor both like walking around the neighborhood & that she wanted to suggest they take a walk together sometime, but was worried about how to approach the conversation

so i said “how about you just say ‘i’ve noticed we both like taking walks! would you be interested in going for one together, or do you use walks for some precious alone time?’”

now Walking Neighbor has an automatic “get out of jail free card” if she wants to say no!!!! which means my mom doesn’t have to worry about the conversation being uncomfortable, because she’s set it up to go smoothly

either/or questions rather than yes/no questions. it is really like magic

Alright, a sort of part two to this post.

About my “Mike is Gaster” theory.

I worked on this one with @allseeingmoth

Theory and long convoluted rambles under the cut

So, for context, i follow the headcanon that Sans, Papyrus, and Gaster all are related in some way. I won’t go into detail with that, it’s just the only way to explain some of these discord screenshots.

Entry #17 from the true lab is also important here, and i translated the whole thing because that makes this nice and easy. For those who don’t know, it reads:

“entry number seventeen.

dark darker yet darker.

the darkness keeps growing

the shadows cutting deeper

photon readings negative

this next experiment

seems

very

very

interesting

...

what do you two think?”

(This is actually written in all caps in the entry but i didn’t type it that way so whatever)

NOW. Crazy thoughts time. First off; the next experiment mentioned. What if that’s the roaring? This is a bit of a stretch but… well, to me, Gaster feels like something thats separated from the game. They can’t totally interact with it, just influence bits and pieces. And his question at the end, “what do you two think?” I’ve seen some theories about the two being Sans and Papyrus, but they seem a little far fetched… not that mine isn’t, of course, as i believe they’re talking to Jevil and Spamton. And this is why i think Gaster is Mike.

Below are screenshots of my original thoughts on this.

Now, i do admit, i hyperfixated on Gaster because i found them interesting, and canon may have blended a bit with my fanon, but i’ll try to keep it as unbiased as possible here. I believe the “next experiment” is the roaring because in the entry, they state that “the darkness keeps growing / the shadows cutting deeper / photon readings negative” (for non-sciencey people, photon readings being negative could mean a complete lack of any light OR the opposite of light/negative light). These all point to, well, darkness, “dark darker yet darker” after-all. And what’s in deltarune? Dark worlds. Boom, theres the simple theory.

Now, why is Gaster experimenting with the dark worlds and roaring? Possibly because he’s trying to merge Deltarune, the game, with the real world. Think about the in-game explanation of the roaring:

“When the LIGHT is subsumed by SHADOW

When the FOUNTAINS fill the sky

All will fall into CHAOS.

The TITANS will take form from the FOUNTAINS

And envelop the land in devastation.

The surviving Darkners, crushed by the darkness

Will slowly, one by one, turn into statues...

Leaving the Lightners to fend for themselves

Lost eternally in an endless night...”

It mentions Titans. Who could the Titans be? Us, of course. We see the characters as, well, characters. Fun toys to be played with and explored. If all the Darkners turn into statues, they will be dolls for the Titans to play with.

So what if Gaster is trying to bring upon the roaring, but is also trying to bring Darkners here, alive? Hence the manipulation of Jevil and Spamton. That’s their experiment. Can they merge our worlds while bringing those who were previously only code to life?

Now, of course, this is all fun video game stuff that can’t happen, but it’s fun to think about.

Anyway have an extra little joke i made.

I think about this post every day

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)

Source

EVERY FUCKING TIME

it hasn’t even been a week and already some wretched soul is using that idiotic man vs bear meme to justify Israel’s treatment of Palestinian civilians

remember that anti-refugee meme about poisoned skittles that was identical to a “feminist” one about poisoned m&ms?

these ~feminist thought experiments about how evil and dangerous Men are and how sadly that means individual men are guilty until proven innocent always end up like this. it’s inherently dehumanizing even when it doesn’t also straight up promote misconceptions about the sources of violence (for instance, the bear thing involves randos but as we all are supposed to know by now, you’re more likely to be harmed by someone you already know)

oh and here’s a bonus “analogy” from the same women’s safety uwu modus tollens motherfucker

@ferventfox @loving-n0t-heyting get a load of this shit

Continue Escalating

I saw the 'hero' walking around cutting grass while I was collecting bananas. He's pretty small, I bet I can beat him.

Glory to Master Kohga.

When we talk about men’s issues, it feels like it’s always the same handful of things (high suicide rate, drafting, divorce court, etc.) and even then it always feels like a token gesture. This is something that I always felt like us leftists need to talk more about, precisely because it’s something the movement actively needs to fix within itself. As a cishet man, it can be very strange to see how, no matter how much I value consent and the happiness of my partner, and no matter how deeply I understand that, as good as sex feels, a fulfilling emotional connection is more important, my sexuality is still seen as evil by a pretty big chunk of the movement. And of course, I understand why this is. Men have a long history of rapey behavior and right now it’s sorta getting better and worse at the same time, with lots of guys learning to confront and unlearn their misogyny and lots of other guys looking to people like Andrew Tate for solutions to their loneliness. I don’t think activism should be reactionary though. I mean what good do we accomplish if our “activism” is just reacting to societal issues that make us upset in whatever way feels right to our monkey brains? We should have an ideal that we’re striving towards, a specific vision of a better world that we have a plan for achieving. I know that to me, that ideal is a world where no one is ashamed of their sexuality while also still knowing where it is appropriate vs inappropriate to display it, and that we trust each other and that trust is earned because we’re all tuned in to each other’s wants and desires. That ideal doesn’t change depending on how mad or happy with men and/or women I am.

I cannot express how jarring it was after being raised by a "Porn Addiction Coach" to get into a relationship with a woman and come face to face with the fact that she did actually want me to sexually desire her.

Like, in Evangelical Purity Culture, male desire was basically poison. It was a threat. It was this constant temptation that would destroy everything. And even after leaving, in the sort of queer, feminist spaces i spend most of my time in that wasn't something that pretty much anyone was spending time actively dissuading me from feeling.

But my desire is good. It's not something that I'm being accepted in spite of. It's a positive thing. It's a bonus. Not even just vanilla stuff, all the stuff I'd convinced myself were these weird terrible desires that were shameful to have.

It honestly took me over a decade to fully accept that. To stop dissociating during sex and confront that I was, in fact, being a massive perv and that was fantastic and preferable and that I could accept that into my self-image without shame or self hatred.

But it's important to do. It's important to leave relationships that don't welcome that part of you. To know that your sexuality is valuable and valid and worth owning and celebrating. Because the alternative is just...not being. Either existing as yourself and repressing the part of your identity that is sexual or allowing that sexuality to exist but turning off your self while it does.

This is now the only correct reading of that acronym