So I, uh, just emptied everything in my drafts, which i’d been using as a sort of inbox-for-processing space for stuff that I 1) didn’t have the cognitive spoons to read but wanted to revisit later, 2) had audio but I didn’t have headphones atm, or 3) had links I didn’t feel like clicking thru to check out yet. I deleted a lot of it, but there’s… a lot I just posted. So, sorry for filling your dash with really random stuff, and/or for reblogging something you made *ages* ago.
PTSD is your brain trying to make sure you DON’T DIE.
Humans are really good at adapting so that we don’t die. That’s kind of our whole *THING*. We adapt.
If something BAD and SCARY and DANGEROUS happens, your brain tries to teach you to react better next time. If the Bad Scary Dangerous thing happens a lot, that’s reinforcing it. With CPTSD, the Bad Scary Dangerous thing happened often enough and frequently enough that your whole psyche developed around it.
You learn to notice the tiny things that signal the Bad Scary Dangerous Thing might happen – even if you don’t consciously know that you know that – so that you are braced to react and defend yourself. They become triggers so that you are primed to respond.
Hypervigilance? Better to panic unnecessarily than to get dead because you didn’t recognize a threat in time, right? It’s uncomfortable and a waste of energy but you’re not dead.
Nightmares about the Bad Thing? Dreams are PRACTICE. You are trying to learn how to react better or faster or more effectively next time.
Avoidance? Dissociating is better than just completely breaking and shutting down entirely.
The thing is, even if you are not in that situation anymore, your brain did not get the memo. It is trying! But it takes a lot of work to convince it that “No really, it is safe now!”
I guess what I’m saying is cut yourself some slack. You are doing your best and you’re not dead. ❤
this is such a good post. I came to a point, sometime in the last year and change, where I stopped being ashamed of the total shutdown that happened when I was trying to apply for med school, because I realized: I got there by ignoring the warning signs that this lifestyle was destroying me, and my brain and body did what they could to save me.
I’d stopped listening to the constant sense of doom, I kept pretending everything was all right when it wasn’t.
every day I would get on the computer and try to work on my secondary applications and my mind would go blank. and I’m a writer! writing is what I do. I have more writing background than the vast majority of pre-meds. I should have been able to do it, even if writing about yourself is a different sort of thing. and I wasn’t, I got like two of ten in and those were late, and for a long time I was so ashamed of this.
(relatedly, the reason my sidebar info hasn’t been restructured in years and there are major things I’d like to have there that are missing from it is that writing about myself in the “present yourself to the world” kind of way is still difficult and triggering for me. I can write stories and anecdotes and share facts about my life, but social media profiles are next to impossible. I knew this was something to do with my trauma, but I didn’t connect it to the application process until just now – I thought it was just the way my identity got messed up by those years of pretending to be more normal. which is probably also a thing, but oops yes also there’s a specific experience traumabrain is skittering away from.)
but yeah, anyway: in 2011-2012 my brain just stood in place and refused to go further, and I was ashamed of it for a long time but now I’m grateful.
But the right arm would be clad in something like this, dragonbone passed down from hims family and culture.
While his left arm, the stained glass arm, goes up to his shoulder, and should be a mosaic of color, because while there is a golden sunlight within that animates it, the glass should be almost alive with color and variation. No one has ever managed to depict it correctly yet. The coloring would look something like this
Either flowing the indvidiual pieces of glass keep moving around, animated as he’s moving. Sometimes when he’s standing still and talking, especially over spiritual matters, the glass takes illustrates more symbolism and becomes less of a flow of color and and light in favor of telling a story.
Sorry if that’s a lot, but I thought more detail would help.
He is ambidextrous and his weapons of choice are War Hammers and Greatswords, preferring agressive tactics against foes in heavy armor and of great strength and size. The sword of his Order, Mahlul, he carries when fighting as a leader of the order of the first sun.
His equally used warhammer is the First Dawn and a true Holy Avenger Artifact, despite its blocky appearance..
And his final weapon and trump card is the light within his glass arm, which he can will to “bleed” out of the cracks in glass into radiant weapons at will or empower what he’s already carrying with additional radiant damage. Generally he uses it to make spears for more distant enemies.
Tonight’s dinner is pre-pack salmon because it was in the freezer and I haven’t been shopping yet, but the pasta is in a gouda-nutmeg sauce with toasted pine nuts and that experiment turned out hella good.
Since there is a request for the sauce:
Ingedients:
Pasta
White wine
Heavy Cream
Small Block of hard chesse- pretty much any hard cheese will work, but I had Gouda on hand
Black pepper
Nutmeg
Pine Nuts (Optional, but hella good)
Instructions
Before cooking, finely shred hard cheese and keep on hand, having it prepared makes things easier later.
Cook pasta in boiling water until almost done, about 7 minutes.
while pasta cooks, heat small pan on another burner to medium-high heat, no oil. add handful of pine nuts and toast, tossing frequently, until toasted. This happens pretty quick so keep an eye on them!
Reserve ½ cup pasta water in case you need to adjust the sauce later, then drain the pasta, returning it to the pot you just cooked it in. If you’re bad at planning ahead like I am and need time to shred the cheese, toss in some butter to keep it from sticking.
Add a splash of white wine and enough heavy cream to coat the pasta, and return it to the burner on medium-low heat and stir until the wine/cream mixture starts to bubble.
add cheese in a small handful at a time, stirring constantly until all the cheese is melted and sauce is very thick.
take pasta off burner and add nutmeg and black pepper to taste. Garnish with pine nuts.
alright so i fed that one predictive writer bot all 7 acts of homestuck and forced it to write a very short act of homestuck (i didnt change anything about it except for maybe adding punctuation and changing the characters’ text colors)
In the West, plot is commonly thought to revolve around conflict: a confrontation between two or more elements, in which one ultimately dominates the other. The standard three- and five-act plot structures–which permeate Western media–have conflict written into their very foundations. A “problem” appears near the end of the first act; and, in the second act, the conflict generated by this problem takes center stage. Conflict is used to create reader involvement even by many post-modern writers, whose work otherwise defies traditional structure.
The necessity of conflict is preached as a kind of dogma by contemporary writers’ workshops and Internet “guides” to writing. A plot without conflict is considered dull; some even go so far as to call it impossible. This has influenced not only fiction, but writing in general–arguably even philosophy. Yet, is there any truth to this belief? Does plot necessarily hinge on conflict? No. Such claims are a product of the West’s insularity. For countless centuries, Chinese and Japanese writers have used a plot structure that does not have conflict “built in”, so to speak. Rather, it relies on exposition and contrast to generate interest. This structure is known as kishōtenketsu.
Great piece about alternative story structure that isn’t based around conflict, and the power of narrative.
(The structure most Western writers are familiar with is based on what Joseph Campbell described as the “monomyth” or “Hero’s Journey,” as detailed and illustrated here.)
If you’re like me, you want to learn everything and have all skills and try to pursue all things at once. I made this spread to help focus in on just one skill or trait to develop at a time. The idea is that when you have a baby plant, it requires more care and attention to survive and grows very quickly when it is well cared for. Once it’s fairly strong, then it’s time to let it grow at its own steady pace along with all the other things you’re working on and move on to the next until your garden of skills is happily and peacefully growing.
1. What skill/trait should you focus on? This is your seedling.
2. How should you approach this? Do I plant from seed? Do I take a cutting and propagate? Is there a class I can take? Should I make a schedule and work on this for ten minutes a day? Is it a more passive trait that I need to work on through metacognition all day?
3. What do you need to set yourself up for success? Plants need to be set up in the right conditions to thrive. They need to be placed where they get the right amount of sunlight and the right humidity. They need the right soil. What conditions do you need to set for yourself to thrive?
4. What is the outcome/what will this help you reach? I won’t call this the “end result” because your vine should keep growing and reach further and further. What does this skill/trait help you reach if you nurture it?
The question I get the most is how I write characters that feel like real people.
Generally when I’m designing a human being, I deconstruct them into 7 major categories:
1. Primary Drive 2. Fear: Major and Secondary 3. Physical Desires 4. Style of self expression 5. How they express affection 6. What controls them (what they are weak for) 7. What part of them will change.
1. Primary Drive: This is generally related to the plot. What are their plot related goals? How are they pulling the plot forward? how do they make decisions? What do they think they’re doing and how do they justify doing it.
2. Fear: First, what is their deep fear? Abandonment? being consumed by power? etc. Second: tiny fears. Spiders. someone licking their neck. Small things that bother them. At least 4.
3. Physical desires. How they feel about touch. What is their perceived sexual/romantic orientation. Do their physical desires match up with their psychological desires.
4. Style of self expression: How they talk. Are they shy? Do they like to joke around and if so, how? Are they anxious or confident internally and how do they express that externally. What do words mean to them? More or less than actions? Does their socioeconomic background affect the way they present themselves socially?
5.
How they express affection: Do they express affection through actions or words. Is expressing affection easy for them or not. How quickly do they open up to someone they like. Does their affection match up with their physical desires. how does the way they show their friends that they love them differ from how they show a potential love interest that they love them. is affection something they struggle with?
6. What controls them (what they are weak for): what are they almost entirely helpless against. What is something that influences them regardless of their own moral code. What– if driven to the end of the wire— would they reject sacrificing. What/who would they cut off their own finger for. What would they kill for, if pushed. What makes them want to curl up and never go outside again from pain. What makes them sink to their knees from weakness or relief. What would make them weep tears of joy regardless where they were and who they were in front of.
7. WHAT PART OF THEM WILL CHANGE: people develop over time. At least two of the above six categories will be altered by the storyline–either to an extreme or whittled down to nothing. When a person experiences trauma, their primary fear may change, or how they express affection may change, etc. By the time your book is over, they should have developed. And its important to decide which parts of them will be the ones that slowly get altered so you can work on monitoring it as you write. making it congruent with the plot instead of just a reaction to the plot.
That’s it.
But most of all, you have to treat this like you’re developing a human being. Not a “character” a living breathing person. When you talk, you use their voice. If you want them to say something and it doesn’t seem like (based on the seven characteristics above) that they would say it, what would they say instead?
If they must do something that’s forced by the plot, that they wouldn’t do based on their seven options, they can still do the thing, but how would they feel internally about doing it?
How do their seven characteristics meet/ meld with someone else’s seven and how will they change each other?
Once you can come up with all the answers to all of these questions, you begin to know your character like you’d know one of your friends. When you can place them in any AU and know how they would react.
They start to breathe.
Something else that makes a character pop, for me, is attaching an emotion to them when we first meet them. Are they angry? Tired? Scared?
They become less forgettable, because then we feel what the character is feeling. Especially important for side characters, I think.
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