/lit/ - Literature

I'm attracted to women but the idea of actually, concretely, getting a girl to some place and being naked with her actually scares me. I don't know, it feels like I'd be letting someone get too close to me, putting myself in a too vulnerable position. I'd actually feel more comfortable in a relationship that took some months to become sexual, yet I'm afraid that women wouldn't really respect that.

Being subtle and being blunt each have their place in writing.

You're subtle when you want the reader to buy-in what you're saying before you bring out the big guns and make your idea explicit. The reader makes an investment in the text and might be actually more primed to receive your point because he's put some effort into it yet. Many people confuse sublety with depth though, if you make it "subtle" but the thing you make the reader work for isn't worthwhile, you just come off as a tryhard.

You're blunt when you just want to make your point straight away. Being blunt works best when you have a strong enough rhetorical skill that your writing essentially "stuns" or baits the reader and makes him feel forced to stop and actually engage what you've said. Being blunt without strong enough rhetoric or unengaging descriptive language only makes you look shallow and unskilled.

Sometimes I feel like falling victim to videogames and their easy injections of dopamine. And I spend hours on those yet I feel unfulfilled. I honestly can't say I "love" videogames. I don't feel like there is any intimate need of mine that videogames satisfy, it's more of a "mechanical" satisfaction that I get when I play them, if that makes any sense. Then I open /lit/ and I remember what I actually love. I look at chart threads and threads where there's actual discussions on writing and philosophy (whatever few there are), and I remember what actually brings me genuine existential joy. And then I pick up my books again and I spend a couple hours reading and although it requires much more effort than the somewhat automated activity of playing vidya, I'm much happier. So, I don't know how to say it, but thanks /lit/ for being there for me and reminding me of what love looks like.