The Ineffable Husbands As "Couple Dancing" By Leyendecker

Yeah, this is painfully me. Only I even do this for things I finished years ago.

Me : *finishes a book/TV show/movie*

Me : I must now go through the Tumblr tag for this and reblog everything.

Two Truths and a Lie

A short poem I wrote relating to the lack of justice or transparency in politics:

Two Truths and a Lie.

Can you spot the falsehood?

Or have candour and mendacity become inseparable?

The snakes have danced their dance, and mesmerised the populace,

And now reality is a dream.

Or a nightmare.

Is there a binary anymore?

A distinct black and white.

Or is our world now made in endless shades of grey?

We have been left trying to pick out the minutia,

But when everything is a pencil sketch can differences be found?

The struggle for justice has lost its hue,

When the heroes you found are branded villains and questionedBy a media unable to speak.

Or scream.

The truth of the matter is that there is no truth now.

There are only lies to be found.

And truth.

When Orwellian thinking is the lifeblood of leadership,

Is there any solace to be found?

When the values so long encouraged and denied

Are diminished by the very people who defended, and coveted, those same values

Is there any future?

Will there even be an end?

Or are we trapped in an abyss of decline,

Until our very being is lost to thought so indecipherable and grey,

That we can no longer observe anything at all.

Can you spot two truths and the lie in a post-truth world?

Atlantis, in pastels on rough watercolour paper.

Some very interesting writing tips, taken from a beloved studio. Less telling than I’d have thought about the studio itself though.

These rules were originally tweeted by Emma Coats, Pixar’s Story Artist. 

You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.

Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Sources: [1] [2]

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An English Boy thinking of the Nation from which he got his Name

A poem I wrote recently after starting to study Irish history:

I sit in class,

And learn of a past

That in many ways once was mine.

Though generations divorced, is it not natural to pine?

For a heritage too vast to grasp.

At home are pictures of a land unfamiliar:

Of faces, green spaces and castles.

And though their meaning escapes me,

And the memories long left me,

I know they mean much more.

In my mind's ear I hear fiddles,

But all I comprehend are riddles.

To follow is a rite of passage

From which I could only scavenge:

A path left but unearnt.

The waves of the coast call to me,

They beckon me back to the quay.

Again I hesitate to follow,

My connection only being hollow,

But now I have a chance to see.

To see revolutions rise and quickly fall,

The mistreatment and the brawls,

And the poets dreaming of a free home.

They tell stories of white horses- across the fields they roam;

A return to a culture stolen.

To discover the rural lands once more,

To grasp the many wars,

To comprehend the intricacies and allegiances.

The negotiations that devolved into grievances,

And the retaliations spun into tales of yore.

One image stands out in the mist:

A memorial of cold stone.

This one belongs to my grandfather, but I know of many more:

O'Connell; Parnell; Struck down by hearts broken, by causes lost.

The Banshees’ howls echoing around them.

I may not grasp the history, the language or the myths.

My blood may not be Irish like those before me,

But I have the chance to learn, to reconnect.

I know what I am:

An English boy thinking of the nation from which he got his name.

I'm definitely using this as book recs having just finished The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet- thanks for the list!

Lizard’s Queer Space Opera Collection

What time is it? It’s ✨ lizard talks about queer sci-fi ✨ time

My family don’t understand how much joy I get from queer stories, and none of my close friend really read space operas (at least not with the same voracity that I do), so I’m appearing here to pass my knowledge on to you, the void that is my blog.

I read a lot of space operas, and I’ve had the incredible luck that the last handful I’ve picked up have been joyfully queer (or maybe we’re just seeing a shift in the sci-fi publishing world. I love it.). This isn’t a comprehensive list or anything, and this isn’t limited to pure space operas, but they are some of my favorites. Hope I can convince some of you to read a couple (and if you do or have read any, please come and shout at me! I want to talk about them! Always!)

I originally wrote these out for my Instagram, and I can’t really be bothered to retype it all so below the cut are my quick descriptions/thoughts on each of the books, but I’ll chuck the list here too

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin

Machine, Elizabeth Bear

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

Winter’s Orbit, Everina Maxwell

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

A Matter Of Oaths, Helen S. Wright

A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine

The Collapsing Empire, John Scalzi

These are just books that I’ve read in the last year or so, and if you have any more recs please tell me!

A couple additions that didn't make it to Instagram:

If you like graphic novels, please give On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden a shot, it's really lovely and quiet and feels like a big warm space hug.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado is a collection of horror short stories, some of which border on scifi, which is why it didn't make it into the main list, but I highly recommend it. My copy was given to me by the lovely @markcampbells

I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter has a bit of a history due to its presentation of gender, and the author actually asked for it to be removed from the Clarkesworld magazine due to the hate comments she was receiving. Still, if you can find it I highly recommend it, as it is genuinely very good.

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer is. Wow it sure is a book that emotionally damaged me. It's about two boys (men? they're 17 but it doesn't feel like a YA book, except int he good ways) who are on a spaceship heading out to Titan to attempt a rescue mission on Earth's first extraterrestrial colony. There are a lot of feels and ouch.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North. This book isn't a space opera, but it is somewhat sci-fi? anyway, Harry August is one of my favourite books of all time, and it explores a man trapped in what is almost a timeloop, except that time-loop is his whole life. each time he dies he's reborn right back where he started, and it's only through his and the other people like him's actions that the world is ever changed in each repeat.

The Culture series, Iain M Banks. I put this one on the list with a good bit of trepidation and the warning of: these books were written by a (supposedly) cishet white man, and almost all of his protagonists are…nearly cishet white men (with a couple women thrown in in later books). The same can not be said for literally every other character, who are almost entirely trans and bisexual. These books really gave me my love for space operas and if you're a fan of the genre I recommend. Also, the AIs here are amazing. Let us not forget the Ship "Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath". They're great.

(I’m also going to add, I would not recommend his normal fiction. I’ve read two, The Wasp Factory which kind of scarred and disturbed me, and Transitions which was just plain bad. Maybe I picked a bad selection, but I can only in good conscience recommend his sci-fi.)

And that's it my dudes! go forth! read queer space operas!

Just a magpie who found herself some new shiny toys!

Bonus: These are for you!

Holy Trinity.

christopher reeve as superman