Avatar

Unprofessional Fireball Caster

@pyronianmage

Jay, 20-something, Elder Scrolls obsessed

that's... not how it works. you can't guarantee that your work definitely won't squick anyone. what do you think you're saying?

"squick free" someone writes on their wholesome family fic about married characters expecting a baby.

I read it and am extremely squicked.

You do not know what squicks other people. "Squick" is not a category of elements, it is a description of a reaction.

Squick is literally a personal thing, you literally cannot know what squicks another person.

Same goes for triggers, by the way. You can't guarantee something is trigger-free because literally anything can be a trigger because the human brain can be weird like that sometimes.

No no, actually there's a perfect way to write an absolutely squick free fanfic! Plenty of writers do it successfully every day!

Here.

Blank documents squick me out because they remind me of all my unstarted writing projects. :/

guys. c'mon.

oh my goddd

Okay, for anyone ACTUALLY unsure and wanting to learn: "squick" is an old fandom term. It means something that grosses you out or makes you deeply uncomfortable, but doesn't give you as intense negative reactions as a trigger. They are incredibly personal, though often times, just like with triggers, you can tag relatively common squicks.

For me, mpreg is a squick. It makes me deeply uncomfortable, but it doesn't send me into a panic spiral, a deep depression, or make me angry like reading about eye trauma does.

My cousins in Lannister, ‘squick’ didn’t even originate in fandom.

Also useful to note that ‘squick’ is specifically used to mean “this isn’t for me, personally” without adding a moral judgement to it. A simple easy way to say ‘no, thank you but you do you’. Unlike ‘cringe’ which has negative connotations. Squicks are also more than just uncomfortable.

Daddy kink makes me uncomfortable

Degradation squicks me out

Hand trauma is a trigger

First known usage of "squick" was in 1991. It's not some new term that was made up for this post.

The idea that something can be squick-free or trigger free is sooooo tied to the neopuritan bullshit we’ve seen grow in the past decade.

The only way you can consider something “squick-free” is if you believe that there are some things that squick everyone out and some things that do not squick anyone out. Which means there are “right” and “wrong” things to be squicked out by. Which is just one more way of attaching moral judgments to your personal disgust reaction, which is the core of the anti movement.

I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.

Are there any other particularly egregious examples?

This book already exists, sort of! Or at least, it’s a biology textbook but I bought it for writing purposes:

It starts with a chapter about freezing to death, and it is without a doubt the scariest thing I’ve read in years (and I read a lot of horror fiction).

Avatar
wandercuriosity-deactivated2024

This book can be downloaded for free on Researchgate, posted there by the author himself:

“Sunset over the Grocery Box,” by me. The view from my father’s front yard in January 2014.

“Sunset at the End of My Driveway (Excluding Pavements Covered With the Shite of One Million Dogs)” by me.

“Sunset from My Front Yard Taken on an iPod Touch in 2010″

“Sunset in Nov 2021 Taken in the Parking Lot of the Pharmacy”

Avatar
judygemstone

“sunset from the parking lot of the diner taken on an iphone 5 in 2016”

Avatar
vimbry

the view across the road partially eclipsed by house, 2017

Taken from a stepladder putting up Christmas lights

-2014, front yard

“Brewing Storm on an Evening Commute”

And “Finally, no Power Lines”

-Sept. 30, 2020, passenger seat of a moving Buick

Behind a near-defunct mall in super small-town OK. HUGE rays.

congrats on re-creating do you like the colours of the sky, lads

Avatar
Reblogged
But you'll never be alone
I'll be with you from dusk till dawn
Baby, I'm right here 🦇🖤🦇

Fennorian and Evelynn by AraniaSethran

Avatar
Reblogged

Woah vampires be upon ye

So excited to receive this piece with Eztli & Fennorian 😍 love that you can see Eztli's fangs and I just needed an excuse to draw her in ayrenn's dress. Thank you again @andengeu for this wonderful piece

A detail about khajiit that I find absolutely hilarious but also see a lot of potential worldbuilding in is their love of sweets and reverence for moon sugar. If you don't know, a theorized reason for and/or result of cats being obligate carnivores is that they CANNOT TASTE SWEETNESS, a flavor normally associated with plants (fruits, nectar, etc.) meanwhile khajiit are known to have an unyielding, insatiable sweet tooth. But this could be super interesting considering the fact that common house cats very much exist, and the Alfiq furstock can be almost indistinguishable visually from them, that there is a lot of wives tales and traditions around "testing" housecats to root out khajiit infiltrators (or to make sure that the kitten your kid brought home isn't some young nonverbal khajiit child they inadvertently kidnapped). The first meal offered to a new cat before being set upon mice might be a bowl of candies and cakes, and a second bowl of skinned raw meat. A house cat will always go to the raw meat (apparently), whereas the bowl of dessert is said to tempt khajiit spies into breaking. Or if they don't, they may break trying to choke down raw, unseasoned, slimy and smelly bits of offal. And I like to think it is a method that has a somewhat reliable success rate.

The best khajiit alfiq spies have figured out with their magical talents to alter the raw meats while in their mouths to be more palatable, or simply have the discipline and willpower to stomach the raw meat without retching. But the next challenge comes in resisting the temptation to sneak a nibble of a pie...

I'm Diné (Navajo) and in high school I was put in some kind of group for native kids. It was run by a white woman who told us that if we were ever in class and feeling overwhelmed, we had permission to just up and leave class to go wander around outside and reconnect with nature. We all took advantage of this regularly

the implication she thought you were like, forest fairies that had to periodically connect with nature to regain your strength is the most racist but also kinda funny thing I ever heard

Why would you leave this absolute gem in the tags

i wanna just be done with this picture i think. idk how to draw plants and my art style is NOT like the original picture im recreating at all

this is based on a mila von luttich piece titled (i think) im sommerland. its really beautiful and i didnt do it justice but HGBWHGFBEHRG ah well.

anyways its dagoth ur going for a walk through the grazelands. if you're a telvanni or ashlander and see him: no you didnt

i did a vast majority of this with a fever like a week ago. then went on a video game binge. but i think im finally done with it. if the anatomy looks wrong. leave me alone i was sick

guy who wins at poker not by being stoic but by bursting into tears every time he looks at his cards, just full hysterical breakdown every round and you gotta peer through the void of theatre kid problems to figure it out

me when a character who was completely powerless gains power and proceeds to lose themselves in the intoxication of it before coming to and being horrified by their own capacity for bloodlust

You are using an unsupported browser and things might not work as intended. Please make sure you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.