I Feel So Overwhelmed And Pessimistic About My Future I Literally Don't Know What To Do

Me reading another person's writing: Oh they missed a period there, no worries mistakes happen :) Three adjectives in a sentence? Adverbs for days? No worries I love descriptions and this story is fire.

Me seeing the same thing in my work: Wow am I illiterate? Am I actually ok? Who the actual fuck told me I can write so I can go and curse their entire family for the time it took for me to carefully craft this GARBAGE.

𝘐 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘰 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵.

𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘪 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦.

𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘺, 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘦.

𝘈𝘴 𝘪 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘪 𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘯.

𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘱 𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯.

The thing people miss about medieval smells and lighting a lot of time is the fact that everything is fire powered. All their heat and all their light. Now I don't know if you have ever been to a place where all you have had is fire but it smells. It smells strong. The smell of fire will pretty much drown out most other scents. So it is likely you wouldn't always smell the person next to you, especially if the wood was wet and made a lot of smoke. You are going to stink like it for days even under modern circumstances where we bathe more regularly and also don't have to continually do this. Don't get me wrong, a city stink will still out stink it with the sheet amount of poop, but it is perfectly okay to imagine a medieval bar where everything just smells smoky.

This fire effect is also why you can always find shady corners in taverns. They didn't have high ceilings. They had some torches/candles/fireplace in a low ceilinged room. It is crazily easy for a pickpocket or anyone to just linger in there, especially once people have been drinking, and just not be noticed. Sure your eyes adjust, but everyone has different night vision and it all depends on how rich of a place you are at as to how much fire is available. Maybe if you are lucky it is a full moon.

Such news frustrate and discuss me so much, I literally can not.

This shit is dystopian, AI was never meant to create art, it will never be able to.

a writing competition i was going to participate in again this year has announced that they now allow AI generated content to be submitted

their reasoning being that "we couldn't ban it even if we wanted to, every writer already uses it anyway"

"Every writer"?

come on

A vampire has worked at the local 7-11 for the past 5 decades. No one has the heart to slay them—partly because they're a good employee, but mostly because they think the vampire is doing a "great job" hiding their vampirism (they're really not).

“When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.”

— Carl R. Rogers

im sooo ready for summer🫩

Writing Notes: Archetypes

A quick rundown of the 12 archetypes that we often encounter in literature:

Caregiver - sacrifices themselves for the needs and wants of others

Creator - creates or envisions

Hero - will save the day with confidence, talent, strength, or skill

Innocent - pure in their motivations; often naive and inexperienced

Joker - adds humor to the story

Lover - driven by passion, love, or devotion

Orphan - may feel out of place; has a deep desire to be understood/accepted

Outlaw - a rebel who breaks social convention

Magician - understands the way the world works & uses it to their advantage

Ruler - has control and/or wants to be in control

Sage - has acquired wisdom and may act as a mentor

Seducer - irresistible and uses their charm to get what they want

Every character has a purpose. While the character may be the protagonist of their own lives, they won't necessarily be the protagonist in the story that you're telling.

Perhaps they're the antagonist. Or a mentor. Or both.

Understanding the character's identity in your story will help you create a complete arc that resonates with your reader.

Fortunately, there's a time-tested way to easily identify the roles your characters will play in your story.

It relies on psychologist Carl Jung's theory of archetypes.

Jung believed there were 12 patterns, or archetypes, that exist in our collective unconscious — the part of the mind that is common to all humans.

These 12 archetypes represent basic human motivations.

And we experience all of them.

However, we each tend to be dominated by only one of these archetypes. And that's the basis of our personality.

Archetype vs. Stereotype

An archetype is used to define the role that a character plays in a novel. They can be a hero, an orphan, and/or an innocent.

By contrast, a stereotype is an oversimplified set of characteristics we assign a person based on preconceived beliefs about the group that the person belongs to, whether we’re doing so by race, gender, age, religion, etc.

While an archetype can be used as the starting point for defining a complex character, a stereotype is quite the opposite.

Stereotypes are reductive and narrow characters into caricatures.

An archetype is a template.

A stereotype is a formulaic conclusion.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References Character Archetypes ⚜ Goals ⚜ Stereotypical Characters

everything eats and is eaten