Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
“Fan fiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped in a sealed bunker. They don’t do it for money. That’s not what it’s about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction. They’re fans, but they’re not silent, couchbound consumers of media. The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.”
(This is really good, especially for a large mainstream publication! IMO what it misses is that in the history of human storytelling, what they call “literature” is really the outlier. If fanfic is what storytelling would look like after an apocalypse, that’s because fanfic is what storytelling has looked like since soon after humans started telling stories, basically – shared culture, remixing, commentary, reexamination, reversal.)
But what if half your ocs are softys and not made for fighting?
dating sim
this post changed the game
Hey btw if you don’t know how to program, you should check out [novelty], which is a free Visual Novel creation software. Absolutely no programming required, and it’s super easy to use, I played with it some when I was a teen but the only reason I didn’t do much with it is cuz I made my story complicated and had like 5000 different branching routes that kept spawning new routes and made myself confused LMAO
But yeah, it’s a WYSIWYG with a really straight-forward GUI, if I remember correctly.
It even comes with some free backgrounds and characters and stuff, and this is what it looks like:
Did I mention it’s super duper free? It hasn’t been updated since 2010, but it has basically all you’d need to make a simple visual novel.
Just make sure your DirectX runtime is updated, cuz it can act buggy if it’s outdated, but this program is so old that I doubt it’d even be an issue lol
holy shit
This is so cool? Can you imagine fanfic in this format?
Some of you are reblogging because you think its funny that programmers would talk to ducks. I’m reblogging because I think its funny picturing a programmer explaining their code, realizing what they did when they explain the bad code, then grabbing the strangling the duck while yelling “WHY WAS THE FIX THAT SIMPLE!? AM I GOING BLIND!”
AS A PROGRAMMER I CAN TELL YOU THAT THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU FUCKING DO WE HAD TO BAN THE DUCKS FROM MY CLASSES BECAUSE EVERYONE WOULD FLIP THE DUCK OR THROW IT AT A WALL OR SOMETHING WHEN THEY FIGURED OUT THE PROBLEM IN THEIR CODE
so that’s the function of a rubber duck
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I work at a startup and part of the onboarding package you get when you first start working here now includes a rubber duck. We also have a bigger version of the duck for the extra hard problems. Sometimes one duck doesn’t cut it and you need to borrow your neighbors to get more ducks on the problem. One time we couldn’t figure out why something wasn’t working right so we assembled the counsel of ducks and by the grace of the Duck Gods were we able to finally come to a solution. These ducks have saved many lives and should be respected for the heroes they are.
I use this for writing, actually. Explain what I’m doing and what I want to do and the different ways i can get to point B from A, as well as the different problems, amazingly working them out as I explain why I could or couldn’t the different things. I love the Rubber Duck theory.
Former programmer, can confirm. We didn’t have a duck in our office so our other programmer, who I shared a space with, used me as a duck proxy. (For the explaining, not the throwing.)
There was more than one day where I’d casually hear “Hey can you be a duck for a minute?”
sometimes i really love my fics. i wrote that because i wanted to read it. i love it. nobody visits my fics more than me. they remind me that i’m a hard worker, that i created something. it’s mine and i cherish it and love it because it’s exactly what i wanted so i made it.
and other days i’m crippled by self criticism and hate everything and can’t bear to look at my own work because i know it’ll never compare to the greats
but i live for the days i love my work. because it’s mine, and i made it. i didn’t wait for somebody else to make what i dream about. i went and did it myself.
so don’t feel like your work is awful
it’s the stuff you dreamed about. it’s the stuff you decided to make a reality. it’s not about quality, or poetry, or how perfectly your sculpt your words or keep it so deeply in character; because it’s what you dreamed and it’s what you wanted to see, so you made it.
keep writing; it’s yours, and you made it. and if you want to continue to sharpen and improve yourself? then do it. it’s all yours and you can make it whatever you want.
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