A Home for Wayward Fandoms

I've seen this before, but it's been years and it just came across my Twitter in its dying days. The words are from a favorite author of mine, Maggie Stiefvater, and they are the words I most need to hear when it comes to dealing with chronic pain and illness. I didn't need this the first time I saw it, six years ago. I need it now. Maybe you do, too.

Spicy-brained friends, I would like to propose an update to the very useful ‘if you hate everyone, eat, if everyone hates you, sleep, and if you hate yourself, shower’ mantra to live by

Have you suddenly become a petty, hateful little gremlin who thinks people should face the firing squad for (checks notes) leaving teabags on the counter, breathing loudly, or daring to exist in the same space as you? Perhaps mundane and reasonable requests like ‘hey, we agreed to hang out now, let’s hang out’ make you want to scream and move to a yurt in the woods.

You. Are. Overstimulated.

People talk a lot about being overstimulated, and the physical/mental effects of it. What I haven’t seen is people talking about what it does emotionally, and it took me an embarassingly long time to link up those nitpicky, resentful emotions with the state of overstimulation/meltdown/shutdown.

These feelings do not mean that you’re a bad person! They probably aren’t how you actually feel about the people around you. They probably do mean that your nervous system is at its absolute limit and any request/demand/stimulus is Too Much and taking you into fight or flight territory.

Go lie down in a dark room for an hour, or find somewhere safe and familiar to stim for a bit. If it’s happening a lot, schedule yourself regular low-stimulation shutdown time

Signed: someone who moved in with their nearest and dearest only to have a massive crisis of faith about Suddenly Hating All of Them. I don’t hate them, it’s just overstimulating living with people. If I can spare anyone else a similar 9 months of suspecting that they may actually be a bit of a shit person, then this post is worth it!

you might especially feel this way if someone picks up on your bad mood, but all their kind suggestions make you want to bite and scream. in my experience that’s not because you hate them or even the suggestion, it’s probably because *any* new information or ideas, no matter how gentle, is just Too Many Thoughts. this is when it helps a lot to have a plan in advance, even if the plan is just “take medication” or “go to hidey-hole,” because trying to think of a solution in the moment might be beyond you.

(also if ur overstimulated, it’s often worth checking if you need to eat/sleep/shower as well, because that might be part of what’s overstimulating you!)

chronic pain is also a source of overstimulation

Just so we’re all clear, it is okay to miss people you no longer want in your life.

this is so important

some people genuinely have trouble with never being told this. i am reblogging this post in case that includes any of you in my audience.

You’re missing the memories, not the person them self

You miss the person you thought they were, not who they turned out to be, and that’s okay.

Sometimes you just miss the person you were around them, or the things that happened when you were with them, and you don’t really miss them, and that’s okay, too.

And sometimes you miss the person they once genuinely were, but then they changed for whatever reason and their current self is not that anymore, but you can’t turn back time

I'm collecting a list of Short Stories That Fucked Us Up As Children. reblog and tell me what I'm missing.

here's the list so far:

I'll add a poll in case it helps haha

OP turned off reblogs

Writing is so much fun! You can be like "I should process this" and just go nuh-huh, see, I'm going to make up a guy and have them process it for me. Not me! It's the guy I made!

Fun/horrifying writing challenge idea!

First, pick a story idea you want to use. Then, before writing each chapter, go to the TvTropes website. This is where things become painful.

TvTropes is now a board of out-of-touch executives who don't care about your vision, but they have an idea of what they think audiences want. For each chapter, they will give you some tropes they require you to use or begin building up to in your story. Find these tropes using the random trope button. You may have to restructure everything to make these guys happy.

Never fear- you CAN refuse tropes, but each trope you accept gives you more words to work with. You don't want your chapter cut short before you can finish, right? Choose how many words a trope gives you based on your own writing preferences and how long you want to do this challenge.

For hard mode- instead of going in with your own idea, use the random media button to find a franchise that the executives want you to either retell, adapt, continue or rip off.

Can you make something good or is this a trainwreck all the way through?

Honestly? My main piece of advice for writing well-rounded characters is to make them a little bit lame. No real living person is 100% cool and suave 100% of the time. Everyone's a little awkward sometimes, or gets too excited about something goofy, or has a silly fear, or laughs about stupid things. Being a bit of a loser is an incurable part of the human condition. Utilize that in your writing.

Hey.

If you do something creative for money, make sure you have something creative that you do which isn't for sale.

If you design clothes for a living, for example, you might bake or preserve food or work with clay and never sell it.

Do not monetize all of your hobbies, motherfuckers. This is how you burn yourself the fuck out.

✨️ask me how I know✨️

Do not talk about "but that costs money."

You are writing right now. You can sing. You can doodle on a napkin. You can make the food you have to eat anyway into a creative outlet. There are ways to be creative that require no extra dollars.

You don't have to be good at it. You just have to DO IT.

You must create, preserve, and rigorously defend the part of your soul that is not for sale.

This is not negotiable. It is this or burnout.

You cannot pour from an empty cup.

James baldwin’s the artists struggle for identity. Btw.

"That I have experienced my share of traumatic experiences, have survived abuse of various kinds, have faced near death from accidental circumstance and from violence (different as the particulars of these may be from those around me) is not a card to play in gamified social interaction or a weapon to wield in battles over prestige. It is not what gives me a special right to speak, to evaluate, or to decide for a group. It is a concrete, experiential manifestation of the vulnerability that connects me to most of the people on this earth. It comes between me and other people not as a wall, but as a bridge."

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture, 2022

when you start reading again and it's like oh. oh . the sun actually does still shine.

Kill me once, shame on you. Kill me twice, how did you did that.

kill me three times, this time loop fucking sucks

kill me four times, at least kiss me first

several times a week I see writing memes about the joy of That One Scene in your head and the agony of Everything Else you need to write around it

please. for your own sake. [gently cups your face] just write the one scene.

the question, you see, is not ‘is it too ooc for this character to cry’ but rather ‘what circumstances would push this character to cry’

this is the whump wisdom, go forth and make that character cry