… I don’t know how to feel about seeing someone else who’s commented before on my fic just outright grab my (not that prevalent!) characterization of a canon character, grab the romantic story beats between him and my favorite character, and then jam it into their own fic.
I don’t like writing something that’s been written a hundred times before so I try to craft something that I haven’t seen or rarely see out there. Add to that my mental health issues and how much it takes out of me to get a single chapter out…
It’s not a good feeling, but to say something feels, idk…super petty I guess? I don’t OWN these characters. And it’s not an EXACT copy. Etc, etc.
NGL though, this is making me just not want to work on my own fics at all. Sigh.
Because when we meet someone who has such a visceral reaction to harmless slang we know to stay away from them because they are going to be one of those annoyingly immature people who still hasn’t figured out that growing up and abandoning child like simplicity and joy is an artificial concept created to shame the masses into conformity.
also a lot of them are references to memes that existed before a lot of these kids were born.
We don’t stop having fun and joking around just because you think we’re too old for that. If your only experience with older people is with your unfun parents and uncles who only work and drink and make bigoted jokes then like, that sucks babe but thats also not my problem.
“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
Not to mention?? The lexicon and grammatical particulars of online communication are freaking fascinating. There are different dialects and referential imagery that is so steeped in layers of meme evolution that you can literally see a picture of Obama’s eyes kind of half-hooded and know exactly what you’re supposed to feel and it’s so freaking cool because these forms of communication, they aren’t just “zomg random,” they actually do follow rules and have structural foundations that we’ve all somehow internalized, and we use them as a way of relating to one another in a text-based medium that could be, SHOULD be, incredibly stifling but it’s not, because we made it our own. We created new ways of speaking, of communicating with one another clearly even when we can’t see faces or read tone or body language, so that I can say to someone “I did a cool thing!!” online and be talking about the exact same thing I’m also referencing in that corporate email where I say “the objective was successfully completed” but those do not sound the same at all because they aren’t the same at all. One conveys my excitement, my pride, my happiness at achieving whatever goal I achieved, while the other is a polite, professional-sounding report to a superior, and the fact that they were both conveying the same idea in 5 words but in such different ways is freaking awesome, so frankly fuck you if you think I’m somehow ‘childish’ for enjoying that.
Online communication grew organically with my generation and it’s still growing today and it is a freaking playground, so hell yes I’m gonna use the swings and the slide and the monkey bars because it’s fun, and if you want to stand by the fence and scowl at me that’s all right, but it’s your problem, not mine.
I wish I’d appreciated more when I was younger and involved in the fanfic world how something can be “bad writing” in the sense that it doesn’t work as a piece of literature, but good in what it’s doing for the writer.
Especially (but not only) for very young writers, fiction can be a badly needed escape or a way to work through their own problems in metaphor. A girl who feels invisible and unloved in the real world can write a version of herself that’s a half-unicorn half-faerie princess with every magic power simultaneously, and whether it’s narratively strong or not, it means something to her that she can be that princess in her story. A person who has no other outlet for their sexuality can write awful “lol, what even is anatomy” porn as part of the process of feeling out what they want and who they are. A boy who’s afraid to express softness and vulnerability in the real world can write unbearably melodramatic and glurgey hurt/comfort fic, and find in it the tenderness that’s inside him.
And 99% of these stories will be awful and unreadable and embarrassing, just as 99% of therapy session transcripts wouldn’t make good one-act plays. But that’s okay. They serve a purpose beyond conventional literature, and while you may not necessarily want to read them, you should still respect that purpose.
If you have been on twitter today you have probably seen everyone talking about this tweet by JK Rowling:
JK Rowling has posted TERFy things before but this is the most explicit. She is referring to an employment tribunal that was brought forward by a woman, Maya Forstater, who had not had her contract renewed due to being repeatedly transphobic (including repeatedly and purposefully mispronouning a person who uses they/them pronouns).
Rowling’s tweet is spreading misinformation about the employment tribunal: The case wasn’t about whether you can or cannot say sex is real. Maya Forstater’s case was about whether discriminating against trans people is a legally protected right (not about her own employment) as she admits here:
The money for the case (around £80k) was raised through transphobic platforms such as Mums net.
Here is where the good news bit comes in: Forstater’s case was not successful. This means transphobes just paid £80k of their own money to give trans people more rights! LMFAO! This case law/new precedent has strengthened legal protections for trans people in England!
The judge in the case ruled that TERF/’Gender critical’ views are “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others” and that TERFs do not have the right to ignore a trans persons gender
That refusing to respect someone’s gender and use their pronouns is an “approach not worthy of respect in a democratic society”
and concludes that being transphobic is not a political belief protected by equality laws
This is fantastic news and something really positive for trans people in England and Wales! I know calling our Rowling for being a Terf is important but losing this positive context is harmful. As trans people we are inundated with bad news and hateful views - today is a good day, something good has happened at last, lets share and celebrate that as the relentless bad news is killing us.
Hello everyone! Out of desperation for human contact with others stranded on this rare, deserted ship, I’ve made a Discord server specifically for AD/SS. Please come and suffer with me over the lack of content. Join me in my attempt to fix that!
Discord is a live chat group available in both website and app form.
To anyone watching this blog for the few fics I have, just a small update to say that I’m not dead, just weathering a depressive wave at the moment. Barely have enough energy to get out of bed and do daily routines. Will resume creative endeavours once it’s eased a bit, thanks for your patience.
deifiedrogue shouted: what ever happened to that art of dumbledore running snape through with the sword of gryffindor? i believe it was titled 'stabby mcstabface' but correct me if i'm wrong. i loved that piece! is it gone for good?
Hm…FINE, I’m bringing it back from the void only because you remember the title XD
I’m considering drawing some of my old pics again becauseit’s helping me deal with a couple of things in my life right now and I think this one could be a very nice candidate. However, I don’t know if it’s going to be boring to see the (kinda) same art again, what do you think?