Get It Done The Weird Way. Do It In Parts. Do It “wrong”. Do It “late”. Do It Scared. It’s

No, you're not wrong.

You're not wrong for wanting a better life for yourself.

You're not wrong for believing that you are deserving of better.

You're not wrong for making those necessary changes in your life.

You're not wrong for changing the way you show up to life.

You're not wrong for distancing yourself from those things that harm you.

You're not wrong.

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helpful reminders + ways to support abortion seekers in the US right now

some thoughts/reminders based on what i’ve seen on social media today:

this decision doesn’t just impact women! it impacts anyone who has a uterus! say what you mean and mean what you say, your words have weight and meaning! (glad we could clear that up)

grieving is normal. having big, messy, unwieldy feelings is normal. taking the time to recognize and sit in those emotions is important. wanting to protest is good. wanting to change things is great. being in touch enough with your emotions to recognize that you’re experiencing trauma is just as important.

everyone processes differently. my reaction may not look like your reaction, and yours might not look like the reactions of your friends/family members. many people have jobs/situations that preclude them from taking the sort of actions they’d like to in response to this/other social injustices they’ve seen recently. hold space for those people, the people sticking it out in places where they can’t speak their minds for the sake of creating a better place for those who come after them.

the people in the U.S. didn't ask for this. CNN polled americans after the draft opinion leaked in early may, and at the time 59% of respondents said that they'd support congressional legislation codifying nationwide abortion rights. I know it's easy to make fun of the U.S. by calling us a dumpster fire or saying you're glad your country didn't do this, but know that there are real people on the other side of the globe from you who are reeling from the whiplash of swiveling their gaze between children being gunned down in their schools and the supreme court attempting to delegitimize reproductive rights. it's not a joke for them, particularly not for those who fall into multiple minority communities and will now be facing the brunt of this ruling head-on in more ways than one.

for fucks sake. donate to abortion healthcare providers. not just PP (we love them too, but the smaller ones need the most help). learn how to support yourself/your friends in the event that you need to get an abortion and don’t live in a state where it’s protected. spend time/money investing in the protection of the rights of the groups that found out halfway through the morning that they have fewer rights than family members only one generation above them. grieve with them. care for them. act just as loudly as your words and posts.

Some helpful links re:putting your money where your mouth is below the cut

Links:

National Abortion Federation (the largest national, toll-free, multi-lingual Hotline for abortion referrals and financial assistance in the U.S. and Canada, providing callers with accurate information, confidential consultation, and referrals to providers of quality abortion care)

National Network of Abortion Funds (direct donation to over 90 local abortion providers, allows you to customize your donation amount + direction)

The Abortion Privacy Guide (how to safely search for abortion access from a device)

Abortion Finder (comprehensive directory of verified abortion service providers)

Repro Legal Helpline (help with specific, legal questions about an abortion experience)

Mayday Health’s Twitter Thread and Plan C (directions on how to request abortion pills for at-home abortion access)

Donations4Abortions (resource to help you find local funds to support from state to state)

Indigenous Women Rising (abortion fund for all indigenous people who are seeking abortion services)

The Brigid Alliance (national abortion fund that arranges/funds all aspects of the abortion process no matter where the person seeking the abortion is located)

I Need An A (provides personalized, up to date info on how to get an abortion)

MA Hotline (licensed healthcare providers to answer medical questions during an at home miscarriage/abortion)

Exhale Pro-Voice, Connect and Breathe (post-abortion counseling services)

Reprocare (emotional support during medical abortion process)

This is your daily reminder that autocrats thrive on hopelessness. They thrive on fear. They win when the people become resigned and believe that fighting back is impossible.

Listen, there’s simply no denying that we are on the road to autocracy. But, believe it or not, we’re not there yet. (Yes, it’s true!) We can turn back!

But in order to do that, we have to believe we can.

There’s an Eleanor Roosevelt quote that gets repeated so often, it’s almost lost its meaning, but I still think it’s worth revisiting in a new light:

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Don’t give them permission to make you feel lesser! That’s what they want! They want you to just roll over and accept their dominance!

Listen, I know this whole situation is so fucking exhausting. And wouldn’t it be so great if we didn’t have to fight so hard for our basic rights and freedoms? But these are the cards we’ve been dealt; we’re in this fight whether we like it or not.

So, do whatever you need to do to keep yourself sane. We’re in this fight, but we need to take it in shifts or else we’ll get burnt out and then they win.

Keep yourself sane. Find the moments of joy wherever you can. And remember that no one gets to make you feel lesser just because they want you to.

As an adult you must cultivate the skill of “Gross! Oh, well. Not my business.”

Hey btw, here's a piece of life advice:

If you know what you'd have to do to solve a problem, but you just don't want to do it, your main problem isn't the problem itself. Your problem is figuring out how to get yourself to do the solution.

If your problem is not eating enough vegetables, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make vegetables stop being yucky". If your problem is not getting enough exercise, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make exercise stop sucking ass". You're not supposed to just be doing things that are awful and suck all the time forever, you're supposed to figure out how to make it stop being so awful all the time.

I used to hate wearing sunscreen because it's sticky and slimy and disgusting and it feels bad and it smells bad, so I neglected to wear it even if I needed to. Then I found one that isn't like that, and doesn't smell and feel gross. Problem solved.

There is no correct way to live that's just supposed to suck and feel bad all the time. You're allowed to figure out how to make it not suck so bad.

DO YOU NEED HELP?! THIS IS YOUR PUSH TO GO GET THAT HELP!!!

IT'S NOT A FAILURE TO NEED HELP!!! ACTUALLY - ASKING FOR HELP IS ONE OF THE BRAVEST, MOST BADASS THINGS YOU CAN DO!!! SO, IF YOU NEED HELP, IF YOU'RE STRUGGLING WITH SOMETHING - THIS IS YOUR SIGN!!! ASK SOMEONE!!! GOOGLE!!! LET'S GET YOU THAT HELP!!!

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.

A really important concept to grasp is that just doing to smallest thing you can will help.

Need to change and wash your sheets but you can’t being yourself to do it? Just change the pillowcases. Just make the bed. Just wiping off the crumbs is enough.

Need to read a paper and do a write up? Just read the paper. Just listen to the paper through a screen reader. Just skim the sections and the first line. Just read the abstract.

Need to clean a mountain of dirty dishes? Just clean the big things. Just soak the things that need to be soaked. Just gather all the dishes into the sink.

The real key here is that you might just get that one small thing done, but likely what will happen is you’ll finish it and realize ‘hey that wasn’t so bad, I’m already here, what else can I do?’ And you’ll end up finishing the task.

But again, even if you just do the one small thing, that’s worth celebrating, it’s worth being proud of, because it was hard, but you did it. Sleeping in dirty sheets is better than sleeping on dirty sheets with crumbs. Reading the abstract is better than reading nothing, and gathering the dishes is better than leaving them out.