ivyblossom

[ivyblossom]

[ivyblossom]

The Library of Congress is changing the subject heading "Gulf of Mexico" to "Gulf of America". They are also rolling back hard-won changes to Indigenous place names. Because of the nature of cataloguing consortial agreements, almost all academic libraries in North America will be expected to follow suit.

Canadians in universities: ask your librarian if this change is going to be implemented at your library.

[ivyblossom]

In honor of the Ides of March, my favorite Tiktok

[ivyblossom]

Victory

I revised. I really did it, like, I made several significant structural adjustments to a draft. I'm even ready to make more as soon as I figure out what those should be. LOOK AT ME GO!

I know this isn't a big deal really, but it's a big deal for ME. Why is this such a big deal to me? I don't know! I guess I never really understood how a story worked, so I couldn't change something big at the beginning without feeling like it just trashes the whole thing and I'm on an entirely different fork of the story now now, the rest has to be rewritten.

But I did it! More than once! I shall get cake.

[ivyblossom]

Nah

I see there's a push to be extra nice and sympathetic to people who voted for a fascist regime and end up getting hurt by it. I don't think that's a great idea.

The recommendation to hide your actual feelings and embrace these people is based on the hope that acting as if you forgive them and empathize with them will make them better, less fascist people. It's actually just a way for them to be forgiven in every meaningful way and ensure that they never feel any accountability for their actions. It's also a way to shut you up. Who does that serve? Your side? Or theirs?

I mean, for starters, it's a lie. No one actually feels any sympathy for those people. The fascists certainly don't, and the people who cried when the fascists got elected mostly don't sympathize with fascist voters getting what they voted for.

There is a narrative that if you're gentle and kind with fascists in their moments of distress, they will become less fascist because of how amazingly supportive and welcoming you are. Is there any evidence that that's true? Because it sounds like what the fascists want you to do: never make them uncomfortable, always embrace and support them, always accept them, no matter what atrocities they commit against you. Stay quiet about it, pretend it never happened. Show them how generous and forgiving you are, that'll teach'em!

Buried inside there is the idea that those people are fascists because someone like you wasn't kind enough to them, and pretending to forgive them now will somehow undo that earlier mistake and make them see the light. If you're honest about your anger and the harm they've caused, you'll just alienate them!

Who does this victim-blaming serve?

The idea that lying about reality to protect fascists' feelings will somehow reduce fascism is just absorbed censorship. It's a neurotic, perfectionist mind trap. It's a control fantasy.

I don't think it's respectful or kind to lie to people. I don't think lying to people in the hopes of manipulating them is particularly winsome for your side, especially once they learn the truth (that you were furious with them and not at all sympathetic). Unless the idea is that they never learn that truth. In which case, you're not manipulating them. You're bowing down to them.

[ivyblossom]

Crow Update

Me and my murder of crows continue to be good friends. I think I frighten people sometimes when I'm walking down the road and suddenly 40 crows appear out of nowhere all headed towards me. I used to think people were getting annoyed at me for befriending so many crows, but now I realize they might wondering if this is a Hitchcock The Birds situation and worrying about my safety. I am perfectly safe! These birbs are family.

I am fully embracing the weird bird lady reputation I am probably building.

I talked to my crows. You have to talk to creatures. All creatures. It's disrespectful not to. It's silly to assume all creatures are dumber than us and wouldn't understand. Crows can see colours I can't even imagine and don't know exist. Crows can probably see forces in the world that we can't. They might understand quantum mechanics, you don't know that they don't, I say. So: talk to animals. It's rude not to.

I met one crow the other day who didn't react like all the other ones do when I throw peanuts. I assume that was a new guy from a different area, and we must not have met yet. So I picked up the peanuts and delivered them in a different spot, and welcomed him to the neighbourhood.

I think in the video game played by crows, I am a loot crate. I'm okay with that.

[ivyblossom]

I understand that the answer is probably no, and I completely respect that.

Is anyone who knows me willing to look at a draft of an original story? It's been pretty heavily revised already, so it's not raw, or anything, and I'm open to further revision. It would help to get another perspective on that. Upper middle grade speculative fiction, 72K.

I have been trying to apply all the advice I've been given and gleaned over the years on how to build original stories well, and I learned a lot writing this one. It's definitely the best original story I've written, but whether I actually figured out how to do it well yet or not is an open question.

[ivyblossom]

Costume appreciation series: Wicked: Part I (2024) dir Jon M. Chu

Costume Design by Paul Tazewell

bonus:

[ivyblossom]

The Tuvix manoeuvre.

effectively killing two of your protagonists who are actually the same protagonist by forcing them to develop into a kind of mutual twin-absorbed-in-the-womb type chimeric synthesis of each other thereby introducing a third new protagonist who is actually both and neither of them. and at the end of season two episode three no less.

[ivyblossom]

That is an incredibly stupid film and this detail couldn't matter any less, but it is still bothering me that this kid is a) this excited about a CD-rom, but also, b) somehow intuiting that this program could not possibly be running on the built-in drive, but had to be running off a CD drive. Like, why?

There was no CD slot on the machine. It was a kiosk screen built into a land rover running this dumb touchscreen map program and she just randomly decided couldn't be running off a hard drive. She is meant to be a "computer nerd" though she prefers the term "hacker". The hacker can hear the whiz of the CD drive through that plastic housing and distinguish it from the whiz of a hard disk spinning up, I guess?

Imagine the logistics, though: why on earth wouldn't you just put your built-in program on the hard drive? In 1993, even that would have been fragile, given that it was still moving parts, but at least it's not running off a device more sensitive than balls. CD drives, the things that are notoriously averse to any kind of movement, and were never very good at being portable, why would you put one of those in your land-rover-mounted kiosk in a dinosaur park?

That's why I never bothered to buy a discman, they were so finicky and sensitive people had to try to walk with them upright to get them to work. It was such a downgrade from the walkman. Tapes don't give a shit what direction they're facing, CDs need the vibes and the temperature to be just so, and even the slightly nudge causes them to catastrophically fail.

But sure, put a spinning, fragile, removable disc in your dinosaur park land rover kiosk for all the sticky-fingered kids to enjoy. Why?

Is this why the land rovers in Jurassic Park (1993) are on tracks? To keep the movement smooth for the interactive CD-rom?

I mean that guess that tracks, these are also the people who put poisonous plants, apex predators, and dinosaurs spitting acid into their family-friendly amusement park, so sure. These people are made of bad decisions.

Maybe the cd-rom in the land rover is Jurassic Park (1993) in a nutshell, really.

Unrated lines from Jurassic Park, 1993

A child looks at a screen, ecstatic: "It's an interactive CD-rom!"

[ivyblossom]

Unrated lines from Jurassic Park, 1993

A child looks at a screen, ecstatic: "It's an interactive CD-rom!"

[ivyblossom]

Feed Your Own Beast

The perennial complaint from fanfic writers that they put so much effort into a story, therefore they are owed fannish engagement, and there ought to be some sort of return on investment for their fannish labour: I am perplexed. I'm not sure where these folks got the message that readers have the option to rank and sort fics by author effort. I must have glossed over that AO3 field all these years. Is it a Likert scale?

I understand wanting comments and kudos and all that. Getting fannish engagement on your work is amazing. Nothing has shaped me or helped me improve as a writer more than fannish interaction. I understand hoping for it, and I understand being disappointed when you don't get it. I understand bailing on a story because no one seems to be into it and that harshes your squee. Posting something in a vacuum when you were hoping to contribute to a fannish conversation is a bummer.

But in a "don't like, don't read" world where unsolicited con crit is harshly frowned upon, where the interaction you get should be neutral at worst and is usually only positive, thinking of that enthusiastic engagement as basic payment for entry is ugly.

It's not healthy to be annoyed that your effort isn't being duly rewarded when the only reward available is unalloyed praise. If you were being rewarded for effort, that praise wouldn't be genuine. Praise must be given freely. Fandom isn't a reward system for creator effort, and it's not a capitalist structure when people need to pay to participate, or where we should feel compelled to compensate anyone in fannish tokens.

I've read quite a lot of angry push back against the response "write for yourself", as if it means that you can't want or value fannish interaction and validation, and you can't be disappointed if you don't get any. That's not what it means. Most fannish creators hope their work will be well-received and that other fans will engage with it. But if you're writing fanfiction with the expectation that you will be doused in praise for your efforts, you're setting yourself up for a fall.

If you are writing for praise, you will always be disappointed no matter how much of it you get. Writing is hard, and there isn't enough praise to compensate for the effort and time it takes. "Write for yourself" doesn't mean "place no value on fannish enthusiasm for your work". It means "don't do this if you aren't feeding your own beast by doing so". Producing that fic needs to be part of your reward system. If it's not, if creating that fic and putting in the world doesn't feed your beast at all and you need the involvement of others to make it worth the effort, don't write the fic.

I don't care it that means fewer fics. We don't need more fics created by people sacrificing their time and effort when that labour doesn't bring them joy and/or satisfaction. Fan creators don't work for fandom, and fandom doesn't owe us payment.

The most heartbreaking part of this to me is what the complaints about insufficient interaction do to the people who have interacted. When fan writers claim they are not getting sufficient feedback and admonish people to interact more and better, it invariably makes the people who did interact with their work feel like their interaction wasn't good enough. That's unfair and untrue. If you expect more and better praise for your own efforts, give more and better praise.

I love fannish interaction. I cherish comments and kudos. I love recs and reviews. I am thrilled by any and all comments on fics, even fics that are a decade old or older, it's all great, validating, and wonderful. I am so grateful to the people who offer it and I welcome interaction at all times. I will never not welcome it with absolute and genuine delight, even when it's a key smash. But there is and never will be a toll to pay for reading.

Readers who read and don't kudos or comment: you are valid. Readers who feel guilt when reading admonishments to interact more: you are valid, and having nothing to feel guilty about. Fannish engagement should only ever be freely offered, never coerced. Enthusiastic consent only. If/when you decide to kudos/comment, do it because you mean it and you want to. And only then. Don't let anyone tell you what you should want to do. That's up to you.

[ivyblossom]

Lessons in Story: Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is not an element of story, and yet here we are.

I'm aware that AI is bad for the environment. So's tumblr. That's all true. I'm also aware that AI scrapes copyrighted material like google does. I'm aware of how it steals art for its knowledge base without compensating artists and uses is as a model and replacement for skills. That's bad. I'm not going to address any of that here.

I have been observing how people talk about using AI in various parts of their writing process at the same time as I'm been trying to understand my own process and the obstacles I'm facing, and these two topics have oddly collided.

As I've said previously, my background is in some kind of woo woo where narrative comes out in one whole piece. So the fact that writing is many different and iterative pieces is something I had to figure out in my own bizarre way, but at the moment I now understand the basic process to be in these four general stages:

dreaming/planning (coming up with characters, ideas, goals, worlds, etc.)

outlining (not to say that this isn't many sub-stages, all of these steps are big catagories)

writing (actually putting words into sentences so your story exists)

Editing (revising, restructuring, polishing, etc.)

Are there more steps that I'm not accounting for? Those are the stages as I understand them. You can move back and forth through these stages throughout the process, so it's not necessarily linear, though it could be. For me, the key has been embracing the fact these are all radically different activities that require a completely different headspace, different skills, sometimes different tools, and a different perspective on narrative. That has been freeing revelation, because I was trying to do most of it at the same time.

But here's what else I've learned:

Dreaming/planning: this is a zero consistency space when it comes to how close or how far away you are from your protagonist. Are you feeling what they feel, or are you 30,000 feet up looking at the task they have in front of them and the path they're going to take? Or are you somewhere in between? Kind of all of the above at different points.

Outlining: in my experience, this can and should include emotional through lines, but outlining usually focuses on the 30,000 foot view. I have personally never written an outline that didn't miss critical details because of the 30,000 foot gap between me and the protagonist when I outline.

Writing: this seems like the very closest and most intimate you get with your story and your protagonist, right? This is where you live through it with them in extreme detail. There is no distance between you and them, you have to use a telescope to see 30,000 feet up. I find I have to revise my outline in small ways because I often underestimate or overestimate what something's going to feel like on the ground. This is like a micro-discovery phase: not plot discovery, emotional and intimate detail discovery.

Editing: I'm not an expert at this, but so far I feel like it goes back to being extremely inconsistent. It's either very close in a different way, or 30,000 feet up, or various in-between levels, depending on the type of editing or revision. And sometimes it's none of those, it's completely outside looking at how many times you use the word "feel" or whether your verbs and nouns agree.

Right. So people try to insert AI to do the graft for one or more of these stages.

AI in stage 1: I've seen some folks talk about using AI to get ideas for stories. I don't understand that, ideas are the easiest part of this process, as far as I can tell. Life's a rich pageant, maybe that's not universally true. Now, having AI to help you refine an idea, I can see that. Especially if you ask it to point out tropes and cliches as you go. Is that bad? Is that cheating? I dunno.

AI in stage 2: I've never seen anyone say they do this. If you have an amazing and complete story idea and you want to shaped into a 3 or 5 act structure, or a hero's journey, etc. I'm sure AI could do that, but that's mainly just typing. That's like AI as workbook. Is that cheating? I dunno. Does an AI generated outline help you? Or do you just skip the thinking that would have created the details of your story? Hard to say.

AI in stage 3: The wildest version of using AI in the creation of fiction, and there are whole subreddits for it. This is the people who are constructing novels scene by scene by telling AI to write it for them to their specifications and then "heavily editing" the result. So they are ostensibly doing stage 1, 2, and 4 themselves, and are outsourcing stage 3, the hard graft. Though I'd be very surprised if they aren't also using AI for stage 4, but let's assume they aren't.

Stage 3 is the only part of writing process that is protected by copyright, so it's a weird one to outsource. It's also the stage, in my experience, where you do micro-discovery, the in-the-moment scene details and the actual, living emotional experience of your story that you can't completely capture in outline. So if you just animate your outline without living through the story with your characters, it's always going to feel emotionally 30,000 feet in the air, I think. Right? If you feed AI an outline, that's what you'd get. i think doing this is just avoiding doing the most intimate and immediate discovery process of creating a story, and I don't think that serves the story or the writer (or "writer").

I'm intrigued that people think you can do this and it makes sense. You'd have to believe that the writing process is simply describing the contents of your outline, but I don't think that's true. It's like trying to get from the twelfth floor to the first floor by skipping the stairs, the elevator or the escalator and just leaping into the air assuming you'll land just fine because those intermediary systems are just time-wasters anyway.

I've read some arguments that using AI for stage 3 is something people with disabilities need to get their stories out into the world. As a neurodivergent person, I think that's short-sighted and is a disservice to those stories. I'm pretty sure it's just skipping the work of living through the emotional through line of the story and just not making all the little decisions and constructing the tiny details that go into the telling of a story. That's a heck of a missing staircase. Outlines aren't stories. Skipping the writing part means you're missing 2/3rds of the discovery, and therefore 2/3rds of the richness and depth of the story. How does that serve disabled voices? I don't buy it.

AI in stage 4: the one that looks innocuous but is actually dangerous. Dumping your work into AI and having it fix everything for you. This is a bad idea. Dump your work in there if you want to, but have it tell you what it's finding that needs adjustment so you can make decisions about it yourself. Copying and pasting out of an AI engine means you aren't making decisions about it, you're deferring decisions to a machine. That's the fastest way possible to erase your own voice. I can see getting it to flag things it has questions about, but taking AI advice on your writing is way too trusting.

I think this is especially dangerous for writers who don't have confidence in their own voice. AI's voice may seem like a better chose to them, and that's really sad.

I have more to say about AI, but this is more than enough for now.

[ivyblossom]

Julia Howarth, editor for The Communicator (a Star Trek fanzine/newsletter), 1975.

"There is a new baby in the family. His name is Randy. He is grey, with green teeth and a great carriage. He typed the entire COMMUNICATOR. He is my typewriter, which I up and bought with $20 that should have gone to the electric bill!" "[The Communicator] was assembled by literally cutting and pasting. Articles were cut out and glued on the pages. Artwork was also cut out and glued to the page. The titles and page numbers were hand written or calligraphed. Sources of artwork were fannish artists, prints of Star Trek film clips, TV Guides and newspapers, and photocopies of pictures from professional magazines. We then took the masters to one of the few copy shops available in the 1970s to print the pages. The magazine was hand folded and collated, then stapled with a tiny Swingline Cub stapler. This magazine was a very amateur labor of love."

[ivyblossom]

The fair field of BBC Sherlock and ACD fic is so crowded, and so many of its treasures are brand new, that I'm constantly perplexed by the question "is the Sherlock fandom dead?"

Here are some new or current fics that deserve to be known and read, and if they are, will be loved:

Keeping the Bees by emilycare (5/7 ch., 9600 words so far): No one touches the strings joining music and the heart more finely than @keirgreeneyes. Every chapter is a delight, and can be read independently. Apply generously in case of cosmic despair.

Summary: Moments from the life of Rosie Watson-Holmes and the bees of 221B Baker Street. Music, memories, love and loss.

Some Variations of the Verb ‘To Love’ by Snowfilly1 (2/3 ch., 6022 words so far). I can't say with any precision what it is about Snowfilly2's writing that is so rich yet weightless, lush yet light--I think it's the things they leave out as much as what they put in. An utterly unique voice in the fandom.

Summary: Three times John went on holiday; three different tenses of the verb ‘to love.’ A love story, over and over.

H.O.U.N.D. by KtwoNtwo (11/16 ch., 24K words so far): What if Sherlock only found John Watson in Baskerville? This story shows us Sherlock investigating Baskerville without John.

Summary: When Sherlock takes on the case of Henry Knight he is unprepared for what he will find at Baskerville. Behind the facade of doped up monkeys, glowing rabbits, and the ever-present alien joke Sherlock suspects there's a darker trial being run. One without full govt authority that involves a very human subject.

Our Division by 72reasons (1/? ch., 1587 words): from the writer of The Perfect Stranger, Big Ben, and Walk of Shame. Need I say more? @onesmallfamily is always a wonder.

Summary: Sherlock Holmes returns from two years away, after acquiring a slight cocaine addiction and dismantling Moriarty's network, with all of the hope in the world that he will be able to re-claim his life, his flat, and the love of his live, his best friend John Watson. Sherlock's hopes are dashed when he returns to find John has moved on and is practically engaged to be married.

A note for those who only read completed fics: I hear you, but hear me out: timely encouragement is often what makes for completed fics. 👀 THANKS FOR REBLOGGING!

If you'd like "to be or not to be" tagged just let me know.

@iwlyanmw @starrla89 @helloliriels @ghostofnuggetspast @naefelldaurk @jobooksncoffee @lololollywrites @redmondcollege @copperplatebeech @imnova @kettykika78 @mazaherstuff @bluebellofbakerstreet @johnwatso @topsyturvy-turtely @meetinginsamarra @stellacartography @missdeliadili @chriscalledmesweetie @shiplocks-of-love @itzmi @safedistancefrombeingsmart @whatnext2020 @fieryphrazes

[ivyblossom]

Lessons in Story: Blather

I've been on a journey with planning and outlining for a long time now, but as a former pantser, it still feels very fresh to me, and everything about it is surprising.

None of this comes naturally to me at all. Once again: when I say "lessons", I mean the lessons I have learned, not lessons of value to anyone else, you're probably better at this than I am. I'm very open to feedback and ideas on planning, this is foreign territory for me.

My biggest revelation about planning and outlining is that, after years of hating and dreading anything even remotely structured, it turns out that I really enjoy this part. It's ridiculous and fun.

My paradigm shift was going from thinking of it as some (ugh!) structured version of writing to it being an entirely different activity. I seems closer to daydreaming than to writing. It doesn't take from the experience of writing, it's adding a new, fun version of composing story that's just as creative and immersive and fun, and even more self-indulgent, it's just from a slightly different vantage point and is less gruelling. It's also easier to do when I'm tired, so I can even see it as something I can do when I don't feel like writing, so it's not even overlapping time-wise.

It's taken me a while to figure how to do this in a way that makes sense and feels good. This is what I've managed so far.

It's blathering. It has no order and no structure, and I'm not sure I even understand what's happening in this process. Maybe one day I will. It comes out as a mess of random thoughts and ideas. It is documented daydreaming.

There have been times when I would just keep all that in my head and have it fuel whatever I did, but that isn't a very reliable or predictable way to function, and it means I'm not making choices between options. So what I'm doing now is to just write it all down, which helps me see it and think about it some more. Once I write it down, it change. Is that weird?

The blather has no rules. It's total free-associating. I write down whatever I'm thinking about related to this story, anything that grabs my attention about it. Things that don't work or things I don't know, things I'm obsessed with, anything. And none of it is artful.

Every time I pick the document up again, I start at the top. I don't reread it. I just blather. I repeat myself. At first it's just bits and pieces of things and me droning on about characters and what I think they're worrying about and wanting, etc. etc. Blather is functional, I don't know why. It helps me make decisions and work through ideas. The ideas get bigger and deeper as I blather about them, and problems emerge and get solved.

At a certain point, the blather starts to coalesce into scenes or pieces of them. And then I start telling myself the story as I know it. Over and over. Eventually I can't tell myself the whole story, I get stuck on some part and spend days circling around it. Sometimes I start telling myself the story from the middle, or work backwards, or whatever appeals to me. But there starts to be a sense of order and linked events, and ideas arrive, spend time in the story, stick around or get kicked out. New day, I start again at the top and tell myself the story again. This is kind of weird and obsessive, but it feels like what I want to be doing, it's like a fidget toy or something.

When I do this enough, eventually I want to start lining up the stuff I know about what happens in the order it happens. I can do that in the document for a bit, but then it starts to get out of hand. Then I start wanting a specific tool that lets me put this in order without putting it in order. Every time I reach this point I try different tools, and none of them work the way I want them to. That might be because I want to do something but not do it at the same time. But that's the point where I want to lay it out in a more structured way, but the thing doesn't have a structure.

At some point, and I don't know what triggers this, but the thing untangles in a way that even though it's not complete yet, it becomes linear. I can line up scenes and it makes perfect sense, I don't need a weird tool. That's the point when I'm ready for a proper outline. I can't say I completely understand what's going on here, but this is what it looks like.

The blathering is so fun I keep doing it even once I've started a formal, structured outline.

That's blather. Maybe there's as better word for it. Maybe there's a better way to do it. I have no idea! But this is what I've settled on. At least it's fun! I'm really glad it's fun, because I only willingly do things that are fun. As I've said, maturity is not my strong suit.