Shomari Kirkwood
@mxoberon.bsky.social
Trans lady bringing fantastical things to your TV and other screens.
Currently: Something Secret and Cool 🤭
Wrote On: 4400, Clean Slate
Repped: INDUSTRY ENTERTAINMENT/Paradigm
Well, I just had a sudden bout of screaming. The world is making me insane.
They always hide it in the color options for each style. Every time.
Styling goes so far! I just started wearing my pants and shirts differently. Bam! Suddenly read more fem and felt more fashionable
Man, when I first learned about the concept of a sugar daddy I was like, "Hell yeah, take me traveling! Fine dining!" And now I'm like, "Dog, if you could shoot me like $40 for taco bell or help me get a new bra, I'd take it."
Man, having a memory recall morning. Was when I floated to my dad I was bi. He flipped and yelled at 11yr old me about "if I wanted a dick in my ass." Which, ya know, not the best way to handle that.
I wrote 10.5k words today. In one 10 hour straight burst. Weh
Drafted a chapter yesterday and was super into nowhere it left off. Like, I had an idea that just ties things together in the coolest way possible for later. Also hit 70k
Unrelated thought, fuck dude, I got into omegaverse stories. That shit just hits!
Like babes, I am the professional in this appeal to authority.
One thing I find funny, is realizing that with my professional history (slush reader for a lit magazine, being a tv writer, working in games, etc.). Every time I see non-pros give super prescriptive advice referencing the "professional world" I can sort of laugh at it.
Another person joined my patreons today. That made me feel pretty good. The little wins.
My tits have become large, this is good. I am now suffering from back pain, this is less good.
So who's to say that in the act of writing itself (not just the process of editing) we can't know something through our bodies and express it.
Arguably, if I push this point: our bodies are our first readers. As such we tell on ourselves sometimes. And the thing is we know we do this! Trusting our "gut" or whether we "hear" the words sing. We can feel it when it isn't working and when it is.
I say this cause I think we underplay the role of our bodies as writers. Our fingers have to move, we need to feel our emotions in us, listen to when our heartbeat starts ramping up. There's all this micro-feedback we are sending to ourselves as we write.
Which, related writing thought, I feel like so many of those "my characters wouldn't do or say what I wanted," is not really the characters but instead your own body. That instinctual weird muscle memory interplay expressing something you feel or know, but arent consciously aware of.
Did another chapter yesterday. Had a weird moment where characters felt a bit alive to me. Almost never happens. Was strange but neat, and gave me a scene that I maybe knew needed to happen but wasn't consciously pushing.
Yooo, just curious, which cover would folks check out if they saw this book online?
And therein lies the core as I see it. I just don't want to spend my time like that. Maybe I'll watch a movie, read a book, or even enjoy a little TV show. Those might be preferable for me. Or, perhaps I won't. In the end, it's just a question of time.
At the same time though, it's no grand failing for someone who has dealt with cops in the manner I have (or much worse) wishes to still not play that game. Cause, as I said above, it's a matter of time. Is this how I want to spend my time with everything I've faced? Maybe no.
This recognition of difference can, for some, be enough to bridge the gap and appreciate what is happening. Which, ya know, is pretty fucking good honestly.
I have little desire to play a game embodying that. However, it's important to note that Harry is not that. His strain of policing both functional and thematic derives from a different branch (if not tree) entirely.
But rather, I'd argue it goes back to a difference that could be cultural or perhaps personal. As a black trans woman in the United States, I've had cops aim guns at me no less than three times. (The third seeing maybe fifteen cops all ready to stuff me with bullets)
I think that's a fair statement. If that is, a fair statement, then it shouldn't be lost that the lack of desire to engage (or ability to connect) is speaking to something innate within someone. (This idea of innate politics grates upon me)
I won't go and make broad claims toward how utterly divergent policing is in the united states versus eastern Europe. I don't know enough about the latter to feel confident in that. But what I can say is that artistically the same idea can land differently depending on culture.
I would push back from saying it's a rejection of seeing cops as people, of recognizing their humanity, or what others have said over on the other site. Rather, I think it is the much simpler reaction to the sort of police we encounter in the worlds we live in.
But let us, for this brief moment, entertain an idea of what's happening when people say they don't want to play a cop (politically speaking).
Now, it is true that in fact all things are reflections in some ways of politics. We just can't confuse reflections for the thing itself as that leads us down the path we're on of using consumption as markers for good politics or bad politics.
The fighting game player is making no more a political statement when they choose not to play a large crpg than the crpg player refuses to spend their time on a fighting game. Why? Because fundamentally, consumption isn't politics.
But, I just don't want to spend my time that way. Cause, before anything deeper, playing games is a usage of time. A rare commodity due to well *waves hands at everything about the world*. It's not that strange then to imagine we have tastes around how we wish to spend that time.
To expand: I have not played disco elysium. I hear good things, it looks very neat, but end of the day I'm just really bored of playing games where I must be a man. Especially a white one. I both know and respect what the story is and why everything is the way it is.
Random thought for bsky that Twitter can't be trusted with: the divergence between those who can play Disco Elysium and those who cannot due to the main character being a cop is, imo, irrespective of politics as much as it is a simple decision of how we wish to spend our time.
I hesitate to pull myself apart to know why I write some of the things I do when I am writing. But so much of these feelings must be why I'm writing a post-apocalyptic thing. Cause there's something so fulfilling about saying that this world, this shitty old world, is dead and buried.
And it's not like an age thing, but it literally feels like I was born too late to have anything truly good in this world some days. Born to cry and suffer and go insane. How it feels at least.
Just wish it didn't feel like everything that could make my life better was something I was too late to do.
Not to be sad posting at 11pm, but it's so hard rn and for what?! For why?! Smh. I feel moved to tears so often. Just trying to drag myself to another good moment. Remind myself that lows, like highs, aren't forever.
I just want to make ends meet. So many things outside my control. Too much fear. Every job feels like bullshit and bad.
So my mage game was all about consensual reality as a strengthener rather than as an inhibitor. That encourages a loop of communal investment and engagement by players. Want your magic to be stronger in a neighborhood? Go do public works to rally their belief in it!
Which like, I do need to look at my mage thing again. Basically was me expressing my distaste for the way consensual reality worked in WoD and shiz. Cause I wanted to feel like a big damn wizard and couldn't the way I wanted to.
Laid out some scene headers for my feature script since I couldn't bring myself to do action lines. Then worked on more novel stuff. Fell asleep working on ttrpg stuff (wuxia things, not my mage thing)