What’s up folks, I just reblogged one of my really old posts about trying to get people to read my novel drafts. But here’s a shiny new one so I can pin this to the front!
So I originally posted these works on Inkitt and Inkshares, but Inkitt is most likely a scam that is often described as “a shittier version of Wattpad.” Inkshares is POSSIBLY a scam, but also an extremely new and experimental website even if it wasn’t, so I decided to move these drafts to Wattpad in hopes that a more established website had more people to read them.
Moonflowers is in-progress and The Crocodile God is completed, but I’ll just let people know that “The Crocodile God” is built on a LOT of outdated knowledge where Tagalogs/Filipinos all had tattoos and that Mayari is a Tagalog goddess, plus I draw from a lot of Maori/Pacific mythology as well.
Summary: When Alima Song’s parents vanish for no reason, she eventually thinks that they’re dead, so she moves from her home in California to the tourist town of Cloncarrig, Ireland to get away from her grief. Aside from issues with the Fair Folk, she gets to know some Malachy Bray and his friends, finds a job, a house, and adopts a stray dog.
Unknown to most people, the dog is Ned Song, her cursed but very much living father. He and her mother Lucy have not been killed–they “just” got kidnapped and cursed by the Wild Hunt, who are also the ones that keep trailing Alima after she moved.
The Irish gods do not enjoy thinking about why a whole gang of fairies are messing with the Song family, but since their leader is a force of nature, they’ll have to start improvising their help.
Summary: If a god loses his community, his rituals, and most records of his existence, what is left of him to call divine?
On a windy beach in California, Mirasol finds a shipwrecked man and takes him to the hospital. With no phone, no ID, and barely any clothes after the sea got done with him, the most information they can get is that his name is Haik, and for lack of better options, he’s discharged to Mirasol’s place.
Dark-skinned, covered in tattoos, and hailing from Australia, Haik is not the typical Filipino. He tells her stories of the Tagalogs’ far past, a foreign and unknown country–and soon finds out that he is Haik the sea-god, constantly searching for his mortal wife, and they are both stuck in a loop of reincarnation after their whale-goddess daughter was stillborn.
Unfortunately, she also finds out that he’s an undocumented immigrant.
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IF ANYTHING ABOUT THESE DRAFTS CAN PIQUE YOUR INTEREST, PLEASE DON’T
HESITATE TO CHECK OUT THE DRAFTS AND LEAVE A COMMENT TO SHOW SUPPORT!!! I get so many people just saying my writing sounds cool EVERYWHERE ELSE BUT THE ACTUAL WEBSITE, and that’s not really getting my audience boost up.
since a ton of people are getting into music as gaeilge because of hozier, can i recommend my fave artist, róisín seoighe? she’s a native irish speaker and language ambassador whose lyrics often involve the preservation of irish culture and deep rage against colonization. níl mé marbh (“i’m not dead”) makes me cry like a baby and sin do lamh (“reach out”) makes me want to burn all of colonialism down. she’s also done several collabs with imlé, another EXCELLENT irish language band that does modern-feeling rock and dance music! my fave of their collabs right now is ÉAD (“jealous”).
both artists have less than 1,700 monthly listeners on spotify simply because they sing in irish & they deserve more bc their music Really Is Excellent. translations of many songs are google-able & when there Aren’t english translations, it’s really good practice for people learning irish!
Clare Sands is another irish musician and while it’s not all her music a lot of her songs feature irish and i am particularly fond of sail on. if you are learning irish - you can find covers of songs you are familiar with already by checking out tg lurgan on spotify who do a lot of translation music projects to promote the language.
OOOOOOOH! I got into Hozier’s stuff because my Filipino ass has a deep and simmering rage against Catholicism for fucking up our culture, too! I will check out these artists asap!
Yeah you say this, except there’s a good chance you were chronically dehydrated as a kid. The reason you didn’t think you were is because a) no one was talking about dehydration at the time, and b) the effects weren’t immediately obvious.
But when my grown-up massage clients get on my table and I have to keep reapplying lotion because their skin absorbs the first layer immediately? When they have a million “knots” because their soft tissue fibers got dried out, lost their elasticity and became sticky, basically glued themselves together, and now it hurts when you move your arm like this, or your neck is always achey?
Yeah, that’s chronic dehydration. That’s shit that builds up over years of not drinking enough water (and/or not stretching, and/or having shitty posture, and/or not healthily processing your difficult emotions, and/or…)
Health is mostly maintenance. You have to act in “healing” ways consistently if you don’t want to spend your life in a cycle of pain -> fix -> same pain again. And the younger you start, the better your results will be.
So yeah, treat the youth and yourself like beached orcas and drink that water.
You might not want to hear this but people with anger issues and/or violent impulses need social accommodations. And no by accommodation I don’t mean walking on eggshells around them, actual accommodations for people with these issues comes down to giving them a space away from what’s triggering them to process their emotions and calm themselves down same as what kind of accommodations people who get sensory overload or just any kind of overwhelmed. There is no moral value to having anger issues or violent impulses, people with them are deserving of accommodation the same as everyone else.
I had severe anger issues growing up, and the only way I was ever taught to deal with them was deep breathing. For some reason, deep breathing just triggers me to get angrier. But it’s the only coping skill I ever got taught for it. Here’s a few better ones.
Go and exercise. Get all of that energy out and away from the people you love.
Get a hang of when you’re winding up to a rage and learn to tell people that you need to step away. I will warn you that the first time that someone refuses to let you go once you learn this skill will spook the hell out of you if you don’t have a backup skill, so figure out ahead of time what you’re gonna do if they won’t let you leave.
Learn to set boundaries. One of the best things I ever did for my anger issues was tell people that I can’t deal with people stealing food off my plate. Second best was when I’m mad, telling people not to touch me. I spook easily when I’m already angry.
Get a pack of pencils and if nothing is working, break one. Sometimes you really do need to break something in order to feel better, and pencils are cheap.
Don’t cook with a knife when you’re mad. If you get too much adrenaline, the knife can slip and hurt you.
If you have anger issues that pop up without any seeming reason and frighten you, I would strongly recommend going over the situation and over your mental health. If there’s anything consistent with a mental health condition or with something particular happening to trigger it, seek to eliminate the trigger or treat the issue. Depression, anxiety, trauma, you name it, it can probably present as anger issues under the right circumstances.
Some quick notes for people without anger issues that want to help someone who has anger issues:
Fear transmutes into anger really, really well if someone’s fear response is “fight”. One of my guesses for why so many men have anger issues is that we’re told we’re not men if we have any other response to fear. However, this issue is far from exclusive to men.
Don’t box people in when you’re arguing with them or soothing them. If someone is backed up against a wall and upset, then getting closer to them without permission is a bad call for your safety and for their soothing, because that removes the ability to get away from you. Ask before getting close. This goes double if someone is injured or otherwise vulnerable.
Teaching angry people that are distressed about being angry the pencil trick on the spot is really easy and works more often than you can think.
Respect people’s requests and boundaries. A lot of people think that some of the boundaries I set up are silly or that once we’re pals, they can ignore them. No, because a lot of my boundaries are related to trauma, and crossing them will trigger me and bring up my anger.
All of this goes for children with anger issues as well. I was a child with anger issues, and a lot of disrespect for my boundaries and needs was because my anger was dismissed because I was a child. Respect children’s anger.
Walking on eggshells is not and will never be a good way to treat anger issues. Recognizing that people with anger issues deserve to have their boundaries respected and to be treated like human beings is.
An end note: Anger issues are not the same thing as being abusive, because emotions are not abusive. Someone with anger issues can become abusive if they take them out on people, but so can someone with suicidal thoughts who takes them out on people. The issue is targeting another person in order to feel better, not having a mental health issue.
An end note for people with anger issues: It really can get better. You can find coping skills and perhaps meds that help cool you down and settle you. You can find people that will accept that doing that one weird thing spooks the fuck out of you, and will let you leave if you’re scaring yourself. You can gain control of yourself without shutting down emotionally. It’s achievable.
I’ve worked on a community support training about some of this once. Here’s some stuff paraphrased from that:
It is probably also worth speaking specifically about rage attacks. Rage attacks are a lot like panic attacks. They’re often a result of trauma or a build up of high stress. They’re your survival instinct going into overdrive for a bit because too much has build up and a release is necessary. Like panic attacks, rage attacks are waves of overwhelming emotions that generally have a build-up, a peak and a cool-down. The build-up and cool-down can take hours, the peak rarely exceeds one hour and is often much shorter. Recognizing these stages can help cope with them.
The build-up can feel like a tension in the whole body, especially in the chest which can feel like a weight is pressing on it. Trying to control the rage can feel like holding the lid on a pot of boiling water. From the outside, people in the build up of a rage attack seem irritated and non communicative with a short fuse. They might suddenly speak loudly or slam doors as the lid fails and bits of the pot boil over. This is often seen as being rude, when in fact it’s the person doing their best to stay in control. During the build-up fase, it’s sometimes possible to let the pressure off through acts of controlled destruction (pencil breaking, tearing up cardboard boxes, etc.). For some people deep breaths work, for some people exercise works, for some people writing down a violent fantasy and then tearing that up works. This will differ from person to person.
When not averted, the peak of the rage attack is an overwhelming phase during which the lid flies off and the rage can not be controlled, though it may to some extend still be directed at a point where it can do no or limited harm, such as punching a wall (or preferably, hitting the wall with some sort of stick so you do not damage your hands). People in this stage may ‘see red’ or see spots and may be nonverbal. There isn’t much you can do to support someone during a rage attack except keeping people away from them and trying not to redirect their focus towards a person. As long as the only things being hurt is inanimate objects (and maybe some bloody knuckles): do not intervene. Absolutely do not try to physically stop the rage attack.
NEVER call ‘emergency services’ when a person is experiencing a rage attack. A person in a rage attack can not control their actions, follow instructions, etc. Your phone call can very easily result in their murder-by-cop. Don’t do it.
After the peak comes to cooldown. Most of the rage has passed but the body is still full of adrenaline. Often at this point he person experiences shame and fear that the people who witnessed the rage attack will reject them. It’s quite common to self-isolate in this stage. If you’re supporting someone during this stage: give them that time to themselves. Once they return, you can check in with them in a nonjudgemental way, making it clear that you are still their friend and are not judging them for experiencing a rage attack. After a bit of cooldown, some people enjoy exercise, dancing or swimming to reduce the left over adrenaline in the body. Others might be too exhausted for such a thing.
Many rage attacks are harmless, but if a person did do harm during a rage attack: wait for them to fully recover (preferably at least one night of sleep in between) before engaging in a restorative conversation about the harm done. In such a conversation it is important to be nonjudgmental about the rage attack itself and to clearly separate the rage attack (something the person did not chose and could not control) from the harm (something the person does bear responsibility for). A person who has rage attacks can not ‘decide’ not to have them but can decide to work on repairing harm and avoiding harm in the future. You could work on a support plan together to figure out how better to recognize and re-direct a build-up, how to avoid harm during the rage itself and how to offer support during the cool down.
I’m sure there is something really intelligent and so very witty to say about this album. It’s so meaty, and so stunning, and you can sink your teeth into each song and be so rewarded for the second, third, tenth, millionth listen. But the one thought that I’m struck by right now is just this joy, this absolute pleasure at seeing Hozier’s maturation and evolution as an artist, at witnessting him step into his talent and claim his little niche of the world with confidence. There’s so much stark clarity about this album that leaves me in awe, simply glad that the man who said “we tried the world, good god, it wasn’t for us” is allowing himself to be a part of the world, and in turn letting us into his own little corner of it. What a gift. What an honor
genuinely speechless over this being seen as “chubby.” like i really believe some of you should be hit with a baseball bat
same energy as this. you are all so fucking stupid
Those thighs make me laugh/rage because I’m five feet and nothing inches tall and 110ish pounds, AND MY LEGS ARE THICKER THAN THAT DRAWING BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE A THIGH GAP.
