i want to talk about the novel im writing with @rollerskatinglizard literally all the time because i’m so excited about how well it’s going but i’m terrified to jinx it
ok here’s the (kind of lengthy) blurb:
In a portal fantasy where the four seasons of a magical world are ruled by young men and women abducted from mundane realms, bitter highschool reject Caleb Miller finds himself abruptly appointed the King of Summer. He’s this world’s latest hope to finally end the King of Winter’s brutal reign… but it isn’t until Winter’s Champion, Milo Caldwell, flees to Caleb’s court, shattered in mind and body and begging for help in saving the Northern Capital from its own king, that Caleb finally sees a way to bring an end to Winter’s endless war.
There’s just one final complication. Milo Caldwell was once a kid from Caleb’s own world: his own highschool, even. Formerly a friendly, popular jock, now the knight is a (literally) pale shadow of himself, bereft of his memories of any other place or purpose than his service to Winter’s cruel, domineering sovereign. In unraveling the mystery of Milo’s destruction, Caleb could bring a final balance to the world— but Milo isn’t at all sure he wants to know what Caleb might discover.
you have awakened in me a slavering hunger. MUST READ THIS
*everything* that’s considered romantic has been conditioned by society, it’s performative, like the emotion can be genuine but romantic *gestures* are a societal construct, chocolates, flowers, rings, there’s no inherent act of romance, the purest form of what is conceptualized as “romance” can probably be boiled down to emotion + intent, and the manifestation of that combo’s gonna be different for everyone
an action evoked from a feeling of adoration and the need to express it can be constrained by what society provides, but once it’s made irrelevant the meaning becomes tailored to those experiencing it; someone giving fancy chocolates to their s.o. because it’s ‘the thing to do’ can’t measure up to someone giving the chocolates because they know their s.o. thinks the boxes are nice and really likes hazelnut fillings, same gesture, but former lacks ‘inherent’ romance because romance isn’t ‘inherent’, the later has a standard approach but it goes beyond what’s considered ‘romantic’
Hello I am a big fan of Obstinaterixatrix’ Romance Meta and I’m just gonna add to this bc it’s a good post.
I feel like what makes the difference between something being romantic and something being What Society Says Is Romance is the connection between people.
Let’s say two people arrive on my doorstep. One of them has a bouquet of expensive roses from the florist. The other one has a dead bird in a plastic bag. We all know which one is to be considered the romantic gift (hint: it’s not the corpse)
And it’s not like I don’t like flowers or am allergic or anything, I would probably be flattered. But I have no connection to roses, and like, you can give roses to more or less anyone
Dead birds are not a standard gift, for pretty obvious reasons. A person bringing me a corpse in a plastic bag had to know me well enough to know that I collect bones and process them myself, and you don’t go shopping for birds in the Dead Bird Shop around the corner, so that means this person didn’t go out with the intent of getting me something and came back with an Appropriate Gift, they probably stumbled across something and thought about me (this ‘something’ just so happens to be a dead bird, because I’m weird)And then they had to go through the process of picking this bird up and bagging it and bringing it to me, probably pretty spontaneously and without a calendar event that says Find Dead Bird For Raptor with a timeslot between three and four pm.
You can’t have Corpse I Found In a Ditch be romantic without some sort of connection here. Roses can be romantic, but it can also just, be a formula. Two plos Two Equals Romance. A shortcut for ‘I care about you‘, even though the person might …. not, actually.
If it’s someone who loves fresh flowers in their home but rarely has the money to buy large arrangements, or like OP’s example where person A gets the chocolates because they know their s.o. thinks the boxes are super cute, then we have Standard Romantic Actions actually be romantic, but they might as well not be.
This is where my squad has the joke of someone posting a picture of a dead rat to the skype chat and goes ‘Raptor I saw this and thought of you‘ and I go -exaggerated gasping noise- “how dare you blatantly flirt with me right in front of my girlfriend“ from (and also THIS JOKE that bunch of people were confused about). Because there’s INTEREST and CONNECTION there. They’re obviosuly not actually trying to steal me from my gf, but there is a human connection and a knowledge of who I am and what I want to be associated with. The humor then comes in from the self-awareness that this could very much be the opposite of a compliment in, like, probably most other situations ever.
So TL;DR: Things can’t be romantic without the connection between people, no matter how ‘inherit‘ people claim the gesture is. However, more or less anything can be a romantic gesture if there’s the right connection and consideration behind it. Taking out the trash can be romantic. Bringing home a dead fox can be romantic. There’s no Romance Shortcuts. You have to actually care about the other person (sorry, Writers Of Like 9 Out Of 10 Mainstream Movies), there’s no way around it.
So basically: Care about each other!! If you’re writing, write characters who care about each other!! And if you don’t know what character A could do for character B, you might wanna look into whether or not you’ve made a Cardboard Love Interest, like I feel many mainstream writers do. But that’s a whooooole ‘nother can of worms.
There’s so many cans of worms.
Oh god there’s so many worms.
Please help.
I’ve wondered for a long time why so many fictional romances feel forced and this is the exact reason. So many main couples in media only express their love through performative romance.
This is also why a lot of platonic fictional relationships are seen as romantic because for some reason screenwriters have a habit of making friends express their love for each other with actual thought and intent to their actions.
note to self: just because someone did the thing you were thinking about doing, and did it way better than you could ever hope to do, doesn’t mean it would be stupid or pointless to go ahead and try to still do the thing anyway.
Also, when it comes to creative things? There really is no “better”.
Sure, someone might be more technically accomplished than you – you might not be able to colour as nicely or craft a sentence that rings as poetically – but art is only really secondarily about that. It’s firstmost about what you, uniquely, have to express, and how the precise way you express it might be what others need to relate to it – even if it’s less flashy, less “beautiful”, and gets fewer notes.
I promise you this: there are obscure fanfics with only a handful of notes that are the read-and-re-read favourites of someone too anxious to comment. There are drawings done by 14-year-olds in poorly-blended markers that are someone’s favourite because they spoke to something that nothing else did. There are covers of songs where your voice cracks and you cringe every time you hear it but someone thinks the way it cracked just at that moment added beauty to the song. There are angsty three-line poems you wrote at 4am that someone once called “pretentious emo trash” that are loved by someone else going through the same thing as you.
And I guarantee you, there is something unique about your art. Even if you’re “saying something someone else has said”. Even if you’re the thousandth person to take on the subject. Even if you feel like you’re not at all unique. You’re bound to express something, however subtle, that didn’t exist until then.
Art is about connection. And the more you create, the more chance you have of finding other people who experience the world the way you do.
“But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.“ via @neil-gaiman
The “two cakes” theory of content production.
It was only yesterday that I was lamenting thing I no longer felt allowed to do because someone had done similar.
I ought to read this post daily. Maybe twice daily.
So reblog this if I can pop into your box and ask you questions about writing (You can probably make a version for art, too). And you can ask them to me if you really want to.
Specify fandom if you want for any of the questions.
1. Which is your favorite of the fics you’ve written for X fandom?
2. Favorite piece overall?
3. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?
4. Which has the most “you” in it, however you’d define that?
5. What is an image/set of images that you’re particularly proud of?
6. Idea that you always wanted to write but could never make work?
7. Least favorite plot point/chapter/moment?
8. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment?
9. Favorite character to write?
10. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you’ve written
11. If I’m showing off just one of your pieces to someone, which one should it be?
12. What WIPs do you have going now? Are you excited about them?
13. Are there any things that might have happened in any of your stories, but you changed them at the last minute? (So-and-so dies, they don’t actually kiss, main character has long extended ballet-based dream sequence, etc.)
14. Would you want to write canon for any of your fandoms (like be hired by showrunner to do an episode)? Which one?
15. Does font matter to you when you’re writing a draft?
16. 3 favorite comments ever received on fanfic.
17. Any mean comments? How’d you deal with it? Who laid the smackdown?
18. If you could go back and revise one of your older stories, which would it be?
19. Do you make up scenes at work/on the bus/at the gym? Who are the characters that pop up the most? Do you write them down?
20. Go nuts, and talk about writing. Or write me a little ficlet-whatsit using a character/image/line I shall now specify:
I’ve found that the best way to write a death scene is to make it saddest when it shouldn’t be. The funeral is rushed, the realization of death isn’t spent too much time on, and the characters mourning is more of a blank space filled with hums and a need for endless nothings.
But then Person A finally gets to be alone and gets to their room and looks at the bed and realizes that it’s suddenly a lot bigger. And they’re too short to reach the blinds to close them, and that was always Person B’s job. And they’ll never fold clothes for someone else again, never need to ask someone to turn off the light, never try to stop them from snoring. And then moving away from it all, trying to forget, holding back tears in the kitchen cradling a cup of tea they realize that Person B will never drink tea with them again. And they’ll never help them reach their mug. And when they drop it to the floor, shattering it into millions of helpless individuals there is no one there to tell them not to move, not to step on the glass, not to cut themselves. That the mug has no worth because it’s worth was in the adventures of cleaning up the pieces and remembering it as it was.
There is no one to stop them from hurting. And there is no one to drink tea.
Tragedy comes in the little things. I just wanted to remind you of that.
Fic writers don’t have to share their works with you. They don’t have to write them at all. They do it and they share it because they’re fans of the show/book/movie etc. just like you, and they want to contribute to everyone’s enjoyment of fandom.
Fanfiction is hard to write.
You need a lot of creativity and passion to write fic. You need a ton of motivation and drive to write a complete fic, let alone a good one. Fic authors write for hours and hours and hours, often staying up late into the night just to write. They write through job struggles and personal issues, resorting to phones and tablets when their computers are on the fritz, tapping away on public buses and trains just because they can’t find any other time to write.
Fanfiction is free.
Fic writers give away thousands and thousands of words of pure fandom magic, and you get to consume all of it for the wonderful price of nothing. The only reward writers receive for themselves (besides a sense of accomplishment) is the response they get from you, the reader. Some don’t even feel that accomplishment until they see kudos and comments telling them how much their work was enjoyed.
Please.
No matter how much time you have, even just clicking the kudos button takes less than a second. And if you have time to read 5k words at one go, it’s no stretch at all to take a few more seconds to type ‘good job!’ or ‘i loved this!’ in the comment box and hit send.
Still not convinced?
1. IF YOU’RE EMBARRASSED / SHY,
Fic authors LOVE hearing from you. Don’t worry about whether you think you’re going to phrase your response well. That’s literally the last thing we care about. Just knowing that you had a good time with something we made is EVERYTHING to us.
2. IF YOU STILL JUST DON’T SEE THE POINT,
I have a very special challenge for you, my friend.
Write a fic.
Go forth, and write a complete, well-structured, well-characterised fic with organic, stimulating dialogue interwoven into a proper, fully fleshed-out storyline.
please kill this idea that just because a female character is not physically strong and does not physically fight that her very existence is, by default, a sexist portrayal of women in media.
the “damsel in distress” trope is only harmful when that aspect of the character is all there is to the character. if the writers give attention to her backstory, her feelings, her struggles, and her development, then she’s not a faceless prop just being used for male empowerment. she’s a person. a person who happens to not fight.
there’s nothing wrong with that. and to push this notion that this is somehow bad and wrong and that women should never need saving, even in war and crime fiction, is ludicrous. it swings the pendulum too far in the other direction and creates the problem of only showcasing women who are physically fit, or butch, or masculine.
people come in all shapes, sizes, temperaments, and ideologies. stop worrying about stupid tropes and focus that energy on questioning whether or not a character is actually well-written and cared for by the author instead.
this post is making the rounds again and i love seeing all of the wide array of female characters tagged on it despite the fact that i wrote it specifically about makoto makimura from yakuza 0
but at the same time it kind of makes me sad that there are so many women like this portrayed in media and yet the vast majority of audiences write them all off so easily as though they’re worthless
i’d argue it even sends a dangerous message to actual women, like sorta implying women who have been kidnapped, abused, rape or such are worthless for needing outside help to save them from their situations.
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