sweet-william-writes

[sweet-william-writes]

"Why are there so many female archers in fiction?"

Please forgive the clickbait-y title! This is a super complex and interesting topic that I barely scratch the surface of here, but I hopefully will be able to do more justice to things like this in the future!

Also, it's not the point of the video, but I had fun with the outfits in this- do you have any faves?

As always, please consider supporting me on Patreon if you can, or watching on youtube if not!

[sweet-william-writes]

Funniest thing in the world when people write an AU extremely different from canon, but they’re not willing to give up on the character building it created for their blorbos. Girlies out there fighting for their life recreating a relationship formed on a doomed arctic exploration in 1848 by replicating that same dynamic in a Great British Bake Off AU.

[sweet-william-writes]

COMN FANFIC WRITERS !!

[sweet-william-writes]

executive dysfunction is inherently funny because it sounds so painfully fake that it wraps back around to being a good excuse. like if i was lying about not being able to do stuff, i would at least be able to come up with something more convincing than "i have not doing stuff syndrome"

[sweet-william-writes]

the worst part about having huge autistic fantasy worlds in your head is that it takes like 8 billion years to turn that into something substantial you can show people

[sweet-william-writes]

I, for one, as an author, would like to apologize for the excessive, over-indulgent, and perhaps misguided, use of commas in this work, including, but not limited to, what might be classified, by some readers, those whom shall not be given a name now, nor in the future, as a frivolous, ostentatious use of the English language.

[sweet-william-writes]

[sweet-william-writes]

you know i have never heard a convincing arguement as to why AO3 should not moderate the content that is posted to their website and i think a lot of the arguement against moderation on AO3 boils down to, terminally online people thinks community moderation is the same as government censorship and personally sending the cops to someone’s house to arrest them irl/

[sweet-william-writes]

taking off a mask to reveal what lies beneath as a romantic gesture is overdone, and besides i want to see the romantic or even platonic potential of protecting someone's identity beneath the mask, without any expectation of ever being allowed to see what's under it. picking it up and holding it gently to their face when it's knocked off and they're in danger of being exposed, without trying to catch a glimpse of what they "really" look like under there. throwing yourself in front of them to hide them from view while they put themselves back together without taking advantage or looking back to see what you're protecting. learning to read them by body language, tone of voice, and behaviour so well that you never need to see their face to feel like you know and understand them.

[sweet-william-writes]

Something that literally changed my life was working with a friend on a coding thing. He was helping me create an auto rig script and was trying to explain something to me but his words were just turning into static in my brain. I was tired and confused and there was so many new concepts happening.

I could feel myself working toward a crying meltdown and was getting preemptively ashamed of what was about to happen when he said, “Hey, are you someone who benefits from breaks?”

It broke me.

Did I benefit from breaks? I didn’t know. I’d never taken them.

When a problem frustrated or upset me I just gritted my teeth and plowed through the emotional distress because eventually if you batter and flail at something long enough you figure it out. So what if you get bruised on the way.

I viscerally remembered in that moment being forced to sit at the table late into the night with my dad screaming at me, trying to understand math. I remembered taking that with me into adulthood and having breakdowns every week trying to understand coding. I could have taken a break? Would it help? I didn’t know! I’d never taken one!

“Yes,” I told him. We paused our call. I ate lunch. I focused on other stuff for half an hour. I came back in a significantly better state of mind, and the thing he’d been trying to explain had been gently cooking in the back of my head and seemed easier to understand.

Now when I find myself gritting my teeth at problems I can hear his gentle voice asking if I benefit from breaks. Yes, dear god, yes why did I never get taught breaks? Why was the only way I knew to keep suffering until something worked?

I was relating to this same friend recently my roadtrip to the redwoods with my wife. “We stopped every hour or so to get out and stretch our legs and switch drivers. It was really nice. When I was a kid we’d just drive twelve hours straight and not stop for anything, just gas. We’d eat in the car and power through.”

He gave a wry smile, immediately connecting the mindset of my parents on a road trip to what they’d instilled in me about brute forcing through discomfort. “Do you benefit from breaks?” he echoed, drawing my attention to it, making me smile with the same sad acknowledgement.

Take breaks. You’re allowed. You don’t have to slam into problems over and over and over, let yourself rest. It will get easier. Take. Breaks.

[sweet-william-writes]

My problem with "babygirl"/"he's a woman to me" fandom memes is, okay, are you REALLY doing this in a queer, playing with gender way, or are you just wrapping "haha you throw like a GIRL" and "okay but which of you is The Woman in this gay relationship?" into one "no no I'm totally not saying being a girl is demeaning it's CUTE for a guy to be pathetic and useless uwu" package?

Think carefully about it now.

[sweet-william-writes]

Sorry for being such a slow writer, it's because I [remembers that self-deprecating jokes are harmful to my mental health and make everyone else uncomfortable] was attacked by dark spirits and washed up on the shore of a mysterious island with no recollection of who I was

[sweet-william-writes]

Healthy relationships are clearly better in real-life but fucked-up ones are way more dramatically interesting in fiction. In much the same way–indeed, in exactly the same way–that feudal monarchy is a hell of a lot of fun in fantasy and historical fiction novels, but complete shit to actually live under.

[sweet-william-writes]

[sweet-william-writes]

It's not a coincidence that a lot of posts about "how to be a good member of fandom" never discuss racism.

It's not a coincidence.

Whiteness is an assumed default, people of color are assumed to be interlopers and/or unimportant, and the "rules" are supposed to handle instances of overt racism, which they don't.

[sweet-william-writes]

*whispering softly to myself* I am writing fic for myself. I do not need external validation. I am writing this for myself. I am writing this for my own enjoyment. I do not need validation

[sweet-william-writes]

genuinely mystified by the kind of person that would produce this image and not realize "oh, I'm being fucking ridiculous"