You ever have a conversation with someone, and they just say a sentence that wakes you up? It feels like having a bucket of water thrown at your face, and you’re like, fuck, that’s it. 

“Intelligence is a weapon, not a virtue” hit me like that. I can’t even remember what the conversation was about, it was months ago now, but I’ve been thinking about that line ever since.

Read More

Apropos of nothing, just an idea I had that I'm sure has been done before, but I thought I'd enjoy seeing comments about it.

Celestia and Luna aren't sisters they're just amicable exes and they go with 'sisters' because it explains their closeness and prevents socially acceptable rumours shipping them because they're over it.

Fuck it. Let's start with the positive.

So, my jaw's been a huge problem, right. I've told people it's been bad enough to give me dysphoria and most of my friends wrote it off as a dysphoria thing, telling me I looked fine and they didn't see the issue, which isn't what I meant. I didn't think I looked ugly, just wrong. Turns out that my body's internal map saw where my jaw sat as disfiguring, and didn't believe my eyes about it.

Read More

So, a funny thing happened to me while I was getting my jaw cut off.

After nearly two years and four cancellations I finally got that jaw surgery I really needed. In a few weeks, when it all heals up, I'm going to feel incredible. Right now my head looks like a Gordon Ramsay prosthetic, and I feel as bad as that looks. Waking up this morning was the cruelest prank my body has ever played on me.

Read More

Just a quick ad. If you liked Flimsy Pretexts, you're probably going to like Mind if I Cut In? more. It's good! Check it out. It was extremely fun to write.

I think I wrote a while ago that the problem with mass media is that you only get exposed to the success stories. You don’t get to see the piles of unsold screenplays, unbought pilots and unpublished novels. It's definitely something I've written around for a while, but I'm not sure I've focused on it specifically.

Read More

The dining room was eerily quiet. Belle had never seen it so lifeless. She stopped at the door, feeling as if she had trespassed on some sanctity that the castle had still kept hidden from her. She had thought she had come to know it so well, and yet...

But the candles were all lit, and at least an hour's worth of wax had dribbled to the stubs. That was part of what made it feel so sanctified, she thought. There was a solemnity, almost a cathedral quality to it.

"Please, sit."

Read More

• The hero of the game is the billionaire who destroys the Earth so a fraction of a fraction of a percent can find a different planet he hasn't fucked up yet.
• If you take a shot for the words "self-similar space" "genetic conatus" and "tachyon", you'll die of liver failure four hours in.
• Storytelling is done like reading a Twitter thread on 1980s dialup. By the time you can click the next part of the vignettes, you've already forgotten what they're about.

Read More

Usually when I talk about being bipolar I talk about the depression, because that's the stuff that feels the worst. Makes me introspective, want to get thoughts out, just have things be understood. And usually it's the stuff I think is most useful to talk about for the sake of empathy for other people going through it.

I'm not sure I've ever talked about how much the mania fucking sucks though.

Read More

The Pinocchio you probably remember from your childhood first aired in 1940. It was a story about becoming a person - being brought into the world with innocence, and then learning morality. It's about the importance of following the guidance of a loving father. It's a morality tale where Jiminy Cricket represents Jesus Christ. It's not subtle. There's a famous, haunting scene where the runaway children drink beer and it turns them into jackasses.

Read More