Welcome to the Skellingcorner, tumblr home of a 27 yo weirdo from Luxembourg.
Blog may contain : Films, Series, Books, Games, and the usual weird stuff. Feel free to come and say hi !
In this post, we write about how a timeline helps you plot a novel.
Making Sense Of The World
History is neither simple nor linear, but when we show events in a timeline they seem to make sense. We see the results of cause and effect when we show sequences that exist in relationship to each other. We see patterns, turning points, and progressions.
On a more positive note, a really adorable little bat recently stopped by my mom’s house, and she sent me a photo of the little cutie as it was hanging out on the screen door. The world can be awful at times, but there are still cute little bats in it.
…only they’re brown because I ran out of food colouring, and the store where I usually get mine is closed right now. Topped with cream cheese frosting, fresh currant, and fresh blackberries.
Also I’ve tried reusable silicone liners this time instead of paper ones, and I’m very pleased with them.
Alright, it’s almost 7 am…I checked if I have enough ingredients in the house - I only need to get buttermilk and cream cheese (and I pray that they have the food colouring I need; I might not have enough left), and the butter is defrosting…so you know what that means?
Baking time this afternoon. *rubs hands*
(For those who are curious: if we have butter left over from previous baking sessions, we freeze it so we can reuse it in our next baking adventures. Our local butter is top quality and doesn’t get watery after defrosting.)
Every so often, I think about Crimson Peak and the massive hole in their roof at the ancestral house. I wonder why no one bothered to put a board or six over it. Clearly Thomas has the free time to work on his machinery, but no one can be bother to fix the hole. I get that it’s #aesthetic, but still, all that snow will rot out the floorboards eventually.
Hi! I've come across your girlfriend tag, and I don't know if someone already asked it in the past, but would you mind share your story? How did you two meet, how did you realize you were a couple etc. Also, if you're comfortable with it, please share a picture of the two of you! :)
Hello, and welcome! :D
So the girlfriend and I are actually high school sweethearts! Our story often gets described as lesbian enemies-to friends-to lovers highschool AU, and - what can I say? It kinda fits. XD
Her name is Jill. She’s nine months older than I am. I was born in June 1987, she in September 1986.
The school year starts in September for us, so often children who are born in September get to stay in Kindergarten a year longer than others, which was also the case for her.
So I started high school in 1999, at age 12, alongside Jill. We didn’t know each other previously. I came from a background with a very strict abusive father, and high school was…how can I say? It was the place where I could escape his supervision, where I could let loose. I was a pretty bright kid, so I showed off like crazy, tried to make friends real fast, and to have fun in general. I was super annoying tbh. XD
Jill had been more like that in elementary school, so she had decided since she was joining the Grown Ups™ (pfffft), she would become all serious and study hard and focus (mostly) on only that.
I was the art and language kid. She was the science kid.
We clashed like waves on a rock. We hated each other during that first year; we even got into a legit fist fight with each other, in which she trashed my glasses, lol.
She failed that class and had to retake the year because she was shit at French…and I failed the following year and had to retake it because I was shit at Maths, so we ended up back together in the same class. That was when I was fourteen, and that was when the teacher put us next to each other, and we pulled out the very same book out of our backpacks to read during recess.
We bonded over Star Trek and Harry Potter. As soon as we noticed that we had common interests, we began opening up to each other - reluctantly, but still. Come spring, we were already inseparable friends, and she invited me to visit her father in Switzerland.
Turns out she likes modern art, and French poetry (poetry in general), and traditional Chinese music. She approaches cooking with such a scientific scrutiny that she was, for a while, convinced the Rules Of Cooking were never to be broken, lest the kitchen might explode (adding more spice than written on the package? Add salt to taste? Unthinkable! Also I like Arabic cuisine and she can’t handle spicy stuff, so yeah).
Turns out she has warm eyes and does laugh much if you know what jokes to pull.
(That was the year we became a couple, on a school trip to Germany. She wore her hair short and dyed red back there, and I was way slimmer, lol. I was fifteen, she was sixteen.)
Now the year after, when I was fifteen, things changed. Our high school was an all-girls school (they do accept boys too since a couple of years), and many of the girls were early bloomers and had their first boyfriends and crushes, picking them up after classes. She and I, we were still single, and joked around that we could still date each other, if we wouldn’t find a boy for us to date. We didn’t think much of it at the time.
If I was already feeling something back then, I was totally oblivious. No idea at all. If she was already feeling something, she never let it transpire.
Then we went on a short trip to the Netherlands in February. She, her mum, her cousin, and me. The cottage had two rooms with a double bed in each, and her cousin shared a bed with her mum, and Jill shared a bed with me. We proceeded to talk until the wee hours of the morning each night.
The night before we were scheduled to drive home, she asked me whether I had ever thought about kissing a girl. I replied that I had not, and that I had, in fact, never kissed anyone in my life. She asked if I would be willing to try. I said: “Sure, why not?”
We both hesitated, but she was bolder than me, and kissed me.
I - it’s hard to describe what happened. It’s as someone had flipped a switch, and everything fell into place, as it always should have been. It’s like I had seen the world in black and white only, and suddenly everything was bright and colourful and saturated. That was when I realised I was in love, and that’s when she did too.
It was the morning of February 17th, at around 02:15 am, 17 years ago as I am typing this in June 2020.
We were both…unsure about how to proceed, but we decided we would just let everything run its natural course. If this was to end in a month, so be it; if it was to last longer, so be it. I was terrified to let anything show at home, because my father was that kind of person who told me to my face that “people like that” should be, in his opinion, “lined up against a wall and shot one by one” - he died before he could find out. There were definetely things we had to learn, like - we used to be glued at the hip in the beginning, but I sometimes need some time to myself, just to think and reflect and breathe. In the beginning, whenever I requested that time, Jill thought I didn’t enjoy her company, or that I was angry with her. It took a while for her to realise that she was allowed to request time on her own, too. These days, we do many things together, but not everything. Sometimes we sit in the same room, and do wildly different things at the same time. I can completely be myself with her.
I’ve never looked back. Never regretted anything. I fall in love again and again each time we meet.
There aren’t many pictures of the two of us together, for reasons we both cannot comprehend, but there’s a selfie of me, and below it there’s a picture I took of her last September, on the train to the Steampunk Festival (hence the costume). It’s one of my favourites.
I was wondering what kind of female black characters do people want to see more of? Like, them being soft or selfish?
Black Girls & Women: Representation We Want
As a Black woman reader, I definitely want to see more soft Black girls and women in literature. Girls with their own self-interests (caring about oneself isn’t necessarily selfish) and not always someone else’s caregiver is great too.
Here’s my list!
More Black girls…
In love
With close family bonds and healthy relationships and support systems (that don’t require enduring abuse, fixing their partner, or overall emotional labor to earn domestic happiness)
Being protected
As main characters, heroines and anti-heroes
On adventures
In fantasy and magical settings
In historical settings as peasants, upper-class society, and royalty
Descriptions of Black Afro hair, skin, features as a normal thing in books (see this compilation) and not in an Othering way
On the other hand, vibrant, sometimes hyped up descriptions that allude to their beauty (see this ask. Or this one). Not Othering, just appreciating!
Put us in fancy dresses and give us a sword and let us dance at the balls and have admirers!
Experiencing complex emotions not necessarily in reaction to racism or racist violence
On the book cover! And with an accurate, not light or white-washed model
~Mod Colette
Responses:
@madamef-er
Soft black girls and nerd girls who like cute things.
Shy black girls not just in situations with boys.
More lgbtqia+ black girls. Studs! Femmes!
Gender fluid and non conforming constantly changing their style because they like it!
Spies and not just as the ‘sexy bait’ or 'weapons master’ let us sit behind the computer for once and be hackers and stuff
@tanlefan
Black girls who are just…people.
I want a fantasy escapism adventure that isn’t a thinly veiled discussion on slavery or racism or any other aspect of The Struggle. I am tired.
Can I just have a happy Black girl who believes in fairies or something?
@esmeraldanacho-1776 More autistic Black women/girls! I don’t care what genre really; just have them in there!
That are nerdy,girly, intelligent, ditzy, all the personality types that white girls in literature get!
That are fragile, shy or anxious. Almost every single black woman I’ve seen in media or otherwise are wise and adult. Let us be an absolute wreck, or an anxious mess!
In science! Characters like Shuri, Moon Girl and Iron Heart in Marvel revitalized me, cuz young black girls only get two types. Both these girls are in intellectual and in science, but have bery different personalities.
In interracial relationships, and not because they hate black men or something along those lines. They just happen to be dating outside their race, black women get hate for that in real life and it’s unfair. Let us have relationships outside our race! That said…
In platonic relationships with black men! I think that’s important, cuz I don’t often seen black solidarity unless it’s for the purpose of showing how diverse the writing is. Let them share interests, daily frustrations that they would only understand, but don’t force a romance.
In solid friendships with other black girls! For some reason, we’re pitted against in each other inside and outside of writing! Write some sweet wholesome friendship!
With different sexualities! Let there be some that are ace, others are gay, bi or pan! Just be sure you don’t sexualize them, or turn em into a robot.
•Who are dark-skinned! This can be seen a lot in tv or movies, but when you want a black girl in your stuff don’t just hire a light-skinned black girl or a biracial black girl. It’s not the same.
Who get to act their age! Black women have a long standing history of being adultified, starting from a very young age, and it’s extremely harmful. Little black girls can wear what they please, the problem is people sexualizing them. Let the teen black girl be a teenager, she can look out for her siblings but she isn’t the keepern the house or their lives. Young adult black girls are not ideal housewives or capable working machines, they mess up and mess around just as much as any young adult.
With mental/physical disabilities or illnesses. Alongside with being forced to be more mature than they are, disabilities/illnesses are never taken seriously and we’re forced to just deal with it. Having black girls who happen to have these issues, but also have a healthy support group is always good!
Seen as beautiful and desirable and NOT in a hypersexualized way
Interracial relationships are wonderful because black girls are beautiful and lbr everybody sees it
Sensitive and allowed to feel something other than righteous anger
Some black girls are skinny! Some are big! Some are slim and some are curvy! There’s no mold!
Dark skinned!
A YA protagonist out to save the world from something other than racism
Superpowers or magic that doesn’t come from generational trauma or slavery
Black characters who support other black characters. None of this token crabs in a barrel business.
Black girl nerds and punks and goths exist. I promise.
And this may be a personal preference but I’m not against the idea of a damsel in distress. We are always being strong. Let her be soft and delicate and cared for. Let her be princess carried and rescued from the tower and the dragon.
[Note from Mod: It’s not just you! I love a Black damsel being saved and protected. What is progressive for one woman varies due to historical and present depictions and is why intersectionality in feminism is so important! -Colette]
As a writer, I write a lot of my black female characters like this because I rarely ever see black women being represented in these ways! ESPECIALLY on the covers of books, unless the author themselves is a black woman and even then its rare.
Too often black women are stereotyped as strong protector types that are always rough, tough, and don’t need anybody in books (and real life), when that’s honestly just dumb and inaccurate–black women are as vulnerable as anyone else (in some cases, even more vulnerable, but that’s another topic).
So yeah, this list is 100% accurate and I encourage those who are interested in writing black female characters (whether you’re a black woman or not) to consider writing them like this, because the stereotype needs to die lol.
But wait, there’s more!
@just-a-swsh-fangirl As an anime fan I kinda want to see a white male protagonist be paired up (romantically) with a black female at the end of the series. It would make my black self happy to see a girl like me in an important role like that.
@tgingwe
Black girls in STEM, pleaaase
Black girls with ADHD, depression, and other mental health conditions!
Black girls with supportive families!
Pan black girls!
African black girls, with cultures that impact their lives and with complex relationships between their specific identities/cultures and the idea of being perceived as just black outside of Africa!
black girls who are daughters of immigrants and have complex relationships with both their homeland and the land their family is from
Black girls with healthy relationships with their parents
black girls who are indecisive about their lives and struggling to find their place in the world and the reason not being racism
LGBTQ+ black girls with families that accept them and celebrate them
More black witches/magic users who don’t fall in the magical negro type.
Quirky black girls who have endearing and unusual interests
Black girls who both love sterotypical and non-stereotypical black things
Black girls having supportive friendship groups and not being the one who constantly needs to support the others
Black girls saving the world
Black girls having a love interest who loves them and cherishes them not because they think they are weak but because they want them to be safe and happy
Black girls being the cherished love interest
Black girls being thought of the most gorgeous girl and not being overly sexualized
Black girls and their siblings/friends going to another world a la Chronicles of Narnia
Black girls being the chosen ones and saving the world
Black girls in medieval fantasy stories and not just being a slave or the handmaiden of the white princess
Black girs with different and complex relationships with their womanhood and how they express it
Black girls with different hair textures
But above all else I just want black girls to be able to have the same range in character as their white counterparts. I am tired of never being able to relate to characters that look like me