#OBVIOUSLY there exist fantasy stories by writers of color that are not based on this foundation

[writingwithcolor]

Jewish author writing about antisemitism; should I include racism too?

anonymous asked:

Hi! I'm a white Jewish person who's writing a story set in a fantasy world with a Jewish-coded culture. It's important to me to explore antisemitism in this distanced setting, and explore what the Jewish diaspora means to me. I have a lot of people of color in my story as well. I don't know whether I, as a white person, should include racism in a story if it isn't necessary, but I also don't want to erase the aspects of many mildly/moderately assimilated cultures that are affected by racism, and I also don't want to imply somehow that antisemitism is a more serious issue than racism, which is obviously not the case. I was thinking that bigotry might be more culture-based rather than ethnically or racially based, but again, I'm not sure how or whether to write about bigotry against cultures + groups based on cultures + groups that I'm not a part of, and people of color in the story would obviously have their own cultural elements. Is acknowledging bigotry necessary?

It's okay to focus on antisemitism

Other mods have important advice on what exactly might be helpful or applicable to include in your story and how. I want to take a moment with the anxiety you express that focusing on antisemitism and not talking about other types of xenophobia will imply to your readers that you think antisemitism is “more serious” than other forms of bigotry. I hear and honor that anxiety, especially since “Jews only care about Jews” is a stereotype that never seems to go away, so I’m going to say something revolutionary:

It’s okay to center Jews in a story about antisemitism.

There, I said it. But I’m not making the case that you shouldn’t include references to or depictions of other types of bigotry in your story. There are a lot of great reasons why you should, because of what it can do for the complexity of your characters, the depth of your worldbuilding, or the strength of your message about the nature of xenophobia, diaspora, etc.

- How your non-Jewish-coded characters react to the things they experience can affect whether they sympathize over or contribute to the antisemitism at the heart of your story.

- How other types of xenophobia do and don’t manifest in your world can help explain why your world has antisemitism in the first place, and what antisemitism consists of in a world that also contains other minorities outside of the fantasy mainstream culture.

- Including other real-world xenophobia can help you set your antisemitism in context and contrast to help explain what you want to say about it.

Both your story and your message might be strengthened by adding these details. But if you feel the structure of your story doesn’t have room for you to show other characters’ experiences and you’re only considering doing it because you’re afraid you’ll be upholding a negative stereotype of yourself if you don’t, then it might help to realize that if someone is already thinking that, nothing you do is going to change their mind. You can explore antisemitism in your story, but you don’t have the power to solve it, and since you don’t have that power you also don’t have that responsibility. I think adding more facets to your story has the potential to make it great, but leaving it out doesn’t make you evil.

- Meir

Portraying xenophobia

As someone living in Korea and therefore usually on the outside looking in, I feel that a lot of people in Western countries tend to conflate racism and xenophobia. Which does make sense since bigots tend to not exactly care about differences between the two but simply act prejudiced against the “other”. Sci also makes a point below about racialized xenophobia. I feel these are factors contributing to your confusion regarding issues of bigotry in your story.

Xenophobia, as defined by Dictionary.com, is “an aversion or hostility to, disdain for, or fear of foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers”. You mention “thinking that bigotry might be more culture-based”, and this description fits xenophobia better than most other forms of bigotry. Xenophobia can be seen as an umbrella term including antisemitism, so you are technically including one form of xenophobia through your exploration of antisemitism.

I understand your wariness of writing racism when it doesn’t add to the plot, especially as a white writer. Your concerns that you might “erase the aspects of many mildly/moderately assimilated cultures that are affected by racism” is valid and in fact accurate, since exclusion of racism will of course lead to lack of portrayals of the intersections between racism and xenophobia. I want to reassure you that this is not a bad thing, just a choice you can make. No one story (or at least, no story that can fit into one book) can include all the different forms of oppression in the world. Focusing on one particular form of oppression, particularly one you have personal experience with, is a valid and important form of representation.

You also comment that you “don't want to imply somehow that antisemitism is a more serious issue than racism”, but I honestly feel that doesn’t need too much concern. Much like how queerness and disability are two separate issues with intersections, racism and xenophobia form a Venn diagram, with large intersections but neither completely including the other. A story focusing on autistic characters that doesn’t also have queer rep doesn’t imply queer issues are less serious. Likewise, a story focusing on antisemitism doesn’t imply racism is less serious.

I am slightly more concerned that there might be an accidental implication of antisemitism being a more serious issue compared to other forms of xenophobia. Of course, exploring antisemitism alone is completely valid representation, and there’s no need to go out of your way to try and portray other forms of xenophobia. A microaggression or two, or maybe a mutual bitch out session with a gentile but marginalized friend should be enough to show that antisemitism isn’t more (or less) serious compared to other forms of xenophobia.

-Rune

Avoiding racialized xenophobia

I think one thing you have to be careful with here is racialized xenophobia. Are your characters of color getting disproportionately more xenophobia than your white characters? You might be falling into the trap of racialized xenophobia, which falls under racism, which you want to avoid. An example would be “all Chinese scientists are untrustworthy, but not you, you’re one of the ‘good ones.’” Although this is technically xenophobia, it is also racism.

--Mod Sci

In the case you choose to include even small snippets of other forms of xenophobia in your story, attempting to portray xenophobia without the complications of racism can be a difficult process when they often go hand in hand (especially to a Western audience). So here are a couple of suggestions I have of portraying xenophobia without racism.

First and the simplest method is portraying xenophobia between people of the same race. For example, there is definitely xenophobia against Chinese and Japanese people in Korea, but it would be difficult to claim there is a racial component when all of us are East Asian. (Something you might want to be aware of here is intersections with colorism, where even within the same race, lighter skin and other more westernized features are considered more desirable. I suggest looking through our colorism tag for more details)

Another idea is to include microaggressions for specific cultures rather than something more broad. For example, calling Korean food stinky because kimchi has a strong scent is specifically xenophobic against Koreans, while commenting on small eyes can be directed against Asians in general.

Finally, while antisemitism is a form of ethnicity-based xenophobia, it is also a form of religion-based xenophobia. Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus can absolutely be xenophobic against each other with no racism involved. Should you choose this method, particularly if religious xenophobia is only shown in a shorter scene, I suggest you try and avoid portraying any of the above religions as the Bad or Oppressive ones. As a Christian I will unironically tell you that Christianity is a safe choice for a religiously xenophobic character, as we’re far less likely to face backlash compared to any other religion, and inspiration should unfortunately be overflowing in real life.

-Rune

Other forms of ethno-religious oppression

Here is my TCK perspective as someone brought up in diverse environments where there are often other axes of oppression including religion, ethnicity and class:

Racism and xenophobia can definitely be apples to oranges, so creating a universe where racism no longer exists or has never existed seems doable to me. Perhaps in your fantasy world, structures that buttress racism, such as colonization, slavery and imperialism, are not issues. That still won’t stop people from creating “Us versus Them” divisions, and you can certainly make anti-semitism one of the many forms of xenophobia that exists in this your story. Meir has hinted that your reluctance to declaratively show the harm of anti-semitism indicates a level of anxiety around the topic, and, as someone non-Jewish but also not Christian or Muslim, my perspective is as follows: I’ve always viewed anti-semitism as a particularly virulent form of ethno-religious xenophobia, and while it is a unique experience, it is not the only unique experience when it comes to ethno-religious xenophobia. I think because the 3-way interaction between the Abrahamic religions dominates much of Western geopolitics, that can be how it looks, but the world is a big place (See Rune’s comments for specific examples).

To that effect, I recommend prioritizing anti-semitism alongside other non-racialized forms of xenophobia along ideological, cultural and class-based lines for both POC and non-POC characters. Show how these differences can drive those in power to treat other groups poorly. I conclude by encouraging you to slowly trace your logic when depicting xenophobia towards POC characters in particular. Emphasize bigotry along axes of class and ideology, rather than traits linked to assumed biologically intrinsic features. Ultimately, I think recognizing commonalities between forms of ethno-religious oppression as a whole will help make you more comfortable in depicting anti-semitism with the seriousness it deserves without feeling as though you are trivializing the experiences of other groups.

- Marika

Worldbuilding ethnically and racially diverse cultures

As has been mentioned by other mods, I think it’s completely fine to focus your story on antisemitism and not portray other forms of bigotry if that’s the focus and scope of the story you want to tell. My fellow mods have also offered several valuable suggestions for writing about “culture-based bigotry” in general if that’s what you want to do, while making sure it’s not coming off as racially based. One element I can add is that from a worldbuilding standpoint, it will also help to have your fantasy cultural groups be ethnically and racially diverse. After all, this was common historically in several parts of the world, and depending on which cultures you’re basing your coding on, you could absolutely have fantasy cultures in your world that include characters we would read (according to our modern-day standards) as white, and others that we would read as people of color, within the same fantasy culture. All these characters would face the same culture-based bigotry (such as xenophobia or religious oppression), even though they are read by a modern audience as different races.

As a note, the reason I say “read as” and “according to our modern-day standards” is that the entire concept of whiteness as we know it is very specific to our current cultural context. Who is and isn’t considered white has changed quite a lot over time, and is still the subject of debate today in some cases. Your work will be read by a modern audience, so of course, you need to take into account our current understanding of race and the dynamics surrounding it. However, it’s also helpful to remember that our modern racial categories are fairly new in the context of the many millennia of history of humankind, and that they are certainly not inevitable. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking a fantasy culture has to align itself entirely with modern-day racial categories.

- Niki

#Asks #fantasy #worldbuilding #anti semitism #xenophobia #racism #Judaism #Jewish

[pocketsizedquasar]

Hi! Sorry for pestering, but when making characters or stories with POC, It makes sense that in a realistic setting, history and surroundings would impact the characters differently depending on their race, but in a fantasy setting, do the same rules apply? Is it different for a white person to write POC in a magic, non-earth without racism in it?

I’m a white person, and creating only white characters feels like a bad choice, but it also seems wrong for me to write about racial issues I have no experience with. Would a sword-n-sorcery world or a videogame world or smthn that just never had a racist system be a reasonable solution, or would it be a lazy cop-out? Is it worse to ignore racial history than portray it from a poor perspective?

Hello! Sorry this took a minute to get back to you; I just wanted to make sure to give this the thought it deserves akskas. Also caveat that I am just one POC and we are not a monolith, and there are POC who are likely to disagree with me! and that's okay

First things first, I'm just gonna direct you to Writing With Color, which is an absolutely wonderful Tumblr page that collects advice of all kinds on how to write characters of color, worldbuilding cultures, etc. etc. They have a very extensive archive full of guides and answered questions about writing POC in all sorts of genres, so I highly highly recommend checking them out.

The thing with creating fantasy (or sci fi or whatever it is) POC or cultures of color is you have to rely a lot more on coding, since you usually can't directly say someone is Korean or Latine or whatever the case may be -- you can hint at culture and appearance, describing things like food and holidays and skin tones, give that culture its own name within your world. But this is the sort of thing that should be done with a lot of research and the help of sensitivity/beta readers of the culture in question. I think the best thing to do to get an idea for how to properly execute coding is probably to read SFF by authors of color and see how we write ourselves! There's lists and stuff all over tumblr/the internet so -- see how authors of color describe different cultures, how they describe skintone and features and holidays and appearances and etc. etc.

Fantasy racism is sort of...a tricky thing to handle. Oftentimes fantasy falls into the trap of, like, making a fantasy oppressed class as a stand-in for real-world racism to avoid writing any actual POC, or they'll have different "races" (i.e. elves and dwarves and whatever) to avoid writing any actual POC, and that's definitely...not great? Try not to have any wholly non-human races as a stand-in for POC; there is a long history of racist and antisemitic tropes that come from this.

White writers will also often fall into the trap of like, trying to give their fantasy racism a reason to exist, like "oh we hate x group bc they allegedly killed the king" or whatever -- but the thing is, real world racism isn't ever based on a logical reason like that. It's not "this group of people did a bad thing" or "this type of magic is inferior so we hate this group;" it's "we are looking for political/economic benefit and need a justification, so we will fabricate one."

But the thing is, you can create cultural differences without going into suffering and oppression and analogues to real-world racism. People from different backgrounds will move around the world differently. My Persian ID would affect how I viewed the world even if I didn't experience the racism that comes with it (though that absolutely also affects my experiences). Does this culture place a lot of importance on family? What kind of family? How does this culture view food, view death, view mourning, view celebration? Everyone within a particular culture is obviously going to be unique and have their own perspective, but that culture still informs them and how they move about the world. So like, you can have characters of color who don't just Feel like a white person with a brown face slapped on, without going into racism or things that might not be your place to talk about.

This is not to say Don't write about fantasy racism and oppression -- a lot of fantasy stories deal with magical racism of some kind or other. There's fantasy oppression stories that don't deal with race at all.

@equalseleventhirds has talked abt this as well, but there also just. Is value in admitting that your own story has limits. That you as a white writer are limited in the story that you are able to tell, and maybe that story Is a white story, and that's okay. This is not to say Don't try to include POC in your cast (IMO I think trying and learning from when you -- inevitably -- fuck up is valuable, and like I said, getting feedback from sensitivity readers and betas can help point you in the right direction), but it's Also valuable to just be like, "Hey. There's some stories that I just cannot tell authentically, so I won't."

God this is long and a bit rambly, but I hope it makes some semblance of sense? Basically TLDR: including POC is good but be careful how you do it and find a sensitivity reader; SFF has unique issues with race and racism so be cautious not to fall into those; consume media made by POC; this stuff is complicated and there will never be a rigid "you should always do this" or "it's better to do this" answer that I can give you or that everyone will agree on, so it's good to always be seeking research and the opinions of multiple people in marginalized groups and coming to a conclusion from there.

So, yeah

#writing #fandom racism #racism #fandom crit #fandom critical #cw racism #long post #quasartalks #ask #pandoras-tupperware #fantasy #sff #sci fi fantasy #sci fi

[faraway-wanderer]

BOOKS BY ASIAN AUTHORS MASTERLIST #stopasianhate

In light of recent events and the growing anti- Asian hate in the US and UK over the course of the pandemic I wanted to put together a masterlist of books by Asian authors. Obviously, it’s not extensive and there are HUNDREDS out there, but supporting art by Asian creators is a way of showing support; read their stories, educate ourselves. It goes without saying that we should all be putting effort into reading stories of POC and by POC because even through fiction we’re learning about different cultures, countries and heritages. So here’s some books to start with by Asian authors!

Here is a link also for resources to educate and petitions to sign (especially if you don’t read haha). It’s important that we educate ourselves and uplift Asian voices right now. Your anti-racism has to include every minority that faces it.

https://anti-asianviolenceresources.carrd.co/

for UK peeps, this is a good read: We may not hear about the anti Asian racism happening here, but it is definitely happening. https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/culture-news/a35692226/its-time-we-stopped-downplaying-the-uks-anti-asian-racism/

 THE BOOKS:

·         War Cross- Marie Lu ( the worldbuilding in this is IMMENSE.)

For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game—it’s a way of life. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. 

·         Star Daughter- Shveta Thakrar

A beautiful story about a girl who is half human and half star, and she must go to the celestial court to try to save her father after he has fallen ill. And before she knows it, she is taking part in a magical competition that she must win!

·         These Violent Delights- Chloe Gong (I told my little sister to read this book yesterday bc she has a thing for a Leo as Romeo- so if you want deadly good looking Romeos, badass Juliet’s and to learn about 1920s Shanghai- this is for you.)

The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery. A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. A Romeo and Juliet retelling.

·         The Poppy War- R.F Kuang (My fave fantasy series just fyi- it’s soul crushing in the best way. Rebecca Kuang is a god of an author).

A brilliantly imaginative talent makes her exciting debut with this epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic, in the tradition of Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.

·         Loveboat Taipei-  Abigail Hing Wen  (Really heartwarming and insightful!)

When eighteen-year-old Ever Wong’s parents send her from Ohio to Taiwan to study Mandarin for the summer, she finds herself thrust among the very over-achieving kids her parents have always wanted her to be, including Rick Woo, the Yale-bound prodigy profiled in the Chinese newspapers since they were nine—and her parents’ yardstick for her never-measuring-up life.

·         Sorcerer to the Crown- Zen Cho (if anyone is looking for another Howl’s Moving Castle, look no further than this book)

At his wit’s end, Zacharias Wythe, freed slave, eminently proficient magician, and Sorcerer Royal of the Unnatural Philosophers—one of the most respected organizations throughout all of Britain—ventures to the border of Fairyland to discover why England’s magical stocks are drying up.

·         Emergency Contact- Mary H.K. Choi (very wholesome and fun rom-com!)

For Penny Lee high school was a total nonevent. When she heads to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer, it’s seventy-nine miles and a zillion light years away from everything she can’t wait to leave behind.

 ·         Jade City- Fonda Lee (I am reading this currently and can I just say- I think everyone who loves fantasy and blood feuds in a story should read this.)

JADE CITY is a gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kungfu. The Kaul family is one of two crime syndicates that control the island of Kekon. It's the only place in the world that produces rare magical jade, which grants those with the right training and heritage superhuman abilities.

 ·         A Pho Love Story- Loan Le

When Dimple Met Rishi meets Ugly Delicious in this funny, smart romantic comedy, in which two Vietnamese-American teens fall in love and must navigate their newfound relationship amid their families’ age-old feud about their competing, neighbouring restaurants.

·         Rebelwing- Andrea Tang

Business is booming for Prudence Wu. A black-market-media smuggler and scholarship student at the prestigious New Columbia Preparatory Academy, Pru is lucky to live in the Barricade Coalition where she is free to study, read, watch, and listen to whatever she wants.

·         Wings of the Locust- Joel Donato Ching Jacob

Tuan escapes his mundane and mediocre existence when he is apprenticed to Muhen, a charming barangay wiseman. But, as he delves deeper into the craft of a mambabarang and its applications in espionage, sabotage and assassination, the young apprentice is overcome by conflicting emotions that cause him to question his new life.

 ·         The Travelling Cat Chronicles- Hiro Arikawa

Sometimes you have to leave behind everything you know to find the place you truly belong...

Nana the cat is on a road trip. He is not sure where he's going or why, but it means that he gets to sit in the front seat of a silver van with his beloved owner, Satoru. 

 ·         Super Fake Love Song- David Yoon

From the bestselling author of Frankly in Love comes a contemporary YA rom-com where a case of mistaken identity kicks off a string of (fake) events that just may lead to (real) love.

  ·         Parachutes- Kelly Yang

Speak enters the world of Gossip Girl in this modern immigrant story from New York Times bestselling author Kelly Yang about two girls navigating wealth, power, friendship, and trauma.

·         The Grace of Kings- Ken Liu ( One of the Time 100 Best Fantasy Books Of All Time!)

Two men rebel together against tyranny—and then become rivals—in this first sweeping book of an epic fantasy series from Ken Liu, recipient of Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards.

·         Wicked Fox- Kat Cho

A fresh and addictive fantasy-romance set in modern-day Seoul.

 ·         Descendant of the Crane- Joan He

In this shimmering Chinese-inspired fantasy, debut author Joan He introduces a determined and vulnerable young heroine struggling to do right in a world brimming with deception.

 ·         Pachinko- Min Jin Lee

Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.

·         America is in the Heart- Carlos Bulosan

First published in 1946, this autobiography of the well known Filipino poet describes his boyhood in the Philippines, his voyage to America, and his years of hardship and despair as an itinerant laborer following the harvest trail in the rural West.

 ·         Days of Distraction- Alexandra Chang

A wry, tender portrait of a young woman — finally free to decide her own path, but unsure if she knows herself well enough to choose wisely—from a captivating new literary voice.

·         The Astonishing Colour of After Emily X.R Pan

Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love. 

·         The Gilded Wolves- Roshani Chokshi

It's 1889. The city is on the cusp of industry and power, and the Exposition Universelle has breathed new life into the streets and dredged up ancient secrets. Here, no one keeps tabs on dark truths better than treasure-hunter and wealthy hotelier Séverin Montagnet-Alarie. When the elite, ever-powerful Order of Babel coerces him to help them on a mission, Séverin is offered a treasure that he never imagined: his true inheritance.

·         When Dimple met Rishi- Sandhya Menon

Dimple and Rishi may think they have each other figured out. But when opposites clash, love works hard to prove itself in the most unexpected ways.

·         On Earth we’re briefly Gorgeous- Ocean Vuong

Poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling.

·         Fierce Fairytales- Nikita Gill

Complete with beautifully hand-drawn illustrations by Gill herself, Fierce Fairytales is an empowering collection of poems and stories for a new generation.

 BOOKS BEING RELEASED LATER THIS YEAR TO PREORDER:

·         Counting down with you- Tashie Bhuiyan- 4th May

A reserved Bangladeshi teenager has twenty-eight days to make the biggest decision of her life after agreeing to fake date her school’s resident bad boy.

How do you make one month last a lifetime?

·         Gearbreakers- Zoe Hana Mikuta- June 29th

Two girls on opposite sides of a war discover they're fighting for a common purpose--and falling for each other--in Zoe Hana Mikuta's high-octane debut Gearbreakers, perfect for fans of Pacific Rim, Pierce Brown's Red Rising Saga, and Marie Lu's Legend series

·         XOXO- Axie Oh- 13th July

When a relationship means throwing Jenny’s life off the path she’s spent years mapping out, she’ll have to decide once and for all just how much she’s willing to risk for love.

·         She who became the sun- Shelley Parker-Chan- 20th July

Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan's She Who Became the Sun, a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from an amazing new voice in literary fantasy.

·         Jade Fire Gold- June C.L Tan- October 12th

Two girls on opposite sides of a war discover they're fighting for a common purpose--and falling for each other--in Zoe Hana Mikuta's high-octane debut Gearbreakers, perfect for fans of Pacific Rim, Pierce Brown's Red Rising Saga, and Marie Lu's Legend series

  Keep sharing, signing petitions and donating where you can. The more people who are actively anti-racist, the better. And if your anti-racism doesn’t include the Asian community then go and educate yourself! BLM wasn’t a trend and neither is this. We have to stand up against white supremacy, and racism and stereotypes and we have to support the communities that need our support. Part of that can include cultivating your reading so you’re reading more diversely and challenging any stereotypes western society may have given you.

 Feel free to reblog and add any more recommendations and resources of course!

#stopasianhate #books by asian authors #anti racism #i'm so sickened by everything that's happening and i hope that this list does encourage people to read books by asian authors!!! #ya #poc authors #fiction #i haven't all of these yet #asian writers #asian authors #masterlist #antiasianracism

[piduai]

this has been on my mind for a while, i feel like at this point women mangaka are generally just better people than their male peers. id love to hear some manga ud recommend by women, or even counterpoints, but series like Dungeon Meshi and Full Metal Alchemist (among others) handle almost every concept way better and with more tact, from writing complex stories and compelling characters, to treating women like people and not literal naked rubber dolls colored in and posed like p*rn

you are so correct and right and speak the truth. female mangaka are superior. the only thing i’d say women don’t do inherently better is technical skill, there’s a ton of men who are very artistically talented, but arts such as drawing and music are sexless because they come from within and aren’t influenced by external factors such as upbringing and culture like storytelling is. everything else though is done better by women.

the problem with female mangaka is that they’re gatekept in the industry big time. if you google ‘top selling manga of all time’ and go to the wikipedia page, there’s only one woman (kimetsu no yaiba) and she’s hiding behind a male pen name just like arakawa hiromi did when fma was publishing. neither of these are a coincidence. women are generally discouraged from pursuing writing, and if they do so they’re supposed to be kept to female-catering genres such as shoujo, josei and BL, which are all much less mainstream, aka much less known and much less money making, than shounen. women having to go behind male-sounding pen names just so men don’t feel emasculated when consuming their stories has been a thing since forever across many different cultures. misogyny is universal.

however since i personally am more into grittier stuff and i love gratuitous violence and other Mature Themes i just naturally gravitate more towards manime with all its faults. my favorite genre overall is comedy though and women ARE much funnier and wittier and more clever. female mangaka also typically avoid drawing gore, which i guess is cultural but a shame.

i’m not a manga person, i prefer watching anime, so i compiled a list of my favorite anime based on manga written by women a while ago. i am VERY picky and nitpicky and very, very difficult to please so keep in mind that the list is not comprehensive in the slightest, it’s just things that i personally liked. there’s tons of non-shoujo stuff written by women that generally have a good reputation (ao no exorcist, gangsta, kuroshitsuji, noragami, d gray man, magi, xxxholic etc etc etc) that didn’t stand out to me at all so again, short as it may be the list isn’t comprehensive in the slightest, i’m sure that people who are more easily entertained than me could come up with much more names. anyway everything else is copy-pasted, i know you know of fmab but it needs to be included because fmab is my favorite series of all times:

anime based on manga created by female writers that is in fact not heterosexual shoujo/BL garbage and i liked (bc i saw a post talking about female mangakas and all of the examples were in fact heterosexual shoujo/BL garbage that i unfortunately do not like and my anime opinions are super important obviously):

fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood (adventure/action) any comments on why fmab is the best product the anime industry has ever put on the market that will not be outranked ever is tired at this point. fmab is a masterpiece through and through. most of the cast including the mcs is male tho, which is sad

saraiya goyou (historical/drama) if fmab didn’t exist it would have been the best title out there. the word masterpiece was invented solely to have a concept to describe it. the ost makes up about 40% of its greatness and was also written by a woman. too bad all the characters are also dudes

acca: 13ku kansatsuka (drama/political) not quite as good as saraiya goyou but from ono natsume as well. pleasant is the word to describe it. relaxing. most of the cast is male.

dorohedoro (horror/gore/comedy) the best title since like 2006. everything about it is great. i don’t have a single criticism and that’s rare. the cast is actually balanced and the Female Characters™ all 3 of them are like, written like people and are also queens

hachimitsu to clover (slice of life) saddest shit i’ve seen in my whole life in a colorful packaging. heterosexual as hell but not in an obnoxious way. cast seems diverse but it’s predominantly male

3gatsu no lion (drama) from the same great umino chica who is a master at writing uncomfortable truths and playing on emotions. she’s great truly, her character crafting is genuine but it gets under your skin, it’s filled with melancholy. 3gatsu is actually better than hachimitsu to clover but 1) i have history with the former so i like it better and 2) it was produced by shaft which is a sin in itself. they did a great job and all, i just hate the studio. has 3 speaking female characters in total but all 3 are great.

hoozuki no reitetsu (comedy) it’s hilarious it’s fresh it’s pretty it’s original it’s creative it’s clever. i love everything about it. the whole cast is male with like 2 exceptions and a rabbit (best girl).

saiunkoku monogatari (historical) i know it LOOKS like heterosexual shoujo garbage but it in fact isn’t. fits the reverse harem trope solely because everyone is in love with mc, but there’s next to no actual romance in it. unironically a feminist power fantasy. i’m still shooketh at how incredibly pleasant it turned out to be. the mc is a young girl but the rest of the cast is almost exclusively male.

arakawa under the bridge (comedy) surprisingly… by shaft again. maybe i am prejudiced. anyway, hilarious to a fault. is technically centered around a str8 romance but it’s not too invasive so whatever. cast is pretty balanced and the women are written smartly.

saint oniisan (comedy) THE funniest thing i’ve ever watched, or nearly. it’s just great. same author as above. cast exclusively male

doukyuusei (gay romance) which i refuse to categorize as BL simply because it’s not BL. it’s a good gay story, arguably the best one yet. cast is exclusively male but i mean lmao

gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun (comedy) straight to A FAULT but funny nevertheless. is, technically, heterosexual shoujo garbage. but SOME heterosexual shoujo garbage can stay i guess. cast is balanced, there’s still more male characters tho

gokusen (comedy/action) which i don’t remember much about except kumiko being best girl and me liking it. if i remember liking it it means it was good overall just not memorable. cast is exclusively male except mc.

kaleido star (sports) which is the ONLY good, or like decent, or like watchable sports anime, the rest don’t exist. not based on a manga but the writer is a woman which is strongly felt through and through. good story about perseverance and will and optimism and competition. cast is predominantly female and all of them are wonderfully written

michiko to hatchin (adventure) again no manga but main writer is the woman known for creating the skating BL people pretend isn’t BL. michiko to hatchin is way better than the skating BL, but i’m just a humble girl. tons of sexy sexy i could have lived without but otherwise good shit. cast predominantly female.

mushishi (mystery/fantasy) mushishi is just unique. it has similar vibes to saraiya goyou and natsume sure, but ultimately it’s one of its kind. it has what ghibli wants. again no criticism about it at all except that it’s SO chill that binging it is super tiring. cast is predominantly male but it has few reoccurring characters so who cares.

natsume yuujinchou (mystery/fantasy) again similar to mushishi but less grim. chill story, the definition of wholesome unproblematic etc whatever kids are into these days. cast predominantly male but not memorable in the slightest

petshop of horrors (horror) watched it a million years ago so don’t remember shit but i do remember liking it. cast is probably predominantly male

sakamoto desu ga (comedy) well THE actual funniest thing i’ve ever watched, it licherally had me in tears, i watched the new episodes like 3 times on the days they came out, including watching them on tv in real time at like 3 am or whenever it aired in shinya. just really really funny. cast predominantly male.

#anon #ppl have recced me dungeon meshi so many times bc it's similar to gk one day...... one day i will check it out #then again ppl also say that vinland saga is similar to gk and boy it is not i fell asleep like 509 times while watching it so

[pens-swords-stuff]

In relation to your most recent post about bending stories to fit a culture, I was wondering - would you generally say that extends to basing a fantasy culture on a real-world culture? Or is there more (respectful) leeway there, at least in your opinion? (I mean, falling into harmful tropes is one thing, but if I'm like, 'I think Mongolia is super rad but what if more women and also, magic')

In response to this post.

I guess the only answer I really have on the topic is: It’s complicated, and I have no idea!

I’m just going to preface with this: I am not a huge fantasy writer! This is a question that I find incredibly complicated and nuanced, and because I don’t create a whole lot of fantasy cultures, I haven’t given it the amount of thought that I should. So I don’t really have a good answer, because fantasy cultures based off other cultures are a really tricky topic for me and I haven’t figured out what my opinions are on that quite yet.

I just really am uneducated and inexperienced in basing a fantasy culture off a real culture.

If anyone is reading this post hoping for a definitive answer, I’m just going to say it now: You are not going to get one in this post. This is basically just me dumping all my thoughts out, probably overcomplicating things and trying to make sense of it.

The post that you’re talking about (linked above, check it out!) is definitely geared towards and written for people that are using real cultures in real world settings. Obviously that doesn’t apply to fantasy in the same way, because those real world cultures don’t exist in fantasy settings!

So in that sense, yes. There is absolutely room for more respectful leeway there because it’s not the same culture. It’s fantasy worldbuilding for a reason, you’re making your own original thing!

That being said, I’m very hesitant to answer this question with a “go out and tweak a culture all you want in your fantasy setting!” because there are absolutely really harmful ways that fantasy has depicted different cultures in their fantasy cultures.

Yes, you did say if it’s done respectfully. If it is respectful, that’s great. But what is respectful? What’s okay and what’s not okay? That’s the primary thing that people ask me when they are looking for a Japanese consultant. And to be honest, I don’t always have an answer.

And in my personal experience talking with people, a lot of it seems to stem from fetishization of a culture, some sort of savior mentality where people think that they can do a culture ‘better’ (whether they realize it as a savior mentality or not), or in a lot of cases, just plain lack of knowledge and research. 

And I feel like writing a culture (or a fantasy culture based off a real culture) respectfully goes so much further than simply avoiding harmful tropes.

I think it’s also worth mentioning here, that I am probably overly protective and critical about my culture and how it’s portrayed. Japan has a very strange relationship with cultural depiction because it is overrepresented in a lot of ways, but really underrepresented in terms of accurate, respectful portrayals. I have a pretty intense knee-jerk reaction of assuming the worst in the portrayal of Japanese culture in anything, and it definitely colors my perspective on writing cultures as a whole. And this is something that I fully admit is a problem on my part.

Even in the example that you mentioned for Mongolian culture but more women and magic, I immediately sort of spiral into several questions because while it sounds innocuous enough, there is a lot there in that sentence alone that makes me extremely wary.

And that’s not to say that it is problematic or it isn’t problematic, I think it’s just a huge indication that A) I’m not Mongolian so I can’t say much about that, and B) I don’t know enough about respectfully basing fantasy cultures off real cultures to know where that line is. I have no idea if I’m being overly sensitive about the topic (which is definitely possible!), or if it’s acceptable because I don’t have a lot of experience or knowledge in fantasy worldbuilding.

This post is basically a lot of words saying I don’t know, here are my complicated, uneducated feelings about the topic. I’m really sorry, this is probably not the kind of answer you were looking for when asking the question! This probably isn’t helpful at all, so I would really encourage you to talk to other people that have more experience with basing fantasy cultures off real ones.

ALSO please keep in mind that this is just one WOC’s uninformed opinion on the topic, and should not be taken as anything else but one person’s thoughts.

#undine answers stuff #im SO sorry #this post probably doesn't make sense and it doesn't really have a point #but i hope that it was helpful somehow?? #carmina-solis

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on Even More Games

[vague, unspecific spoilers for Heaven’s Vault, Later Alligator, and Life is Strange 2]

Thoughts on Heaven’s Vault

Heaven’s Vault is a game about archeology, which means it’s also a game about incompleteness. This is very clever. Inkle - also the developers of 80 Days, which I will play someday! - specialize in deep narratives that can be explored many, many ways, allowing for a lot of player choice. You make a lot of small decisions - do you share a discovery with the trader in exchange for a valuable item, or hide it so he doesn’t plunder it? do you go looking for your missing friend, or let her stay missing in case there are people trying to follow you to her? These all have their own little arcs and resolutions, and there are so many of them, and so many ways they can play out, that the game can never be played the same way twice. The overall story begins and ends in the same place and theoretically hits the same major beats, but the journey is tailored broadly and finely to each player; it’s a style of design Aaron A. Reed refers to as “not... a branching tree but a braided rope.”

Making a narrative about archeology is how you dodge the exponentially complicated nature of that design: if there are dozens of locations, characters, plot threads, bits of color, which can be engaged with at many points in time, or ignored, or dropped by the player halfway through, how do you avoid telling a story full of gaps and dead ends? Well... you don’t. Having only partial information and having to infer the rest is what archeology is.

The protagonist of Heaven’s Vault, Aliya, is digging up the secrets of an ancient civilization, having been sent by her academy to find a researcher who’s gone missing, and stumbling into his incredible discovery. Everywhere she goes, there are holes: she has partial understanding of the researcher’s journey and motives; he, in turn, had partial understanding of the mystery he was uncovering, and Aliya has only fragments of his knowledge; the ancient texts she translates are usually fragments of larger works, and she is guessing at the meanings of many of the words; the game’s constantly updating historical timeline has entire centuries with nothing but question marks. Aliya arrives in a new location and wonders aloud to her robot companion about what this place was, when it was founded, when it was abandoned, how her predecessor found his way her and where he went next and what he took with him.

The constant feeling of discovery - of unearthing - is magnificent. Site after site, I asked, “What is this place?” Always thinking, if the eventual answer is any good, this is going to be one of the best games I’ve ever played. And, in the end, it doesn’t give you an answer, it just give you enough to make the story feel complete. It answers by not answering.

Also, translating alien texts is just extremely my jam. I’m the weirdo who enjoyed the ending of Arrival but secretly wished the whole movie had been about xenolinguistics like the first half. I guess Inkle felt similar.

The game’s by no means perfect. I think I enjoyed the sailing between worlds more than most - it’s slow, but very pretty - but it’s going to discourage a replay. I don’t think the relationship between Aliya and her robot, Six, ever gets terribly interesting. Some of the archeology is a little too obviously game-y - sail around, wait to find a random ruin, beam Six down to grab an ancient doodad, translate a bit of text, lo and behold it’s from one of the sites you’re looking for and it’s narrowed your search radius somehow. (It gives Star Trek explanations the first few times - e.g. “it has radiation that only exists in one part of the nebula” - and then stops bothering.) And the game sags a little in the middle; it could’ve hacked out 3 or 4 dig sites and still given me the same experience.

But, all told, there’s magic in it, and it just feels good to be there. Do not sleep on this one.

Thoughts on Later Alligator

There’s not a ton to say about this game except that is charming as hell. Lindsay and Alex Small-Butera have build a beautifully animated world of cute alligators, one of whom is having a birthday party where he’s convinced he’s going to be murdered. He wants you to run around getting information out of everyone who’s going to be there, which you get by completing minigames. It’s a cast of weird and funny characters with weird and funny dialogue and there’s not much more to it than that.

The design can be a little frustrating. Some minigames, if you lose, you don’t get to try again. Some are annoyingly finicky. You need to complete them all to get the true ending, which means, in my case, playing the game three times to complete all the bits you missed or got locked out of. The ending was a little different each time, so it wasn’t a total wash, but the game’s on a timer that only advances when you play a game or take the bus, and once you’ve completed most of the games there’s a lot of traveling back and forth from one nowhere to another just to advance time to the next unskippable plot beat.

(It’s also a little unclear what you’re missing as you try to get the final ending, as some of the ongoing puzzle are optional.)

But I can’t get mad. The game is too damn cute! Each character is lively and unique, with tons of personality, and the dialogue is just clever enough not to fall into empty adorkability.

It good.

Thoughts on Life is Strange 2

Somewhere, early in the development of Life is Strange 2, some Dontnod employee wrote in a design document “Episode 4 - cult?” (but in French) and nobody told them “no.”

I will not forgive them for this,

After twenty minutes of LiS2, I was ready to yell at everyone who had reported it was boring. It has one of the most powerful, gut-punching openings of any game I’ve played in recent memory. And all through the first, second, and third episodes, I was in love. Unlike Before the Storm, this was its own creature, willing to make dramatic departures from the original game’s template. Instead of controlling a character with supernatural powers, you play as the superpowered character’s older brother. The one with the magic is a 9-year-old, unable to fully understand or control his abilities, suffering a recent trauma, and needing to be guided through a dangerous and racist world. All the ambition missing from Before the Storm is back, and this time the animation isn’t creepy and the writing is wildly improved (thanks to some journeyman script work from Fullbright’s Steve Gaynor) and I even have a computer able to play it on higher graphical settings.

But nothing good lasts.

Everything good about the series screeches to a halt in Episode 4, the one where some asshole said “cult?” and didn’t get a Nerf football thrown at their head. And it’s not just that it’s a terrible idea; it’s actually sort of amazing how much the game relies on an alchemy of plot, tone, theme, and writing, and how a slight imbalance can throw the whole thing off. Episode 4 has scene after scene that are powerful in their conception - brothers reunited after a violent rift; a boy having his first conversation with his estranged mother in nearly a decade; getting interrogated by the feds for a crime that can’t even be explained by physics - fall flat because the writers can’t think of anything interesting for the characters to say. (Steve Gaynor’s name stops appearing in the credits as of this episode.)

And here the game’s rickety bits, kept delicately together for three episodes, start to shake apart. Dontnod’s overly-earnest voice direction, which I didn’t notice in the early episodes, started to wear me down. (”Could you sigh mid-syllable, like you’re slightly overwhelmed with emotion?” “Sure, on which line?” “All of them.”) The thinness of the secondary characters, most of whom pop up for one episode and disappear, became more noticeable. The lack of a mechanical hook like the time rewinding of the original game, and the attendant commentary on choice-based games and power fantasies, made the game feel less substantial. The surreal imagery of the original, obligatorily evoked in the prequel, is sensibly absent, but there’s nothing equally striking that replaces it. Even the branching path decisions become less clear: the end-of-episode stat screens for the final episodes mentioned at least a dozen choices I didn’t even know I’d made, some of which were critical in shaping my younger brother’s morality and were not necessarily the choices I’d have made if I’d known I was making a choice at all.

Come the final episode, I got An Ending that seemed right for the way I’d played, but much of the way I’d played felt accidental.

So what are we to make of this? Life is Strange is a beautiful disaster, an ambitious disaster, where Life is Strange 2 is almost less interesting for being  more competent. It has a huge mess of charged topics - American racism, teens losing their virginity, raising a child outside the nuclear family, grief and trauma - and, while it handles them without the gracelessness and sledgehammer subtlety of the original, it doesn’t come to any conclusions about any of them. LiS1, for all its jank, had some opinions, where LiS2 falls into the category of “this sure is some shit, innit?” games.

It starts with a powerful premise, deeply relatable characters, fine writing, beautiful art, but can’t even manage, in the end, to be a disaster. It is the only game in the series so far to be forgettable.

#Adventure Games #capsule review #heaven's vault #life is strange 2 #later alligator

[kingjasnah]

actually. actually let’s talk about diversity in fantasy let’s give that a go. im mad and im gonna be that way for a while

don’t want to read all this? fair. tldr: fantasy writers who rely not only on the medieval europe model but also hide behind historical accuracy in 2020 (fuck it, from ‘95 onwards) are lazy and unimaginative and should be held accountable no matter how many white 20 year old dudes jerk off to whatever power fantasy is embedded in the plot. so lets chat about that lads. (slightly) drunk rant under the cut

now prelim shit: we know fantasy is used both as escapism and as a way to deal with various traumas via magical metaphor. staples of the genre. even if jk rowling busted out the laziest and at times offensive metaphor for ww2 and racism ive ever seen, she still adhered to time and true tropes. whatever.

so why have we, in this post game of thrones era, become insanely obsessed with realism? i can hear sixty 20-something year old men crying at me rn like oh ohh oh its based off the war of roses oh wahh all medieval fantasy fiction is based off england and the crusades anyway so women should get raped and people of color should be demonized its not racism its xenophobia and also gay people dont exist and disabled people are systematically killed off and if we stretch the magic fixes mental illness thing a LITTLE further we have straight up eugenics.

we all know where the england but myth thing came from. now the thing about tolkien is that while i will always absolutely love lotr, looking at the LAZY state of fantasy? damn i kinda wish he hadn’t revolutionized the genre. the bitch was still racist. he still didnt give a shit abt women (eowyn was just a vehicle to show how much he fucking hated macbeth anyone holding jrrt up as a feminist icon for that needs to sit the fuck down and explain to me why i can count the woman speaking roles in lotr, a story with a name and fleshed out backstory for every minor character, on one hand but thats! another post). he had something to say abt class with sam i’ll give him that but he is still 100% NOT what we need to hold our standards to in 2020. 

i dont want to talk about old school fantasy, like 80s early 90s cause theres literally no point. its sexist, racist, ableist for sure, this we know. david eddings (not even that old school tbh) can rise from the grave and explain himself to me personally and i still wont forgive him for ehlana. 

so let’s talk historical accuracy. quick question. who the FUCK gives a shit? WHO is this elusive got fan who’s out here like blehh actually??? this method of iron production is TOTALLY anachronistic of the time. ummm these vegetables in this fictional world were NOT native to english soil so how are they here? cause i know this is the classic argument but ive never actually met someone who cared about the lack of dysentery as much as they care abt the women getting raped on screen/page. 

god forbid you have to worldbuild for a second god forbid you can’t rely on the idea of fantasy readers already have in their head god forbid you have an original idea god forbid you spend more than two seconds thinking about ur setting (oh i should mention i dont....really blame GoT for its setting cause of how long ago it was og written but trust me i sure as hell blame grrm for writing a 13 yr old giving ‘consent’ to sex with a grown man within the first couple of chapters) 

If we accept the basic premise of fantasy as escapism, and i AM drunk so i will NOT be finding fuckin. quotes and shit for this but come on tolkien said it himself and as much as i’ll drag him he crafted the simplest and most powerful fantasy metaphors on the board rn. But if we know its escapism. If we know. then who is it escapism for? certainly not for me, the gay brown woman who busted through all of GoT in 10th grade. 

modern fantasy lit used as an excuse for that white male power fantasy is literally disgusting. calling historical accuracy is so fucking dumb ESPECIALLY cause we, as ppl in the 21st  century, KNOW women have been consistently written out of the story. poc ppl, gay and trans ppl, anyone with a god forbid disability has been WRITTEN out of history as we know it, INCLUDING the fucking war of the roses so HOW can we hold up testimony we know is flawed to support our FICTIONAL. STORY. just to??? support the white power fantasy?? literally noah fence but if you are a white guy who felt really empowered by every time jim butcher described a woman tell me: how do you think that’ll hold up in classic HisToRiCaL fantasy. you think thats a fucking noble pursuit? or are you grima wormtongue out here. 

(side note: jim butcher stop writing challenge i dont need to know abt every woman on page’s nipples. anyone who hides behind subgenre like that? ‘ohhh its a noir story thats why hes sexualizing everyone’ shut the fuck up an author isnt possessed by a fuckin muse and compelled to bust out 500k they have agency and they have choice and they MADE the choice to reserve said will for none of their female characters)

which brings me to point 2: target audience and BOY is the alcohol hitting me rn but WHO is this for? this isnt the fucking 80s we know poc and other marginalized folk read fantasy FOR the escapism. on god ive had a cosmere focused blog for nearly three years and. im just gonna say it im interacted with A LOT of yall and ive managed to talk to VERY few white straight ppl as compared to everyone else. 

like....who deserves to see the metaphor on homophobia or racism. joanne rowling? the bitch who literally tried to sell us happy slaves and the disgusting aids metaphor and the worst case of antisemitic stereotypes i ever saw in an nyt bestseller? yall think that was for US? or was it for the white guilt crowd. 

literally white people can find any book about them that they can relate to. but hmmm maybe theres a reason gay women care so much about stormlight archive’s jasnah kholin, a brown woman who’s heavily coded as wlw. or kaladin, the FIRST fantasy protag ive ever seen with clinical depression. hmm i wonder why a bunch of millennials are vibing all of a sudden. im not saying sanderson is perfect--but its the best ive seen from a white author tbh

maybe theres a reason a lot of poc vibe with a literary way to express trauma, and maybe thats why i specifically get so pissed when its not done well. theres a REASON books about outcasts pushing through and claiming their own lives are popular with people who arent white and straight and able bodied. Junot Diaz had a point. maybe lets STOP catering to those assholes who think theyre joseph campbell’s wet dream personified. ive lost respect SO many authors who are objectively talented. pat rothfuss can write so beautifully that ive cried to bits of name of the wind but literally i will never pick that series up again (not just because of the felurian. women in general tbh. mostly the felurian ngl) cause 1) i personally KNEW men whod jerk off to that shit and 2) there was no need for it there was no plot reason for ANY of that shit 

so like obviously thers an issue with authors of color specifically not getting recognized for fantasy and genre work but on god??????? im still mostly mad at the legions of white authors churning out the same medieval england chosen one books year after fucking year. have an original thought maybe. also im sorry that you as an author lack the basic empathy needed to examine the way that women? or any group of people that youre explicitly writing about see the world and would specifically see YOUR made up world. 

yes your fantasy should be diverse, but more than that it should be kind. if you as a writer cant respect groups of people who deserve it....what the hell are you doing in a genre that traditionally is about finding ways to express injustice through metaphor? tolkien’s hero was sam. fantasy was NEVER about the privileged. yall know who you are so stop acting so fucking entitled. peace out. 

#disclaimer ive had a bit to drink. and instead of getting ridiculously emotional like normal and plud in a trek movie #im mad! surprise shes mad now. not at BS specifically dont worry this is still a cosmere stan zone but im mad and im gonna talk about it #if no one reads this ur valid but if you do im gonna be mad or another two hours before i force myself to #man idk feel free to talk tho #this is so stupid im sorry i got so heated i plugged in the BoP soundtrack #and like just #well youll see

[hybridfiction]

On Roswell, Research, and Reliability, or the Importance, of Research

No matter what the form or purpose of writing—whether a novel, blog, etc.—research is not only practical but also necessary. In fact, solid research grounds any form of writing. Since you aren’t simply stating an opinion off the top of your head, your words will hold truth. And truth is powerful. Even in the various fiction genres, including sci-fi and fantasy, it’s the true bits that add color to the story and make it compelling.

Moreover, research fills in knowledge gaps, rids your writing of unhealthy absolutes, and strengthens your critical thinking processes, which in turn affects how and what you write. Learning how to perform research, then, is crucial to developing as a writer.

Research is not something we instinctively know how to perform, and like most things worth knowing, it takes time to develop the necessary discernment between what’s good information and what’s not. Thanks to the pervasive nature of the internet, all of us have a basic grasp of how to perform an online search, but there’s a vast difference between googling “travel tips for safaris” and researching to learn something well enough to write on it convincingly. It’s the difference between wanting to know more about Roswell UFO sightings because I’m a little interested in aliens and deciding to write a novel set in Roswell during 1947 or writing a scholarly piece on the sociological role Roswell has played in the belief of the existence of UFOs in the United States.

While the first definitely encourages the latter two, it will not offer enough credible or reliable information to write anything that is not based on rumor and speculation. The difference between a reliable source and an unreliable source is the difference between truth and make-believe. Unreliable sources are filled with skewed data, unchecked “facts,” and leaps of reality. Alternately, reliable sources generally maintain high standards of scholarship and factuality.

Once you begin to research your topic—be it Batman or Einstein—you’ll soon be able to compare and contrast the differences in the nature and quality of information. However, the best way to begin judging facts versus opinion is to (1) examine the author’s background in the field, (2) note whether the author is making unsupported assertions or wild leaps in logic (ex. “So-and-so spoke fondly of this person, so they obviously had an affair,” or, “Since we can’t see gravity, it doesn’t exist”), and (3) question the source: does it come from a reliable source?

To begin researching, then, you’ll first need to narrow down your search terms. Let’s go back to Roswell for a moment and say I’m going to go ahead and write that novel. “Roswell” alone is too broad a search term. I will need to outline specifics of what I want and need to know (which, of course, depends on what I want to write). For example, I might need to know about life in 1947, the Air Force, the investigation, etc. I’d also need to decide who my main character will be and fill in background information on him or her or them. Will he or she be a journalist, police officer, alien, or bobbysoxer? What were each of these people like, what were their mindsets, how did they speak, what would their daily activities be?

If I chose to write the scholarly piece, however, I’d not only need to know the history of supposed UFO crashes and sightings but also how Roswell became known as a UFO crash site. What projected the incident in Roswell from a small-town event at the back of the public consciousness to a full-blown “government conspiracy,” and so on? Since my study would be from a sociological standpoint, I’d need to find confirmed reports and interviews of persons affected by the phenomenon, including well-documented case studies and research.

Once you’ve narrowed down your key terms, it’s time to perform multiple searches in research databases, library catalogs, and on the internet. Sift through the search results by titles, abstracts, and summaries/blurbs before actually reading anything. Since right now you’re only compiling data, it helps to create a desktop folder to save whatever you want to further investigate. Also, don’t stop looking after the second page of results. What may be most useful to you may not be in the top ten or twenty search results.

Once that’s done, it’s time to start sorting through the articles. Glance through the first few paragraphs to categorize them according to their merit, such as “Useless” (which you trash), “Possibilities” (which may contribute to your research), and “Important” (self-explanatory).

Once sorted, begin to read and highlight/underline and take notes. Note-taking helps you to process all that data and to assimilate ideas so as to generate your own perspective on the topic.

On the whole, research is necessary and can be a very rewarding learning experience.

Tips

Read everything with a grain of salt. People are imperfect—which is wonderful—but that means we make mistakes, draw wrong conclusions, and sometimes decide our opinions are gospel truth.

Visit your local university or college libraries to access their research databases and locate peer-reviewed, reliable sources.

When researching, be wary of getting lost “down the rabbit hole.” Gathering a lot of sources is good, but there’s such a thing as too much. Know when to stop—generally when you know what an author will say before he or she says it—and don’t let researching stop you from writing. Begin drafting what you can with the intent of returning later to flesh out what you don’t currently know.

We’re excited to announce that every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, we are offering our insight on different techniques needed to make good creative projects. These projects include stories (long and short form), comics, movies, TV shows, and art. Also, we love listening, so please share your insights in return!

#comics #comic writers #story workshop #writing advice #writers #writers workshop #fantasy writers #science fiction writers #art advice #artists #art workshop

[simonjadis]

"Subverting expectations" should be something akin to what it adds to the story and not outright replaces. In addition, a writer should employ it based on what they feel in right for their characters and story with deep consideration. It seems like with recent examples that need no introduction do it to "please the audience" when they should write the sort of the story they'd want to read and/or watch themselves. It should come from the heart if you don't mind cheese.

I had not heard of that cyborg incident, anon! That sounds great.

(And I’m behind on DuckTales – the last episode I saw was Della’s first episode; I love Paget Brewster as her voice almost as much as I loved Paget voicing Poison Ivy)

I totally agree with you!!

Sometimes, I am horrified when I learn that feedback has convinced a storyteller to go in a different direction, even if I 100% understand why. Other times, it’s a great thing.

1. Good Case: Griffin McElroy is informed by fans of the Bury Your Gays trope, and his narrative returns two Tragic WLW as dryads (I’m not there yet in The Adventure Zone; I’m so nervous about continuing The Suffering Game)

2. Bad Case A: video game creators listen to disproportionate outrage from entitled forum bros and yield to their demands to include less queer content and fewer characters of color in the next game, or to sideline that content and those characters

3. Bad Case B: Joseph Morgan is a handsome, talented actor, but his desire to go forward with the story of Klaus Mikaelson on The Vampire Diaries should not have changed existing plans. I know that this is Extremely Writer Of Me but, to my mind, that’s like putting on a puppet show and one of the puppets whirls around and tells you to not kill him off. I’m not mad that the spinoff happened or anything, I just think that Klaus is a terrible person who deserves to die, however sympathetic aspects of his backstory may have been.

Anon, you wrote “a writer should employ it based on what they feel in right for their characters and story with deep consideration“

the line about with deep consideration is especially good, and something that many of us forget to express

because I’m gay, I’m going to pick an example – there are stories I might write in which the word “faggot” appears a great deal. it’s a slur, but it might be appropriate for characterization or setting. that doesn’t mean that it needs to be part of the story that will be consumed by an actual human audience, some of whom may have heard that word yelled at them at the worst moments of their lives

I could also write a fantasy setting in which that words holds no particular meaning, and someone’s name might happen to be that. it’s not like the fantasy character speak english or have that slur – the name just happens to be that, and exists within that world’s context. BUT again, this is going to be consumed by an actual audience, and I can just … not do that

in a previous post [X], I discussed worldbuilding and narrative choices, and used a domino/marbles analogy. another analogy might be baking – you choose the recipe and the ingredients and how they’re introduced and combined, but once placed in the oven, it all has to work naturally – you can’t force a cake to rise

if you do that in a story, people will know that something isn’t right

but choosing the recipe/ingredients and how they’re combined isn’t an excuse to do whatever you want.

you can choose to, as you note, set things up so that a woman who might have been fridged will instead be in a position to become a cyborg. (I don’t know a good baking analogy for that)

there are ways to include bigotry, death, and horror in your worldbuilding without focusing upon these elements for shock value, and that’s because the storyteller also controls the perspective

for another poor analogy, let’s say that you’re using your phone to record a video tour of your house – a walkthrough. you can use camera angles to avoid showing that place where the carpet just isn’t the same as it used to be, or that side of the couch that the cats chose as a scratching post, or that place where your drunk buddy decided to throw food onto the kitchen ceiling to see what stuck and now it’s discolored. storytellers can do this by choosing who (first person or third person limited) is telling the story, by choosing an unreliable narrator (usually just someone without the social awareness to realize what’s going on around them), or by taking the story in other directions

which means, and I know that this is a tangent but you reminded me of it, that stories can avoid gratuitous depictions of sexual assault or domestic violence and focus on fun things, like werewolf violence or whatever. it doesn’t mean pretending that those things don’t exist, it’s just prioritizing what gets “screen time”

that’s another place where deep considering comes into play. what things need to be part of the media experience, and which things can’t be left aside? for example, with very rare exceptions, i recommend against following the story of anyone experiencing gastrointestinal distress and related symptoms. someone can have a stomachache and then stay in bed with a time skip or someone else’s POV for a while. with rare exceptions, we don’t need to follow that person into the bathroom. the same is true with sexual assault and domestic violence, only this time we’re adding potential reader trauma to the list of reasons to tilt the metaphorical camera in another direction; if a character says that their ex was “a bad man” or warns someone away from X tavern, I believe them

obviously, sometimes stories do include horrifying elements; there are very few absolutes in writing

[barely restraining myself from talking about showing-vs-telling and some discourse I’ve seen about it]

I absolutely do not mind cheese, anon, and I agree that stories should metaphorically come from the heart

I do think that a lot of television writing has less of that because it’s, well, a job. the story should still make sense, and ideally everyone in the writer’s room feels passionately about some aspect of the project, but any mercenary writer is going to have some things where they just do their best and then call it a day. the story needs to make sense and engage audiences, but it doesn’t have to be a passion project

if a writer does a good job of entertaining themselves, they’ll usually do a decent job of pleasing the audience. there are exceptions.

not everybody has a foot fetish, Joss

#writing #storytelling #anon #ask #anon ask

[shirlleycoyle]

The Juicy, Round World of Blueberry Porn

“If something exists, there is porn of it:” Welcome to Rule 34, a series in which Motherboard’s Samantha Cole lovingly explores the highly specific fetishes that can be found on the web. If you’ve thought of it, someone’s jerked off to it.

The links and images in this article may be considered NSFW.

Most stories in the blueberry porn genre begin the same way: A woman eats an unusually delicious piece of candy. She starts to feel a little funny—maybe a little bloated—and as she chews, her transformation into a piece of fruit becomes unstoppable. Her thighs, breasts, and belly start to swell to cartoonish proportions, ripping her clothing as her juice-filled body swallows her arms and legs.

“Squeeze me,” she might plead, begging the onlooker to relieve the pressure that’s built up in her gurgling, swollen, bluish form. The berry girl is rendered helpless by her round, over-full state, at the mercy of the onlooker. She sloshes and rolls, confused at what’s happening but not altogether repulsed by it.

The “blueberry” kink is a subgenre of several other kinks: It combines force-feeding, expansion or inflation porn (using air, water, enemas, or food), super-sized “big beautiful women”, as well as elements of bondage and submission. There’s often a humiliation element, or care-taking tenderness, or a combination of the two.

Yes, this all might seem a little weird, even for someone who writes a column dedicated to lesser known, highly specific fetishes. But the more I looked into the genre, and the more I talked to the people in the blueberry community, the more universal their experiences with sexuality seemed. That’s not because everyone has some unexplored fruit-based fetish, but because they understand something that’s true for us all: It’s not always easy to admit your kink, and it’s a relief to find a group of people who accept it, and you.

“A catalyst that sparked something in their brain”

As with most of the niche fetishes we’ve covered in the Rule 34 series, the most visible part of the blueberry community on the internet is on Reddit, with the r/blueberry subreddit. While that forum is fairly dead (the most recent post was a month ago), there are chat rooms, Discord servers, and fan forums where the community is very much active and alive.

Almost everyone I talked to within the blueberry kink community referenced Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (some reference the 1971 movie starring Gene Wilder, others said the 2005 movie starring Johnny Depp or the original Roald Dahl book)—where the boisterous young girl Violet Beauregarde chews some of Willy Wonka’s magical meal-flavored gum and subsequently becomes a human blueberry—as their first awakening to blueberry content. Beauregarde inflates to a huge blue ball, to mimic the blueberry pie flavor at the end of the gum. She is then sent to a “juicing room” to alleviate her condition.

For many, watching it as children themselves, this surreal preteen berry girl was their gateway to a lifelong kink.

“Some of my earliest memories were replaying and replaying ‘the scene’ on the VHS player in the living room, my eyes literally plastered up against the glass as I rewound the scene for the eighteenth time in a row,” a member of the community who goes by Weeblord told me in an online chat. Motherboard granted Weeblord and other members of the blueberry community anonymity because of the private nature of the subject matter.

“A huge misconception with this fetish is that since its origin is from a children’s movie it has something to do with being attracted to children,” another member of the community who talked to me in a private message, who also asked to remain anonymous, told me in an online chat. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. Almost all of the people I’ve encountered online just saw it as a catalyst that sparked something in their brain when they were young and it carried over into adulthood.”

But as they grew up and explored new aspects of the berry girl world, their tastes evolved into something more erotic. On forums like DeviantArt and Discord chat servers devoted to the kink, in illustrated and photographic art, or through text-based role playing or erotic writing, it became less about a specific scene in a movie or book and more about what new creative directions they could take the concepts of inflation and BDSM.

Even outside of Willy Wonka’s inventing room origins, the community has its own landmark works and origin stories. Several enthusiasts brought up blueberry comic artist and writer DocSwell’s “Bizarre Adventures of Berrygirl” series when I asked what influenced their interest in the kink.

Last week, several members of the community launched an anthology of blueberry kink writing and art called Bloomfph! They crowdfunded the more than 70 page collection. A contributor who goes by Fate-Full told me it’s a “love letter” to the community.

“Jiggliness and squishiness”

An erotic video producer who goes by the name Maxgrowthtold me that he believes blueberry porn is not something anyone consciously chooses to be into, but “just the way you are wired.” He said he’s always been fascinated with transformation sequences in comics and cartoons, and as he grew up, that fascination turned sexual.

“I always gravitated to bigness in transformation, so the berry girl scenario was easy to get excited about,” Maxgrowth said. “On the surface, for me, it’s about the bigness and the roundness, but I think underneath the surface psychologically it’s about the helplessness and emotional reactions of the girl to her condition.” Those emotions can range from confusion, to excitement, arousal, and fear.

ImageCredit: Maxgrowth/TaylorMadeClips

Riddlercorps, a prominent member of the blueberry kink community who runs a Discord server with channels focused on the kink, creates photo edits and role plays blueberry transformations with his partner. She doesn’t share his kink, but he says she’s a supportive model for his artwork.

“I like the psychological implications that the transformation has,” he told me. “It’s a process of shock, fear and/or pleasure in some cases, acceptance, etc. and different people react in different ways.”

“If you have a strange interest you believe no one else has or will accept, then turn that fantasy into something tangible”

To many, it’s a form of BDSM: The berry-person is trapped in their own juice-laden bodies, unable to move except for some helpless twirling fingers protruding from their round forms.

“Some people find it as [a] form of bondage due to the obviously restricted movement of the submissive, berried individual,” Riddlercorps said. “Others enjoy the humiliation and embarrassment factor of it. Some people just like to pretend that they or a partner is swelling up, ripping through their clothing. Some people mimic it to the BBW kink. It truly just depends on who you ask.”

Image: Phot edit by Riddlercorps

A blueberry enthusiast who goes by Thiccestboi1293 told me that it’s the “jiggliness and squishiness” of the characters that’s attractive to him. Another fan, Mikey D, told me that it’s the “size and the heaviness,” combined with the slow buildup of juice.

”It’s foreplay to the body, and then the immediate helplessness once it finishes filling you with juice. At least when being the berry,” Mikey D said. “Looking on at one, the size is still something to love, regardless of how the berry is or if the berry’s got an erect dick. Once it’s big, you feel that sort of daunting feeling on how massive they are and how juicy they seem to be.”

For others, the gurgling, churning of the juice inside the berry belly is a turn-on. A community member who goes by JC19 told me that the changes in skin color and the softness are also part of the allure, for him: “Seeing how soft it must feel to be a ball of fat or juice, and just the growth and helplessness of it all.”

“We’re treated as freaks”

As patient as the many blueberry enthusiasts I spoke to for this piece were with my questions about their kink, their openness is not without some sense of risk to their community. In the past, their kink has been labeled as “horrifying,” and several people I interviewed told me that they were concerned about harassment—or had experienced it in the past.

“I think a lot of people who are in the community aren’t very open about their expansion fetish in broad daylight,” Maria Alive, a fetish-artist who specializes in inflation and dabbles in blueberry photo edits, told me in an email. “A lot of the time it’s due to these social stigma around fetishes, especially as this is one where the partner requires to grow larger or at least pretends to grow larger. We all have been conditioned to find bigger or larger people unattractive, as they’re fat and unhealthy—but that couldn’t be further from the truth. So most people are ashamed to admit this to their partner.”

Read more: Slime Girls are the Sticky, Gooey Monsters of Your Wet Dreams

Another member of the community who requested anonymity told me that many people in relationships keep their kink a secret forever, out of fear that their partner will judge them for it. “I’ve always mentioned it [to partners] and never suffered a negative reaction, but curiosity instead,” she said. “It’s a much more male dominated fetish than female like most fetishes are. I’ve sort of felt like an outsider as a woman into it but many of the guys I talk to about it are nice and I’ve had very few bad experiences.”

“For the most part, the community keeps to itself because we’re treated as freaks rather than normal individuals with an unusual kink,” Riddlercorps told me. “It also doesn’t help that there are some prominent members of the community that seem to actively ruin the reputation. We’re normal people, just like you and the readers. Of course there are always a handful of people fucked up in the head that do nothing but damage to our community’s reputation. The few ruin it for the many.”

Blueberry erotica writer Fate-Full told me that the challenges they face are like any other marginalized kink that exists on fan art sites like DeviantArt, where a lot of blueberry art is hosted. When blueberry art occasionally makes it to the front page, people who don’t share or understand the kink spam the comments with hate and distaste.

“Sometimes art is taken down, but like YouTube’s algorithm, many times it’s completely random and impossible to protect against. Artists try to solve this by posting their work elsewhere, especially if the content is NSFW, but as seen with the Tumblr ‘no female presenting nipples’ implosion, this can be a finite solution.”

It’s even harder for blueberry enthusiasts to get mainstream acceptance of the kink because it’s nearly impossible to replicate the blueberry effect in person, unless you have an inflatable suit and a lot of blue makeup handy. Not everyone has the interior space or funds to buy a giant sumo-suit for acting out their kink—which is why so much of it lives in illustrated art, photo editing, erotica and text-based role playing. It’s a fetish that, for many, originated from a special effect in a big Hollywood movie, and while people find creative ways to replicate it, it’s still a production when compared with more widely known kinks.

“Blueberry inflation/transformation is inherently impossible in reality, it is pure fantasy,” blueberry artist luvemripe told me. “There are inflatable suits available that simulate the experience as close as possible, perhaps enough to suspend one’s disbelief. The challenge with a morph is crossing this line of believability, making something unrealistic look realistic.”

Despite all this, blueberry enthusiasts find ways to explore their kink, and many said it helped them explore their sexualities, beyond giant blue women. “The average blueberry enthusiast realizes that the kink is strange and ridiculous and usually has a good sense of humor about it,” luvemripe said.

“If you have a strange interest you believe no one else has or will accept, then turn that fantasy into something tangible,” Fate-Full said. “Watch as people slowly find it and realize they are not alone, and neither are you.”

The Juicy, Round World of Blueberry Porn syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[prodigal-ezreal]

Nach Little Box of Hopes And Fears: Ezreal rework edition.

Let’s open this Pandora box, okay?

So, The Ezreal rework is probably hitting live somewhere at the end of the year after Worlds and the PBE during them, which gives us two months to sit, twiddle our thumbs and think. And Oh Boi! Have I thought! More under the cut because this Got Long.

This is all VERY subjective. Please take it with a grain of sea salt.

Let’s start from the beginning, as all organized matters should: What has Riot been doing with their reworks and Lore updates lately?

In my opinion, is give everyone and everything a place in the world, connecting characters and things that might have not been connected previously and retconning a few things along the way— With various degrees of success. The Darkin in Shurima are probably one of the biggest offenders here. While it gave them a place in Runaterra other than ‘Maybe aliens from another dimension/Old As Hell Demons’, Aatrox’s rework, Varus’s music video and Rhaast’s release never tied their designs or origins to anything Shuriman, from there the whiplash I got at least.

But that’s beside the point I’m trying to make. What’s Ezreal’s current state in the Lore?

Well, Ezreal has always been kind of in a weird spot post-institute, he’s from Piltover but has never had any strong affiliations or associations with the City State other than the place in which he spent his childhood, and now with the Piltover/Zaun and his own lore update, he has little ties in design as well! Back in the day, belts were all the rage in Piltover, now it’s more of an Art Deco thing —which I love— but Mr ‘I could probably go a week eating only the leather in my outfit’s belts and I still wouldn’t go hungry’ doesn’t fit anymore aesthetically. Shurima is still important to his character, since that’s where he got his gauntlet from, but as we can see from Elixir of Uloa, he’s not limited to exploring the desert, and to be honest? he never was.

Talking about design, it’s not that his design is horrendously bad, even if a bit ridiculous for his job (leather is not a breathable fabric), it just grew old. And it could have grown older! But the disparity between League’s current aesthetic/lore direction and Ezreal’s would have grown way too large for a champion so played. That’s why I reason they chose him, and not fiddlesticks or Udyr, for a VU/VO right now.

And here is where the box gets opened: let’s go first through the fears to have hope be sitting nice and pretty still inside at the end, okay?

I think everyone that follows me knows that, while I eat up any and all canon Ezreal content, I really don’t like the most recent approach Riot has had with his art: That Cutesy, Pixie Boy aesthetic that gets in my nerves and is present both in Star Guardian and the most recent World Championship skins. (Not to mention, they have gotten really lazy painting/modeling his face? I’d argue Ace of Spades has a prettier face than SG/SSG). Were his rework to take that direction for the sake of the good old ‘Ez is a girl’ joke, I’m going to be really sad about it. And Mad. Smad.

Not because I have a probelm with Ezreal not being your traditional hypermasculine fantasy male character, I quite enjoy that he isn’t, and if they were to tilt the scales in that direction to overfix the same joke, I’d still feel weird about it.

I think its easy to understand the fear of my favorite character being changed into the joke that has plagued him for years because of the homophobic fanbase that birthed it. My beef of course isn’t with male aligned people who don’t fit into the expectations of the gender, and it’s not my intention to imply that if you like the joke/ship, that you are contributing to your own oppression by reclaiming something they named as shameful— of course not. My beef is with the fact they claimed it shameful and that Riot is Not Woke Enough to pretend like it was their intention all along and they aren’t playing into the vices and prejuices of its fanbase. Let me explain.

Tar/ez or Eztar!c exists only because of the powerduo they used to be all the way back in Season 2, and persisted as an intracommunity joke because people just loved making fun of characters that didn’t quite fit with the usual Male Archetype(tm), Ezreal with his assumed ‘pretty boy’ looks (assumed because tbh no one was pretty back then) and lithe physique, and Taric with his ‘affeminate’ liking of gems. This joke, rooted in homophobia, turned both of their characters into jokes that Riot despite its best efforts because I mostly liked Taric’s rework, shut up, still l can’t completely overcome to this day, when the usage of ‘lol that’s so gay’ is not as negative as the beggining of the decade. It’s not like I think that it’s going to go away, I just fear it’s gonna get worse.

Not to mention! The wildly original, very alive horse that is the ‘Ez is a girl’ joke, comes from people forcing heterosexual roles into same gender relationships which, ew! That and his “Pretty anime boy” archetype, since those are also popular in yao! media (double ew). AND from the misogony that any male aligned person, or in less serious cases like this one, character, that doesn’t fall into line with the expectative of its gender, it’s marked as lesser. You might see this issues and think ‘I barely see that anymore’, which, fair. It has been in decline in the general Internet Population since the second half of the decade, but all of these problems stem from early 2010’s gamer culture so— Yeah. That’s another can of worms I am NOT opening.

TLDR: I feel like the the recent art direction comes from toxic places and I’m fearful Riot is gonna play into that instead of ignoring it.

It may be something else behind those decisions, but this is what my confirmation bias looks like.

Enough of unfounded fears I have now struck into your hearts because if I’m going to hell worrying about this, I’m gonna bring you all with me. Let’s think about hope.

My highest hopes for the update is that Riot plays into Ezreal’s lack of strong links— Not only do I think that it makes sense for a explorer to never truly belong in one place, it’s just easier and doesn’t force anything too alien to his character. I’d really like if they went for a ‘citizen of the world’ kind of deal. Make his design something based on Piltover but obviously worn and foreign, pepper his language with words from Shurima, Freljord, Ionia! Hell, with how big Noxus is, he’d have to learn to speak the language if he wanted to cross through it. I feel like he’s a wonderful opportunity to represent how diverse, yet interconnected Runnaterra is. I also feel like it plays into his fantasy of being a dashing —pun intended—young man who gets in and out of trouble, from adventure to adventure a la Indana Jones.

But going back to Riot’s Lore direction, we still need to tie him with somewhere, or at the very least, something.

Enter the world rune.

‘But Nach’ I hear you wail as I use either 50’s sellsman tactics or early 2000’s fanfic writer interrumptions to catch your attention, ‘World Runes are Ryze’s thing!’

Which, Fair. They are. I’m not saying Ezreal is gonna ‘prove himself to be able to let go of a World Rune’ since that is Ryze’s exclusive thing (even if the thought of that happening and Ez outright rejecting it cos Adventure sounds very appealing to me) I just want him to be tied to the missing World Rune because it makes sense for League’s token explorer to accidentaly stumble into the World Magic Battery.

Also because of the promo, but who knows. Maybe he wasn’t in the Ryze short precisely for that, maybe because since it had been so many years on the making, Ez wasn’t even in the Update Radar then and they just didn’t include him/made reference to him. It doesn’t matter, we don’t know. Time will tell.

Plus, him being tied to the World Rune would make Zoe’s fixation —as creepy as it is— make a bit more sense. If the Aspect Of Change that damned The Darkin is the same one we have today, It’d make her have more secretive, ulterior motives and connect her happy go lucky and childish personality to that mischeveous, manipulative persona we got to see in the Darkin story. If it turns out they are different, it still makes sense with Zoe’s Color story and IG characterization since she can’t seem to get serious about/remember what precisely she was supposed to omen.

TLDR Hopes: Just tie him to the world rune, it’d be cool. Also make him a fucking tutti fruti of cultures.

To tie it all up, I know there’s not much I can do but wait, since I am not active in the forums or the reddit community— but If I could feel in my heart Zoe was gonna have a crush on Ezreal when we got her ig teaser, then I do dare hope.

#i am SO sorry if this rant isnt cut by mobile #long post #ooc #meta #meta? meta

[dwarrowdams]

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

It’s Festivus, obviously, which means that it’s time for my annual airing of grievances.

This year’s topic is kind of two sub-topics under the broader category of romance novels: specifically, misogyny directed towards romance heroines (and the women who write them) and anti-aro sentiments within romance novels.

Misogyny around romance novels isn’t exactly a new thing (because ofc women can’t like a thing without it being dragged through the fucking mud and treated like crap), but it’s morphed into an ugly animal that sometimes disguises it as a Good Liberal™.

You know, the kind who “doesn’t see color” and has a gay friend and thinks that they deserve praise for not misgendering trans people.

These Good Liberals™ see romance as something that’s fueling misogynistic stereotypes.  Problem is, they’re making these assumptions based on outdated romance novels that don’t reflect current trends.  There are some romance novels that are misogynistic af, but the genre is no more inherently misogynistic than every genre.  This is a whole-ass genre that largely centers the lives and desires of women in a way that many other types of fiction don’t.  If you want to say that all of it is bad, you might as well just come right out and say that you don’t give a fuck about stories that often flip patriarchal narratives on their heads.

Also, I never see people coming for fantasy—which is a cesspool of misogyny—the way they come for romance, and the misogyny in that genre is so awful that I'm scared to read any fantasy novel written by a man unless I am 250% positive that no women are raped/sexually assaulted/sexually harassed on page.  (Sometimes even novels by women have gender-based violence.)  If you actually give a fuck about making sure that women are treated like complex and three-dimensional human beings, look at all genres, not just one that is primarily written by women and often centers woman MCs.

(also like...queer people exist in romance, so talking about the genre like it’s all allocishets is a surefire sign that someone doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about)

The romance community itself is good at dealing with misogyny (you have to be when someone writes a fucking “is romance killing feminism?!” thinkpiece every other week), but they’re shit at dealing with anti-aro sentiments.

I fucking love romance.  I’m writing romance novels.  I read romance novels all the damn time.

I’m also on the aromantic spectrum and don’t like it when others imply that me (or others) identifying as such means that something is wrong with us.

Anti-aro sentiments sneak their way into so many romance novels.  Someone is hailed as “unfeeling” just bc they’ve never had a romantic partner.  Someone’s love “fixes” someone else’s cold heart.  Someone wondered what’s wrong with them bc they never loved anyone romantically before.

It’s hard to notice at first, but once you see it, it’s hard to unsee.  There are so many other ways that authors could express that someone didn’t feel romantic love other than resorting to the tired “unfeeling” or “heartless” tropes.  Romantic love is not some end-all, be-all thing.  It’s great, but so is platonic love or familial love or the love you have for your pets or the love you have for your favorite hobby.

Not every romance novel does this, but when they do, it gives me an icky feeling inside.  It reminds me that people in my own community think that people like me are missing something, that we need “the right person,” that we’re like a clock with a missing part.

Aro-spec people are perfect and we are not missing a single goddamn thing—except the respect and acceptance that we deserve (and tbh that’s other people’s fault, not ours, so we personally are not missing anything).

I just really fucking hope that the genre begins to weed out these insidious anti-aro sentiments because as a romance writer, I don’t want to be a part of a community that thinks I’m missing something bc I rarely feel romantic attraction.

#hush Bree #Bree airs grievances #wow I was...really angry about anti-aro shit in romance novels #I didn't know how pissed I was until I started writing #felt good to get it out #Brynne for ts

[piduai]

anime based on manga created by female writers that is in fact not heterosexual shoujo/BL garbage and i liked (bc i saw a post talking about female mangakas and all of the examples were in fact heterosexual shoujo/BL garbage that i unfortunately do not like and my anime opinions are super important obviously):

fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood (adventure/action) any comments on why fmab is the best product the anime industry has ever put on the market that will not be outranked ever is tired at this point. fmab is a masterpiece through and through, periodt. most of the cast including the mcs is male tho, which is sad

saraiya goyou (historical/drama) if fmab didn’t exist it would have been the best title out there. the word masterpiece was invented solely to have a concept to describe it. the ost makes up about 40% of its greatness and was also written by a woman. too bad all the characters are also dudes

acca: 13ku kansatsuka (drama/political) not quite as good as saraiya goyou but from ono natsume as well. pleasant is the word to describe it. relaxing. all of the cast is male.

dorohedoro (horror/gore/comedy) the best title since like 2006. everything about it is great. i don’t have a single criticism and that’s rare. the cast is actually balanced and the Female Characters(tm) all 3 of them are like, written like people and are also queens

hachimitsu to clover (slice of life) saddest shit i’ve seen in my whole life in a colorful packaging. heterosexual as hell but not in an obnoxious way. cast seems diverse but it’s predominantly male

3gatsu no lion (drama) from the same great umino chica who is a master at writing uncomfortable truths and playing on emotions. she’s great truly, her character crafting is genuine but it gets under your skin, it’s filled with melancholy. 3gatsu is actually better than hachimitsu to clover but 1) i have history with the former so i like it better and 2) it was produced by shaft which is a sin in itself. they did a great job and all, i just hate the studio. has 3 speaking female characters in total but all 3 are great.

hoozuki no reitetsu (comedy) it’s hilarious it’s fresh it’s pretty it’s original it’s creative it’s clever. i love everything about it. the whole cast is male with like 2 exceptions and a rabbit (best girl).

saiunkoku monogatari (historical) i know it LOOKS like heterosexual shoujo garbage but it in fact isn’t. fits the reverse harem trope solely because everyone is in love with mc, but there’s next to no actual romance in it. unironically a feminist power fantasy. i’m still shooketh at how incredibly pleasant it turned out to be. the mc is a young girl but the rest of the cast is almost exclusive male.

arakawa under the bridge (comedy) surprisingly... by shaft again. maybe i am prejudiced. anyway, hilarious to a fault. is technically centered around a str8 romance but it’s not too invasive so whatever. cast is pretty balanced and the women are written smartly.

doukyuusei (gay romance) which i refuse to categorize as BL simply because it’s not BL. it’s a good gay story, arguably the best one yet. cast is exclusively male but i mean lmao

gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun (comedy) straight to A FAULT but funny nevertheless. is, technically, heterosexual shoujo garbage. but SOME heterosexual shoujo garbage can stay i guess. cast is balanced, there’s still more male characters tho

gokusen (comedy/action) which i don’t remember much about except kumiko being best girl and me liking it. if i remember liking it it means it was good overall just not memorable. cast is exclusively male except mc.

kaleido star (sports) which is the ONLY good, or like decent, or like watchable sports anime, the rest don’t exist. not based on a manga but the writer is a woman which is strongly felt through and through. good story about perseverance and will and optimism and competition. cast is predominantly female and all of them are wonderfully written

michiko to hatchin (adventure) again no manga but main writer is the woman known for creating the skating BL people pretend isn’t BL. michiko to hatchin is way better than the skating BL, but i’m just a humble girl. tons of sexy sexy i could have lived without but otherwise good shit. cast predominantly female.

mononoke (horror/mystery) oh it’s wonderful, nothing else to say. i mean i could nitpick if i wanted but there’s no point, i love mononoke to bits. cast is predominantly male with all the victims being female, lol

mushishi (mystery/fantasy) mushishi is just unique. it has similar vibes as saraiya goyou and natsume sure, but ultimately it’s one of its kind. it has what ghibli wants. again no criticism about it at all except that it’s SO chill that binging it is super tiring. cast is predominantly male but it has few reoccurring characters so who cares.

natsume yuujinchou (mystery/fantasy) again similar to mushishi but less grim. chill story, the definition of wholesome unproblematic etc whatever kids are into these days. cast predominantly male but not memorable in the slightest

petshop of horrors (horror) watched it a million years ago so don’t remember shit but i do remember liking it. cast is probably predominantly male

saint oniisan (comedy) THE funniest thing i’ve ever watched, or nearly. it’s just great. cast exclusively male

sakamoto desu ga (comedy) well THE actual funniest thing i’ve ever watched, it licherally had me in tears, i watched the new episodes like 3 times on the days they came out, including watching them on tv in real time at like 3 am or whenever it aired in shinya. just really really funny. cast predominantly male

#all good comedy was written by women. that is in fact... a fact #honestly women have written way better stuff than sailor moon and fuckening.... kamisama hajimemashita or whatever the hell yall dig

[aion-rsa]

Loki: Best Shows to Watch If You’re Missing the God of Mischief

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The God of mischief might be off in a different timeline prepping for a second season but we still need something to put in our eyes. Assuming you’ve already binged the MCU shows WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, we’ve rounded up some other great series that could scratch that Loki-shaped itch. Some of these are spiritually similar, some are great showcases of Loki’s cast and others explore similar themes. All are crackers though and well worth setting your tempad for. 

Flowers

This Brit black comedy which aired on Channel 4 in the UK ran for two seasons, each equally special. Is it similar to Loki? Not at face value, but it does feature a stand out turn from Sophia Di Martino who stole the show as female Loki, Sylvie. Written by Will Sharpe, it’s the story of a highly dysfunctional family, with Julian Barrett and Olivia Coleman as parents on the verge of separation and Di Martino and Daniel Rigby as their troubled twins. Flowers is surreal, magical realistic, gothic and often bleak while remaining funny and moving at all times. Not a big world-hopping show like Loki, then, but it does tackle existential crisis head on, and it’ll only make you love Di Martino more. RF

Lovecraft Country

Like many Marvel projects, the Loki TV series has a deep bench of impressive acting talent. One of the most undersung (and honestly underutilized) members of the first season’s cast was Wunmi Mosaku, aka Hunter B-15, who was asked to depict a deep and abrupt change in loyalties over the course of six episodes. Mosaku pulls it off, mostly because she is a phenomenal actress. If you’re looking to see more of her work, look no further than HBO’s Lovecraft Country (but also watch In the Flesh, in which Mosaku plays the Season 2 antagonist), which also features He Who Remains’ Jonathan Majors in the main cast. (A two-fer!) Mosaku plays Ruby Baptiste, a Black singer living in 1950s Southside Chicago in this social horror. Come for Wunmi Mosaku and Jonathan Majors, stay for… Wunmi Mosaku and Jonathan Majors, but also for a TV series that has more supernatural twists than even the most bonkers episode of Loki. KB

Rick and Morty

If your favorite part of Loki was the existence of a thriving multiverse, then we’ve got some good news. Beloved Adult Swim series Rick and Morty (that also admittedly can have an overzealous fandom) is all about the storytelling joy that multiverses can provide. Mad scientist Rick Sanchez and his grandson Morty Smith reside in a plane of infinite universes and therefore infinite possibilities for bizarre adventure. Rick and Morty alum Michael Waldron served as Loki‘s head writer and the writing staff consisted of several more vets of the animated hit. Fans of Loki’s many variants will certainly enjoy encountering the countless versions of Rick, Morty, and their family. Just wait until you meet Lawyer Morty. Look at the little guy go! AB

Doctor Who

Not an original comparison, but one that absolutely stands up. After all, what was Loki episode three if not Doctor Who gifted a Disney budget? Nexus Events, the Sacred Timeline, doomed moons, memory reactivation… almost everything about Loki has one foot in the world of Doctor Who. The Marvel series may have had Time Keepers instead of Time Lords,  variants instead of regenerations, and an alligator in place of… well, which Doctor would be the most likely to eat a cat? (Troughton’s, obviously), but there’s common DNA here. The really good news for the Loki fan who hasn’t already travelled with the Doctor(s) through space and time is that instead of just six episodes, there are roughly 10 billion of them plus novelisations, audio adventures, comic strips, videogames and a TV movie. Allons-y! LM

The Night Manager

Tom Hiddleston’s bum. But also this is an excellent series adapted from the novel of the same name by John le Carré and directed by Oscar winner Susanne Bier. Hiddleston plays Jonathan Pine, manager of a luxury hotel who gets recruited to infiltrate the inner sanctum of Hugh Laurie’s violent and volatile arms dealer. Olivia Colman co-stars once again (Hiddleston, Laurie and Colman all won Golden Globes for their performances) with a supporting role for Elizabeth Debicki which was very much a precursor for her part in Tenet. Post-Night Manager, Hiddleston was top billed to be the next Bond, so given Tenet basically was Bond but on another timeline, and featured time travel as an integral part, Loki and The Night Manager are basically the same show… RF

Timeless

If you wish Loki had been a bit more of a time-hopping procedural, then we have a show for you. Timeless, which aired on NBC for two too-short seasons from 2016-2018, stars Abigail Spencer as Lucy Preston, a historian who gets recruited by a secret department within U.S. Homeland Security in order to stop a mysterious organization that has stolen a time machine. Lucy teams up with scientist Rufus and soldier Wyatt, and the three unlikely bedfellows must learn to work together in high-stakes settings like the Hindenburg, Ford’s Theatre, and the Alamo. Co-created by The Boys showrunner Erik Kripke, Timeless has tons of character-driven twists that make the time travel personal, tying together these characters and settings in unexpected ways. KB

Legion

Loki is such a bold, creative superhero series that it’s hard to imagine that there’s every been anything quite like it. Believe or not – that’s not entirely true! While Loki is one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first big heady sci-fi TV swing, it’s not Marvel’s first overall on television. From 2017 to 2019, Marvel-adjacent property Legion enjoyed a bizarre, colorful three-season run on FX. This series is based on the X-Men character David Haller a.k.a. Legion. Diagnosed with schizophrenia at a young age, David also just happens to be a mutant with nigh-omnipotent powers. This show from Fargo‘s Noah Hawley revels in the strange potential of its premise. Legion is often confusing, but always intriguing. It’s a show that largely replaces superhero battles with dance offs. It’s well worth watching the entire run while you wait for Loki season 2. AB

The OA

Very different to Loki in tone but very similar in head-messing inter-dimensional WTF-ness, The OA is a strange and beautiful beast. If you could follow the Marvel show’s timeline hopping, then you’ve a strong chance of grasping the madness at play in Netflix’s The OA. It starts off as a story about the return of a woman (played by co-creator Brit Marling) who’s been missing for seven years, and ends up as a story about… parallel dimensions, arcane rituals, experimental physics, sci-fi magic and a kind-of-haunted house. It’s a total trip, in short, and should scratch any itch Loki fans are experiencing for TV of the weird variety. Speaking of which, give us season three, Netflix, you cowards. LM

Quantum Leap

Before the TVA there was Doctor Sam Beckett. Played by puppy-faced Scott Bakula, Sam is a scientist who invented a “quantum accelerator” (time machine) that randomly transports him back in time to put right events which once went wrong. In each episode of Quantum Leap, Sam wakes up in the body of someone else at a distinct point in history and has to figure out his mission with the help of his best mate, in hologram form, Al (Dean Stockwell). Sam is essentially maintaining the sacred timeline at the expense of his own life and free will, which would make Al…. Miss Minutes? Either way, it’s a hugely good natured show which ran for five seasons and it’s well worth a visit. RF

Continuum

Continuum protagonist Kiera (Rachel Nichols) has serious Sylvie energy. While they might not have much in common when it comes to their background—Sylvie is trying to take down the time authorities while Kiera, a cop from the corporate-controlled future, is an authority—they’re both incredibly focused women who will do what they have to in order to achieve their goals. Continuum follows Kiera, when she is unexpectedly stranded in our present. Desperate to get back to her family and her life in the future, Kiera teams up with a teen genius, as well as local detective Carlos Fonnegra. Filled with complex character arcs and alternate timelines, Continuum is a must for any fan of time travel TV. KB

Life on Mars

Loki’s crime procedural/time-hopping/fantasy cocktail may have been made famous by Quantum Leap, but it achieved its apotheosis (that’s right, five syllables, count ‘em) in BBC One’s Life on Mars. That’s the story of Sam Tyler (John Simm), a Manchester police officer who’s hit by a car in 2006 and wakes up in 1973. Like Loki, Tyler has to piece together what’s really going on behind-the-scenes while running his own investigations. Tyler may not be a God, or have magical powers and other planets to visit, but Life on Mars still took him to some odd and captivating places. It ended prematurely after two seasons (at the request of Simm, who said he wanted to spend more time with his family), after which the tale continued with sequel Ashes to Ashes starring Keeley Hawes. Currently, plans are afoot for a belated third series. LM 

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[myaekingheart]

All of them for the writing asks 😁😁😁

HOLY CRAP HONESTLY THANK YOU xD

Writer Asks

Was being a writer a dream of yours when you were little? Or did it spring up when your older? Or is it just a hobby? I’ve always been a writer, regardless of whether I necessarily knew it at the time. I’ve shuffled through some other career ideas– when I was little, I wanted to be a veterinarian, and then in middle school I liked the idea of modeling– but at the end of the day, writing is what I always came back to. I used to come up with elaborate storylines when I played with my Barbies and hog the computer on Microsoft Word making shitty stories that I’d print out and staple together and draw covers for. I don’t think I really considered it a viable career at the time, but now I know that writing is what I’m meant to with my life above all else and that if I lose every other opportunity that comes my way, I’ll be fine so long as I can still write.

Overall, would you say you are more driven by plot or characters in writing? (What makes you more excited about an idea?)  I think, truthfully, a little of both. I love thinking of cool ideas and ways that my characters will fit into them. It’s exciting to think of their lives and the things that can happen to them that will make or break them. I love seeing my characters happy and getting what they want, but I also love when things don’t go their way and when something completely breaks them. The torture is fun to see. I am sadistic.

Give an overview/description of some of your past stories. (Only if you are willing, of course!) Oh god, okay, so I have a couple. There was this one story when I was a little kid that I came up with, I forget the name of it, but the basic premise was that there was this disease and you turned every color of the rainbow ROYGBIV style and then when you reached violet, you died. I had another one I was working on fifth grade called “The War of Sacawragi” that I cannot for the life of me remember what it was about, but I remember rambling about it to my friends one day at lunch and being all hyped about it. Maybe it had to do with a refugee woman fleeing a war-torn country with her baby, or to protect her unborn baby, or something like that? I never finished it, and I lost what I did write when my computer at the time broke, but I don’t know. I don’t think I totally care that it’s gone? Maybe one day I’ll revisit the idea, but for now I don’t really care.

INSPIRATION. What inspires you the most?Images, music, movies. Sometimes history and mythology. A plethora of things.

Do you have an idea for a story you don’t feel you can write at this current time? (Whether it be because life is busy right now, you need to do more research, etc.) I have a couple ideas for stuff I want to write, but I just don’t feel the motivation to quite yet. It’s tough, because I’m deep into writing From Upon the Golden Thrones (my Narnia fanfic) and focusing so much on the following sequels of that that I feel like I don’t want to start anything original until I finish that. Which sucks because I know original work is what’s going to bring home the bacon and shit but I just care so much about this goddamn fucking fanfiction that I cannot get it out of my head. Plus, I feel like I’m at a spot in my life right now where pouring more energy into writing fanfiction is acceptable because I’m in college rather than out in the working world depending on churning out original stories to earn a living. Once I graduate college, I’m terrified I won’t be finished with these Narnia stories and will have to give them up for the sake of focusing on my career, which makes me incredibly sad because as stupid as it may sound, I have never cared about any of the other stories I’ve written (original or otherwise) as much as I care about this fucking fanfic.

Favorite POV to write in? (As in First, Third, or maybe a specific character?)I really like third person omniscient. I used to write almost exclusively in first person but I felt like that was really restrictive to me. I like the way third person omniscient feels like playing God– you know exactly what everyone is doing, where they are, how they are feeling, but the characters don’t know shit and it’s kind of fun to fuck them up like that. It’s fun to know stuff they don’t. Plus, I really like paying attention to everyone’s take on a situation. I like delving into their internal monologues when something happens, good or bad, and how they interpret those situations. I like my readers to know what’s going on in my character’s heads and how they view the world compared to one another.

Favorite writers? Have they influenced you at all? Obviously CS Lewis is a fave. I just love the way he was able to interpolate scripture into fantasy. I’m not a wildly religious person but Narnia is the closest thing I’ve felt I’ve come to religion in my adult life, like Narnia makes me feel a particular way that nothing has ever made me feel before. I think that is also in part to my Irish heritage, and knowing much of Lewis’s inspiration for the landscapes of his book was inspired by his homeland. I actually wrote an entire essay about this for one of my classes last semester. I’ve never really been as big a fanatic of any other writers as I am with CS Lewis, much in the same way as I approach my music tastes-- I more often than not like particular songs rather than whole bands. Much like Nirvana and Beartooth is to my music taste, CS Lewis is the one artist whose work I am a wild fan of (even if the only other work of his that I’ve read outside of Narnia is Out of the Silent Planet).

If one cliche could be eradicated from writing, which one would you pick?The idea that everything has to be romance, and that every romance has to be a certain way. I like the stereotypical chick flicks as much as the next woman but I like complicated love that waxes and wanes. I like love that has a purpose, that at it’s core is hopeful but that rips your insides apart and makes you realize things about your life you never knew before. I like love that is based on more than just the superficial things. Situational love, childish love, war-torn love, all of that good shit. I prefer love that is real and raw and it hurts because it pays no mind to caution in the literary sense. I’m tired of the love we always see in YA lit where everything is meant to be poetic and flowery. Give me blood and sweat and tears. Give me something that’s real. That’s the kind of love I enjoy reading.

Favorite cliche or trope? I like the comedic stuff a lot, like funny misunderstandings. I wrote one into the last posted chapter on my fanfic that I was pretty disgustingly pleased with. I’m really bad at writing comedy but I try. I don’t know if this is necessarily a cliche or a trope, either, but I adore bildungsromans. I live for character development.

Do you have to force yourself to write, or is it something you want to do? Half and half. I feel like my will to write exists on a spectrum. On one end, there is the idealistic mix of motivation and inspiration where I sit down and the words just flow out of my fingertips and when I look back at these chapters, I typically have to do very little editing because I was so deep in the zone and so focused on what I wanted to write and I did that. On the opposite end is the numbness of feeling zero motivation and zero inspiration. It’s like sex-- I’m just not turned on and not thinking about sex whatsoever. And that’s fine. You don’t need to write 24/7. The worst is when I fall somewhere in the middle, which is where I am most often. I either have all the inspiration and no motivation or all the motivation and no inspiration. Most frequently it’s the former. I think about my current story constantly and yet more often than not, I never have the strength to open up the word document and actually work on it. This has been especially true this past month, when I went on a three day writing binge and wrote eight chapters only to find on day four that the file got corrupted and I lost all of my work.

Share a passage from one of your works and tell us why you liked it so much. Oh god, this is dangerous. One of my favorites is a scene in Chapter 12 of From Upon the Golden Thrones, but it’s too long to copy and paste here so instead I’m going to use a passage from Chapter 9 instead:     As night swept across Narnia, the bad dreams took hold once again. Eilonwy’s breath hitched, tossing and turning as fearful visions paraded through her head. Peter snapped awake the moment he heard so much as a whimper, climbing onto the edge of her bed to try and soothe her awake. Her eyes fluttered open, brimming with tears, hands trembling wildly. “It’s okay, Ellie, everything’s alright. It was just a bad dream” he whispered, petting her hair. She shook her head and burst into tears.     “It never ends…” she whined, burying her face beneath a mountain of pillows. “I want to go home!”     “Ellie, shh, you are home” Peter replied but the huntress shook her head in great protest.     “This isn’t home, this is hell!” she screamed. With a sudden jolt, she sat upright and began throwing pillows left and right.     “Eilonwy, stop! Please!” Peter begged but she refused. She launched pillow after pillow into the wall, toward the window, knocking things off her vanity and even cracking it’s glass. She kept going until the entire room was drenched in a blizzard of feathers. It wasn’t until the window creaked open and a soft breeze blew through that Eilonwy finally began to calm down. Exhausted, she collapsed onto the mattress and wept softly, tears staining her cheeks. Peter swatted at the downy rain, climbing into her bed and wrapping his arms around her tightly. She sighed and fell into him, far too tired to fight him off, and deeply inhaled the sweet smell of his skin.     “It’s alright now…everything’s alright” he whispered, gently rocking her back and forth like an infant.     “It never ends…” she repeated softly, her hot breath grazing Peter’s collarbone. Not knowing what else to say, he sat there in silence continuing to rock her and hug her tight in hopes that perhaps he could glue all of her broken pieces back together. As she slowly drifted back to sleep, however, a quiet murmur caught his attention and sent his heart soaring. In the softest tone imaginable, she breathed a quiet “I love you…” And finally, Peter received the confirmation he had been searching for. She officially loved him back just like he knew she did. I love this scene so much because it’s finally this breakthrough with the relationship between these two characters. In the entire first installment, they’re getting to know one another and learning about each other and experiencing these scary, foreign feelings and they’ve come so far since then at this point, and Peter wants nothing more than for her to reciprocate his feelings for her, and this is the scene where he finally gets it and he’s over the moon. As for Eilonwy, she really struggles with the whole concept of attachment and affection and so this is a really pivotal scene for her, as well, and one that affects both of them heavily long after it’s happened, both for better and for worse.

What is the worst writing advice in your opinion? I’m not sure this is even really advice but the worst, in my opinion, is the pressure to write literary fiction rather than genre fiction. Stick literary fiction up your ass and smoke it. I don’t give a shit. I’ve noticed more than anything that in my college writing classes thus far, there’s this desperation to drill literary fiction into our heads, to convince us that it is the only fiction of quality and that genre fiction is trash. I completely disagree. Genre fiction is so much more liberating. Shit actually happens in genre fiction. Yeah, some of it is cheesy and commercialized but to say genre fiction, especially genre fiction of today, is worthless is to completely disregard the amazing, accessible commentary it’s providing to people of all ages, socioeconomic statuses, races, genders, etc. Genre fiction is giving us characters we can relate to, characters that we see ourselves in whether they’re transgender or of color or struggle with the same mental illnesses we do. It can give us both an escape from reality and a comfort within it by showing us that we are not alone and that we can fight our demons just like the characters in these books do. So I say fuck your literary fiction. Genre fiction has given me far more than literary ever has.

What is the best writing advice? The best writing advice I can think of is to write what you feel. I’m a firm believer in the idea that our best writing comes from our emotions. We kind of have to keep them reigned in to a certain degree, I think, in order to keep control over the language and the emotion but if your words aren’t fueled with some sort of feeling, then to me it’s like staring at a plain piece of cardboard. There’s no meat in the message.

Character names. How do you come up with them? It depends. Sometimes I see a name or even a word somewhere and a character shows up in my head. Sometimes I just pin random names to people. Sometimes I go onto those baby name websites and look up something meaningful that fits the character both in sound and in definition. And sometimes things just come together, like with my original character in my Narnia fanfiction. Her name is Eilonwy like the character in The Chronicles of Prydain. I’ve never actually read the books, but I like the long-forgotten Disney movie inspired by them. The name was just really interesting and pretty to me, and I really wanted to use it. At first, that was all it was: just a superficial reason. I was fourteen when I first came up with the initial idea for the story, so of course I didn’t have any deeper reasoning behind “It sounds pretty!” Now that I’m older and more thoughtful about my writing and shit, though, I’ve come to find that the name holds much deeper meaning to the story than I ever could’ve imagined which feels great. I love when things just randomly work out like that.

Do you tell friends/family about your writing, or do you keep it a secret?They know I write and some know what I write about but I don’t make too big a fuss about it. If I’m deep in a writing binge, I’ll post my pride on facebook like “I’ve written such-and-such word count so far!” or whatever. For the most part, though, I keep pretty quiet. I’ll share when I have to, like in writing workshops, but in regards to my fanfiction, the only person I really ramble to about it is my best friend. She’s heard all the spoilers and given me feedback on paragraphs I was either proud or unsure of. I’m really grateful for her feedback, and that she lets me fangirl over my own work when I need to!

What are some of your favorite words to use in writing? I don’t know if I have any favorite words. I have overused words, but I don’t know if I have any favorites.

Opinions on smut? Good if done right. I’ve tried my hand at my fair share of smut and when I look back at the stuff I tried to write for my last finished fanfiction, a Jack Frost x Violet Parr American Horror Story AU, I cannot help but cringe. I had the hot and heavy shit down pat but situational appropriateness was not entirely grasped. But then again, I was sixteen and a virgin when I wrote that so of course I didn’t have any realistic handle on it. Looking back, I’m just proud of myself for even writing something of that length because as problematic and cringey as it is to me now, that was the story that really confirmed I had the stamina to write novels. Up until that point, I had never written a full-fleshed, novel-length work. Now I’ve written two more and am working on a fourth. But anyways, about smut, my approach has shifted since then. Nowadays, my guidelines are to do it only when it’s appropriate to and to do it tastefully. Less is more. I care more about the emotion in it now than I do the physical act.

Is there anything you have found that you cannot, under any circumstance, write about?I’m not sure. I can’t think of anything right now off the top of my head, because refusing to write about something and finding difficulty in writing about something are two completely different things. There’s lots of things that are difficult for me to write whether it’s because they’re not my strong points (like humor) or because I feel inexperienced, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try to do as much research as I can to write them. If I care about a situation or idea enough, I will go that distance. I don’t know if there’s anything I would shy away from writing, including triggering material. I’ve already done stuff regarding rape. I write a lot about anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, even some PTSD. I don’t think there’s anything I’d shy away from writing.

Creative nonfiction. Have you dabbled with it? Do you like writing about your own life?I honestly love writing about my own life. That makes me sound really narcissistic but I mean, I’m telling the truth. There’s this one quote from a movie called Stuck in Love that I absolutely adore, it says “A writer is the sum of their experiences.” So much of my writing is inspired by my own experiences, and while I certainly don’t think you have to have experience in something to successfully write about it, having that extra layer of knowledge on a subject really adds realism and meaning to something. I can fake it, sure. I did that a lot in stories I wrote for my community college creative writing class. I wrote one story called Princess about a girl auditioning to be a face character at Disney World. I’ve never done that, though I’ve done a lot of research because I desperately want to. People thought I had actually experienced it. I wrote another about a young woman in the hospital for an eating disorder who desperately wanted a baby. While I’ve never been hospitalized for an eating disorder, I do struggle with one and my greatest fear is losing the ability to have a baby because of it so even though it wasn’t something I directly experienced, I channeled my fears and feelings into it. At the end of the day, I think so long as you’re passionate about something, you can successfully write about it and make it believable. But back to the question, one of the experiences I look to for inspiration most often is my love life and what I’ve been through with that. I’ve never been abused or cheated on or any of that bullshit, but I’ve had a very interesting history with my boyfriend that hinges on not only romance and compatibility like in all relationships but also in self esteem, grief, family, and the past. I’ve written quite a handful of short stories based around it, and some of the not-so-lovely feelings that have come from it. (Disclaimer: This is not to say my boyfriend and I are unhappy or in an unhealthy relationship. We just haven’t always had it easy and early on, I had a really tough time coming to terms with some things that I’m not going to go into detail with right now).

Allusions and references to other works. Thoughts? Do you like to use them?As a fanfiction writer, I feel like I’m obligated to say yes since that writing mainly takes place in other people’s works. At it’s foundation, though, I love allusion. I’m a big fan of fairytales and I have some interest in Greek mythology, as well, so I like taking inspiration from those and alluding to them in my stories. It’s easy to do in my Narnia fanfiction, especially, because it already alludes mythology and also religion which can tie into fairytales. Eilonwy, my OC, is a very heavy reference to the story of Snow White, as well as to Adam and Eve and Joan of Arc. I think it’s fun to tie certain things into shit like that, and I love when everything connects and makes sense.

What do you think characterizes your writing?My style and approach. I command the language a certain way where I try to sound cohesive and intelligent but also pump those big words with emotion and meaning. I don’t really know how else to describe it; my best writing comes when I’m in that zone and the words are just flowing out of me. I like trying to express abstract concepts in ways that feel tangible, too. I think tangibility is a big aspect, too. As an adjective here it probably doesn’t make much sense, but there’s something about my writing that I feel gives it this kind of tangible quality, almost. I like being able to feel the emotions and words in the air around me like oxygen. I also think the fact that I don’t like to shy away from anything helps to characterize my writing, too. I like to pull out all the stops. I don’t like censoring myself for the sake of comfort or digestibility. Maybe that makes my work kind of hard to get through but still. I feel like you have to have a stronger stomach for my work because I will not resist uncomfortable topics or scenes. Rape, gore, anxiety, whatever. I don’t shy away from any of it.

Do you control your characters, or do they control you? For the most part, I have pretty decent control over my characters but sometimes they like to go their own way and screw up the plan. Sometimes it’s for the best, but I’m the kind of person who likes to strictly stay to the path I’ve mapped out so more often than not it’s a nuisance. That resistance can be a real struggle, too, because sometimes where my characters take me flows nicely but it would mean reworking everything so I have to go back and try and channel that flow into the right direction.

Are there any misconceptions people have about your writing? I don’t really know. I try to be as clear as possible about what is happening and what I mean when I say certain things. If anything, they’d probably mistake me for a psychopath.

Best compliment someone has given you about your writing.I think the best compliments are honestly the ones where people are just straight-up fangirling. I love reading people’s reactions to my works, especially when they love it and want more of it and are screaming at their computer screens because of choices the characters have made. I had one person even send me a message telling me that they love my story so much, it’s all they can think about and gives them motivation to live (in a non-suicidal manner) and implored me to keep writing. That’s the kind of feedback that really motivates me to keep doing what I do.

Five years from now, where do you see yourself as a writer? In five years, I hope to be a published author with at least a small repertoire of original work under my belt and out in the open. I know it might take longer than five years to get there but I’ve come so far already and I think if I have the passion and the will to do it, I can get there. The end goal is to just get my stories out there and accessible to the public in hopes that someone may find something in them that they relate to, that helps them feel less alone, or that they just enjoy reading. The day I find my name on a bookstore shelf is the day I will feel as if I’ve truly made it (which brings me to another point about my opinions on paper versus digital publishing but I think that’s a rant for another post-- I’ve already made this one long enough!)

#ugh honestly thank you so much for this hahaha #writing stuff #ask memes #answered asks #magnificent-north #ramblings