What's in your bag?

Via cupcake_goth, a getting-to-know-me meme, because why not.

The most notable aspect of my bag is the outside, which is covered in enamel pins and other stuff, like medallions from the webcomic Skin Deep by Kory Bing.


( Portrait oriented and thus kinda tall pictures of my bag )

Inside the bag are many things, because it is large.

Pocket with medallions: Hand sanitizer; tiny tub of Vaseline; both a stick and a tub of Vanillary perfume from Lush; a stick of Hot Southern Mess perfume from Bathhouse; Blistex medicated mint; Burt's Bees lip shimmers in Papaya and Cherry; Burt's Bees tinted lip balm in Hibiscus, Red Dahlia, and Rose.

Pocket with saguaro and cow skull: A woven rainbow bracelet, a tiny notebook with peacocks on the covers and random flowers pressed between the pages (which are terrible for pressed flowers because they're printed with an all-over design in slick magazine-type ink), a (micro? mini? I can never remember which is which, the one that came out on top) USB cable, an iphone lightning cable, a car charger-USB adapter, a wall plug-USB adapter, a spare battery/charger, a charger for my fitbit, and a 64gb flash drive that would have blown my everloving mind in middle school when I got my very first 512mb flash drive.

Pocket on the inside back of the bag: Just a packet of tissues and a glasses-cleaning cloth, anything in it presses against my back so it's not really usable.

Pocket 1 on the inside front of the bag: A large pencil eraser, two nail files, three pens from my mom's work (one of which I keep forgetting to give to Alex), two cheap mechanical pencils, three miscellaneous ballpoint pens (acroball black, uniball signo black, and an ultra fine point purple pilot), a mini screwdriver with interchangeable heads, a green mini sharpie, and a doll arm.

Pocket 2 on the inside front of the bag: Another USB cable, a spare wristband for my fitbit, a little plastic case with emergency tampons in it, a lanyard with my university ID, and a small black leather change purse with earplugs in it.

Main body of the bag: Cloth pouch (goldenrod with flowers), cloth pouch (salmon with flowers), cloth pouch (white with butterflies), hairbrush, deodorant, a paracord sling (like, as in David and Goliath) Alex made, an old pill bottle full of most of my earrings, an old pill bottle full of miscellaneous interesting small items like keys I found on the ground and an acorn and an enamel pin that broke off my bag, a little 2019 calendar from my mom's work, a black notebook I was triyng to bullet journal in, a wood-patterned notebook, and a bluetooth keyboard.

Connected to loops of bias tape sewn into the seams by carabiners: Tiny Totoro pouch (containing spare picking pin backs), wallet that is technically a clutch purse, ring of hairties, housekey, charm knotted for me by my dear friend Jared (which there are supposed to be two of, but one went missing in my last migration between bags).

Goldenrod pouch: A plastic fork, two pairs of latex gloves, and a rubber charm of the gijinka of the king from Hatoful Boyfriend Holiday Star.

Salmon pouch: More earplugs, some wet wipes I'm pretty sure I nicked from Ghengis Grill, A+D ointment, neosporin, another glasses cleaning cloth, some folded ziplock bags, and the backing card from my Certified Multishipper pin.

Butterfly pouch: Off brand pepto bismol pills, painkillers, benadryl, anxiety medication, those terrible earbuds in the little square plastic thing that come with iphones, a lot of packets of lactaid, a couple cough drops, a single packet of off-brand dayquil pills, a retractable sewing tape measure, and a folding knife.

My philosophy is to be PREPARED FOR ANYTHING. I've got another external battery I need to charge and stick back in my bag, and a second pair of shitty iphone earbuds I need to put back in their case and back in the bag. I also need to put back in a couple of the bandanas I took out to wash, because you never know when you'll need a bandana. And there are two other pocketknives that normally live in there but I took out to fly to see my family over Christmas and haven't put back yet. Sometimes I have a double-walled steel waterbottle in it too, or a knitted hat, or a cheap infinity scarf. (Also, it's full of smaller bags so I can literally ever find anything.)

Linkdump, mostly about writing

Show vs. Tell: Lessons from Wake of Vultures has an interesting take on the well-worn adage "Show, don't tell": If something important changes, render it on the page (show). If nothing changes, summarize it (tell). It claims to illustrate with examples, but ime they're too spare to demonstrate anything. I'll have to think about this more.

An interesting twitter thread about How Not To Write Supporting Characters In Shipfic (or, in her own words, "How to Avoid Making Your Main Couple Accidental Psychopaths")

The Mysterious Discipline of Narratologists: Why We Need Stories to Make Sense at Tor.com is a very interesting piece about how stories work. I think I'll want to muse on it more. the audience has a set of shared communal knowledge makes me think of how Alex's interpreting program discusses extra-linguistic knowledge (which has become something of a household catchphrase). They seem to be fairly conceptually similar.

Tor.com is offering a new short fiction newsletter

The Wii Shop Channel's closure marks the death of a piece of Nintendo magic-- I'm not that surprised about the channel shuttering, because over christmas helping my mom I discovered that the YouTube app for the wii no longer works and the NetFlix app stopped working this month, but wow. That's the end of some kind of era. (I ended up helping my mom buy and set up a Roku, since she could no longer use her wii as a hilariously low-res set top box. Seriously, it was like 480p, on like a 60" television, it was so funny.)

The Story About The Story: Or, How Writers Talk About Their Books by Chuck Wendig

25 Steps To Being A Traditionally Published Author: Lazy Bastard Edition (Guest Post By Delilah S. Dawson). I just like reading about writing, even if posts like this make me increasingly sure that I am not cut out to be an author (of novels, anyway, I still harbor dreams of short fiction publication). (Though it's entirely possible that my badly managed mental health is the one saying that and I'd be more up for it if I was less A Mess With No Insurance To Do Anything About It.)

25 Humpalicious Steps For Writing Your First Sex Scene, By Delilah S. Dawson (Author Of Wicked As She Wants). When I wrote my first sex scene, the hero accidentally removed the heroine’s corset three times, which made me sound like an idiot with a corset fetish. AS IF. I'm amused. Also (partially) potentially applicable to fanfic sex scenes.

Tucker Leighty-Phillips interviews Ursula Vernon is a website with truly abysmal formatting, fucking pale grey text on a white background, what the fuck. I used the 'white background with black font' bookmarklet from this incredibly useful page to render it bloody readable. Anyway: And a lot of the messages that do come across by what I’m retelling I choose to change, like in the snow queen version I did, if there’s a moral to the story it was the dude chosen by Hans Christian Anderson was an absolute douche bag and you could do better. I guess that’s a moral. Love me some Ursula Vernon. And The Raven and the Reindeer was a great book, with lesbians, A+ highly recommended. This is a fun interview because Ursula is inherently interesting and hilarious, if you can get past the TERRIBLE DAMNED WEBSITE. God, who the fuck chose this font color. Why.