#jo’s thoughts

[once-in-a-blood-moon]

Solomon's laying on the couch, loopy and dazed from a spell that backfired on him. MC's rubbing his chest to comfort him.

Solomon: My spouse will get upset if they see you touching me like that on my chest.

MC: I am your spouse.

Solomon:

[undercoverpena]

I’m about to get mushy and sweet and grateful so if you’d prefer to skip that, meet my new plant.

june isn’t usually a good mental health month for me.

which sucks cause it’s pride and the sun comes out, but somehow there’s always more grey clouds for me even if the sky is blue.

one year ago, to try and combat it, I began a series that was the most “me” thing I’d shared since coming back to tumblr. a thing which both terrified me—in some ways, helped me find myself again after a slew of bad june’s and bad brain times.

making javi peña fall in love with a girl through texts was like rekindling a relationship with an old version of me from before and allowed me to take that version (and all I’d learnt) forward.

this year, I’ve just wrapped up the final scene of my current series where frankie works in a hardware store. now, it’s not edited, but it’s all written, all of the scenes so I have less pressure each week and all the little moments I’ve envisioned since february are down.

and, understandably, I was sad, but also like really fucking proud? like look at me go. in one year look at how far I’ve come? the stories I’ve managed to tell, the writing I’ve been able to do that not only helps me but has brought smiles to all of you, the lovely people who continue to show up even if I shy, quiet and very anxious.

my usual routine when I finish the draft of a series is to go get cake. a thing I do on the final posting day too.

and while that had been my mission, then I saw this plant.

I kill plants. it isn’t a thing I intend to do, but I do. but this one caught my eye. in a plant plot in a shade that friends often call jo-pink. and I knew that had to be my gift to myself for finishing.

not cake (like usual), not a big iced drink that I’ll love until half way down and then feel sick from, but a plant.

I wanted to call it rainy, but the name didn’t fit. anyone who names plants will know there’s a vibe.

so meet gilbert, or gilly/bertie (we’re still workshopping), and while I water them, and post this and run, thank you, for showing up even though you don’t need to. thank you for bringing a smile to my face on the days it feels really hard.

and thank you for allowing me to have a place that I feel safe to share, because while my brain will create stories, it’s you all showing up that makes it feel safer to get my finger to press the post button each week.

i’m so happy one year ago I shared late night texts, and I’m really happy that today I finished the first draft of do me yourself.

I love you all.

[jo-harrington]

Thoughts about Writing and Creating

Earlier today I read an article that really resonated with me and specifically made me think about some things within the corner I exist in within the tumblr fanfiction community.

First an intro: Hi! My name is Jo! I’m a 28 year old professional designer and visual artist, and I write about a silly metal head from the 80’s. I’ve been reading and writing fanfic in some way shape or form since I was 12. (Way before I should have.) There are people who’ve been in fandom longer than I have. And some people who are new to this world.

The thoughts I’m conveying below are mine alone and you may agree or you may not. Me writing this is to get these thoughts out and, hopefully, inspire some peace in my community and impart some lessons on some newer members of fandom. If you disagree with my opinions, please feel free to make your own. Post about them or shoot me a PM and we can have a peaceful discussion.

This post is NOT meant as an open door to hatred. If you come to me looking to fight, or dehumanize me, you will be blocked. I have seen enough in my time on tumblr to know how to protect my peace.

That being said, let’s proceed:

The article (I’ll link it below) was about the new Little Mermaid movie and how this “live action Disney revolution” is just a signifier of how media is recycled and that no idea is a new one. In any creative outlet. And while the article itself delves into the history of the Little Mermaid or mermaids themselves and all of that, the nuance of reference versus inspiration, the final idea was: never stop creating, never stop being inspired, never stop exploring.

How does that pertain to fanfiction though? How does that apply to me?

There’s been a lot of talk recently of “this person copied this idea” or “this is just a ripoff of that.” Enough that it drives people off of tumblr or stops them creating altogether. Makes people think that they’ve done something wrong. Some of this talk is is done by creators themselves, some is done by devoted friends or fans. And it is truly a shame, and I think it’s time that we stop.

This is not saying “plagiarism” or “copy and pasting word for word with a bit of name changing” is ok. No, those things are not ok. And people are allowed to be protective of their creations! Writers and artists put their heart and soul into their work.

But in terms of people’s genuine creativity…we need to be more tolerant of overlap. Whether we create or consume.

I’m currently writing a Freaky Friday Alternate Universe featuring 2 characters from a Netflix show. My story would not exist if these other media sources and inspirations didn’t exist. Does that mean my story should not exist or be told? Does that mean my writing isn’t good? No and no.

I don’t profit from my work. I write for me. For my friends. For you. I have nothing to gain and nothing to lose. And if someone came to me tomorrow and said “hey, I wanted to write another Freaky Friday story,” so long as they didn’t copy my work word for word…well…you know what? I would be happy about it! Welcome it. Encourage them.

How can I tell someone no? Forbid them to try and use my idea—whether they were inspired by it or just…stumbled on it by chance as they got the idea organically themselves? What if they had genuine inspiration and could write this story better? Who, if they’ve never written before, might have just found their first chance to do so?

How could I dare to stop someone from being inspired? When I dared to follow the same inspiration for myself?

Now I know there are a lot more personal or original ideas and fanfictions out there. But at the end of the day, everything had been done in some way shape or form. We are all inspired by something. We have overlapping experiences. (I myself have found a good friend in this community who has life experiences so close to my own it’s frightening.)

There are 8 billion of us on this planet, thinking and imagining. Living. There is no one in a million idea anymore when we are consuming so much diverse media at any given time during the day.

Again, if you’re a creator, you’re allowed to be protective of your creation. But you are not allowed to stunt someone’s inspiration or growth. We are not fighting one another in fandom. We are all in this little corner together. Someone getting a like or a comment doesn’t mean that a like or a comment was taken away from you.

And if you’re a consumer of fanfiction, if you’re here to support a friend or just someone who created something you love…yes, it may be something you look forward to, but you should never hurt someone just because you think they might have “stolen” or “hurt” your writer friends. This is a place for all of us to feel safe.

Consider the Golden Rule: Treat others the way you would want to be treated.

There are no big blogs or small blogs. Notes aren’t important. What is important is kindness and community.

And we should all be welcome here.

Article: There’s No Such Thing as a New Idea

[celestiall222]

How some of these namor x reader fics look 💀

Namor is for POC 🤷🏻‍♀️

[jovienna]

my only ‘fanfic-esque’ claim to fame moment in my life was this one time where i interrupted an interaction between these two guys i went to high school with (it was a private catholic college, so yk how it goes) during a popular girl's birthday party. how i was invited was purely by a stroke of luck and being seated next to her in art class & being the class clown etc. i was feeling super uncomfortable and needed to take a shit (as one does) so i asked the birthday girl, ‘heyyy where’s your bathroom i need to use it!!’ so she directs me towards the bathroom which is like. closer to the back of the house? not so many people were there is what i’m saying. so while the party raged on i'm just skedaddling down to the back in sheer pain and agony and craving the sweet release of not death but rather my bowels. but when i approach the bathroom… i can see that the fan is on. like yk when u turn on the bathroom light and it makes that sound that goes along the lines of BRRRRRRRRRRR? yeah, that. anyways i barely have to open the door (it was already ajar) thinking, ‘oh! somebody's probably used it recently and forgot to the fan off!’ but no. no. i was wrong. inside the room were two guys from maths class. aka two of the most homophobic shits i knew. they said every slur under the sun and constantly picked on effeminate male classmates and would probably be confused why women would rather pick the bear. these guys were pinning each other to the bathroom wall and piss drunk. one guy was saying stuff like ‘thanks for being such . such a good friend’ & showering his neck in what like sloppy kisses. but the other was trying to push him off saying . ‘no you told me you wanted to stop this’. and honestly at this point i didn't even care they were doing all this in the bathroom bc i just really needed to shit and had to get their attention so i coughed and was said .,, ‘can you guys take this somewhere else,.... i need the bathroom’ they were really flushed n embarrassed ,, left the bathroom without a word ,., with all things said and done.. i FINALLY closed the door and proceeded to take the biggest dump of my life. we never spoke of that incident again tho. not that there was a chance to seeing as i wouldn’t go anywhere near their ‘crowd’. i do know that one of the guys moved away to a fancy all boys school in the big city to further his football career, and we never saw him again. i think he has a girlfriend now. i’ve since graduated and will never learn the answers.

[liuhko]

Account revamp, pls appreciate ✊🏾

[fanfic-gremlin-ft-trauma]

happy birthday to one of the greatest fics of all time <3 ( @bisexuallsokka , thank you for writing this masterpiece.)

[moodyseal]

TOApril Day 28 – Silent Thunder

Last prompt for this year!! Waystation gang to the rescue ✊

[starstriix]

i love gen 2 girls and i love drawing ponies,, so i put em together

I’ve also ponified the gen 2 boys!!

Also, here’s a post with explanation of the species choices and cutie mark designs if you’re interested!

[rosepompadour]

You made a princess of me.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1869)

[once-in-a-blood-moon]

Him.

[undercoverpena]

on today’s episode of “pinterest is trying to kill me”, I present thee: broad back (+ chest, everything) morales

<bites fist> like the actual fuck, fish?

[mistyheartrbs]

cannot stop thinking about weird barbie and queercoding and how her subplot mirrors margot robbie barbie’s main plotline and the Implications of it all. because like. weird barbie is introduced as this outsider who lives on the fringes of barbieland society (it’s intentionally never made clear whether she was exiled or chose to set up camp there herself; the way mckinnon plays her makes me think probably a mix of both) who, as one of the other barbies (i want to say alexandra shipp/the author?) explains, was one of the prettiest barbies until a little girl played with her too hard, and now she’s an outcast. the barbies call her Weird Barbie behind her back and to her face. this is because of something she couldn’t control (first parallel to robbie’s barbie, whose crisis is brought on by gloria’s own feelings of negativity) and yet she’s forced away because of it. going to hop onto a brief tangent here and say one of the things that never sat right with me in toy story 3 was the weird...demonization? of the preschoolers who chew on/break/otherwise harm the toys because in a story where the Very Ultimate Dream of any toy is to be loved and played with it’s bizarre that they then seemed to be saying well, actually, there are Wrong ways to play with toys when these kids didn’t know any better. and it would’ve been easy for that to be weird barbie’s deal - a freaky little girl played with her in the “wrong” way and doomed her as a result. but she gets to be a hero! she leads the resistance!

robbie’s barbie is immune to ken’s brainwashing bc she experienced the real world’s misogyny and more specifically felt gloria’s messy complex human emotions - her “dark and crazy” drawings, as sasha calls them - stemming from the pain of being a woman in society. weird barbie has never been to the real world and still manages to stay immune, along with her mansion of misfit toys (including, as other tumblr users have pointed out, magic earring ken aka Gay Ken) - there’s layers to that. in both robbie’s barbie’s and weird barbie’s cases, their girls placed Weird and Unpleasant feelings onto the perfect ideal that is Barbie™ and absolutely upended their lives as a result - but they became fully realized people because of it. barbie chooses to go back to the real world to live as a human woman because she wants to feel all those messy and bizarre human feelings! she loves them! she loves humanity and the avenues through which she reaches that love are women being unabashedly freaky and weird both within and outside of her understanding of the world she lives in. what a queer experience. what a way to showcase that scary exciting feeling of being on the very fringes of girlhood and needing to define it for yourself. pink birkenstocks. she leaves barbieland better than she found it. she can’t stay there anymore. she loves the people around her and she loves herself and that self-love is something she’s earned now. weird barbie gets to run sanitation. gloria’s ideas for ordinary barbie foster understanding. barbie is sasha’s stepmom now probably. greta gerwig you’ve done it again.

[celestiall222]

X reader then I go to read it and suddenly I got a name and I’m white and petite 💀💀 y’all PLEASEEE be serious

[jovienna]

hi guys,

there's been a bit of a hiccup with my blog lately and it seems like my posts aren't showing up in the wider tag searches (particularly for In Memoriam).,, i’ve gone through my visibility settings and amended the issue tho it didn’t put the posts back on the wider search tags which was. frustrating. ;-;

soo i’ll be reposting some of my previous content just to ensure it's back on the radar and reaching a wider audience <33 if you notice me resharing stuff you’ve seen before, don't worry ur not experiencing a glitch in the matrix haha. just pretend you saw nothing

[liuhko]

ALRIGHT BOYS. I feel like WRITING ✊🏾 (aka I finally have time in my schedule) and I’m thinking dumb cowboy(or girl #lgbt) and fem reader 🤭 but which character? Respond or I won’t write a thing. /hj