lenyanathewriter

[lenyanathewriter]

Idk what mad scientist needs to hear this today but your googles and lab coat are incredibly flattering and all your expirments will blow away the scientific community who called you a fool

[lenyanathewriter]

american genre media is such a foul wasteland of racialized misogyny and sheer mediocrity that a series about lucifer the prince of hell having celestial adventures and grappling with thrilling existential questions while epically romancing infernal royalty mazikeen is adapted as…a police procedural where mazikeen, a black woman, is reduced to Lucifer’s oversexed underling while the prince of hell moons over a basic white woman who never existed in the comic who’s a cop and a Super Special Angelic Being created to torment him with the power of her Redemptive White Heterosexual Love…because networks and showrunners are *that* basic

[lenyanathewriter]

I couldn’t find any guides online that were quite what I wanted, so I made one. I created them to be viewable on my phone, so these should work on any phone bigger than 5″! Together we can end window switching. Hope this helps someone else

[lenyanathewriter]

how to make a story file

As I am preparing for Camp NaNo*, I have been working on my story file. It occurred to me this might not be common or popular practice. “Story File” is a name I gave it and maybe some of y’all have a different name with the same contents.��

*There’s still time to apply to join my Camp NaNo cabin!

My Story File contains everything about my story that doesn’t go in the outline.

It’s broken up into major categories and specific templates. So without further ado, here is how I structure my Story File. 

Intro

Title

Logline

Synopsis

Genre

Estimated Total Length (word count)

Draft Length Goal (word count)

Character Bank

Main characters and brief, one-sentence descriptions with ages

Themes and Character Development

Central Question

The Yes/No question that is being asked through the whole story

Should have objective qualities, rather than subjective

i.e. “Will they fall in love?” (subjective) vs. “Will they leave their partners and become a couple?” (objective)

Thematic Questions

These are the internal conflict questions that reside in your character(s) and your story

ex. “Can there really be a successful government?”

ex. “Does grief excuse bad actions?”

Themes at a Glance

Words or phrases that relate to the themes of the story

ex. person vs. nature

ex. isolation

ex. grief

ex. first love

Motivation / Stasis State / Final State

for each main character, you should write a sentence or two pertaining to these three things

Motivation: What is the drive behind this character and their past, present, and future actions? What part of their background makes them the way that they are? What are they looking for? What do they want out of this/a situation?

Stasis State: What are they like before the inciting incident? What problems and questions do they have?

Final State: What has changed about them and their outlook? What questions have they resolved? What has happened to their internal conflict?

Relationships

I usually make a little web of the MCs and their relationship to one another. One for the stasis and one for final.

Stasis: How do these characters see each other? How do they act toward the other? (All before the inciting incident)

Final: How do these characters see each other now? How has their idea of one another shifted? 

Even if a character dies before the end, include the most recent relationship status in the Final web.

ex. this is how I organize it, using the Draw feature of Google Docs

Character Bank

This is just a very preliminary character bank. If you prefer a more in-depth one, check out my 6 Box Method.

Per (relevant/important) character:

Name

Nickname/preferred name

Age

Field/Occupation

Physical Description

Personality

Personal History

Education/Occupation History

Extra Notes:

Worldbuilding Bank

(Check out my worldbuilding posts on Categories Pt. 1 and 2 for better context)

Seasons and Climate

Languages

Other Cultural Pockets

Folklore and Legends

Fine Arts

Dress and Modesty

Classes

Jobs

Currency and Economics

Shopping

Agriculture and Livestock

Imports and Exports

Literature, Pop Culture, and Entertainment

Food and Water

Holidays and Festivals

Family and Parenting

Relationships

Housing

Religion and Beliefs

Government

Health and Medicine

Technology and Communication

Death

Transportation

Plants, Animals, and Human-environment Interaction

Education

Beauty Standards

Gender and Sexuality

—————————

I hope this helps y’all and supplements what you’re probably already doing. I know it’s helped me tons to have everything in a central place.

Best of luck!

[lenyanathewriter]

How Fullmetal Alchemist Integrates Theme and Character

In a world where everything is subjective and polarizing opinions are the norm, where anti-fans and trolls take ‘love to hate’ a little too far, and where any story popular enough to become a pop-culture phenomenon is almost guaranteed to have a small-but-vocal minority that can’t see what all the fuss is about, I have never once seen, read, or heard of anyone say that Fullmetal Alchemist is a bad story. 

None. 

I’m sure they exist, but during the course of its run Fullmetal Alchemist reached the rarefied air of being almost universally beloved within the manga/anime community and being critically acclaimed as a damn good story. This success is wholly deserved. Arakawa was able to do something that a lot of shonen mangaka can’t, and as a result Fullmetal Alchemist is one of the best plotted, tightly written manga I have ever read. 

Others have and will write about the philosophy Arakawa presents, point out the incredible amount of research she was able to cram into her series, extrapolate on the world building better than I could, but today I want to talk about something I’ve not seen anyone else touch on, and that’s how she integrates her themes into her characterization in order to really drive the point she’s trying to make home. 

So what’s the main theme of Fullmetal Alchemist? Luckily Arakawa tells us directly on the next to last page of the series. 

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[lenyanathewriter]

I think that The House that Jack Built is a very feminist movie.

Through out the whole film it makes fun of and critiseses Jack’s opinions on life and art. In all discussions with Virgil Jack always turns out to be wrong, his arguments are always weaker than Virgil’s. He contradicts himself, gives absurd examples about lamps and wrongly interprets philosophical works and art to his favor.

Vitgil calls him out multiple times, for example, for telling only the stories about naive women to prove how smart and strong he is. After that Jack, in a rush, talks about how he tried to kill several men, as if he tries to say: “Hey, I kill not only helpless women, men too! There is no difference, look at how cool and intellectual I am, definitely not compensaiting for anything!”.

And when Jack goes into this pseudo philihsofical monolog about how wrong it is to always portray women as the victim and man as the agressor just fucking before cutting off woman’s breast, himself proving the point he tries to demolish.

That is such clear sarcarsm and irony and I’m dissapointed that no one on this site saw that, in his new film, von Trier ridicules еvery thing feminism ridicules for years - toxic masculinity being one of them.

Vergil also points out my favorite point of the movie, saying that art is love. And film makes it clear that Jack don’t understands love, thus doesn’t understand the art. And everything - his homicides, his photos, his house - is not art at all.

Jack is not a misunerstood talent, he is a sick misogynistic pretentious dipshit, and that’s how he is suppoused to be portraed. Lars doesn’t glorify Jack, but actually points out how delusional he is. 

Trier (out of all people!) deconstracts this myth of violence and destruction lying in the heart of great art, showing that Jack is not talanted at all.

I thought for some time, after I read other’s posts about the film, that this is just my subjective understanding, but then I came across some interviews of the screenwriter and the author of the idea of The House that Jack Built, Jenle Hallund, who turned out to be a feminist woman. 

I couldn’t find this interview in English so I’ll just translate from Russian the most important parts that prove my perception:

”...This is a current story about how the artist’s works can be built on the humiliation of women. Bertolucci, Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein - many male authors, whose actions society has forgiven for years and preferred not to notice, because these are persons who are supposedly allowed everything. But is this great art? Jack is clearly not a great artist. <…>

In the main character of “The House that Jack Built” you can see a portrait of a ridiculous, pitiful man. He obviously has no talent, he is a narcissist, he is weak, he is afraid of women, so the only way for him to feel the power is to humiliate and kill them. <…>

The main narrator of this story is Jack himself, these are his memories of the murdered women, we look at them through his eyes. And therefore women in the film can not be more than what Jack sees them. And he himself is not able to see women different, because he needs to feel that these women are pathetic to believe in his own superiority.

And you can think - aren’t we all in our reality living in the house that Jack built? Reality, where men, confident in their superiority, commit violence against women and children.”

[lenyanathewriter]

Guillermo del Toro: “Makes literally anything”

Me:

[lenyanathewriter]

F

Truly iconic

[lenyanathewriter]

pidge: [hacks into a galra computer] okay, allura, i gathered the intel. can i…add something to mark that voltron was here?

allura: well, it is pretty obvious we were here, and there would be no harm done letting the galra know we paid them a visit. go ahead.

pidge: [types in something and closes her computer] haha, yes! thanks allura.

allura: what did you do?

pidge: i made it so every time someone opens up the computer, it says, “lotor is an ugly bitch” in five different languages, and nothing else. 

allura: [puts her hand on pidge’s shoulder] you are a great paladin, pidge.

[lenyanathewriter]

[lenyanathewriter]

you had one job Clarice

[lenyanathewriter]

[lenyanathewriter]

Don’t let tumblr brainwash you

Tumblr can be a wonderful place if you’re interested in arts, music, fandoms, or social justice. But it can also be very toxic sometimes, so please be careful and remember :

- You don’t like something? Blacklist it. Simple as that. Don’t be the kind of people who send anon hate, or that simply keeps complaining. People will have different opinions, and like different things. So just blacklist it. Unfollow people if their blog makes you feel bad.

- Fighting for equality between genders is great. But don’t think that all women are your allies and all men your enemies. Also, if you’re a feminist, you’ve got to call out misogynistic/sexist women (even when they’re POC) on their crap when you can.

- Fighting for equality between races is also a great thing. But don’t fall into the perpetual victimization of POC that tumblr loves. Being a POC does not give you a free pass to be a jerk to white people who didn’t do anything to you personally. Just because a POC say something, doesn’t mean it’s right. <- This does not excuse racist white people though.

- White women don’t own feminism. But Black women don’t either. Actually, no one “invented” feminism. Women (and some men too) of all races, throughout all ages, have been questioning relationships between men and women. White/Asian/South American… women didn’t wait for Black women (or for any other women) to become feminists and to theorize it. <- This does not excuse racist white feminist though.

- Being in a minority does not allow you to be a jerk, be it to other minorities, or to men/white/cis/straight people. No. Not under any circumstances.

- Never feel bad just because you belong to a majority.

- Hating people just because they belong to a majority does make you a bad person. Not only does it help no one, your hatred will only consume yourself. There is a difference between discussing privileges and injustices in your society (which is a good thing) and deciding that men/white/straight/cis people are not sad enough and should feel bad about themselves for this sole reason.

- POC are not perfect angels. Even today, slavery and colonization are still a thing (though unofficial) in several POC countries. Also, reverse racism in America does not exist, but discrimination against white people does in some non-white countries. Sorry to break it to you, but being white doesn’t mean you’ll never face racism. White people are not imperialist by nature, and POC are certainly not generous, open-minded victims by nature. <- This does not excuse racism in white countries.

- You don’t tell people what they should be emotionally invested in or not, and especially not in the name of social justice. People will care about what they want. You can’t ask people to be sad because they don’t struggle as much as you in life.

Let me elaborate a bit on this point.

You don’t tell people how to feel. You can only expect people to be respectful (be it of your grief, of your struggles), because everyone deserve respect and everyone should be respectful. However : you can’t expect people to be sad and emotionally invested in everything. It is wrong, unhealthy, and just plain impossible. I repeat it : it is not possible to care about everything. You will only crumble under the misery of this world. And you can’t ask people to do that.

Would you randomly come up to strangers in the street and tell them : “How dare you be happy ? My brother just died, killed by a car ! How come you’re not crying because of it ? You were sad when your best friend died ! You don’t care about me ! How dare you try to feel good and happy ?” No you wouldn’t. So why is it okay to do this on tumblr ? It isn’t.

You don’t make people feel guilty for not being sad about everything that happen on the planet.

- Also, you don’t make people feel guilty for being more emotionally invested in events that happen close to them/to people like them.

- People are only responsible for what they do personally. You don’t blame a whole country for the way their media treat an event. Because spoiler : they don’t control it. If you feel like an event is not covered enough, fine, talk about it. But if to do so you try to make this country’s people feel guilty/passive-aggressively complain about how over-covered other events are, you’re just a jerk. You’re not helping anyone, and you just want an excuse to spread hate. You don’t make a candle shine brighter by spitting on the others.

- You don’t help minorities by hating a majority. And that is true whether you belong to this minority or not. Seriously, don’t. Not only is it a dick move, you’ll only hurt your own cause.

- Celebrities don’t have to care about social justice if they don’t want to. That doesn’t mean that you should excuse them if they do something really gross, but other than that you can’t expect them to fight for other people/to be educated on social justice. Also, don’t idealize them : you’ll only be disappointed.

- Actually, no one has to care about social justice issues. Everyone should learn to respect other people, in order to not cause more suffering in the world, true. But other than respect, you can’t ask anything from anyone.  People should only fight for social justice if they want to. Caring about yourself/people like you first does not make you a bad person. <- This does not mean you can be a sexist/homophobic/racist jerk, though.

- One of the most important thing : don’t rely on tumblr to tell you what to think, what to like, etc. Even the most educated and moderate blogs sometimes make mistakes.

Also, two more things more fandom related :

- There is nothing inherently wrong or transphobic with genderbending/rule 63/whatever you want to call it, as it is something totally different from transexuel/non-binary/genderqueer headcanons, and as one does not prevent the other from existing. Sure, the treatment of genderbent character can be badly done (see for instance the hypersexualization of some bent-to-female characters), but it is not frequent and it doesn’t mean the concept of genderbending itself is wrong.

- You don’t tell people what they can ship or not. You find a ship really gross ? Blacklist it/politely ask people to tag it if they don’t. But people can ship whatever they want, and if you think you’re some godly instance that can decide what ship are problematic or not, you are mistaken. There is nothing wrong with any ship (as long as they are aware that the ship is unhealthy, if this is the case). People know the difference between reality and fiction. I’ll repeat it : as long as you don’t shove it in other people’s face and you’re aware of the (potentially unhealthy) dynamics of a ship, there is nothing wrong with any ship. It’s fiction, people. If you can’t understand this, you are the one who don’t separate fiction and reality correctly.

tl;dr : Fighting for a better world is a good thing. But if you only fight through hate, you don’t actually care about making a better world, you just want to spread hate. No one should feel bad about themselves for things they can’t control.

You don’t show solidarity towards people who struggle by hating people who don’t.

[lenyanathewriter]

Everybody wants a girlfriend like Erika Linder

[lenyanathewriter]

Six children in need of adult supervision. 

[lenyanathewriter]

*listens to lungs*: this is my fave florence album

*listens to ceremonials*: this is my fave florence album

*listens to how big, how blue, how beautiful*: this is my fave florence album

*listens to florence welch breathing*: this is my fave florence album

[lenyanathewriter]

I am absolutely in love with Dr. Alexandria Hypatia and she deserves everything good in the world.