#and some great fiction writers critics etc

[hoyatype]

things that are gauche to brag about but cool to experience

[violet-moonstone]

currently obsessed with peggy from the gilded age and pearline and and annie in sinners

I love when historical fiction includes more variety in representation of black women -- not just stereotypes and suffering. (Not to say that these characters don't suffer but they don't just exist to create feelings of pity or guilt in the audience, and certainly not amusement at stereotypical behaviour)

It would have been so easy for pearline and annie to fall into the jezebel and mammy stereotypes -- and I'm sure there are people who view them that way -- but they are really written as much more complex than that. they are not just desired, but cherished, and their personalities (and especially annie's knowledge and bond with smoke) strengthen the dynamic of the characters in the film.

I've also read about pearline's desire to escape the confines of her marriage/social expectations as a parallel to sammie's desire to escape his father's expectations and pursue music -- and how they both find that in each other and at the juke joint. Other people have explained this more coherently than I have, but anyway i LOVE that aspect of the film

and then there's peggy, who could have been written in a way that unfortunately a lot of female/poc characters are written in recent years by writers with good intentions (or at least the desire to be perceived as such) but underdeveloped writing skills/lazy character writing -- which is to say that she could have just been written as perfect to showcase how progressive the writer is, because a lot of people seem to think the solution to negative dehumanizing representation is positive dehumanizing representation. real women of colour are not perfect and we shouldn't need to be in order to be respected, loved, admired, etc. And peggy isn't perfect -- she shows vulnerability and sometimes she makes bad decisions -- but at the same time, she's intelligent, ambitious, and kind, AND she doesn't need Marian to come save her. She wants a friendship of equals, not a white saviour and her pet black friend/charity case

I want more of this!

also...some thoughts about princess tiana

so the thing is, she's one of my favourite disney princesses. like peggy, she reminds me of myself.

however

In a vacuum, her flaw being that she works too hard/never rests is a great way to balance out her perfectionism and ambition, but within the wider context of the film it seems cruel for the writers to show a woman working against barriers of class and race to be written that way, only for the resolution to that struggle not to come from support from her community, but from marrying into wealth -- and this is portrayed as happily ever after...like sure it might be for her but what does it say about the lives of everyone else in her former position? and has she truly escaped, or does she just continue to face discrimination with more of a safety net?

anyway, I don't expect coherent social criticism from disney, and I'm usually glad to enjoy my favourite childhood movies, flaws and all. I'm glad we got a black princess, I just wish her story were different. tbh over the years, I've stopped caring altogether about the frog portion of the movie because I just don't find it interesting (and yes I'm one of those people who's salty about her being a frog for most of the movie). They could have made a completely different story in the same setting with magical elements.

[queen-paladin]

disclaimer: yes, I am complaining about cheating in media. Because, yes, writers have the freedom to create what they want but if the morality in creation is free for all forms of media, but no piece of art is exempt from criticism, and that includes criticism on personal moral grounds. I betcha if I said Harry Potter is good, actually, everyone on here would flood my blog telling me I am wrong because of the author's intense prejudice. That being said, I am criticizing cheating in fiction, If you don't like that, don't interact

So often lately I see period dramas where the husband cheats on the wife (ex. Poldark, The Essex Serpent, Queen Charlotte, The Great)...and not only do I despise the cheating trope with every fibre of my being to where I get panic attacks when I consume the media...but specifically with period dramas...

Do these writers not understand the greater implications of a husband cheating on a wife during these periods? More than just the humiliation and heartbreak in the case of a loving, good marriage just like it is today.

In the Western world, probably until certain laws were enacted in the 1900's, if a woman married a man, she was legally his property. She had no legal identity under him. She was financially dependent on him. Any wages she made would automatically go to her husband. Her children were also not legally her children- they belonged to the father. If the husband died, even if the wife was still alive, the children were legally considered orphans.

Women could only rarely gain a divorce from their husbands. In England in the mid-1800's specifically, if a wife divorced a husband she had to prove he had to not only cheat but also be physically abusive, incestuous, or commit bestiality. On the other hand, a husband could divorce a wife just for being unfaithful. Because, kids, there were sexual double standards.

Getting married was often the endgame for a lot of women during that time. Sometimes you couldn't make your own living enough- marriage was a way to secure your entire future financially, with more than enough money to get by. If you were a spinster and middle class, you could get by with a job. But if you are an upper-class lady, the one thing a lady does not do is get a job and work. So upper-class spinsters basically were dependent on their families to get by (ex. Anne Elliott in Persuasion faces this with her own toxic family). As strange as it sounded today, marriage gave them some freedom to go about since a husband could be persuaded sometimes more easily than a father and one had a different home, their servants, etc. A husband was your foundation entirely for being a part of society, and standing up as your own woman.

So if a husband cheated on a wife, that was a threat to take all of that away.

He could give a lot of money that could be used to support his wife and children to the mistress. He could completely abandon said wife for the mistress. And since the wife legally couldn't get a job as he still lived, she would be dependent on any money he would said- and that is IF he sent over any money.

He could take her to court and publicly humiliate her to get a divorce away from her (look up the separation of Charles and Kate Dickens, he would call her mentally ill and say her cooking was bad and that she was having more children than they could keep up with all while having an affair and divorcing her to be with the misteress). And even if the wife was the nicest, more proper, goodest, more rule-abiding never-keeping-a-toe-out-of-line lady in town...as a man, the law was default on his side (look up Caroline Norton's A Letter to the Queen which details exactly that, the poor woman had her earnings as a writer taken by her husband and was denied access to her children from said husband)

So yeah...even if there was "no love" between them (and anytime the wife is portrayed as too boring or too bitchy so He HaS tO cHeAt is brought up is...pretty victim blamey)

So yeah. Period drama writers, if you have the husband have an affair ...just consider the reality of these things and address them, maybe punish the husband for once (*gasp* men facing consequences for their actions?!?!!), and if not, just please find other options and other tropes and devices for once.

[greenerteacups]

GT!!

Your writing inspires me every time I read it! I have long admired how you so skillfully drop deep insights into your writing in seemingly throw-away lines. You masterfully weave impactful themes into your narrative without disrupting flow for even a beat.

Personally, this is something I struggle with in my writing, and I'm really trying to improve. How did you learn to do this so well? Any tips for a new-ish writer?

Thanks for sharing your beautiful art with the world :) I wish I could scream at you in person about how much your writing has impacted me, but I hope you feel my respect and admiration across our screens! 🫶🏼🫶🏼

Thank you so much for the kind words! I offer you an answering scream into the void, out of mutual appreciation for the inspiration and kindness.

I think "writing themes" is tricky, because it depends on the kind of fiction you're trying to write. Some authors are deeply invested in telling a story that communicates a particular idea about how to live. (Contemporary critics tend to be dismissive of this mode because they see it as unrealistic; real experiences don't happen in order to communicate ideas or parables, etc.; and to that I would say who died and made you king of fiction, nobody said realism had to be the goal of all books ever, and the fact that the current literary climate happens to favor realism is an accident of taste and culture, not an objective standard of quality.) Those authors — I'm thinking of people like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harper Lee, George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, Paul Coelho, Anthony Burgess, most big-ticket science fiction novelists since Isaac Asimov and many fantasy novelists as well — have characters who act as representations of particular ideas. If you want to write that way, you might consider what you want one idea to "say" to one another in the moral thesis of your story: how do you think these concepts engage with each other? If you were going to visualize that by treating these concepts as people, what would they do to each other? What flaws would they have? How would they survive in different environments? What would be the "conclusion," i.e., which of them end up better-off? Is that a good thing? Why?

Alternatively, maybe you want a story that's more naturalistic and character-centric, and you don't want to necessarily give your reader a moral at the end of it. That's fine! In general, I've found that when most people talk about "themes," they use it as a sort of a catch-all term for "the author is thinking Deeply about Some Stuff," which doesn't necessarily mean that the text takes a position on any particular moral problem. It just means that the problems your characters have are rooted in choices they make, which allows the reader to see how certain ways of living may result in certain costs and benefits. The Great Gatsby isn't about capitalism and inequality per se, but watching Nick run around with these rich people, it's hard not to think about what capitalism and inequality are doing to each character in the story. Which kind of inevitably makes inequality and capitalism one of the themes of the book. It's not that the author put it there on purpose as an easter egg for you to find; it's just that if you want to discuss the book on a level deeper than a straight-up plot summary (asking the big why and how and what-if questions of analysis), you'll probably need to think about the ways that money and class are playing out in the story. It's woven into the structure of the story, right? These are concepts with force and energy in the novel, and they're moving pieces on the board. Conversely, some concepts don't play a role in the novel. For instance, nobody in the book is particularly religious. (Except, of course, the murderous idiot Wilson — and whoa, what does that seem to say about religion in the book?) So the redeeming power of Christ is clearly not a "theme" of Gatsby in the same way it very much is a theme of, say, Brideshead Revisited.

In that case, you might try dedicating a freewrite or two to what your concepts are. What's moving your pieces? Why you think your characters have the problems they do: what do you think causes them to fail? What in their pasts made them that way? In what situations would their faults become virtues? When they hurt other people, why does that happen? What institutions, systems, and social rules might have shaped their thought process? What do they believe, and does it help them or hurt them?

[ariaste]

I don’t know if you are still answering writing questions, but if so, I’d love any advice on doing research for fiction writing. I have a background in science research, and I can do that just fine (with a university library), but I’m not really sure where to start if I want to find out things that will help me to write a time and place in a convincing way. Also, not sure where to look for this information without access to a university.

Thanks!

Science research and book research are not so different. Both involve a lot of reading, a lot of curiosity, a lot of critical thinking, etc. You probably already have the skills. :)

The next step would be to just start exploring and asking questions: What does it mean TO YOU to write a setting "in a convincing way"? Who are you aiming to convince, and what are the reasons that their convincedness is important? Who are some authors or books you've read that achieved the quality of Being Convincing? Go rummaging in some of the most effective scenes and see if you can take them apart and identify what parts are convincing YOU. By understanding your own internal mechanisms of Being Convinced, you are in a better position to then Be Convincing.

Also, give yourself some suspicious (but kind) squinting. I have known too many apprentice writers for whom an anxiety about doing enough research or "What if I can't be convincing" was hiding an underlying anxiety about writing in general, or of exposing themselves to the audience, or the perfectionist fear of making a mistake. So what? What happens if you make a mistake? What happens if you are not convincing? Is the answer somewhere in the neighborhood of, "Someone on the internet will be mad at me"? If it is.... Nah, don't worry about that yet. You're worrying about what the audience will think before the story is even written, and that will suffocate your creativity faster than anything. That is a problem for future-you. Present-you is allowed to just have fun and play. Yes, even if you mess up and make some mistakes. Yes, even if you are writing problematic tropes. No one has to see it. What you do in the privacy of your own home is nobody's business but yours. You have permission to write whatever you want.

BUT! Some research tips.

You are allowed to start with Wikipedia. I do it all the time. You search for something, you read 17 articles, and then you've got some basic ideas. This is just getting oriented. If you find something really interesting, dig into it deeper. Look at the citations, see if there are any interesting books that you can dig up.

After that: Regular libraries are also your friend. Those bad boys can fit so many books in them, and if they can't, then they have inter-library loan. Many libraries offer access to JSTOR and other academic sites if that's your vibe. Thriftbooks.com is your friend if you're looking to purchase nonfiction books on a budget. Also: Tumblr mutuals are your friend. Some friends work at universities and can slip you a couple PDFs under the table if you ask nicely. Other friends might coincidentally be nerds on the exact subject you want to know about. Ask for help! Make posts on tumblr or other social media sites saying, "Yo I am badly in need of someone who knows anything about 15th century textiles, does anyone want to infodump at me or recommend some good books about it?" You have no IDEA of the breadth of weird areas of expertise people will reveal if you talk about your interests in public and express a willingness to chat. I recently made a friend this way and it's great. I've heard you can also just straight-up email academics who write about the topics you're interested in and say "I'm writing a fiction book on this topic and I heard you're the expert, can I ask you some questions?" and make friends that way.

So there you go. But again, be SO SO SO SO CAREFUL of the impulse to do really exhaustive research for fiction -- I really cannot overstate how often "I haven't done enough research to [be allowed to] write this" is the excuse that people tell themselves because they're scared ACTUALLY STARTING. Yes, research is helpful and good to do. But you're allowed to just start. You're allowed to b messy and make mistakes. Nothing in writing is permanent until the thing is published. Everything can be revised. :) And no one is going to kill you for not being convincing enough. Go play! Have fun with it! Satisfy your human curiosity and then tell a good story!

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Tuesday, February 4

BUFFY: I think it's time for you to go. SPIKE: Yeah, well, can't. Daylight. BUFFY: Okay. I'll go. SPIKE: I'll get the door. BUFFY: Fine! SPIKE: Fine! BUFFY: I'm actually trying to move right now. SPIKE: Me too.

~~Buffy Season 6 Episode #114: "Older and Far Away"~~

The Sunnydale Herald is looking for a new editor. Contributing to the Herald is a great way to get your Buffy on! Find out more.

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Stirring (Joyce, Spike, G) by apachefirecat

[Chaptered Fiction]

Love is Loss Ch. 3/5 (Faith, E, Hazbin Hotel xover) by patriciatepes

hit rewind Ch. 92 (Buffy/Spike, E) by untiljanuary

Devil Inside Ch. 5 (Buffy/Willow, M) by Xyex

The Choice To Stay Ch. 19 (Buffy/Spike, E) by Spikelover4ever

The Buffy Chronicles: Life After Sunnydale Ch. 31 (Buffy/Spike, E) by sweetmelodykiss

Perfect Clarity, Chapter 25 (Buffy/Spike, E) by Joan963z, Ragini

Bound, Chapter 65 (Buffy/Spike, E) by RavenLove12

Guitar Villain , Chapter 8 (Buffy/Spike, E) by RavenLove12

Animal I Have Become, Chapter 9 (Buffy/Spike, E) by CheekyKitten

The Broken That is Lost Amidst Stardust Ch. 7 (Xander, E, Star Wars xover) by ShadowMaster

[Images, Audio & Video]

Artwork: Buffy/Harmony Comics () by sideartblog999

Artwork: Buffy/Faith () by sideartblog999

Video: Willow - I Am The Darkness () by Buffy & Spike Channel

[Reviews & Recaps]

S01E03 the witch by poetryarcade

PODCAST: Episode 136: Grave by Mythtaken

VIDEO: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season One | Analysis & Breakdown by Passion of the Nerd

[Community Announcements]

Tuesday, February 11 - Promotion Day by fic-promptly

[Fandom Discussions]

i haven’t seen a lot of people talk about buffy’s experience in faith’s body during who are you? by thisyearsgirl3

Rewatching Buffy The Vampire Slayer, extending the “magic is a queer metaphor” by in-aether-case

it’s so awesome that riley doesn’t become remotely interesting until his last like three episodes lmao by dykekingofhell

Just amazing how little internal consistency the memory spell in Tabula Rasa has. by defectivegembrain

the real tragedy of buffy particularly in early seasons is that she’s convinced she’s not a normal girl dealing with normal girl things by frogs-in3-hills

Obviously been thinking about Buffy a lot with the revival by kat--writes

I really do think that the majority of the Buffy fandom downplays the importance of Buffy’s relationship with her mother by coraniaid

Something Im noticing while watching older shows (DS9 and Buffy) by kvothbloodless

I didn’t want to say anything about the reboot. by girl4music

Do you consider Buffy woke?! by niambikm

This new show isn’t gonna be Buffy 2: Electric Boogaloo by cosmos0001

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Novels – Recommendations? by Rehboogie

I just finished rewatching the first three seasons for the first time as an adult. by edd6pi

Did Watcher Jr. (undergraduate journal for buffy + whedon shows) shut down? by BriaFaustian

What's something a Buffyverse character or the writers receive from a good portion of the fandom that you feel is unwarranted? (Credit or praise, hate, love, extreme criticism, making excuses, etc.) by PristineSituation498

Should the supernatural world be public knowledge for the sequel spin off? by speashasha

Am I the only one who thought Buffy was unreasonable in Empty Places? by PlaneAutomatic4965

Are there actually some well done HD remasters of Buffy out there? by shukii89

I never understood how Bangel stans can call Riley BORING when Angel is literally Mr. Cardboard by jdpm1991

Season 4 Riley Finn is so dreamy!! by CanisLupusBaileyi

Just look through the pictures already! by Public-Childhood8848

The CEO of Rome Wolfram and Hart is a real life vampire by WerdNerd88

Spike’s Soul by s4071002

Passion of the Nerd does a season 1 analysis of Buffy by WerdNerd88

Smile Time to Not Fade Away is one of my favorite stretch of episodes in a season in the BuffyVerse by jdpm1991

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Never Needed a Sequel by thethreepennyguignol

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[honeyhotteoks]

First off: you're my absolute favorite fanfic author! The way you write the characters and their emotions and dialog is just beautiful! Into the Aurora and This Night Together inspired me to actually give my writing a fighting chance!!!

With that said...how did you start posting your work? I really want to, but I'm sooooooo nervous!! What if no likes it? What if everyone hates it? And is there a certain way to format the post? I'm fairly new to ✨️actually✨️ posting on tumblr and have no clue what I'm doing 😬

oh my gosh, thank you so much!! i’m so honored to know that i helped inspire you to write fic 😭

this is a great question!! i have lots of advice for you, check under the cut~

okay so as far as how i started posting, this is probably not the post helpful answer. i’ve actually been writing fanfic since i was probably like 14 for various fandoms, i used to post on ff.net then on ao3 and now here, and it’s just been years of publicly posting fandom works online. that being said…… at some point you will just want to rip the bandaid off and when you do, i have some advice

there are going to be people who don’t like what you write, it doesn’t matter what you write or how you write. you like my work and i have a lot of followers, but i’ve had people give pretty negative feedback about aurora, tnt, and some of my one-shots. or reviews that aren’t “mean” necessarily but are “constructive”…. however, i’m a big believer that in the world of fan fiction, unsolicited constructive criticism doesn’t belong in comments when the author is posting their hobby for free. all i’m saying is that it’s gonna happen at some point, but you have to remember that the people doing that aren’t writing fic, and i genuinely do not care about the critical opinions of someone who’s never put themselves out there creatively before.

something that hurt when i started posting was the lack of engagement, and i know this is something a lot of writers still struggle with, especially on tumblr. there are fics i have written that are like deeply dear to me and i’m really proud of but have so few notes compared to other fics and that used to really bum me out. what i’ve learned is this:

people actually aren’t perpetually online they just seem it, so if you post something once and never mention it again, people with busy lives are going to miss it

the time you post doesn’t have to matter… but if you’re trying to drum up engagement, then consider the time of day you’re posting. tumblr has good analytics to tell you blog engagement stats and stuff like that, i find that can help with knowing most of your followers are from XYZ time zone and they probably will not see something you post at 2 PM during the work/school day vs. 7 PM or something like that

try not to be sad if you get a majority of likes and not reblogs. i personally like tons of work that i intend to read later, i treat my likes like bookmarks, that doesn’t mean someone didn’t like your work enough to reblog it, it means they use their likes differently OR potentially they have a blog where they don’t feel comfortable reblogging fanfic, especially nsfw fic.

if you’re posting anywhere, know your tags. don’t post something with two hashtags and assume it’ll find its way. unfortunately it won’t, so make sure you tag everything appropriately so it lands in people’s suggested feeds

if you do all of that and then your fic gets some notes but not that many….. and you’re wondering….. why didn’t more people like it? well part of that might just be that it’s not showing up at the top of people’s feeds anymore. if you want to establish yourself in the writing space, engaging with readers is important. if you get a really nice review in a reblog, don’t be afraid to reblog it back. if you get a certain number of notes, don’t be afraid to reblog your own fic and say thank you for 100 notes etc., just to push it up on people’s feeds.

if you’re posting on AO3, just make sure that you’re filling out all the tags, warnings, pairings, etc. AO3 has been around a while and is a well oiled machine, and i know a ton of readers on there use the filters to find the exact niche of fic they want to read. i cannot tell you how many fics i pass by that don’t have tags, are missing a good description, etc.

okay now as far as formatting goes…… here are my thoughts after a lot of trial and error:

before you decide on anything formatting wise, just remember that readers engage with fic on tumblr in a variety of ways. some people are on desktop, some people are on your actual blog web address, and some people are just on mobile. before you teach yourself html coding for fancy lettering in ombré colors…… are your readers going to be able to see it in dark mode? if not, maybe don’t invest the time, because the first thing i do when i see a post like that is scroll because it’s taking me too long to know what’s going on

so yeah, are there rules to format? yes and no. content “yes”, visual “no” but people do follow a particular trend. what i like to do is keep it simple to avoid the formatting issues i mentioned above, but i also invested a little time in figuring out a “look” for my posts so when people are scrolling they might see my layout and know it’s me. details below->

1. a header image or header images, it’s the quickest way for people to get a vibe and it might capture an aesthetic. some authors have a header made for them as an author, some do a custom one per fic, but i typically just make an aesthetic black and white collage and go with that because it looks cool but i don’t have to learn photoshop to do it. go with what you know on this one

2. a title and a SHORT description, i think ‘untitled’ is tough…. people won’t read or remember your fic. no description means people are guessing and might not click, and too long means people might scroll. my rule of thumb is a couple sentences.

3. content tags, and this is VERY important — people need warnings or clarity on what the fic is about. most people skim the tags to find out if they want to read it over a description, especially when we’re talking very short form fic or smut. that’s why tags might be funny or informal, but it’s also really important to tag anything that might be triggering in a variety of ways. something i always make sure i include is every sex act or kink (i never know what triggers one person and not another), and anything related to: violence, abuse, self harm, mental health, physical injury, death, food/diet content, and body descriptors of reader. if you’re writing self insert and you’re describing the reader a particular way, that’s fine but you should disclose it. some of my fics are specifically written for ‘curvy’ reader in mind and its tagged that way vs. like …. ‘short/small/size-kink’ reader. Gender is also important here, i always tag fem!reader because i feel like that works, but i often see more trans inclusive terms like afab!reader etc., so it’s up to you! but we definitely want to be mindful of readers who could feel dysphoric if surprised by pronouns/body-parts/etc.

4. a clear identifier of the ships in the fic. i.e. put the ‘yunho x reader’ or ‘idol!yunho x fem!reader’ tag high up so people know who they’re reading

5. otherwise, i personally recommend keeping the top of the post short, putting in a cut, and then posting everything under the cut because a long post is just a lot to scroll through etc. i favor the small text for my fics headers and regular size text for the actual body of the fic just to keep it looking nice.

hopefully this helps! i’d be happy to talk through anything else too, i love getting into this stuff. my biggest recommendation would be to ask yourself what kind of work you want to post and invest some time in developing a style for your format etc. - even if it’s close to what other people are posting that’s okay! just keeping it consistent and looking good helps get readers to click, so search around and see what you like and then play with your posts in drafts before you do anything.

good luck!!!

[thatscarletflycatcher]

One of the interesting excursus I must force myself not to explore right now XD is about Elaine Showalter's A Literature of their Own (1977), one of the most important/foundational works of feminist literary criticism in the English speaking world of its time. It is, in general broad strokes, a book that seeks to identify and characterize a tradition or traditions of the women's novel in Britain, as separate from that of men.

It's an interesting text in terms of the ways in which it identifies the strategies used in general Victorian culture to put down women's writers, the weaponization of Austen to put women writers "in their place" (cfr. that exchange of letters between Charlotte Brontë and G.H. Lewes that is used to this day to dunk on CB for disliking Austen's novels), the ways in which women themselves reinforced this (cfr. George Eliot's extreme reluctance to acknowledge genius in women that weren't herself) etc.* And in this way it accidentally illuminates A) how much of persistent criticism of Gaskell is just a continuation and rewarming of those same prejudices B) how much the establishment of the narrative of the great female novelist as a sort of Romantic genius/tortured artist -comically owing in no small degree to Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Brontë- made of Gaskell a safe scapegoat, and significantly drove readings of her as inferior and a failed artist.

Showalter uses as an example of certain insidious practices of certain male critics, a passage from J.M. Ludlow's review of Gaskell's Ruth (1853):

"Now, if we consider the novel to be the picture of human life in a pathetic, or as some might prefer the expression, in a sympathetic form, that is to say, addressed to human feeling, rather than to human taste, judgement, or reason, there seem nothing paradoxical in the view, that women are called to the mastery of this peculiar field of literature. We know, all of us, that if man is the head of humanity, woman is its heart; and as soon as education has rendered her ordinarily capable of expressing feeling in written words, why should we be surprised to find that her words come more home to us than those of me, where feeling is chiefly concerned?"

If you have seen me rant and complain these past few months about 20th century critics of Gaskell, you cannot fail to recognize here the same touchstones of discourse. The target has just been displaced from "all women are unintelligent and sentimental" to "all married women with children are unintelligent and sentimental".

Things get more interesting when Deirdre D'Albertis in Dissembling Fictions, one of the more cited books on Gaskell, takes Showalter to task (with Gilbert and Gubar, the authors of The Madwoman in the Attic) for more or less acritically subscribing to Virginia Woolf's conception of a woman's tradition of writing as both being evolutionary (meaning later works are better than earlier works) and pyramidal (in order for there to exist geniuses like Austen and Eliot, there must be lesser authors that provide the bases for those pinnacles of achievement). And, you know, passages like this from Showalter herself, at the very opening of the acknowledgements section of her book:

"In the Atlas of the English novel, women's territory is usually depicted as desert bounded by mountains on four sides: the Austen peaks, the Brontë cliffs, the Eliot range, and the Woolf hills. This book is an attempt to fill in the terrain between these literary landmarks and to construct a more reliable map from which to explore the achievements of English women novelists."

seem to entirely justify it.

This is, however, not yet the twist. D'Albertis' argument about how the tradition of feminist literary criticism has been extremely uncomfortable with Gaskell because of the ways in which she doesn't fit the molds of the Woman WriterTM is functionally placed in support of the main thesis of her work, which isn't that Gaskell is actually good. No. The thesis is that instead of being bad on accident, she's bad on purpose and a consummate liar. No, I'm not joking. The argument is that Gaskell's fiction is literary broken and the endings such failures because she's questioning genre and the uses of genre from masculine authors, but that she covers this protest with lies to protect her respectability.

While I cannot prove that this assertion of the self evident character of Gaskell's fiction as failure specially in closing is due to D'Albertis belonging to the Marxist critical tradition through Williams and Kettle -because both are referenced, but not extensively-, there's something very ironic to me in these layers of discourse in which the basic, unproven assumption (that Gaskell's fiction is actually not good) remains unquestioned, even when everything else is.

God forbid Elizabeth Gaskell writes anything.

*reasons why I cannot forgive Chesterton's The Victorian Age in Literature (1913). Chesterton is the kind of author that is prevented from becoming insufferably pedantic only because he's clever, well read and witty (much like Oscar Wilde), but when it comes to women writers this book is so insanely superficial and flippant he comes across as an unmitigated ass. The author of The Man Who Was Thursday (an excellent novel, btw) comparing Victorian women writers with headless chickens because of their unaustenian flights of fancy IS RICH.

[wearenemies]

i literally havent stopped thinking about ur peterick college professor AU all day.. its so good

giggles and blushes so sweet of you to say…. if you have any criticism at any point or any ideas of what to do with it i love how you write their dynamic and would be more than happy to sit my white ass down and listen 🫶

i've been thinking about the whole premise a little further and still am not sure whether or not they're going to straight up be married because i think patrick wearing a ring would be a good in for theorisation about his relationship status that would otherwise seem even more unnecessary, but i don't know if p2 marriage is an unrealistic and overly romantic stance to take, especially considering what went on in real life, so i'm still on the fence about that. i might just say they're engaged and leave it at that.... also unsure still whether our narrator would be a student or a coworker of theirs? i think the coworker situation better justifies this guy's interest in the lives of these guys because they'd want to make friends, and there are considerably more situations in which it would be appropriate for them to be interacting (after work drinks, etc. patrick could wear the stupid t shirt pete got him. beautiful world) but i worry that that'd betray to an immersion-breaking degree how little i know about the inner workings of american academia and employment at american universities and whatnot so. another glaring issue. i also realise that the whole keeping-the-narrator-in-the-dark thing might be much less realistic to achieve irl than i make it seem, so i’ll have to employ some serious lampshading + sitcom logic to make it work in a way that feels natural, but i figure that if you’re able to suspend your disbelief enough to imagine patrick pursuing higher education you can believe anything so peace and love.

on that note, the peterick history i’m imagining is that they would’ve been in the band but it never would’ve really gone anywhere because of patrick’s reluctance vocally, so they all (with the exception of andy: with how ridiculously skilled and prominent in the hardcore scene he was it'd be completely unreasonable to assume that he wouldn't have joined a band and made it pretty big at some point) ended up going back to school like their parents wanted. pete was vehemently against finishing his poli sci degree, and his parents decided to allow him to pursue something he actually wanted to do (that being literary analysis and creative writing) on the condition that he’d work as hard as he could and not touch narcotics or whatever, and it was a hard sell but after he graduated he decided that he’d rather be doing that than anything else, and since his parents had the funds to support him and running on mani mostofi’s logic that ‘if pete didn’t get famous, he would’ve ended up in jail’, they considered it a productive and wholesome use of his time, and pete just kind of stayed in academia. i imagine he’s very well known in literary circles because of his general charisma and bizarre angles on things, and i can see him having written several significant (and not to toot his horn too much but pretty great) journal pieces on the works of his favourite writers, and a wider fictional bibliography than just the single weird roman-a-clef that he has to his name in real life.

patrick’s a little more difficult to work with conceptually because he graduated from high school with significantly worse grades than pete in real life, doesn’t have weirdly famous relatives, and is generally not a hugely academically inclined person, so i might just have to gloss over explaining that (maybe he took some supplemental classes and took out a LOT of loans or whatever) but i imagine music theory being a subject of interest for him because of the technical and semi-scientific nature of it as a very trivia-minded (and ‘possibly autistic’. coughs) person who likes the factual nature of natural history. i can see him having work published in the yale-founded journal of music theory, and maybe focusing especially on music theory’s application in the fields of anthropology and cognitive sciences because of the aforementioned natural history interest. i see him and pete having drifted apart a little over the years (maybe they fucked for a while - potentially starting ‘05 - and had a messy ‘friendship breakup’ around 2009?) running into each other at an arts conference in like 2011/2012, ending up both working at the same place in around 2015, and finally getting together as a result of that connection, no unsubstantial degree of nudging from friends, and years of mutual tension.

there’s for sure a huge extent to which you’ll have to ignore how fundamentally the whole academia thing is probably not something they’d do, but i’m begging you guys to let me know if anything seems too egregiously out of character i’ve never written fic before i’m playing with my touys here 👍

[pseudowho]

Hi! i’m pretty new to tumblr and actually have met 0 people from it so i thought i’d ask you because you seem welcoming and i love your posts. how are you able to write fics without hating all of them? every time i try to write something i immediately reread it and find it to be the worst writing ever. any tips on improving?

Hello! I'm disgustingly welcoming and friendly. Well done for finding me.

please note: I'm really not an expert on what makes writing 'good'. Please don't consider me to be one

r.e. hating it, I very often hate my own writing. It does help that others don't seem to. Validation isn't everything, no, but it does go a long way. What goes further is, instead of looking at your writing and hating it, try to look at your writing with a critical eye. What do you dislike about it? Why? What are you trying to capture, and how is it best to create that?

You should figure out what kind of writer you are. Is this an exercise for you to feel soothed, or cheered? Is this an exercise to make others feel soothed or cheered? Both are equally valid, but they can change the direction your writing takes, leaning from how it makes you feel to how it makes the reader feel.

Equally, you can have both!

I'm very much a for the reader writer, and when I write something, it's with an unconscious lean towards making other people feel something. It ends up feeling methodical and calculated as opposed to personal. I like to garner the emotions I'm seeking from an audience. I find it satisfying as a writer.

Like I said, I've been asked this a lot, but I'm honestly not the person to ask. I've been writing for a year and didn't know I had any ability for it until it happened. I'll tell you some things that I think have contributed to my writing:

Read more, and good literature: try Shirley Jackson, Ursula leGuin, Ray Bradbury, Tasha Suri, Natasha Pulley, Jeff Vandermeer, Cormac McCarthy. This is going to sound arrogant and arsey, but I'll own it: most published smut has a lower literature quality than non-smut. Veer away into fiction. The writing quality will inspire you. You may already do this, but if not, give it a go.

I picture stories like movie scenes. Then I wrote the scene.

Often, what can be said loosely in 10 words, can be said tightly in three or four. There is a perfect word for a feeling, or situations, or vibe, or facial expression, etc. Seek them out.

Imitate-- find an author whose work is profoundly beautiful. Try to imitate their style. It's a great way to practice and discover your own style along the way.

Accept that your writing will improve the more and more you do it. If you keep writing, you'll look back on what you wrote a year before and it will make you cringe. This is normal, and healthy.

More than anything, keep going and trying. You'll never improve if you give up.

☝️ us talking writing, sharing a milkshake, idk

Love,

-- Haitch xxx

[inklings-challenge]

Inklings Challenge 2023 FAQ

(Things that People Have Already Asked or Things I Imagine They Might Ask)

What is the Inklings Challenge?

The Inklings Challenge is an invitation for Christian science fiction and fantasy writers to create stories that fit the Christian worldview. The event runs from October 1st to October 21st, 2021. Participants are divided into three separate groups and challenged to write a story that fits the assigned topic.

Team Lewis

Portal Fantasy: Stories where someone from the real world explores a new world

Space Travel: Stories about traveling through space or exploring other planets

Team Tolkien

Secondary World Fantasy: Stories that takes place in an imaginary realm that’s completely separate from our world

Time Travel: Stories exploring travel through time

Team Chesterton

Intrusive Fantasy: Stories where the fantastical elements intrude into the real world

Adventure: Stories where characters (usually in our world) travel to exciting locations, face dangers, undertake a mission or quest, etc.

These teams will be assigned at random on October 1st, 2023. Writers are then encouraged to write a story before the deadline on October 21st.

Stories should also use at least one of seven provided Christian themes to inspire some element of their story. This year's themes all explore traditional acts of charity and mercy which Christians are called to do for others in need.

The seven themes writers may choose from are:

Feed the hungry

Give drink to the thirsty

Clothe the naked

Shelter the homeless

Visit the sick

Visit the imprisoned

Bury the dead

Finished stories can be posted to a tumblr blog. The post should also be tagged #inklingschallenge, and tagged with the name of your particular team: #team lewis, #team tolkien, or #team chesterton, so they can be shared on the main Inklings Challenge blog.

For organizational purposes, stories should also be tagged with:

The genre the story falls under: #genre: portal fantasy, #genre: space travel, #genre: secondary world, #genre: time travel, #genre: intrusive fantasy, #genre: adventure

Any themes that were used within the story: #theme: food, #theme: drink, #theme: clothing, #theme: shelter, #theme: visiting the sick, #theme: visiting the imprisoned, #theme: burial

The completion status of the story: #story: complete or #story: unfinished

How do I sign up for the Inklings Challenge?

Message this blog via ask box or private message before October 1st, 2023, and you'll be added to the list of participants.

What if I don’t finish by the deadline?

Post it anyway! In the original version of this challenge, Tolkien never finished his story! The idea is to create whatever you can, and we welcome unfinished stories. Show us what you’ve accomplished. If you like, you can also post the finished version at a later date, and I’ll make an effort to share it on the main blog.

What if I finish early?

Post it! I’ll share it to the main blog, and it’ll provide inspiration for other writers. If you’re feeling ambitious, create more stories within your assigned topics.

What if my story isn’t any good? Do I have to post?

No one’s judging this. This is a fun challenge, not a contest, and I hope that it will inspire people to push past that voice of criticism and just share whatever they come up with. If you really don’t want to post what you’ve created, no one’s going to force you to, but I hope you’ll join in the fun.

If you just plain don’t have enough to post–say, if the month gets away from you and you wind up with half a sentence–you’re always welcome to keep working on it and post something more substantial at a later date.

Can I use characters or settings from my other stories?

Absolutely! This can be a great way to expand your story world. As long as the story fits your assigned topic, you’re welcome to use any settings or characters you might have created for other works. However, it’d be nice if the story you write can stand alone, so readers can understand it without any knowledge of other works in the world.

What if I don’t like my team’s assigned topics?

I encourage everyone to at least try to come up with a story that fits one of their assigned topics. That’s the challenge portion of The Inklings Challenge–it’ll stretch your imagination and get you to work outside of your comfort zone. The categories are broad, and you should be able to come up with an angle that interests you.

However, if there’s a particular topic that calls to you in another team’s options, you can stretch the definitions to make it fit your own topic. What’s to say the portal in the portal fantasy can’t lead to a different time period? Explore a secondary world of elves in space if you want to. Be creative!

Does [a certain type of story] fit into this Inklings Challenge genre?

Writers are allowed to define the limits of the genre themselves, and can define it as narrowly or widely as they prefer.

I have never read anything by and/or don't like the author my team is named after. Do I have to write something in their style?

The team names have absolutely nothing to do with the style of stories we expect from the writers. They’re only named after the authors because:

The Inklings Challenge was inspired by a similar writing challenge between Tolkien and Lewis, who happen to have written genres that provide good categories for the challenge teams

Chesterton is another prominent Christian writer whose work dealt with fantastical themes that provided good categories for a third team (which allowed me to include the third major type of fantasy).

Naming the teams after the authors is much more fun than naming them Team A, B, and C or whatever.

That’s not to say that you can’t be inspired by the authors or their works if you like them, but please do not worry at all if you don’t.

Do I have to write an allegory or include religion?

You are welcome to write an allegory or to explicitly explore religion if you want to, but you’re certainly not required to. The goal is merely to write stories that fit within the Christian worldview, not to preach.

What if I can’t think of an idea?

Over the course of September, writing prompts will be posted to this blog for anyone who wants a little extra inspiration. The Inklings Challenge directory also has quite a few writing prompt posts from past challenges, most of which would still fit this year’s Challenge.

Do I have to put my story into a tumblr post?

If you prefer to post your story in another format–such as on another blogging site or on AO3–you are welcome to do so, but to submit the story for the Challenge, you’ll need to make a tumblr post that provides the link to the story and tag with all the required tags, so it can be archived on the main Challenge blog.

Do I have to post my story in a single post or can I post it in multiple parts?

You may post your story in as many parts as you desire. As long as they are all tagged appropriately and it’s clear which order they’re supposed to go in, I should be able to find them, reblog them to the Challenge website, and put them in the archive.

My friend doesn’t have a tumblr. Can they still participate in the Challenge?

This is a tumblr-centered Challenge, so for organizational purposes, the writers should have access to tumblr, so they can be notified of team assignments, post their stories, etc.

However, it would be possible for writers without a tumblr account to participate if these conditions are fulfilled:

The non-tumblr writer provides some name that I can use to list them on a Team and that can be used as an author name for their story.

The non-tumblr writer can check the Inklings Challenge blog and find out which team they are assigned to.

The non-tumblr writer has a friend who is on tumblr who can either post the story on their tumblr blog (with proper credit toward the writer) or create a post with the link to wherever the non-tumblr writer has posted the story.

It’s after October 1st and I just found out about the Challenge. Can I still participate?

This year, because of the extreme glitches in tumblr's notification system that puts me in danger of missing someone's message, I'm going to say that, yes, you can. People who sign up after the deadline will be randomly assigned to one of three teams in a way that balances the number of participants on each team.

Can I write fanfiction for the Challenge?

The Inklings Challenge is meant to provide new science fiction and fantasy stories from a Christian worldview, so this challenge is focused on original fiction.

Are there other ways to engage with the Inklings Challenge Community?

There are several ways to interact with the community!

On this blog, discussion posts, labeled "The Eagle and Child", will be posted roughly once a week that provide an opportunity for writers to discuss their story ideas and their writing progress.

@inklings-sprint, run by @allisonreader, provides several opportunities for writers to come together for writing and brainstorming sprints.

The Inklings Challenge Discord provides extra support for people who want to participate on that platform. The Discord is run by @secret--psalms--saturn, and @enjoliquej, so anyone who wants to participate should message one of them for the link.

Is there merchandise for the Inklings Challenge?

Every year, @ellakas creates beautiful stickers related to each of the three teams of the Inklings Challenge. The link to purchase this year's stickers is in this post.

[navybrat817]

Navy, do you have any tips for those of us new to writing smut/fan fiction in general? I’ve recently started and one of my beta readers have been really judgmental, and I can’t tell if it’s just them, or if it’s actually my writing…so I’ll take any advice for writing. 💕

Hi, nonnie. I'm sorry you're feeling judged by your beta reader. One of the things I've come to appreciate for anyone who has beta read for me is the balance between hyping me up and giving me constructive criticism. I value their feedback and it has helped me grow, but I've never once felt judged.

Typically when I have someone beta read for me, I provide the warnings in advance in case there are triggers and I ask for any help/feedback on grammar, flow, etc., which is important. Your beta needs to know what you want out of it. Is it the structure that you need help with? Do you simply need hype? Communication is key.

Is it the topic itself that has you feeling judged by this beta reader or your writing style? Is it judgement or constructive criticism? I only ask that because instinct for many of us is to get defensive or react emotionally before taking another look.

Are you able to find another beta reader through Tumblr or discord if you're no longer comfortable sharing with them? @needabeta may be an option.

As far as smut writing tips, I don't think I'm a great smut writer! I do try and stick with emotions and the tone of the characters. This ask here has some great tips if you want to take a look!

Sharing your writing is a vulnerable thing and I hope your beta reader understands that. Love and thanks! ❤️

[aaronsrpgs]

DAWstruck

A Quick Look at Sci-Fi/Fantasy Publisher DAW and My Desire for Cheap Entertainment

If you've ever been to an American used bookstore, flea market, etc., you probably recognize the distinctively uniform yellow (or faded-to-brown) spines of the DAW books pictured above.

From Wikipedia: "DAW Books is an American science fiction and fantasy publisher, founded by Donald A. Wollheim, along with his wife, Elsie B. Wollheim, following his departure from Ace Books in 1971. The company claims to be 'the first publishing company ever devoted exclusively to science fiction and fantasy.'"

Wollheim was active in sci-fi publishing and fandom circles; he published the Ursula LeGuin's first two books at Ace, and as a youth, he was kicked out of the New York Science Fiction League club for getting a group of unpaid authors together to sue writer/publisher/organizer Hugo Gernsback after they weren't paid for published stories:

"It grieves us to announce that we have found the first disloyalty in our organization… These members we expelled on June 12th. Their names are Donald A. Wollheim, John B. Michel, and William S. Sykora—three active fans who just got themselves onto the wrong road."

I've worked in bookstores and libraries for decades, and my eyes always glossed over the shelves full of yellow spines. But I started to reconsider after listening to Sean at SFUltra talk about Electric Forest by Tanith Lee. (Once you're equally convinced, go back his Patreon, which is literally my favorite criticism on the internet.)

I started devouring Lee's work. In my opinion, she outstrips most of the "greats" of that era of sci-fi. Her prose is awesome, her plots are great fun, and she's prolific across science fiction and fantasy. Had I been sleeping on DAW Books? Were they all this good?!

They are not all that good.

DAW Books books run the gamut of sci-fi and fantasy, from alternate histories to barbarian tales to postmodern reactions to the post-war West. And taken as an overview of the sci-fi field at that time, they reflect the good (Tanith Lee) and the bad (libertarian cryto-fascism, coercive sex freaks, tired cliches).

So why am I writing about them? Because they represent a type of publisher that, as far as I know, doesn't really exist anymore. They published authors who'd never been published before, and they printed straight to paperback.

I have no idea if anyone was making a living being published by DAW, but I assume this was a foot in the door for lots of these authors. And the books were so cheap! The one I have on hand was $1.25 in 1976. Adjusted for inflation, that's $6.93.

And listen, I read difficult books. I read literary fiction and academic histories and complicated, confusing cross-genre works. But I also like to read trash! I think everyone deserves to read some trash. But I want that trash to be cheap and easily accessible.

And with modern publishers focusing on established authors and Next Big Things, it's hard to find trash! And when you do find it, it's often dressed up to look like a Next Big Thing and priced accordingly.

Please give me more cheap trash.

And god, look at those covers. Again, I don't know if any painters were making a living by selling work to DAW, but they were definitely putting in the work. You got classic Frazetta horniness, you got '70s psychedelia, you got "what if the Bible was weirder?" classicism.

I want to decorate my walls with these.

The nice part is that they're mostly shorter than 200 pages, and I've never spent more than $5 on one of these, and I can usually find them even cheaper. So next time you're at a library sale and you see a faded yellow DAW spine, take a closer look.

Just stay away from Gor.

(DAW is still in business today, as a subsidiary of Astra House Publishing. I would say they occupy the same spheres as Tor: popular, readable, and usually left-of-center science fiction and fantasy. Such as The Forever Sea, a sapphic ecological fantasy book about sailors on a sea of plants. They cost, unfortunately, more than $7.)

[kitkatopinions]

Hey KitKat I have a question and sorry if this is a weird question:

Is there anything wrong with liking certain rwby characters that are not as popular?

I like Neptune even with the small scenes he had in canon yet I have met fans that didn’t like my opinion because of the whole dance arc.

I understand he is not perfect but I think the part that really bother me is that when I try addressing their character flaws apparently I was the bad guy?

Why is their character immune to criticism when they have just as much flaws?

I don't think there's anything wrong with liking pretty much any character so long as the flaws the character has are acknowledged and (if included in writing) are actually written as flaws.

Neptune is a great example and I also happen to like him, so this is a great place to discuss it. XD Neptune in canon severely suffered from the RWBY writers' misogyny, as he was written as a giant douchebag partially to prop up Jaune's 'nice guy' thing, but since the writers were misogynists, Neptune's own cool guy dudebro 'womanizer' thing was treated as not a big problem and not a deal breaker to the other characters even when he made women visibly uncomfortable and kept flirting like with Team NDGO and with Ilia. And since he was a side character without a lot of screentime and like zero growth, that's kinda like sixty percent of his character at least and the rest of it is pretty thin. In canon, there isn't much to him. And it's important that no one defends or refuses to admit that Neptune in canon is a douchebag who doesn't respect women. But also... Neptune is a fictional person. he isn't real, 'condemning him for his actions' seems kind of ridiculous, and making him better or making him get better in fanfics or just liking the rest of his non-douchey character traits and his design and wanting to have fun with that shouldn't be treated as bad. It's the same with any RWBY character, even much worse ones who have done worse things morally speaking than making women uncomfortable, like Ironwood, Adam, Emerald, Mercury, Roman, Neo, Cinder, Salem, JACQUES SCHNEE even. Like, I hate Jacques with the power of a thousand burning suns, he's evil and trash and I would never redeem him or have a better version of him in my headcanons (even though I love and value redemption arcs, I also personally think having characters that don't get redeemed and instead demonstrate examples of how even though everyone can be redeemed, some people won't be redeemed is beneficial) but if somebody else did... So long as they aren't excusing or defending his actions, so what? I write fanfictions about redeemed Kylo Ren and redeemed Count Olaf, so I have no space to judge.

People have this weird tendency to treat fictional characters like they're real people, like they need to answer for their crimes, like they 'can't change,' and it's so strange to me. Fictional characters are whatever people want them to be, and they don't exist, so their crimes are all fictional, so... Why would they 'need to be punished?' XD Also, the same people who have this 'we should condemn fictional characters,' 'how dare you like this character when they did X bad thing,' 'writing anything except hate for this character is abuse apologism' people... They almost always like a villain themselves. XD Whether it's a villain in RWBY like Cinder, Salem, Tyrian, Watts, Hazel, Raven, etc, or whether it's a villain outside of RWBY like the Joker, Harley Quinn, Azula, Darth Vader, Sephiroth, Catra, Lotor, Maleficent, etcetera.

But yeah, in general, I think you should ignore those people. If you like Neptune, more power to you! If you want to write fics or headcanons or what have you about Neptune realizing that the way he acted was wrong, even more power to you! If you write things where Neptune was never a womanizer or misogynist to begin with, cool! If people get angry at you over something like writing a teenage boy to deconstruct his misogyny or making said teenage boy not that way in the first place, then they're probably not people you want to know. Hope this helps. :)

[goddevouringserpent]

some rambling thoughts about A Certain Videogame that is releasing soon (largely game-neutral and fandom-negative)

because. listen. there are a lot of things that I could criticise Dragon Age for. Inquisition was my biggest disappointment in gaming, even bigger than BG3 because with BG3 I was on the "I expected nothing and was still let down" mindset, whereas with DAI I was genuinely looking forward to it & felt like they did not deliver on any of the promises they made. there are a lot of things they have handled poorly. the ongoing plot about the elven gods is extremely unsatisfying & feels like a total cop-out and a loss of what made the world interesting in the first place.

but some people are approaching their criticism the wrong way IMO. because—alright I don't want to get into drama with anyone or bring drama to anyone so I won't be screenshotting OP's URL here, but this statement is just. outrageously ridiculous.

uh. no? it really is not that easy??? where are these texts coming from, pray tell? that shit doesn't sprout from the ground fully-formed. who's writing them? who's voicing them (unless we're meant to assume that you want all reactivity to be contained within codex entries)? even for interactive fiction games, where literally all you have is writing with no voice work or mocap work or whathaveyou involved, keeping track of these variables is extremely tough and time-consuming work. (source: I am writing one. unpublished as of yet, but I am writing it.) this is such a weirdly reductionist way of approaching the topic, especially in light of what we know has been going on at BW—they fired a large portion of the writers, including Mary fucking Kirby (which should be more concerning to us as players than a lack of reactivity, btw), there's clearly Issues going on there that encompass the whole company, there's a lack of funding or at least severe issues with how they're handling their funding, there's a lack of care for the people who have worked there for decades, etc etc.

is the lack of reactivity a problem? yeah I guess? maybe? but not for the reasons OP is saying, and it most definitely cannot be solved in the way OP is proposing. reactivity isn't a switch you turn on or off. and a reactivity like OP mentions would just make the world feel wide but shallow; things are acknowledged, but nothing comes out of them. there's a throwaway line of text, and that's that. because the alternative involves branching paths, cameos, different solutions to quests or different dialogue trees, etc etc, all of which is, again, a LOT of work, it's not something an intern can pull off in a day.

and like. alright. not to play devil's advocate here because I am, by and at large, hugely disenchanted with this franchise, and although I will be playing DATV (not that they'll be seeing a cent from me lol) just out of curiosity and sunk cost fallacy, I do not have high hopes for it. BUT.

Origins released in 2009. DA2 released in 2011. Inquisition—the latest entry in the franchise—released in 2014. that's a whole fucking decade in-between the third and fourth installments. and something that I think a lot of people online fail to understand is that the vast majority of gamers do not engage in fandom-type activities. we are a minority. a loud, outspoken minority, but a minority in the end. a LOT of people just play the game for what it is, then shelf it and don't think about it until the next one comes out (if it ever does). in this context I think that "making great use of the medium" would fall more along the lines of making sure there is proper reactivity within the game itself—meaning: let's NOT have another "human NPC humansplains Dalish history to my Dalish elf protag" moment—and not making callbacks to games from 10+ years ago, because. guys. we have to accept it. a LOT of the people who are gonna be playing this game won't have played DAO/DA2, or even DAI. a LOT of the people who are gonna be playing this game won't remember shit about the previous games. because a decade has passed. (if we're counting from DAI. otherwise we're looking at 15 years.)

especially when people start complaining about stuff like "what do you MEAN the choice of who we left in the Fade isn't relevant"—we were told that person's not coming back. like I could understand being upset at, IDK, your Inquisitor's romance choice (which btw does seem like their way of catering to the fandom part of the playerbase, but I digress) being more relevant than who is currently ruling Orlais, but if you're upset about the Fade thing you only have yourself to blame. we've known for years that character's Not Coming Back. the devs were very straightforward about that. ultimately it's not their fault if you've headcanoned your way around that statement. which like, don't get me wrong, I am all for headcanons, but when you have a headcanon you need to accept the fact that canon probably will contradict it eventually. your city now but also don't expect the devs to buy building permissions in your city, y'know?

but yeah. as I was saying. 10-15 years. most of the choices are gonna mean absolute jack shit to new (and a lot of returning!!) players, so at a certain point it makes sense that they had to make, like, a strategic choice of what to include and what to set aside. and of course it's a bummer for those of us who have been playing since DAO! I wanted mentions of my HOF, of Kieran, etc etc, there's a lot that makes me go "aww man". but also I think that people need to start acknowledging the fact that ultimately there are limits to what can and can't be done within the frame of one game that is being released, again, 10 years after the previous entry.

I mean tbh at this point I feel they'd be better served by having their next game be the first installment of a completely new franchise / IP. I can understand why they didn't make that choice. but it feels they'd be better off that way. having to deliver cameos and reactivity to Every Single Goddamn Choice Made In 3 Games The Oldest Of Which Is 15 Years Old is kind of a Sisyphean task that bogs the actual game down IMO

[bacchicly]

It's No Accident That HAMILTON Erases Native Americans — OnStage Blog

Two important quotes from the article above that I want to highlight:

Native American people, First Nations people, Algonquin people, The People of the Dawnland were left out HAMILTON, and it was no accident. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a brilliant and deliberate writer, and this was a deliberate and conscious decision. He squeezed bits about the postal service, Coast Guard, and Martha Washington naming her Tomcat after Hamilton. We could have easily had a passing mention, but we’re excluded for a reason. We don’t fit the “we are all immigrants” narrative.

...

I know this is shocking to many, but you can critique something and enjoy it at the same time. You can dislike huge aspects and elements of the media you consume, take great issue with it and enjoy it at the same time.

What follows are now my words and reflection:

Firstly, there are more quotes I considered including above - so I encourage reading the article - especially for the specific names and situations that the writer, Melody Nicolette, points to as possible inclusions in the narrative.

As I have mentioned before:

I am very interested right now how "imperfect" or "incomplete" or "fictionalized" or "re-imagined" or "re-examined" history function and the complexities that surround these types of works and within this context, I have been thinking a lot about the lack of indigenous voices and even mention of them in the musical.

The article I am sharing is from my first foray into what indigenous people themselves have said about the musical. I will likely share a few more perspectives in the next little while.

I'm also going to see if I can find any sort of statement from the creators / cast about this absence in the work. I have read some of the statements about other choices / exclusions / adaptations (such as stating that Angelica was single and available whan Hamilton and Eliza were married) and the same logic presented then (e.g. I only have so much time and was trying to craft a compelling show, etc.) will likely come into play, however, I am interested if they have addressed this gap explicitly in writing or a filmed interview.

I am also going to think about if silence in some cases is stronger than "lip-service" or a passing inclusion. What empowers audiences and critics more to extend the conversation and promote real world change? What have critics, artists, scholars, and activists done or not done so far with this erasure and what more could or should be done?