#like what’s the point in making little fictional characters if I can’t destroy their will to live???

[softmcbighard]

“im totally normal about this piece of media” i say as i park myself in front of my pc to play more astarion dating simulator 3

#i have until the end of the week to beat this game and then I must return to the real world #I can’t wait to make every single one of my drawing projects relate to this game somehow #and I already have plans for stuff #honestly I’m so hyped to go back to school so I can focus on my art again without distraction #I just need to draw my oc’s being absolutely fucking miserable #like what’s the point in making little fictional characters if I can’t destroy their will to live??? #bg3

[queens-of-spirits]

Why the svsss papapa scenes are literary genius actually, Part 1:

So, fun fact, I originally wanted to do a funny little post where I ranked the four papapa scenes in svsss (with special mention to the start of the return to childhood extra and LMY’s writing) but my deranged ass decided to go full quirky English prof and turn this shit into a proper analysis.

So, believe it or not, the svsss papapa scenes are actually really important for understanding a lot of the characters and themes of the story. So yes. I am going to go through them all and explain why. Starting with…

Maigu Ridge (spoilers, obviously):

If this were actually my silly rankings post (which I still may make), Maigu ridge would rank dead last in any category related to actually being an enjoyable smut scene to read. That’s fine, because, to put it bluntly, that wasn’t the point.

It’s a subversion of the pressure and idea of the perfect first time or instinctive sexual skill seen in both power fantasy and romance/bl novels. That subversion and the shock of what happens is meant to take us out of the scene and make us think about the characters, the situation, and the tropes we take for granted. Remember, svsss is genre savvy twice over, both in Danmei/bl and power fantasy fiction. It explores both those worlds and the complicated aspects of both (I.e the obsession with revenge). It’s not trying to be a good smut scene, it’s setting up the characterization of the couple and the character arc seen throughout the rest of the papapa moments in the extras (more on that in future posts, but it’s about SQQ learning to be more open with his desire and pleasure) and exemplifying the main themes of the book (forgiveness and intention)

So without further ado, here is my analysis on this scene.

The notes about SQQ’s character in the Maigu Ridge scene should be obvious and understood by looking at the broad context of the scene. Like the Without a Cure moment, it shows how much he cares for LBH and his willingness to put his own life and body on the line to save him. It is devotion, pure and simple. However, more depth is revealed when examining specific passages (note all quotes are from the English publications because I don’t speak Chinese, so I’m sorry if the translation muddled the meaning).

The most vital part to me for Binghe’s character is this line:

“he’d done this out of consideration for Luo Binghe’s convenience, but unexpectedly he was flipped back around. Luo Binghe jammed himself between Shen Qingqiu’s legs, his entire attention rapt on Shen Qingqiu’s face.”

This refers to how SQQ tries to turn around so that LBH would not see his face during what is about to happen and LBH flipping him over again.

This, I believe is symbolic. SQQ turns around because he thinks that anyone will do and he is the only one willing, but that’s not true LBH wants SQH specifically. He needs to relieve the energy from the sword’s influence, yes, but despite that pain, he is focused solely on SQQ’s face.

The transformation from the stallion protagonist Bingge to our Bingmei is exemplified here better than any scene before it (I would argue it is later topped by the Bingge vs Bingmei extra). Unlike Binghe, Bingmei is not looking for mindless pleasure to escape his lonely life (represented here by the corrupting energy of the sword) he is seeking the one he adores above all, the one who he cares for more than anything. He has found true connection and THAT is what drives him to madness (remember, he’s trying to destroy everything to be the only one in SQQ’s world so he can’t be abandoned). That’s why, even when supposedly in a mad state, he seeks to look at SQQ’s face, because it isn’t about the sex, it’s about them, the two of them together.

The other vital part is the aftermath, before even the jade pendant. Specifically, this exchange:

“Shizun don’t hate me…I didn’t know…I never wanted to hurt you…why didn’t you push me away? Why didn’t you kill me?”

“This master knows. This master was willing”

Again, this was an act not born out of lust, like with Bingge and his wives, but something different. Bingge takes what he wants and feels no guilt because nothing was ever given to him, but Bingmei was given the world by one person and struggles with not feeling like, with not BEING the animal or monster that the rest of the world sees him as’

LBH had no intention to hurt SQQ

Just like how SQQ had no intention to hurt him by avoiding him

It’s symbolic of their relationship as a whole. Unintentional hurt and the forgiveness that follows. THATS why the remaining papapa scenes are so important. It’s about them learning to not hurt each other. Every single papapa scene that follows builds on this idea of them learning the right way to love each other (remember, their story together is just beginning after the last page of the book) and learning how to not hurt each other unintentionally, LBH physically, SQQ emotionally.

Again, clear themes of forgiveness and intention. The reasons behind why people do bad things (hence the focus on SJ and TLJ as complex characters) and the act of forgiveness and learning from mistakes, which I argue are the two main themes of SVSSS

So while Maigu ridge is terrible in terms of being an enjoyable scene to read, that was not it’s purpose. It’s purpose was to utilize the tropes of both Danmei and male fantasy to take us out of those genres (where first times always go well) and get us to THINK about the characters and why they do what they do, their intentions.

#bingqiu #svsss #shen qingqiu #luo binghe #luo bingge #luo bingmei #maigu ridge #scum villains self saving system #scum villian self saving system #papapa #SQQ #LBH #analysis #of things that maybe should not be #would my English teacher be proud or horrified? #you decide

[lavender-long-stories]

Writing Advice: Getting Words on a Page

With the 75k word count in November and 90k in August, I have been asked questions like how do I keep focus and what do I do when I get stuck. I am going to compile all the advice I have.

Over the last few years, I have posted 700k+ words of fan fiction and have been posting 3 to 6 chapters every week for the last ten months. This is not how to make your writing better. This is how to get words on a page. 

This is not all my original ideas. This is just a collection of things that have worked for me.

I am not sure I am the person to tell you how to make your writing better, but if people want my thoughts on that. I can make that post too.

When inspiration strikes, write like wild. 

If you have the time and you are bitten by the writing bug, keep writing anything while you are in peak form. You will thank yourself later when you feel like you can’t write everything. I have done the extreme version of this where I have a month (four chapters) written ahead of almost everything on my post schedule (you don’t need this), but this was really nice after I brunt out after finishing out the 90k challenge I destroyed myself with in August.

Write in little pockets of time.

You don’t need to sit down and write for two hours. Write 100 words here and 500 there. It will all add up. When I was struggling at the end of the 75k, I would just open a doc every few hours and write half a page until I got distracted and tried again later.

Change your font.

If you are struggling to edit or even just find yourself drifting while writing, change your font. It helps trick your brain into paying attention. (I like doing a mono font like Courier when I need writing vibes. It looks typewriter-y)

Take a shower. 

Not just for shower thoughts, being clean and fresh helps with focus

Get dressed.

I love being comfy, but something about getting dressed makes me feel like I am working and should finish my task. Extra points for it being fun. (Maybe cosplay a pirate or something.)

Move Locations.

Desk, kitchen table, bed, outside: changing location helps move you out of a brain rut.

Handwrite notes.

I take most of my notes on notion, but when I am struggling with my plot, I write out notes by hand, starting with what happened last and continuing from there, writing even things I know will happen. Then I transfer this to my digital notes so they are easier to move around in order, AND a lot of time, I add details when revising them to digital. Double power.

Always, always write down your thoughts and keep them.

Some of my most popular stories came from me rediscovering a 2 am thought that I wrote down six years ago. Keep a notepad next to the bed if you have to.

Change POV

If something is not working in a scene, maybe it is who you have reacting to it. Try switching POV. It helps you think of the scene from another perspective.

Watch a show in your genre.

I watch a lot of the silliest KDrama’s and get lots of romance ideas. Maybe I didn’t think of sending my character to a park or trapping them in a sky lift. Maybe I should add a stalker that sounds fun.

Take your bathroom breaks.

You should always drink lots of fluids and remember to take your bathroom breaks because the brief moment of walking away always gives me an idea.

Skim through the story and make notes on what HAS happened, not just what will happen.

This helps more with my style of having next to no plot outline. Need your next plot point and don’t know where to go? Remember that time they did x? Let’s build off that. This helps intertwine the plot without losing things.

Just read the story back.

You don’t always need to make notes, but sometimes just reading from the beginning can make you pick up on a detail that was unimportant at the time, and you may not even have meant to put in that could have a lot more meaning now. Then, you can call it clever foreshadowing.  

Explain your problem or the scene you are struggling with out loud.

It doesn’t have to be to someone. It could be a glass of water. This is called ‘rubber ducking. It’s a programmer term (hello, that is my day job). Restructuring your problem in a way you have to articulate it most of the time makes the solution come to you.

Try focusing on the scenery.

If you can’t get a scene to work open with the weather or how the floor is creaking under step, give the world a new feeling. How does the person feel about the weather or the temperature of the room? 

Can’t figure out what is wrong? Rewrite the chapter from scratch. 

Open a new doc and rewrite the chapter from memory. I do this a lot in the beginning of a story that didn’t quite hit the way I wanted it to. I will start the chapter from memory and skim the old one to ensure I didn’t miss anything important. Can’t do it from memory? Read a paragraph and write that from memory. 

Take a left turn.

Sometimes, if you can’t go any further, go back a sentence, a paragraph, a scene, a chapter, and just make a different decision. Turn left instead of right. Change how someone reacts to an argument. It opens a whole new lane to go down.

Excited for a scene that is in the future?

Write it! You don’t have to use it word for word in the future. Sometimes, you can copy and paste it in, and sometimes, you can just rewrite it, and you lose none of those thoughts you originally had.  Writing it might remind you of something that needs to happen first to help you get there.

Have more than one story you are working on.

I don’t think you need to be working on four+ stories like I do, but having something to switch to when your brain really isn’t feeling your main is a great way to keep you writing. Call it productive procrastination. This is the REAL reason I have so many stories uploading.  (ᵕ—ᴗ—)

Other Somewhat Related Advice

Context Switching

I work on multiple projects at a time, and I tend not to mix them up because they have a different vibe to me. It feels like stepping into each world.  If you are struggling with context switching between stories, I suggest finding a song or making a playlist that gives you that story’s ‘vibe’ and keeping a link to it in your writing folder or snagging a section of your story that captures the vibe you are going for and keeping it off to the side to reread when you need to switch.

Don’t edit the same day you write.

You’re not going to catch errors. Your brain is too familiar with what you wrote. Also, I recommend Grammarly or another grammar checker for all your missing comma and period needs. (Word, Docs, and any other text editor simply won't bully you enough.)

If you hate editing, don’t leave yourself with a painful amount of editing.

When people ask me how I edit my work, how many passes I take, etc, I tend to disappoint them. The short answer is one read-through (after using a grammar checker).  I learned a LONG time ago that as much as it would be nice to write a bunch of dialog and then tell yourself you will go back to add all the actions or write without quotes because it takes time, you will save yourself a lot of time and pain if you learn to write it correctly the first time and then editing won’t be as much of a chore. I have been writing for years, and I am used to how I write and edit. If you are newer to writing, give it another pass or two, but try to shift some of that work to the writing process, not the editing process.

Make yourself an editing cheat sheet.

Make yourself a doc or a notion of words you notice you use too much or common words you misspell when writing.  I usually make one when I get back and do a post edit (when the story has been up for a while and I get back with fresh eyes and edit it). Reading through your old work and find things that you don’t like or don’t want to do anymore is a great way to build this list and improve your writing.

Now go write.

Got any advice for me? Reblog and tell me.

#writing problems #writing #writing tips #writers block #writing advice #writer #writing community #writeblr

[basket-of-radiants]

Proposal for Re-working the Kholins’ Character Arcs - a semi-coherent “essay” by me (feat. @akpaley​, thank you for your contributions and for your attempts at editing.)

Hey guys. Different kind of post this time around, compared to my usual brand. It’s time for some fix-it fanfiction masquerading as literary critique. I won’t be using a readmore, I dunno, probably to punish anyone still following this blog or something. So! In this post I’m going to solve the all the issues of racial theming associated with the Kholin family.

I’m often very harsh on the Kholins for benefitting so much from exploitative power structures while doing little to help those below them. But then I’ve also criticized them for actually addressing these very problems in-universe. How can I be upset at them for their inaction and then also be annoyed when Jasnah ends slavery? The short answer to all of this is just that the ways these topics are addressed all feel very inauthentic. For example, in real life history it took over a century of protests, slave revolts, political campaigning, and civil wars to legally end slavery in Europe and America, and abolitionists were met with fierce opposition at every turn. A fictional world need not follow our same historical trajectory, but it still seems a little disingenuous for a monarch to just decide to end it within her first year of power because it doesn’t mesh with her philosophical framework. It’s more like trying to wrap up a subplot than actually address the topic.

Ultimately however, there’s only so far this line of criticism can ever take me because the Kholins are the protagonists and you can’t get rid of them without turning the whole story into something else entirely. And Sanderson shouldn’t have to, these are characters that he created and he’s allowed to tell a story about them. And I actually like a lot of their personalities and arcs and outlooks quite a lot. I do think it’s...unfortunate...to have used slavery and racism as disposable props in a story that ultimately turned out to be about a bunch of royals learning to be better people and saving the world along the way. So I guess what I’m interested in is if there’s a way to keep the premise, keep the characters, keep the general story beats, keep the themes of honor and personal growth, keep the basic structure of everything, and still handle those themes with grace. You know, could this be a compassionate story about addressing racism told from the point of view of nobility? Is such a thing possible?

Well, I’m going to try my best. And I’m going to be imperfect about it, obviously, so if you actually care enough to read all this shit, I welcome discussion and disagreement. 

Jasnah is the most obvious example to point to as being indicative of the problem, but I also think she has the easiest character fixes. She’s already been established as an outspoken dissident on many of her society’s deeply ingrained values. Just add to her atheism and feminism that she’s also always been an outspoken abolitionist. Give her ties to an ongoing reformist movement. Have her lecture Shallan about it in Way of Kings. Make that a reason she’s butted heads with her family so much. I do think it’s poor writing to have a ruler end slavery on a whim, but I won’t deny that having the right person in power can make a huge difference. It’s not as cathartic as having Kaladin lead a slave revolt (or as having Moash destroy society <3) but that doesn’t make it inherently bad so long as the topic itself is still treated with weight. Have her moralistic ideology be firmly pre-established so that when she has to explain why she’s abolishing slavery, her reasoning can be purely pragmatic. The reason she’s moving so fast is because this is a historical point of heightened change, and so her reforms are more likely to work, but if she waits too long and things settle back into a new status quo, she may have missed her window. Not to mention, when her nephew comes of age, her own legitimacy as a ruler might be challenged, so she needs to do as much as she can in what may be end up being a short reign. As a character, Jasnah has always been able to girlboss her way past political realities through sheer force of personality, and that’s great and all, but I think it heightens her character’s competence if she does have to deal with real backlash, not just to her but to her policies as well. The narrative doesn’t even need to linger on her opposition, but acknowledging it and acknowledging that she’s simply a member of a preexisting and ongoing movement would have done wonders to portray slavery as a real and prescient issue. Then again, this is a topic which people have fought and continue to fight wars over, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable for her to have receive major backlash either; perhaps when the Kholins hear in Words of Radiance that she was assassinated, the news could come as tragic but not entirely unexpected so as to imply that her opposition has attempted such in the past. All this is to say, I don’t think it’s at all wrong for Jasnah to do what she did. I also don’t think her entire stance on abolitionism should have come down to a comment where she tells her uncle she’s trying to rule according to ethically consistent values. The fact that slavery was insultingly easy to end not only delegitimizes is as a topic worthy of discussion, but also is a really scathing indictment of literally everyone else in the ruling class who didn’t even think to try.

Jasnah done, easy, Dalinar next.

Dalinar is probably the most complicated character for me to discuss and form coherent statements on. He’s just so rife with contradictions down to his core. That’s probably why I continue to like him so much, why he’s still my favorite, even though I still consider him to be a Bad Person over all. I think deep down I’ll always lean a bit too pacifistic ideologically to ever consider a warlord/general to be a good person, no matter how honorable he may be or how much growth he may undergo. Don’t get me wrong, I still do love his growth. Dalinar is characterized by his constant change and forward momentum, even moreso than the rest of the cast. So for discussing him, at what point can I point to him and say “this is Dalinar, this is who he is, this is what he believes and what he cares about”? Of course, during any point in his arc, you’re going to have to grapple with the fact that all of his lofty rhetoric about honor and striving for personal betterment is ultimately going to be pretty useless to all the people whose lives he’s meaninglessly thrown away across his military career. For me personally, when I talk about his character I like to take the end-of-oathbringer approach, where I acknowledge everything he did in the past as Blackthorn, I agree that it was pretty fucked up, and I forgive him and grant him a clean slate. All this to say that even if I’m judging him purely by his behavior as the current Dalinar within the present day continuity of the books, he’s still a massive hypocrite with horrific amounts of blood on his hands which he’s never even bothered to consider. I dunno, when I first read Way of Kings and I first got to meet this general who’s leading an army in a literal genocide campaign, I sort of figured he’d get some kind of “wait am I the bad guy” moment at some point in the future. And he did get a moment in Oathbringer where he has to fully confront his guilt over past actions, it was great, I really really loved it! But it was also all about actions he took before the series even started, so I guess wiping out the listeners wasn’t a sin he thought needed any atonement. I’m not going to get into the narrative’s treatment of singers and listeners on this post (for no other reason than because I have waaaaaaay too much to say there) but the point I’m getting at is that however good Dalinar’s growth is and whatever direction it takes, it’s always going to have poisonous roots to me. And his treatment of class/racial issues is no different. 

Fixing Dalinar is going to take a lot of what Dalinar does best: introspection. In Way of Kings, Dalinar dislikes how Sadeas treats his bridgemen because he believes it to be dishonorable, because he believes Sadeas is forcing others into a situation that he himself would never put himself into. He also has various sympathetic reflections here and there about how sad it is when soldiers die, and about how without the benefit of the Thrill, violence is actually kind of bad. You know how it goes. But I don’t think he ever put himself at risk to actually help or protect any of the people who are dying. Whether he wants to end the war or not, he still continues to participate in it. And he’s still willing to set aside the lives of literally everyone beneath him so he can pursue his dream of unity. The book ends with Kaladin and the rest of bridge four saving him and Adolin, and in gratitude, he purchases their freedom and gives them honored positions in his household. You know, because he’s so honorable. Everyone loves this scene, so I’m going to make it the catalyst for Dalinar’s new and improved character development. The problem with saying Kaladin helped Dalinar so Dalinar helped Kaladin is that when I’m being reductive and uncharitable (like I’m being right now), I can argue that their relationship basically started as a quid pro quo. This scene is meant to prove that Dalinar really is the most honorable person in Alethkar, just as Syl thought, only it doesn’t actually do that. See I don’t actually want Dalinar to start treating Kaladin as an equal. I want Dalinar to, in that moment, realize that Kaladin is better than him. That for all of his pontificating about honor, he would have never even considered risking his own life and the lives of his own family to rescue a bunch of bridgemen. I want him to see Kaladin’s honor, and rather than be validated in his beliefs, I want him to be thoroughly humbled. Let him spend all next book reflecting on all the lives of darkeyes he’s destroyed. Let it shame him, as Evi’s death shamed him. He already flirts with these lines of thought, and he already has an arc about confronting his past actions. Let the racial injustices he’s participated in be a part of that. Let him abandon his books and traditions instead look to Kaladin to learn what honor truly means. I don’t know how any of this would translate to his actions, because if we’re being honest his ideals are already quite incongruous with his actions, but the fact that he manages to have such strong theming regardless makes me think maybe that’s okay. I guess ultimately it would be enough for me if his character, as someone who symbolizes the ideals of a nation, was able to look at a darkeyes publicly be a follower rather than always trying to lead by his own personal example.

That’s Dalinar. Elhokar next?

I actually don’t think there’s too much wrong with Elhokar’s writing, especially in the first two books where a much greater emphasis on these themes were placed. He’s not a protagonist and we the audience aren’t supposed to endorse his actions. Most of what I’d change about his story is more about Kaladin and Moash than it is about him. I definitely don’t love that he can throw away the lives of his own people by the thousands in the genocide campaign that was the vengeance war, and then have the narrative just ignore all that in favor of him being sad about his own incompetence. If Elhokar is meant to be a sympathetic character, then when he calls himself a bad king, that’s what he should be thinking about, the number of lives he’s wasted over these years. I actually like him a lot more as a less sympathetic character, and I think I would have preferred if in oathbringer the narrative and the other characters would have stopped making so many excuses for him. Back to Kaladin and Moash, those are the two characters defined by their experiences as members of the downtrodden caste, so I personally sort of judge the problematic-ness of the whole story by how they get treated. Everyone loves to talk about how those two are foils. So. In order to strengthen Kaladin and Moash’s characters, either Elhokar needs to be as much of a monster as Amaram, or Amaram needs to be just as sympathetic and conflicted and having-of-a-toddler as Elhokar. Don’t get me wrong, I genuinely love the trope of finding at the end of a revenge quest that the person you hated has changed and grown. But I hate how this means that Moash’s hatred is wrong and unjustified, whereas Kaladin’s is validated at every turn. I don’t actually dislike Elhokar. I mean I think he’s a bad person, but I like a lot of characters who are bad people. I just think that if this story really wants to grapple with class and race (because it sure brings them up a lot for a story that doesn't want to talk about them), then Moash is a much more important character than him, with a lot more to add to that kind of discussion, which is why I think Elhokar’s characterization would have to come second to Moash’s development. (Obviously if this series were being reworked to be better on this topic, Moash would have to be written with a lot more compassion in general, but this post isn’t about him.)

Intermission time. Gavilar.

Gavilar is already perfect, 10/10, great character all around, what a guy, no notes, no wonder he’s so universally beloved among all of the fans, social justice icon.

Okay onto Navani.

I may not be the best person to talk about Navani. She has never been a favorite character of mine, and so compared to the others I haven’t thought as much about her values or the way she thinks or the narrative impacts of her actions. Someone who has more love for her would probably write better criticisms of her. (I’m going to reject any premise that falls along the lines of “Navani isn’t racist because she feels X,” but I’m not wholly confident in my analysis here, and I welcome any good faith critiques both of my own thinking and of her character when come at from other angles.) It’s hard to say where she should have grown from how she starts out viewing darkeyes because I don’t actually know how she starts out viewing darkeyes. I know I’m probably meant to assume she just treats everyone equally because she’s a Good Person on Team Good Guys, but it’s hard to just accept that she had all around good values when she married a warlord and was in love with his more violent brother. I dunno, was her “good guy” status meant to have always been an element of her character, or did she get it secondhand from her association with the new and improved Dalinar? With someone like Adolin, we got to see what shitty values he held at the start of Way of Kings (I’m talking about the Alethi warmongering, not his interest in fashion) but we also got to see how his father gradually won him over throughout the course of the book, and then later on we get to see him develop further on his own. For someone like Navani, I find it strange how she’s always so proactively supportive of Dalinar in everything, even when his own goals and values are in flux. I assume her character is just meant to be super ride or die when it comes to her family, and I do like that in a character, but that also means that she’s been wholly willing to support or at the very least excuse her family’s oppression and exploitation of darkeyes without comment. (See, Lirin is a much better parent than Navani, he would never have let his son start a whole genocidal vengeance war for fun and profit (I say this as if I’m joking but I’m kinda not.)) Some people have reminded me that she was pretty much shut out of the political process by Gavilar and Elhokar, and I agree with that, but I don’t really have any evidence that she would have cared much about darkeyes even if she had been more involved. In general it just seems like the whole topic doesn’t matter much to her. So what I would wish for the narrative would be to lean further into this. Draw attention to her cognitive dissonance and try and make the readers feel conflicted about her as a person. Highlight the fact that she’s willing to overlook the suffering that befalls other families if it means success for her own. I think one of my issues with her is that to me, this is a major (and interesting!) character flaw, but the books never seem to treat it as such. Honestly I think if this were intentional, I’d probably find her character really interesting, but from my reading of the text, I feel that I’m supposed to think of Navani as a generally decent person who’s by and large on the right side of things. The thing is, with the caste system playing such an integral role in their culture, I think she needs to have some sort of feelings about it, or else the fact that she doesn’t should be an issue to overcome. Otherwise she becomes another factor delegitimizing racial oppression as a real and important problem. If she’s a good guy and she doesn’t care about racism, then that’s saying you don’t have to be antiracist to be a good person in this world. 

Probably could have done that one better. I dunno. Leave me angry and hateful comments if I’m totally misrepresenting your favorite character. Moving on.

Adolin already has some great character development across the books. And he already has kind of engaged with this stuff in his story. Unfortunately, that’s less used in the “this person was racist but is becoming better sense” and more used in the sense of “Kaladin learns that #NotAllLighteyes are bad” which is pretty unfortunate for a number of reasons. Especially since, if he actually was going to prove he’s different from other lighteyes, out of all the Kholins I think Adolin is the best candidate for being a full on class traitor. I’m serious, looking back over the events of his plotlines, it would suit him shockingly well while disturbing the overall narrative shockingly little.

Adolin’s current plot is loosely as follows: in Way of Kings he likes all the things someone of his station is supposed to like, clothes, violence, dueling, warfare, swords, hangtime with the guys, all the good stuff. At the beginning of the book he doesn’t understand why old, stuck-up Dalinar can’t just let loose and be a relelntless war-monger like everyone else, but by the end of the book he’s come to understand a certain value to honor and thus has begun to become a better person himself. Words of Radiance has him lose his popularity, fall out of favor with all of his friends, grow disillusioned with his society, perform a prison sit-in in solidarity with Kaladin, and murder Sadeas. Most of this is done again, because of his father, and how Adolin now wants to help and support him and his ideals. In Oathbringer he mostly isn’t involved in courtly politics, being away on a mission for much of it, but he does make a pretty big move by rejecting the throne. In Rhythm of War we see the schism that’s formed between him and his father until he leaves on another long-distance mission. Summary over. In general I reject the idea that making the Kholins be individually less racist makes for a better, or more nuanced and compassionate discussion of the topic, but if anyone is primed for a “lighteyes learns racism is wrong” character arc, I think it’s Adolin. Imagine him following a bit less in Dalinar’s footsteps and a bit more in Jasnah’s. You almost don’t even have to change any story beats: in getting to know Kaladin, something clicks in Adolin where he realizes that if he wants to treat Kaladin as his equal, he has to treat all darkeyes as equals, and so he realizes to his horror that he and his entire caste of friends and family are all monsters for treating them the way they do. (Actually, there is one plotline in WoR I’d probably scrap, and that’s his slowburn bromance with Kaladin. I mean I get what Sanderson was going for with the ribbing and then eventual friendship, but Kaladin was an absolute stranger who risked his own life to save Adolin and his father from certain death, and so I feel there should probably have been a bit more overt respect upfront there.) In pushing for his newfound belief in equality, he ends up burning through all of his intracaste goodwill and political capital, causing all of his friends to drop him. When he kills Sadeas, it doesn’t have to be about protecting Dalinar or about personal revenge, it could also be that he’s gotten to know Bridge 4 and learned firsthand about the atrocities they’d gone through, and so there’s no way he’d allow such a pioneer of human rights violations to stay in power. In the following books, maybe he’s become so politically toxic due to challenging the very foundations of his own power, his own family has to send him away on missions so he can’t rock the boat too much at home. Maybe refusing the throne was more of a political statement than a personal one, because he’s come to understand that being a ruler means oppressing thousands of others. Maybe this is another form of hypocrisy he criticizes Dalinar for, how Dalinar might claim to value darkeyes but how he still retains power bought with thousands of their corpses. None of this has to modify actual events very much, it just affects the reasons for them. And it would also meaningfully show why he gets to be a “good lighteyes” if he actually engaged with his status and rejected it, knowing it comes at the expense of others.

Okay, enough about that. Renarin maybe?

I won’t say too much about Renarin here, because I’d probably just end up repeating a lot of the same criticisms of how he’s used as a “good lighteyes.” From a narrative standpoint, all those criticisms hold for him as well. You know, he wants to join Bridge Four, and future-villain Moash doesn’t like the idea because he doesn’t trust lighteyes, but Kaladin reassures him that Renarin is a good boy, so don’t worry about it, and everything works out fine in the end, proving that lighteyes are good people just like you and me. This isn’t a problem with him as a person or character, it’s just more of that general theme of “the caste system is fine so long as nice people are at the top” which I clearly think should be interrogated. Thus far, in contrast to the rest of his family, Renarin is very young and has had much less of a political presence, not to mention fewer POV chapters anyway, so I think delving too much deeper here will feel a bit hollow to me.

Does Shallan count as a Kholin? I’d like to talk about her super briefly.

Unpopular opinion, but I actually think Shallan is one of the better characters on the topic of race insofar as how she’s written, especially compared to the other Kholins. But wait, I hear you say, what about all of her dozens of instances of casual racism? Yes, that’s what I’m referring to. I like how Shallan demonstrates how ingrained these harmful ideologies are in their society. I like how every time she has a distasteful thought, we the audience are reminded that racism still exists and even good people will continue to promote it if they don’t view it critically. I like that Shallan is problematic, because their society has problems! At least with her it doesn’t feel like the story’s trying to sweep the fact under the rug. There are plenty of issues with her writing, plenty of jabs at Kaladin that probably shouldn’t have been treated as cute. She’s actually the main character whose racism and classism I see criticized the most. And I think that’s a good thing! My issue with the Kholins isn’t that I think they should all be less racist, my issue is that their positions are inherently oppressive, and it seems as though the narrative doesn’t think that matters so long as deep down they’re good people. When people critique Shallan in specific instances, I tend to see a fair amount of consensus and agreement there, but when I critique the Kholins people will argue with me by pointing out that Dalinar/Adolin/Navani/whoever actually treats darkeyes as equals, so my arguments are invalid. Purely my own anecdotal experience of course, but it tends to make me think that there’s something in Shallan’s writing that’s working right, something that isn’t working for the other lighteyed characters.

Now obviously with all of this, I’m not saying I want these books to have more racism in them. What I’m arguing is that if the books are going to explore the topic (which they do) then they should treat the topic with an appropriate amount of gravity rather than acting as if it can be solved by having aristocrats become nicer people.

If you’re still here with me, thank you for reading, I love you, I hope you enjoyed yourself through my descent further and further into rambly nonsense. If you just scrolled to the bottom, that’s fair enough, there won't be a tl;dr but you’re welcome for filling your dash with massive text blocks.

#i'm going to be super nice and not put this post in any of the respective character tags #you're so welcome #i don't even know what to tag this as no one actually blocks ''long post'' #i could tag it as discourse but my discourse tag is usually reserved for moash posting #also i genuinely am happy to read discussion about any of these points #i can't guarantee i'll reply to all of it but i welcome good faith disagreements (or agreements i suppose.) #except for my points about gavilar #try to argue with me there and i will make fun of you sorry #i should fully reactivate this blog but JUST for gavilar posting #preemptive faq response - q: why is this so long please put this under a cut. a: it's literally your fault for following me.

[pigeontheoneandonly]

Pacing

I’m going to talk about good pacing.  Readers have often complimented me on my pacing, which I consider some of the highest praise I’ve received, because my best-known works tend to run quite long, and that presents a lot of challenges in this area.  So here’s what I’ve learned over my years of writing:

1. Something interesting must happen every single scene.  This doesn’t mean dramatic, or emphatically significant, or energetic.  It means interesting.  A bit of writing advice I see thrown around a lot states that every scene must advance either the character or the plot, and this isn’t a bad way of thinking about it if you have difficulty discerning what is interesting (and as long as in speculative fiction you remember to count the setting itself as a character for these purposes).  But what it really boils down to is every scene needs to engage the reader in such a way that they’re interested in learning more--whether that’s what happens next, a juicy bit of worldbuilding, or an intriguing character facet.  Make it good and leave the reader just a little shy of satisfied, all the time.

(And it should go without saying that the interesting bit can’t be totally desultory; you need every scene to be related in some way to what’s happening in your story and your plot as well.)

2. Emotional tone matters just as much as interest.  The stories I write are often fairly grim, full dark emotions and situations, fraught relationships, and the like.  But if all you ever give your reader is the same buffet, whether that’s fluffy light emotions, or closer to my end of the spectrum, they become fatigued and inured to the interest you’re attempting to create through these emotions.  It’s like eating pizza every night.  Even if you love pizza, at some point it becomes boring and a complete chore to keep eating it (or keep reading, in this analogy).  You need to vary your highs and lows.  You need to have unexpected twists of gloom or levity to contrast with your larger themes.  This, by the way, tends to mimic life, which is why it’s compelling.

3. Likewise, you need to balance action and inaction.  As a very basic formula, try to follow scenes or chapters where a great deal of action (considerable plot advancement, or even literal action like a battle) with scenes that are more reflective and cerebral.  Give your readers breathing room.  This doesn’t destroy tension; it relieves it just enough to get your readers ready for the next dose.  

4. Good pacing and good tension are co-dependent.  The word tension tends to conjure an emotive definition in most people, but I prefer to think of it the way we do in knitting: the tension of the yarn must be maintained to ensure each stitch is alike, and each row is the same length and even with the rest of the fabric.  Tension is what gives your story consistency and draws the reader along from start to conclusion.  Instead of increasing and relaxing tension to vary the story emotions, keep tension constant and add more stitches (more stuff going on) when you want the story to feel more intense.  This prevents the story from dragging in its “relaxed” or more contemplative phases.  You always want the reader to feel there is more to discover, more to explore, right up until the satisfying ending--and even then, ideally, you want them a little wistful they couldn’t spend more time here.

#writing #pigeon writes #pacing

[kcwriter-blog]

15 Lines of Dialogue

Rules: Share 15 or fewer lines of dialogue from an OC, ideally lines that capture the character/personality/vibe of the OC. Bonus points for just using the dialogue without other details about the scene, but you're free to include those as well!

Thank you, @broodwolf221 and @kierarhawke for tagging me in this. 🥰

This isn't going to be easy. I just started writing fan fiction and most of it is Solas stream of consciousness stuff in which my OC doesn't speak. So much of this is coming from my WIPs. Given that, here's an introduction to Theneras (Her name means Dreams in Elvhen).

“Was it prepared here? Because I am not eating anything that came out of that kitchen. I’m positive I saw a rat getting drunk on the bar. He had his own little tankard and everything.”

“No? I’m their bloody Herald of Andraste and they still butchered them. Regardless, I made a mistake and they paid for it.”

"“That was my choice to make, not yours!"

“How was I supposed to know? It’s not like he was wearing a sign that said, ‘Elvhen god planning to destroy the world. Under no circumstances fall in love with him.’"

“Ir abelas, vhenan, if I could add your grief to my own, I would."

“When I wake up, they will still be gone. I will still be the last of my clan. I will still be alone. Dreams offer cold comfort."

“I can’t talk about this. I can't even think about it right now. Why not just say no one trusts me and be done with it. Maybe that’s why I never leave home."

"There are always choices, Solas. You may not like them but they are there."

“I don’t know if I am safe, but I assume I’m not dead – yet. I have you to thank for that, I take it?”

“I don’t understand you, Solas. Do you want to succeed in your endeavor or fail, because I can’t tell.”

“What experience? If I want to fuck a carpet, there’s a perfectly good rug in my sitting room.”

"I don’t want to wake up alone. Do you?”

“And you thought a wolf was the appropriate response to a Crow assassin?”

“I never like your answers anymore.”

“That you still love me? No. That I still love you? Yes. I just don’t want to.”

Tagging, but with no pressure to accept (if you've already been tagged, my apologies. 😊): @arlathvhenan @an-established-butt-dent

#solas #dragon age inquisition #solavellan #tag games #current wips #wip #dai solas #solasmance

[caterpillarinacave]

Tatiana is absolutely evil, but I don't think she's fully in her rights mind. Like, I think Tatiana is also a victim in many ways, and she was driven to madness and evil despite having once had the potential to be a fine person. Mortmain is WAY scarier than her because he isn't just in his right mind - he's incredibly methodical, meticulous, and scientific as he goes about his plots. He caused a girl to be born while fully intending even before she existed to rape her and use her to breed his children. He linked her to an angel to make sure she survived. He worked for decades to perfect his automatons. He is batshit crazy and is basically an evil capitalist overlord.

I find Mortmain to be a genuinely unsettling villain.

Tatiana is very much not in her right mind, and falls into the category of “shadowhunter women who didn’t get what they want and absolutely can’t deal with it”. She sort of does that thing that a lot of fictional charcaters, and a lot of real people, do where when someone is absent from their lives they make them up in their heads to fix everything. Like “if only my dad were alive everything would be perfect!” Or “my grandma was exactly like me if I’d known her I wouldn’t be lonely!”, when they barely knew that person, and that person defiantly wouldn’t fix everything.

In TLH she operates with idea that if Rupert were still alive everything would be better, and if her Benedict was alive everything would be perfect, when logically, she’s totally wrong. 

Mortmain on the other hand has no delusions about anything.

He’s the opposite of a lot of characters in that he doesn’t seem mean and have a nice, sympathetic side, he almost seems nice while very much not caring. 

He’s not at all concerned with human life or even recruiting people. He’ll straight up say “so and so shouldn’t die” and kill them without being at all smug, sad, or angry. 

It’s not even like there’s anything you can do to make him angry. He’s going to destroy the shadowhunter end of story. You can bring up his parents if you want but it’s not gonna upset him. 

He basically views everyone around him as very little more than ants. 

Also he fought like ten shadowhunter children. No one in the institute is over the age of like 23 and he still lost.

He is so creepy. He’s planning to breed a teenager??? He’s planning to keep her, mostly teenaged, friends hostage so she doesn’t defy him??? So creepy. So gross. Loved his death<3

Part of me wishes we could have seen what would happen if the TID gang did stay in the mountain for few days, solely to see some interactions. There are a few interesting parallels in the books involving Mortmain that I’ve never seen anyone point out. Whenever I reread TID I’ll point them out. He’s easily my favorite TSC villain, since he’s so successful in being a major threat while still being at his core just a dude. 

#If I had energy the fic I write involving those paralells and that possible au #Thanks for the ask #tid #Eat the capitalist #Or crush him to death in an angelic grip

[vashhanamichi]

I am in love with Hologhost. I love how dreamy and poetic it is. It's really intriguing and I also really like Mary Magdalene and the atmosphere that you have created. For the violence ask game: 1, 7, 8, 16, 18 and 25. Sorry for the amount of questions that I picked.

First of all thank you for your words, I’m glad you liked my fics! Also no need to apologise! think I never answered these types of asks before and I had a lot of fun answering them. Thank you for sending me an ask!

As for the answers:

1. The character that everyone gets wrong: I’m not sure if this counts, but a lot of people are not aware that 1) Tom wasn’t in muggle London for the Blitz! It happened while he was in Hogwarts. He’d see the effects - buildings destroyed for example - when he went back during the summer but he didn’t experiment the Blitz itself, if I remember the dates correctly. 2) he wasn’t a posh child! He had a working class accent and a manner of speaking/behaving. A lot of writers have him behaving like a upper Downton Abbey character since he was kid but he grew up poor and “unrefined”!

7. A character that you began to hate not because of canon but because of fanon: I don’t hate him but fanon Draco annoys me haha it’s kinda hard making him compelling in fanfic because in canon he’s a cowardly, spoiled little boy biting more than he can chew so I get why people would give him more depth and qualities but I don’t like the total distortion I see in certain fics, re: making him noble and brave or this cool and sexy bad boy who’s even more powerful than Voldemort 😬

8. Common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about: That Harry is Voldemort’s “equal”. He isn’t. Voldemort is older, more experienced - including sexually - smarter, ruthless. Perhaps Harry has dormant powers that make him as magically powerful as Voldemort (like what happened during the 7 Potters chapter as far as I remember) but this is not very explored in canon. More importantly, Harry is Voldemort’s Horcrux. He’s a possession, a prize. He belongs to Voldemort. I get wanting to make them equal so their relationship is more “healthy” but they’re inherently fucked up and that’s what makes it so fun and compelling to me. In fiction love can be an unequal and toxic affair. Harry is such as a concubine to a powerful Emperor and I like them like this. Their age difference alone puts them in uneven ground. If you want something closer to a more balanced relationship between them, Harry needs to travel back in time and meet a young Tom Riddle.

16. You can’t understand why so many people like this thing (characterisation, trope, headcanon etc): Dark!Harry, any variety of Weasley and Dumbledore bashing, the whole “the light is evil actually” thing. If you take away how violently Harry disagrees with Voldemort and how much other people, who also oppose Voldemort, are important to him — the Weasleys, Dumbledore, the Order etc — you’re taking away the conflict and the friction between them. The whole point to me is Harry suffering with how much he loves Voldemort/Tom Riddle, no matter how wretched he is. He’s a Christ figure, condemned to love all Humanity and that Humanity includes Voldemort, but he’s also a human boy, not a god, so loving Voldemort hurts. Why would you take away Harry’s suffering? He’s at his prettiest when he cries!!! He was born to be a martyr!!!! Also I understand being annoyed by the canon’s lack of nuance between “dark” and “light”, but making the Malfoys the “good guys” and the Weasleys the “bad guys” is just inverting that binary. Also in canon Voldemort is very much a fascistic racist working with other fascist racists. Kinda hard to defend his philosophy.

18. It is absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on: Riddledore, Omega Voldemort (not Tom Riddle, VOLDEMORT) Omega Dumbledore, attic wife trope for both Harry and Dumbledore. The gothic fairy tale elements of TomHarry, the psychosexual madness of it all. Harry both as Voldemort’s son and mother. Stockholm Syndrome. Yaoi basics. How come Gellert didn’t impregnate Albus into submission in the western fandom yet? Also the characters Alastor Moody, Kingsley Shackelbolt and Cedric Diggory.

25. I’m not aware of any fandom complaint I think 🤔

I’ll answer your other ask ASAP!

#ask

[lycanlovingvampyre]

MAG 106 Relisten

Activity on my first listen: putting up a new fence

Hearing the episode title I somehow already suspected this could be a space one...

Huh... The spinning of the tape breaks off there for a moment after Melanie's clap (1:21). I never noticed this. Probably always thought it was a brief loading error. Thought it now too at first, but I went back to check.

"More than large enough for the swell of humanity to grow, and ultimately extinguish itself." Hm, a touch of the Extinction there?

"and when I think of it too deeply, I feel like I’m going to throw up. Like a sort of existential vertigo." Yeah, I know this feeling. When I try to think of things which are incomprehensible for me I get this weird feeling and feel dizzy.

"I knew that if it chose to cry out, it would have destroyed me utterly." The Vast is the most cosmic of all horrors of the Entities. This literally sounds like an Old One.

"And I wish that I could convince myself that ignorance was the same thing as safety." Louder, for Jon in S1!

Although this is a statement with a lot of rambling and very little actually happening (and usually I simply cannot follow those kind of statements) I absolutely love this one. I'm not only afraid of heights and I hate falling (generally avoid rides with a drop at theme parks), the aspect of one's own insignificance compared to the sheer size of the universe really gets to me, but also fascinates me.

Nice to see that the rest of the archival team is actually helping Martin with the statements.

MELANIE: "Also, I um, I can’t find Jan Kilbride." Sounds like he has been swallowed up by the earth! *badum tss*

BASIRA: "Yeah, it’s, it is not cool down here." MELANIE: "Summer in the basement, I suppose." Is it really hot in some basements in the summer? Because mine is always cool. Very comfortable in summer, too cold in winter.

BASIRA: [ugh] "That boy needs to relax." MELANIE: "Or at least find someone else to fuss over!" BASIRA: "Yeah, he’s got it bad." This is top quality office gossip!

BASIRA: "Do you know if he and Jon ever…" MELANIE: "No clue, and not interested! Although… according to Georgie, Jon doesn’t." BASIRA: "Like, at all?" MELANIE: "Yeah." First of all, Georgie randomly telling a mutual that Jon is ace, it that allowed? Second, Melanie randomly telling a mutual (and co-worker!) that Jon is ace... General opinion on the confirmation of an ace character: Yay!!! I don't really know what to think of confirmation happening by mentioning it in bonus material, a lot of people probably won't catch it that way, so having it in the main canon story is great! Then, yeah, it's kind of hard to reveal it when sex isn't really a topic in itself in the story. It comes up very rarely in statements, implied with Tim and towards the end with Georgie and Melanie. So how do you touch upon a topic that isn't really a topic? Have people talk about it and I think the gossip was a good way to handle that. The benefit of the gossip and especially the circumstance of who is telling it makes it vague to leave room for interpretations so people can put him anywhere on the spectrum. The vagueness of certain story points is doing a great service for fan content in my opinion. As someone who asked themself why I had not yet come across proper ace representation in fiction, hearing of poor little meow meow Jon being ace made me so happy!

BASIRA: "No way. I used to love that show. I mean, the first couple of seasons, at least. Took a weird turn in season three, when they introduced –" I heard this may be again a reference to The Black Tapes?? Yes, no, maybe?

ELIAS: "Whatever I’m planning needs to be stopped even if it cost a few lives. Including your own." That's very Gertrude-y of Melanie. Except for the part of risking her own life, that's very Slaughter-y.

Ben's voice acting is so on point!

When I heard Ivy Meadows I immediately knew, this is going to be bad. I remembered very well that this was the care home from MAG 36.

So that knowledge-insertion torture... THAT was the moment I finally decided "Holy shit... Elias really is evil!"

@a-mag-a-day

#a-mag-a-day #mag 106 #tma #tma spoilers

[gealach-in-a-misty-world]

1837. Poppy had always loved the night, which is why it wasn’t too much of a bother to wake one evening in an unfamiliar home far from London, weak and confused and plagued with a terrible thirst for blood, to learn that she could no longer step out into the day. And while vampirism presented several disadvantages, it more than made up for those in its benefits: immortality, a body that could run at speed for hours without tiring, the thrill of becoming a predator, the thing that pulls rabbits from bushes and tears through their fur and flesh with the sharp point of a white fang. And, of course, Roisin. The mysterious woman who has lived for centuries, who held Poppy through her painful transformation, and who, for some reason, is now teaching her how to adjust to her new, endless life. A tight, lonely, buttoned-up woman, with kindness and care, pressed up behind her teeth. The time they spend together is as transformative to Poppy as the changes in her body, and soon, she finds herself hopelessly, overwhelmingly attached. But Roisin has secrets of her own, and can’t make any promises; not when vengeance must be served. Soon, their little world explodes. Together and apart, they encounter scores of vampires, shifty pirates, conniving opera singers, ancient nobles, glamorous French women, and a found family that throws a very particular sort of party. But overhead, threat looms—one woman who is capable of destroying everything Poppy and Roisin hold dear.

"I want to watch you split the world like an orange and drink the juice". Samara Breger's A Long Time Dead is a phenomenal standalone sapphic vampire tale that reads like the best Anne Rice. Breger's vampires seem to borrow a few things from The Vampire Chronicles, but they're so full of life that it's a joy to read. We're thrown right into the thick of action as Poppy wakes up after being turned and she spends the first part of her new life being helped through the transition by a tragic figure that she immediately comes to love. What follows is a slow and tormented and rich journey towards a found family; a tale about belonging and about overcoming abuse in a relationship.

Poppy isn't a gloomy protagonist; she's a ray of sunshine, and she cares deeply. Even when she faces hardships, she keeps her sunny personality. She's crass at times, but she's so alive, in every way. She loves the joys of food, and in fact the loss of it is one of the first things she bemoans when she realizes that now she has to feed exclusively on blood. Before being turned she was a sex worker, and she's always very candid in her desires. The numerous sex scenes in the book are never gratuitous, and they're so well written.

In general, the prose is fantastic. There are turns of phrase that grip you and amaze you and leave you reeling. Breger plays with the tropes of the genre and crafts a unique tale brimming with exhilarating tidbits and cameos and also fully exploring Catholic guilt. The choice to give very few chapters to Roisin works well, because we're given front seats to the depth of Poppy's devotion. Roisin is driven and consumed by the need for revenge, self-sacrificing; but gradually she finds her will to live again.

The rest of the cast is delightful, from Poppy's oldest friend to the Coven she finds, five vampires that welcome her into their lives and love her unconditionally; from her new mortal maid, just as foul-mouthed as her, to the incredible villain, a despicable and amoral character. Every thread is accounted for, every hint acknowledged and resolved and brought to a satisfying conclusion.

A Long Time Dead is a joyous gothic tale.

✨ 4.5 stars

[You can find more of my reviews about queer speculative fiction on my blog MISTY WORLD]

#samara breger #a long time dead #queer books #sapphic #vampires #book reviews #books #sff #gealach reads #gealach writes

[sofoulandfairaday]

Forgive me if you've already said this, but where can I read your fics? Your opinions are always very interesting and I am intrigued to see them developed into a story.

Ya can’t lmao

No, see, I mostly write for myself because I enjoy it and therefore it’s shameless self-indulgent content. I cry when writing sad scenes, I giggle at the crack-y ones, I get flustered with the smut, I spend hours researching the little details like book titles and whether jasmine grows in Venice or not and what the magical hierarchy of cities is and how dark magic can also heal and not just destroy and how not to make the characters overpowered because that is such a pet peeve of mine. It’s very VERY specific to my taste and I overthink every single word I write (yes, the curtains are yellow for a reason). I do have a very long 50+ chapter WIP which will maybe be published when finished. Since every fucking chapter is about 8K words long it will never be finished and no one will ever bother reading it ihihihihi.

(Just publish the first chapters!, you say. I wish I could write linearly, I reply)

Also, there is another HUGE problem. Most of my stuff is written in Italian. The very few excerpts on here are translated. Do you know how hard it is to try and convey the precise feelings you had when writing something, the word plays and the very specific descriptions in another language? It’s a whole job, and a boring one most of the time, which means that my Anna Karenina length fucking fan fiction (not even close to finished) has to be translated by me in my nonexistent down time. Also, I used to be one of those people who bitched about GRRM, but MAN my story has maybe spiralled into 100 different directions and I have no idea which version of the characters I want to stick to, what order I want to give certain events, and if they are IC or not anymore. Can you tell that I’m a perfectionist and I make even fun things unfunny?

Which is also why I’m so behind with the fics I want to read and review both in eng and ita. I DO see the new stuff published and I have NO time to look at it let alone tell the author what I think.

(Also I erase half of what I write because cringe and I have a self-insert OC - double cringe - that was meant to be a fun minor wink wink character in two (2) chs that has become important so now it CAN’T be a self-insert and i have to make psychologically complex except now she’s too bitchy and then she’s not bitchy enough to the point she is nothing like me now which kind of invalidates the point entirely. Also, I hate everybody else’s OCs so why should my writing have one when I could concentrate on other characters?? Except I can’t give her role to anyone else unless I rewrite half of the whole thing so I am stuck and-)

When Olivia Rodrigo said and I hate every song I write and I’m not cool and I’m not smart (and I can’t even parallel park) that’s me :))))

I am so sorry anon by the way this wasn’t meant to be a rant you’ve just opened Pandora’s box and now I’m afraid I come off as a little unhinged. I am honestly flattered that you would send this, bless you. You’re my favourite ❤️

WITH THAT BEING SAID, there is something of mine on the internet (most of it SUCKS). Unless you know Italian you won’t be able to read it though. My account on a very popular Italian fanfic site still has my old little Bellamort song fics from when I was 13 (I can’t even bring myself to cancel them because cancelling them would mean opening them and opening them means I combust from the cringe). My views of the characters have also changed and I stand by NOTHING lmao. There is also some new stuff which is all smut (some I’m proud of and some I’ll delete as soon as I get over myself and just open the damn site) and maybe one (1) one-shot that I’m actually proud of.

And in English? The only thing that has ever been translated in English as of now is 8K+ words of filthy (and I mean filthy) PW very little P smut which I will not link on an account that actual people from my actual offline life might find (it’s hard enough to explain what’s on here) . However if you know me it’s not impossible to track down (or you can just dm me). There is no deeper meaning or philosophical themes or anything like that tho; if you’re attracted to my thoughtful metas where I quote and dissect the book passages or my quirky headcanons where I tease the characters, this is not that. This is just them fucking.

Sorry ❤️

#I think I exposed myself with this one #it’s literally THE most flattering thing in the world to receive an ask like this #idk why you would want to #but it still makes my day

[rainnotliam]

I don’t know. I’m kind of done with life. Trying to draw Arven and I keep berating myself for the littlest mistakes. I feel like crying. I don’t know why I keep failing badly. I can’t even pull myself together. So I’ll just rant. At least typing it makes me feel better.

I wish I weren’t so attached to fictional characters. Ever since I was small, like five years old I had a DS in my pocket, playing Mario and Luigi games, barely introduced to Pokemon itself. I always had the device with me, so clingy towards it. It wasn’t until a lot later on I got the Switch, and finally saw Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee. I got a copy of Eevee for Christmas, and played it through my winter break. It was absolutely addicting. I couldn’t tell you how happy I was with Trace as my rival, playing through and getting more immersed into the world.

But kind of a little while after I finished the game with immense pride and joy, caught Mewtwo, finished the rest… I kind of realized. My device wasn’t just to entertain me, it wasn’t as nice as I thought. My parents only got me it to shut me up, and when I tell you this, I tell you fully. I never once remembered them going out of their way to actually talk about my interests, play any games with me, or try to get to know me as their child. So as Sword and Shield came out, I was getting my copy as fast as I could to meet new characters and such to never, NEVER get bored of the fictional or rpg world.

Barely a year after I played SwSh, I just felt… empty. Once again, a little while later getting Legends:Arceus getting attached, rinse and repeat, BDSP, and finally: Scarlet and Violet.

Legends: Arceus really made me feel for Volo. The way he knew he slipped up something and was aware of your presence, how he always put on a fake act until you cracked him down slowly as you got even stronger, making him panic. Trying to destroy the world to make it a better place, as it had never for him.

It was absolutely selfish of him, yes. But I felt terrible, so terrible for him. As said for him, as a child, he always questioned unfair things, and why they happened. He turned his interest to legends and myths, and then slowly getting addicted to the point he needed to quench his thirst for the knowledge to make a new world. A world as it had never for him. A world which he could control, a world where he could finally be at peace. But you were the one who took his dream away, you were the one who destroyed the image of him able to never be judged again. He didn’t care who he had to hurt to reach his goal, consumed by desperate feelings and wanting to remake Hisui.

What does this have to do with me, exactly? I don’t know. Perhaps it was how he looked so abandoned, so alone in his one goal, so desperate to have something he couldn’t have which he could make and pursue himself. I felt like Volo for a second. I wanted the love and attention of my parents, just for once not having to be pushed into being the best, being the know it all for everything, the smartest and overachiever. I wanted to be known as myself. A child they had, which they loved. Or what I wanted them to love. So when Volo finally left the Temple, over consumed with rage, he snapped and realized he couldn’t have it. He accepted it, and never wanted to hurt you again. That’s why he told Laventon, why he never wanted to approach us once more, in fear we would get harmed by him and his dreams. Sometimes, I feel so angry at others whenever out in public, a simple family picture, or hugs by their parents; it hurt me so much seeing them so happy. Even faintly annoyed by their actions, the children really loved their parents. I would’ve killed for anything like that.

So my thirst for games, especially ones made my Pokémon got even stronger, till I’m here right now. And it hasn’t changed. With Arven, he had been abandoned by one of his parents after born, the other dying later on. He only had one companion: Mabosstiff.

For me, that hit home right on the mark. You could guess I was bawling my eyes out, sobs tearing at my throat, body shaking. I was home alone when going into a breakdown, but even then, my sweater could still be seen wet and dark with tears.

I felt so alone, only accompanied by fictional character which I called my friends. Irl friends… I haven’t fully told them anything about myself. They think they do know me quite a bit, but the truth is, an online friend knows me so much better. He’s the only one I remotely have shared about thirty percent about myself. Even friends of nine years or older don’t know me as well… and it hurts. I wish I could tell them, but so much of it can’t be said simply. My online so-called “brother” comforts me and has sympathy for me. He feels it too, as he has issues with his family as well. I usually never rant much, but I…

I just wish. I just with I didn’t have to have non realistic people as my closest “friends” my closest listeners, people closer to my heart.

It hurts.

#rant post #venting #personal post #might delete who knows #legit crying #i cant handle this #personal vent

[whimsyqueen]

OC Superlatives Tag!

Thanks for tagging me @kiss-my-aquari-ass!! This one is FUN!

I’m a dork who writes mostly short fiction, so for this I’m just gonna go apeshit and do EVERYONE. I’ll specify what piece they’re from though to be clear!

Most arrogant: I really hate to start off with a character who’s such a gross yucky slimeball but this one’s gotta go to Victor from the Eldritch Curse story. And that motherfucker really does let it get the best of him. I mean, just look at where I put Petra down below and what I said about her to understand this sad motherfucker. He thinks he’s better than everyone but he ISNT.

Most humble: haven’t really mentioned this story anywhere, but honestly the protagonist from my flash piece titled The Fool. I don’t really write humble characters, but I think she is. Truly she just wanted to have a peaceful night and ended up pondering the meaning of life and became a tree. Her whole story is how she realizes that the world is bigger than her and she can appreciate that. That makes sense to me.

Most charming: PETRA from the brother/sister Eldritch Curse Story wow damn this girl will charm the pants off of you and then absolutely rip your throat out without question. She led her brother on for so long letting him think he was getting the better of her but NOPE! FUCK YOU! She was in charge the whole time

Most aggressive: This is personality-wise not physically aggressive, but probably Angharad. She just knows what she wants from the world, and is a Whole Lot Of Person.

Most talkative: Matilda, from the Verity/Vampire story, 100%. Girlie does not know how to stop asking questions and yes it DOES get her in trouble!

Least talkative: Protagonist from the Lighthouse Story! *Slaps Character* This Bad Boy Can Fit So Much Trauma In It. But literally they went to the lighthouse to fucking get away from people asking them questions and they do not want to speak to anyone ever are you kidding me

Most relatable: This is a wild answer but for me it’s Araminta from my small town girl burying her mother’s ashes story. Is she a bitch with a terrible personality? Yes, but she’s just been through so much and doesn’t know how to handle it all and just wants some goddamn peace and quiet! I wanna give her a hug!

Least relatable: This one is difficult because I know all of these characters so well, and there are pieces of me in all of them, but I have to say Edythe from the Angharad/Bog Witch story. I just…. Can’t connect to her as easily, she’s so devoted to her religion and her hometown and definitely thinks that her hometown should be destroyed by an all-consuming swamp so uh. yeah!

Most ambitious: A solid tie, and both of them already have superlatives here but I’m doing it anyway. Petra, who’s ambition truly gets her farther than she ever thought possible, and Pippa, who’s ambition and drive took her literally to the stars.

Most easy-going: Ruby, also from Verity’s story. Don’t get me wrong, girl is stressed the fuck out and some terrible things happen to her, but she literally always has a very devil may care attitude. Does anything faze her? Probably not! Except Verity 😬

Most high-strung: Haters will disagree but it’s Eleanor from Vampire Verity story. Eleanor “I Took A Self Defense Class” Thompson. Eleanor “Keys Between My Fingers As I Walk Down The Street In Broad Daylight” Thompson. Eleanor “My Parents Are Private Investigators” Thompson. Yeah she’s high strung just only about the strangest little things. She’s simultaneously high strung and needs to get her priorities in order.

Most pretentious: The Girl, The Vampire Verity Herself. She just. Hhhhhhhhhhhh. She’s so old, she knows what she likes at this point and all of it is very uppity. Please make fun of her, she deserves it (but also she’s so sad). Like this bitch writes with only fountain pens, will only feed a certain way, and spends all her spare time in museums and opening incredibly specific aesthetic-based vampire bars, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Most cheerful: This was simply the hardest one to answer. I just don’t write happy characters, or characters that are particularly cheerful. The closest we get is probably Matilda, honestly, who I’ve already assigned a superlative for, but she’s as cheerful as they come, especially in comparison to everyone else.

Most patient: ALSO Benevolence from the Verity Vampire story. That girl had to put up with so much shit when Verity first got turned, poor thing. Later on in life she gets significantly LESS PATIENT for some SUPER OBVIOUS REASONS but definitely Human/Alive Benevolence is one of the most patient people on the planet.

Most diligent: Pippa from my little Outer Space story. She had to work hard as fuck to get where she is today, and she will not let anyone forget it. It takes a lot of work to be the first person to leave Earth and willingly never return. Reach for the stars and whatever ✨

For this one I think I’m gonna tag…… @aohendo, @lanawritesalittle, @zmwrites, @emelkae, and @lunarmoment! And also whoever else sees this and wants to do it! Have fun!

#writing #writer things #character creation #writeblr #my ocs #blorbos #creative writing

[thenexusofsouls]

Meta: Gargantos’ Expressive Personality in Multiverse of Madness

{i am the caretaker of souls} I realize this is going to be an odd meta about a character I don’t even write on here, but I do write Stephen Strange, so I’ll let it slide just this once, heh. If you’d like to read a random meta about this squirmy fellow right here, read on! XD

I just need to rant about Gargantos for a while because... I thought he was so cool. From a writer’s point of view, he was a joy to watch, really. From head to toe (er, eye to tentacles), he was such an exercise in how to communicate non-verbal expression in a creature without typical human anatomy, and I loved it. He had so much personality in the short time he was on screen, and for someone like me who has made their own fictional creatures for books and things, I wondered what his deal was, what he was thinking, how intelligent he was, etc. When you create an original creature, you have go far beyond just describing what it looks like and how it moves. Depending on the genre of book or whatever medium you’re using, you need to explain how it got there, its ecology, its psychology, and why it does what it does. It has to make sense inside its own little fictional bubble. These questions were only partially answered for me regarding Gargantos in DSMoM, so my imagination sort of has been running wild with the fun and idle mental exercise of thinking about what his story is.

I just found out that he’s apparently called “Gargantos,” but most of us know him as the “tentacled giant eyeball dude” from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t care about spoilers, or if you have and you just want to watch it again, here’s a clip of him, or some pictures if you don’t want to watch a whole scene: x, x, x. So... for the purposes of this meta, I’m going to be treating him like a random creature we don’t know yet, because I know there’s a fan theory that he was actually meant to be Shuma-Gorath but Disney didn’t have the rights to that character’s name and couldn’t use it. Still others believe he was merely made to look like Shuma-Gorath and it was meant to be more of an homage than anything else. Since we don’t know that for sure, I’m only going to judge what was on screen and treat him like he was his own original creature aside from any Shuma-Gorath theories.

First, I want to point out the excellent expression Gargantos has for being a tentacle monster with really no face other than a giant eye (and what look like... two nose slits?). There were several things that honestly just made me grin with joy because they were great examples of how to convey emotion without saying a word (the timestamps refer to the video I linked to above):

At 0:12, Gargantos gets either surprised or scared of the magic touching his tentacle and inspects it to make sure its okay, temporarily dropping America as his eye opens all the way to denote that surprise and maybe even fear. Then the eyelid crimps down again to show anger or possibly determination to get America. Or maybe frustration that he had her and dropped her.

At 0:30 he looks scared of Wong’s magic and quickly blocks it, then looks at what’s sticking in his tentacle with anger.

At 0:46-0:49, he brings Wong closer to his eye and looks at him, this time the shape of the eyelid is denoting curiosity or scrutiny, kindof like... “who or what is this tiny creature that keeps attacking me?” But then at 0:49 he turns right back to America because that’s why he’s here. This isn’t a rampaging monster looking to kill and destroy indiscriminately, he’s only there for America. Things just keep distracting him and getting in his way.

I adore the expression at 1:05, almost like a “this is mines and you can’t has” expression as he’s hugging the bus with America inside and narrowing his eye at Strange, haha. Then at 1:10, he’s totally shocked at the distortion of the bus like WHOA HOLY SHIT, and I love it. With just the recoil of his body and the way his single eye goes wide, there’s so much conveyed here. 

At 1:17, when one of his tentacles is severed by Strange, Gargantos is understandably shocked and likely in pain. His eye goes wide but this time the pupil also goes to a pinpoint, which adds another layer of expression onto the scene. He’s not just surprised, he’s also startled and/or traumatized for a second. He also screams, clearly in distress. In the animal world, for example in cats, constricted pupils can indicate anger, fear, heightened alertness, or that they are responding to a perceived threat.

Despite his severed limb, he sees America and is like “hey there you are,” but then gets really frustrated by his other limb being stuck in the bus like “dammit get this thing off of me.” At the last second before the video cuts to a trailer, Gargantos’ eye goes wide with fear again, because the bus is constricting around his tentacle.

Letting my imagination and over-analyzing-loving self run totally wild, this scene teaches me several things about Gargantos:

He’s intelligent, but not overly so. Maybe the intellect of a young child or pre-teen. I say this because he’s easily distracted, he seems wowed by everything even when he’s supposed to be in the middle of a pressing battle, and he even remains curious about his opponents despite the danger they pose. This suggests either a limited intellect, or innocence, or both. He is intelligent, though, beyond that of just a basic animal.

There are glowing orange runes on his tentacles, and after WandaVision, we all know what runes mean... witchcraft. I didn’t think the runes were put there by him or part of his body naturally, because I think he has no experience with magic whatsoever. I’ll come back to that later. Later in the movie, Wanda admits to “sending that creature,” and he was focused on America unless something happened to him, he was distracted by Wong or Strange, or something surprised/scared him. He had a mission, and I think he was bound by those runes to do it. Maybe Wanda threatened him, or maybe the magic acts like a leash of sorts, but he definitely was only there for one reason. Like I said before, he wasn’t just a mindless, rampaging monster that was flailing without purpose.

I feel a little bit sad about that last point because what if Gargantos has a family back in his world? What if he got plucked out of it through no fault or want of his own and was forced by Wanda to fetch this weird little thing called a human from this really strange world called Earth, and he doesn’t even want to do it but the runes compel him to? And then he’s just trying to do it fast so he can go back to his mate and little hatchlings he has at home and other little humans keep scaring and hurting him? And then... well... if you saw the movie, you know what happened to him... *sigh* Yeah, I just gave myself a hard sad with that one. And now his family will just never know what became of him, because he never came back home... T^T (Side note to anyone who has played the second playthrough of the game NieR, it was giving me those vibes. Actually Gargantos reminded me of Wendy, and how she kept saying she didn’t know where she was and was scared... even as the game gave you no choice but to kill her.)

It begs the question that if Strange could have dispelled the runes and freed Gargantos from Wanda’s compulsive influence, would he just have stopped attacking? Gone home somehow? That... would have been a cool thing to see. In movies we always just kill the monsters. That’s our first course of action. But what if we could just send them home because that’s where they want to go anyway? Mediating that would have been a unique way of handling the situation that would’ve been a nice change of pace.

I’ll be willing to bet that Gargantos comes from a world, dimension, or other place without magic or at least doesn’t deal with it himself, and therefore he’s so surprised by it and fearful of it. Every time the magic touched him, he got concerned and sometimes recoiled. He probably also has no protection from it so it’s easier to control him with it too. This may have factored into Wanda’s choosing of him as a temporary servant, because she could easily compel him to do things.

Aaaaand I have no point to this rant other than I LOVED Gargantos, wanted to see more of him, and wanted better for him. I don’t think he was evil, I think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got roped into Wanda’s whole deal, and I kindof feel sorry for him. I’m... weird like that, heh. Since I was little, I’ve been loving and sympathizing with various fantasy creatures in movies, even the seemingly villainous ones, haha. I looked at him more like an intelligent magical beast than a demon or otherwise evil being.

Do you have any thoughts, headcanons, or other interesting tidbits to share about Gargantos? Feel free to reply to this post. I would love to see what others thought about him! =)

#{ i am the caretaker of souls } ᵒᵒᶜ #dsmom spoilers #multiverse of madness spoilers #doctor strange in the multiverse of madness #{what does this say about me that I can write this much} #{about a character who was on screen for only a couple minutes} #{who really had no bearing on the story heh} #{i'm always overanalyzing the small-bit and underdog characters lol} #{y tho}

[howaboutcastiel-personal]

I keep calling out for help and nothing comes of it. I’m tired of calling out for help. I’m tired of being the bummer constantly and the one that ruins everyone’s mood and demands attention when I haven’t done anything to deserve attention.

My friends are just… all gone. I kind of made a new one??? But all the ones I’ve ever counted on… have just turned into these creatures. Like feral cats or something. I’m their little plaything and they like to poke and prod at me when they’re bored and that’s it. If I need something, they’re not there. If they need something, I’m always there.

But then again, I’m horrible. I’m short-tempered and rude and brutally honest and I set boundaries with hostility and I demand too much. And my company isn’t actually enjoyable, I’m there for comic relief and nothing deeper. My interests don’t matter. My needs don’t matter. I’m thought about when I’m useful and that’s it. That’s how it is with everyone.

It’s pointless now. School. Work. Friends. Everything. Eating is pointless. Sleeping is pointless. I don’t think I’ve ever been useful before. I don’t think I’ll ever be useful to anyone. The fictional characters, I can’t even convince myself that they would want me. They wouldn’t want me. There’s nothing to want.

I’m so disconnected to the entire world. To everything, everywhere. Nothing has any significance and I have no significance to anything or anyone. I’m entirely pointless and at this point I don’t even know what to yearn for. There’s no hope in anything. And I know they say you have to create your own hope but I have tried. I have tried so hard and I have tried until there’s nothing left inside of me and there is simply no more hope to be had. The planet is dying. I’m fat. I’m ugly. I’m unlikable. I’m useless. I’m the person in the friend group everyone is secretly trying to push out. I’m the one that gets left out of plans when they can get away with it. And it’s my own fault. I’m heartless. I’m poor. I’m not generous. I’m not patient. And I talk like a broken record about things no one else cares about.

There’s nothing left. I can’t even write fics like normal because Steven Grant wouldn’t want me. He wouldn’t be willing to fix me. There’s something wrong with me that would just disgust him to his core and I can’t pretend that he would see past it. I’m not enough for him and I could never offer him anything anyway. And I wouldn’t even be able to treat him the way he deserves, knowing me. It’s just stupid for me to think otherwise. And it’s selfish.

No one needs me. No one wants me. I don’t think that I want me anymore, either. I haven’t even cried about it. I just get angry, then tired, then angry, then tired. Then there’s moments of reprieve that just make me feel guilty for the anger and fatigue. It’s a pathetic, shameful pity-party. But there’s no point in trying to fix it. Because who would I be fixing it for? Nobody, because nobody wants me.

I wish that I could abuse my body more and get away with it. I want to starve myself. I want to get up at ungodly hours and drink enough coffee to down a horse. I want to take a rusty pair of scissors and carve out all the parts of myself I hate. I want to hurt until I can’t hurt anymore and I want it to destroy me. If I can’t be good I can be skinny at least. I can be hard and scarred up. I can have energy, so I can be useful. I’m just so un fucking useful. But I can’t. My body won’t work. I’ll faint. I’ll puke. I’ll dissociate so hard that I might as well be asleep with my eyes open. My hair will fall out. I’ll be unable to stand because the stomach cramps are so strong. My visual will swim.

Fucking useless. Completely useless and there’s nothing I can do. I can’t ask for help anymore. No one is going to help and I don’t deserve help.

I just want to stop.

#diary

[c-is-for-circinate]

Like, is the gist "Real life pedophilia/incest/rape is bad, and stories saying these things are good are bad, but including these topics in a story isn't inherently bad, so the people being like 'hey, maybe Ao3 shouldn't have so much kiddie porn there's an entire category called "Underage"' are just overreacting and making things worse?" Because it feels like you're saying, "your negative reaction to this stuff is valid, but also you're annoying and prudish and bad and really you aren't valid."

So here’s the thing: it really does not sound like you're asking this question because you want my answer, it sounds like you want to be angry with me and have a fight. And fair enough! I'm not terribly interested in a fight, but apparently this is my day to dive into this topic as thoughtfully and honestly as I can be. Maybe I'll say something you haven't already heard from other people before. Maybe not! Only you, anonymous asker, know that.

To begin with, you got part of the gist right. Real life rape (including child abuse/child sexual abuse as well as incest) is bad. Stories about rape, about underage sex, and about incest, are stories.

They're stories. They're pixels on a screen. They're not real. Whether they claim that rape is good, or bad, or sexy, or melodramatic, or life-destroying, or a normal Tuesday afternoon. They're stories.

And having a negative reaction to them is valid. Stories can stir up powerful emotions in people. It is absolutely, 100%, fair and valid and even normal for there to be certain tropes, plot elements, events, and kinds of content that make you upset and that you never want to see in a story you read, ever. You don't have to want to read about sex. You don't have to want to read any of it. That doesn't make you bad.

There are tropes, plot elements, events, and kinds of content that upset me. There are stories I won't read. The same is true of literally everyone else I know. Even though I know the stories aren't real. Even though I know the things happening in them are happening to fictional characters, who do not exist, who I cannot protect and who also cannot be harmed because they're not real. Even then, I can be made sad and scared and upset and hurt by reading those stories. And that is okay and that is valid and I am not bad or wrong for being upset about the story I've read, and neither are you.

But that doesn't mean the story doesn't have value to somebody else. That doesn't mean the story isn't important to somebody else.

What I see most often coming from antis, possibly even including yourself, is an overwhelming desire to protect. They want to keep themselves and others--possibly people they know, possibly hypothetical people they may never meet--safe from being hurt by these stories. And that desire to protect, also, is normal. It's even admirable! The problem, though, the thing that does more harm than good, is when that desire to protect drives people to lash out against things that matter to other people.

There is a difference between actual rape and stories about rape. There is a difference between a story that could theoretically hurt somebody, someday (which is all stories, always), and a story that hurts you personally. And there is a difference between a story that hurts you personally, and a story that is inherently poisonous to everyone who touches it.

We know--absolutely, scientifically, incontrovertibly--that stories about rape do not make people rapists. Yes, even the stories where the rape is there to be sexy. Even stories where the person being raped is a child. Even then. Fiction is not the same thing as normalization; again, there are far smarter people who have written far more extensively on that topic than I, and next time I come across something that goes more into detail on this point I promise I will reblog it. If this really is the thing you're afraid of, I may not be the right person to convince you that this is an unfounded fear, but I know someone out there can elaborate on it.

(Unfounded, which is not the same thing as invalid. My mother's claustrophobia is unfounded; it flares up in many situations where there's no physical threat whatsoever, where she has plenty of space to move and air to breathe. It's still real. It still chokes her. It's still valid, she is not bad or broken to feel that way, and she still can't drive through certain tunnels. The fear is real. But the thing she's afraid of can't physically hurt her, and that is worth knowing in terms of how she deals with it.)

We know, absolutely, scientifically, and incontrovertibly, that stories about rape and many, many, many other things can hurt and even traumatize their readers. Even though the situation you're reacting to is not real and you receive no physical injury, you can still be hurt by it. The key word there, though, is readers. The fact that the horror genre is out there terrifying people who enjoy being terrified for fun does not damage me unless I do something stupid and try listening to the Magnus Archives again and end up tense and miserable and paranoid for the rest of the week. The fact that guacamole is apparently delicious to everybody else in the world does not hurt me unless I do something stupid and order the wrong thing at a restaurant, and end up itchy and miserable with a little trouble breathing for the rest of the night.

The fact that there are, yes, tens of thousands of fics on AO3 in which characters under the age of 18 have sex? It can't hurt you. Those fics do not hurt you by existing. They can only hurt you if you read them. They can only hurt anyone who reads them. That's why there is an 'Underage' tag--and it's worth noting, 'Underage' is a warning, not a category. Nobody wants you to get hurt reading the wrong fic, any more than the sushi chef wants my throat to swell up because I ordered something with avocado. Literally nobody wants that.

The flip side, of course, is that you hating each and every one of those fics individually and as a group doesn't actually hurt me, or anyone else who writes, reads, or enjoys them. By itself. You can hate anything you like, and fic writers can write anything they like, and it all comes out in the end, more or less. Except.

Except that reading fic is always, entirely, 100% opt-in, and online harassment isn't even opt-out. Some antis have a nasty habit of going after writers whose content they don't like; climbing into inboxes and comments sections, calling those writers nasty names, throwing around cruelties and aggression and insults. I know that's not the same thing as simply disliking a genre, or even passively disagreeing with its existence (although disliking a genre and disagreeing with its right to exist are also very different things). I know not all antis do that. I don't know you, anon, but based on the speed and aggressiveness of this response to my last post, I can't help but wonder if you would do that.

And that does hurt people. Just like it might hurt you if someone threw a bunch of content that makes you uncomfortable into your inbox. Including the harasser, actually--because getting into fights with strangers on the internet about things that make you angry, sad, defensive, and upset isn't good for anybody. Including both you and me.

Anyway, after yet another lengthy ramble, let's get the tl;dr response to your ask here: nobody is ever bad or wrong for disliking certain content in their stories, no matter what that content is. You and your emotions are valid. The "overreacting and making things worse" part isn't about what you feel, but what you do with it. Constantly engaging with places where the thing that upsets you will probably show up, even to argue and try to fight it, will make things worse in the sense that now you're spending way more time thinking about this thing that makes you upset and angry, thereby leaving you more upset and angry. Getting together with a bunch of your upset, angry friends to make your feelings everybody else's problem? Makes fandom a more toxic place for everyone else involved.

Don't read stuff that's going to hurt you. Don't make other people read stuff that's going to hurt them. That's the whole thing, really.

#Anonymous #asked and answered #rape cw #incest cw #discourse #anti discourse day