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Resisting tyranny takes a lot of forms.

The "Might as Well" principle for people with ADHD means leaning into your urge to take care of needs immediately when you notice them, and take that task-hopping tendency as an opportunity to "clean as you go".

You were probably raised to think there's only 1 "right" way to be productive. This is false. You don't need to (and honestly you CAN'T) become neurotypical, but you've probably spent a lot of your life striving to achieve success in a neurotypical way. This can be detrimental to your mental health. You have to learn what works best for YOU.

You don't need to feel guilty for not keeping a strict routine and an aesthetically pleasing home. Your goal should be keeping your environment (minimally) livable and safe.

This principle is intended to help with chore struggles, but it can also apply to personal care, and other areas of the ADHD struggle.

Going to the kitchen? Might as well bring as many dishes/cups as you can carry.

Going to the bathroom? Might as well wipe down the counter while you're in there (or for me personally, scoop the litter box while I'm there).

Taking a shower? Might as well scrub the shower walls while you're there (Be safe! I keep a utility sponge nearby for spot cleaning, but I don't use chemicals during my showers).

Forgot to brush your teeth in the morning? Might as well brush after lunch. No need to wait until the next "designated" teeth brushing time at bedtime (minimally, keep some floss picks, tooth wipes, or mouth wash at work/school).

Stuck in decision paralysis in front of the fridge? Might as well hydrate. Drink water!

Mount doom (laundry pile) giving you anxiety? Might as well pick one category, such as shirts, and sort them out. You don't even have to put them all the way away, just separate them so your doom pile looks smaller and less daunting.

Please feel free to add more!!

The Author's Darling

So I follow a lot of people who post a lot about OC/self-insert positivity. And that's genuinely great. I love people's OCs and self-inserts. But occasionally, I will see someone, in an attempt to Defend The Honour of OCs and self-inserts, defend a particular kind of writing mistake. And that pisses me off, because it does everyone a disservice.

There are plenty of people who write OCs and self-inserts who do not make this writing mistake, and equating the two is unfair to every OC writer who works hard at their craft. There are also plenty of people who write canon-character-only fanfic or original fic who do make this mistake-- and that hurts both them and their potential readers.

The mistake I'm talking about? Writing a sort of character I'm going to call an Author's Darling.

I'm going to talk about what Author's Darlings are, why they're bad, how you can avoid writing one, and what an Author's Darling isn't. I put a cut in this post, because it's long.

What is an Author's Darling?

An Author's Darling is a character who cannot fail at anything that matters to the author of their story.

What this looks like in practice depends on the author-- different authors prioritize different things. Some authors think their Darling should be stone-cold badasses and never lose a fight. other authors are fine with their Darlings getting knocked out every time they try to throw a punch, but would be very upset if their Darling got rejected romantically.

Plenty of characters succeed at most things they try. Superman wins most of the fights he takes on, but he's not necessarily a Darling. But if you look at a character and you can say, "oh, this character would never lose a fight", or "everyone loves this character and would never get mad at them"? You've got an Author's Darling on your hands.

And- especially in fandom- a character can be a Darling in the hands of one author and a perfectly fine character in the hands of another. Steve Rogers/Captain America is an example of a character who gets Darling-ified a lot. Captain America is supposed to be a shining example of The Best that humanity has to offer- he's virtuous, strong, brave, and oh so pretty. It's easy to fall into the trap of making him incapable of failing at whatever you want him to do, whether that's "punching a lot of Nazis" or "supporting Bucky in his recovery". But a lot of writers manage to thread the needle and write Cap as the lovable, flawed person he's supposed to be.

Why are Author's Darlings bad?

Well, two reasons:

Writing an Author's Darling is a really good way to give yourself writer's block, especially when it comes to the plot. If your character can't fail at anything important, this means that it's really hard to build tension. If your character is going to automatically succeed at anything that's important to the plot, all you're writing is "and then they win, and then they win, and then they win". It can get pretty monotonous pretty quickly, especially if you're writing genre fiction. You can run out of ideas, or your inner critic can go "this isn't how stories work???? the FUCK???" and block your creative flow. If your character can't fail at anything- important or not- it's hard to come up with a good story for them at all. You know how sometimes you get a character rattling around your head but you can't get a plot for them at all? One of the first steps in fixing that is making sure you're not writing an Author's Darling.

Writing an Author's Darling makes people not want to read your work. Now, look. I know everyone says "you should write for yourself, and screw anyone who says otherwise!" But let's be honest here: it sucks to spend hours working on a piece of writing, post it, and then get, like, 2 hits and no kudos, or 1 tumblr like from your friend who likes everything that crosses their dash. It's incredibly demoralizing. Author's Darlings are one of the big factors that make people stop reading a story. As soon as a reader gets the sense that the protagonist can't screw up- that they're "too perfect"- the tension in the story is gone. There's no reason for them to keep reading, because they know the character's just going to Press The Win Button And Win. So they'll click out without saying anything, and you'll wonder why no one's reading your fic.

What isn't an Author's Darling?

This section is haunted by the ghost of Mary Sue. If you're reading this list and you're new to fandom/young, you might wonder why I'm calling out certain specific things; this is a fandom war you missed, don't worry about it.

An Author's Darling is not a character of any specific gender. Male, female, and nonbinary characters can all be Author's Darlings.

An Author's Darling is not necessarily an OC. In the current fandom climate, it's way more likely that a Darling will be a 35-year-old canon male character the writer calls "babygirl".

An Author's Darling is not necessarily a self-insert, but it's really easy to make a self-insert into a Darling. There's a reason people recommend that newbie writers avoid self-inserts- it can be really hard to write a character based on yourself that screws up something important. It takes a lot of vulnerability and courage to write, and it's not something you want to show everyone.

An Author's Darling is not an "overpowered" character or a "cool" character. Your character can have sixteen katanas and do air dashes and still not be a Darling- and your character can be a powerless human in a superhero setting and be the biggest Darling to ever Darling. Having "too many" powers or standing out "too much" in the setting is often a symptom of a Darling- if you don't want your character to fail at anything important, and being The Coolest Person In The Room is important to you, you're going to make your Darling overpowered and good at everything. But it's not the thing that makes an Author's Darling bad.

An Author's Darling is not a 'perfect' character, or a character without flaws. There's a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram, don't get me wrong... but you can load up a character with "flaws" that don't matter to you. A lot of dudebro male writers, for example, will make their Darlings emotionally constipated, mean, and Bad At Relationships. These genuinely are character flaws... but these writers don't give a flying fuck about the character's relationships. They're happy to let their Darling fail at this stuff to prove he's FLAWED!!!- but try and make them write a fight scene their Darling loses, and they'll break out in hives.

Why should I care? Writing is supposed to be fun, and writing characters failing is not fun for me.

Writing is a craft. It is no different from knitting a sweater, making a stop-motion film, or trimming a bonsai. There are ways to do it well, and there are ways to do it poorly.

It can be fun and rewarding to knit a shitty sock with holes in the heel where you forgot how the pattern works and weird lumps in the calf. It is more fun and rewarding to get good enough at knitting that you knit socks you can wear.

Similarly, it can be fun and rewarding to deliberately write stories about overpowered Author's Darlings that are boring to read for anyone who isn't you. But it is more fun and rewarding to get good enough at writing that you write stories other people will want to read.

And you know, maybe you don't care about that. Everyone needs a hobby that they're bad at and have no interest in getting better at; it keeps you humble. Maybe writing is yours.

But plenty of writers do care. And tarring every writer who writes OCs and self-inserts with the same brush- the brush of "this is supposed to be fun! we're writing deliberately bad things! yay!"- is an insult to anyone who writes OCs and cares about their craft.

If you want to write well, you should be aware of what an Author's Darling is, and if possible, you should try to avoid writing them. If you don't care about writing well, that's fine- but please avoid implying that every OC or self-insert character is badly written in this particular way.

Art by Julia Sidorenko

the key to surviving grad school (also maybe life but definitely grad school) is to pick a side quest every few months or so. something that brings you joy and that you can get better at over time, independent of whether or not your research or classes are going well. put your need for academic validation to use in a non-academic setting and everything will feel less dire and you will learn you are more than your work

a very good lesson my therapist helped me with was changing “should” to “want to”

example:

“I should shower.” -> moral, weighty, often an addition to the chorus of shit you are already struggling with. a dead end! guilt and shame are not sustainable motivators.

“I want to shower.” -> acknowledgement of a need and desire, now we can move forward!

often, when we’re stuck, it’s unlikely that we are choosing it. even if you have the “i could do this if i just got off my ass” running through your head, that doesn’t mean it’s correct. something is stopping you. something is preventing you. moving forward looks like figuring out what that blockage is.

there are infinite reasons we get stuck or don’t do something. often, these reasons have little places we can push back on.

with our example, here are some reasons that have interfered with my hygiene, and what i tell/ask myself when they come up. my therapist recommended getting curious with the feeling, not judgmental. genuinely, gently: why is this thing stopping you?

i don’t like my skin being damp, it’s really uncomfortable -> the discomfort will suck, and i’ll feel better once i’m dry. is the post-shower dampness more uncomfortable than feeling icky right now?

i can’t stand up that long and making it to the shower is too fucking hard -> i can sit on the side of the tub / i don’t have to shower right now, i can rest for a bit and see where i’m at after

i haven’t done that much, so i’m not that dirty -> i still don’t feel very good, maybe a shower would help reset. even if i don’t feel better, at least i don’t have to add sensory ick to the bad feeling.

i forgot and now it’s time for bed and i can’t sleep with wet hair -> i can shower in the morning! / i can do a body wash and take care of my hair in the morning

and listen, sometimes the reason for not doing something you want to do is very fucking compelling. sometimes you just can’t fucking shower. and you learn to stock hygiene wipes on the grocery list and keep a stack of clean washcloths by the sink, and you buy a shower chair for the days you need to sit down.

and if you get to a place where you want something and won’t give it to yourself (not can’t!), you need to ask why you’re depriving yourself of something you want.

i find that is often more helpful than railing against yourself for something you should be doing.

First of all, how dare you

Having a traumatic childhood means you cannot talk even objectively about your basic foundational experiences without it being "venting", even if you're not actually venting. You just straight up have a huge chunk of your life you can't talk about, full stop, without it being trauma dumping.

And it not being socially acceptable to talk about your own childhood is super alienating. Sometimes people want to know why, and any answer you can give them is going to be off putting.

It's to the point I get irritated when something I said is framed as venting when I'm literally just talking about my life experiences, doing my best to keep emotion out of it.

that task you’ve been putting off? that chore you’ve been procrastinating? whatever responsibility it is that you’ve been ignoring, try this: set a timer and dedicate 15 minutes to doing it, and when the timer stops, so do you. you may not complete it in that time frame, and that’s totally okay, because now you’ve made some progress. and guess what? a small victory is still a win