Write That Story Because You Wanna See It Created. Because You Wanna Read It.

Minerva Mcgongall pulled out her notebook and turned to the page that listed the names and details of that years Gryffindor Quidditch team. Her heart swelling with pride she jotted down the name “Harry Potter” next to the position “Seeker” before closing the book and opening a second drawer. She took out a small, wooden box and rummaged in it for a few seconds before withdrawing a worn out envelope, inside of which was a short letter and a photograph.

“Dearest Minnie,

Hope you’re doing well! I’m the same of course, driving Lily up the wall as usual, she sends you her love by the way!

Now I know I told you that you’ll never find a chaser as good as me ever again, but it just goes to show that even the brilliant are sometimes mistaken. I’ve found you (made you!) a replacement who will one day outshine his old man by leagues! Enclosed is a photograph of your new Quidditch prodigy so that you may assess his skills for yourself. We have him chasing the cat for practice. He’ll be unbeatable by the time he starts at Hogwarts! The youngest Quidditch player in a century!

I guarantee it, Minnie. And you know I’m never wrong, though you’ll never admit it!

Missing you and Hogwarts terribly,

Lots of love,

James

P.S. Sirius says his marriage proposal still stands.”

Wiping away a single tear that ran down her cheek and chuckling to herself, she smiled down at the photograph of a small, gleeful, black haired boy zooming along on a toy broom, a pair of legs chasing after him and a young woman laughing hysterically in a corner.

“Right again, Mr. Potter.”

a lot of people on this site are like, deeply existentially freaked out that they haven’t been in love by 19 or whatever, and are desperate for any explanation for this that might make it ok. i just want to say, you are completely ok, no explanation needed. this is MUCH more common than you think, especially if you’re not straight. you’re very very young. you’re 100% fine. if you want it, it will happen in its own time.

a summer day

Richie’s eyes settled on Stan, soft curls, pale features, and the loveliest pink in his cheeks. He was soft-spoken and wise and Richie adored him. Boys weren’t supposed to be pretty but Stanley just was. He was so pretty and so unaware of it, from the tips of his neatly trimmed nails to the top of his mess of sandy-blonde curls. His words were often joking but always had a hint of affection in them. Stanley was rain in june, a bird’s song, the stillness of the ocean early in the morning.

He dragged his eyes over to Beverly, the prettiest girl in the world in his four eyes . She was much more than just a pretty girl though, she was fearless, caring, and so kind it made Richie’s chest ache. Her beauty was not only skin deep, but far deeper. Her firey red hair matched her soul, and the freckles that dotted her face reminded him of the constellations they saw when they star gazed in the fall, her eyes were like diamonds and Richie prayed he’never forget them. Beverly was the warmth of fire, the feeling of the first day of summer, a butterfly in may.

Bill, their fearless leader, the boy that Richie pins as his first love. Auburn hair and scrapped knees, sticking up for his best friends to boys much older and far bigger than he. Bill was an enigma to Richie, a beautiful mix of heroic and humble. He was almost as tall as Richie now and filling out with muscle and richie could hardly breathe anymore. He played baseball so effortlessly and was the best brother to Georgie. Bill was the feeling of snow on christmas morning, the smell of freshly cut grass, the laughter between best friends.

His attention drifted to Mike, god how he loved Mikey. The boy who was once unsure of himself and how he fit into their misfit family now smiled the prettiest smiles and laughed the brightest laughter. His skin shone in the summer sun like nothing else, and his eyes were the loveliest shade of honey. His kind soul and tender touch felt like a taste of heaven on earth. Richie was positive if he’d ever met an angel it was in the form of Mike. Mike was the comfort of a hug, the taste of fresh lemonade, the feeling of tenderness.

Then came Ben, or Ben Handsome as he was so affectionately called. Though he wasn’t the pudgy kid he was a few summers ago, his heart was still as full of the same love and loyalty now. Ben had a way with words like no other, the first to help and the last to go home. Richie admired his beautiful feautures, his newly acquired height, toned muscle, and the mess of soft, dark blonde locks that fell in his eyes every once in a while. Ben was the feeling of a first kiss, a bouquet of roses, the calmness of night.

Eddie, the boy richie teased until he cried from the day they met, a mix of tender affection and the short tempered-ness much like that of a child. His long eyelashes cast shadows in the late afternoon sun, and caught rain in the spring. Eddie, though hot headed, was a sweet boy who’d give the world to make any of his friends smile. His delicate feautures, covered in freckles from the years in the sun, reminded him of home. Eddie was the sunshine after a storm, the sparklers on the fourth of july, the sweetest smile.

Richie was in love, so far gone for the six most important people in his life that it was laughable. A puppet to his emotions, Richie hoped that one day he’d finally be able to tell the deepest and darkest secret to them without them running for the hills. But today, he lays back against the grass and dozes off with Stan’s hand resting idly in his hair and Bev’s legs crossed over his.

Do you have any tips to stop cringing at/hating your own writing? Thanks!

yeah actually: write cringe shit on purpose

do you know what so fucking cringe? superheroes. most people irl associate them with five year old boys and gamer bros who like excluding people based on whether they know how many Robins there are. you MIGHT get lucky and have them associate you with shippers and fandom folks. when my brand new housemate said to me ‘oh so I hear you like superheroes?’ I felt my soul fucking evacuate my body.

anyway so I took my favourite cringe genre and made it more cringe. I stripped out most of the action and made it about melodrama. about romance. about three line prompts centred on feelings. and I filled a whole blog with it. thousands of prompts, tens of thousands of words of nothing but the most cringe-inducing, self-indulgent, emotional twaddle. I write it fast, on the fly--for most of this blog’s lifespan I was producing two prompts a day, and there was no time to edit out the yikes or the badly placed commas or the overwrought betrayal. I’ve written cancel-worthy smut prompts and twee little tooth-aching cuteness. I’ve written so much junk that no one in their right mind would show another living soul, and published it in front of more than EIGHT THOUSAND PEOPLE. 

it’s an inoculation process (get your flu shot, kids). if you write cringe shit on purpose, you mind a lot less when you write cringe shit by accident. in fact, sometimes you start to enjoy the cringe even in your serious work, because you start to recognise a fundamental truth: everything is cringe. purple prose is cringe. romances are cringe. redemption arcs are cringe. em dashes are cringe. superheroes are cringe. 

you will always be writing something cringe. always. even when you’re a bestselling author, you’ll write something and think ‘oh god that’s so fucking cringe’. the difference between you now and you in that future is that you in the future has written so much more cringe shit. you will be (semi) cringe immune. you have survived the cringe before and you will survive the cringe again. 

so keep writing. keep cringing too, but most importantly: just keep writing. it’s the only surefire cure. 

hope this helps!

how to draw arms ? ? 

in recent years, there's been a push in therapeutic circles to shift the language from "attention-seeking" to "connection-seeking" behavior.

i was an attention-seeker. i was the textbook example of an attention-seeker. i was a troublemaker. i would self-harm. i destroyed my own relationships. i was uncontrolled, dramatic, sensitive. i took everything personally. i had "nothing" to be depressed "about," but made a big show of how sad i was nonetheless. i was really unsafe about myself in a lot of ways.

the strange thing about that is: it meant others could ignore me. the prevailing wisdom behind knowing something is "attention seeking" is to say: well, since you want it that bad, you're not getting any. it meant i was lower-on-the-list of concern. it meant an eye-roll.

the belief was that: since i was obviously doing these things on purpose, it would be bad behavioral training if i was "rewarded" for it. it would "teach me" that i simply had to make enough fuss, and i'd finally get all that missing attention and love. no, it was better to ignore that stuff.

i was suffering. and it felt like - oh, it doesn't matter how loudly i am in pain, nobody gives a shit about if i'm living or dying.

awhile ago, i went through my journals from that time. a lot of them read the same thing. in them, i am convinced i am invisible. that nobody wants to hear me, to see me. that i could die or vanish and nobody would even notice. i didn't even want attention - not really - because it was always dismissive, mocking. nothing i ever did would be good enough to get someone to actually-worry about me.

that's a terrifying thing for me to read as an adult. that is a child who fully has no problem committing. that is a child who has no concept of feeling loved. the most basic human instinct is missing from her life.

i needed help. i didn't know how to ask for it. i was a kid. i was a kid in a bad home, and whenever i thought things couldn't get worse there - they almost always did.

and the ways i showed that - the ways i tried to deal with that - they made others dismiss me. i wasn't suffering prettily. after all, if i was really in trouble, why wouldn't i just march into the first counselor's office and ask someone to help me? i had the opportunities, right? what did i think would happen, exactly? that someone would finally stand up and do something? who even wants that kind of responsibility?

i heard connection-seeking for the first time about three months ago. my therapist mentioned it when we were talking about my history. it rang some kind of horrible bell, deep inside me. i don't know what she said in the rest of her sentence. i just started... crying.

"oh no", i said to her. "i think i just realized: i have no idea how to forgive them for minimizing the ways i was hurting."

how many other kids, though. how many other kids were out there drowning, snatching around for a lifevest, some kind of rope - how many were straight-up ignored.

how many of those kids aren't gonna get old.

ROSWELL NEW MEXICO ⇢ 1x10

bonus: happy max (✿◠‿◠)

Nobody understands the bond between a girl and the mediocre book she read when she was 13 years old.

This has probably been said before, but doing your best doesn’t always mean giving 100%. Sometimes you’re only able to give 50% and that’s okay because at the time that was the best you could do