#author death

[darylthekidd]

im literally dying from what is essentially chronic blood loss and severe depression which, at times, can induce psychosis and hallucinations, but this story must go on.

[prokopetz]

Folks act like "maybe the author isn't the final authority about what their work means" is some wanky post-modern nonsense and not a simple recognition that a lot of authors are perfectly prepared to bullshit about their own work. Like, leaving big-name popular media aside, I have personally encountered authors being actively disingenuous about their own work for all of the following reasons:

A true answer wouldn't fit the image they've cultivated.

They've decided they like the explanation the readers/viewers have come up with better than what they actually had in mind.

Something that was originally intended as a standalone work ended up growing into a franchise or series, and now they're pretending that was the plan all along for some reason.

They don't want to admit that the bit you're asking about is genuinely just a plot hole.

The real answer gets into some shit they don't care to discuss, so they've prepared a cover story to explain away the parts they don't want to talk about.

Their politics have changed since they wrote it, but they don't want to acknowledge that, so they're constantly trying to re-interpret everything they've ever written to be perfectly consistent with whatever their positions are this week.

They wrote it decades ago and they honestly don't remember what they were thinking at the time, so they're just making shit up; sometimes they also don't remember what shit they made up the last time, so the answer is different every time they're asked.

The work in question is at least partly autobiographical and they can't tell the truth without confessing to a crime in the process.

Most of the good bits are plagiarised and they don't really understand it themselves.

They're lying to you on purpose, for evil reasons.

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

[rs-hawk]

Working on my novel and couldn’t figure out why it felt so empty. I didn’t have any filler. It was all 100% plot. The characters only interacted when necessary. I didn’t prattle on about the scenery or how the birds sounded. I had all my fuller stuff that I loved saved in another file because I “didn’t need it”.

Y’all, I knew this existed in TV shows but it didn’t hit me until this that everything is being whittled down. We are so starving for filler that we snap up anything. I unload all mine on Tumblr or keep it in a massive Google Docs. It SUCKS.

Honestly? Death to plot necessity. Revive filler. Revive unnecessary interactions. Revive just vibing with characters sometimes. I don’t want to just consume the plot and I don’t want to just create the plot either.

[neil-gaiman]

I told my mother you had Tumblr and the absolute shock she was in that you are still alive and of somewhat sound mind was hilarious, would you be able to just tell her you are alive and not super old?

If not that's totally okay, ik you probably get a ton of these :)

I am sorry, but I fear I must disappoint you, for when you reach my advanced age it is difficult to remember whether you are alive or not.

[galaghiel]

Both Jack and Maddie stared at him, speechless. Silence blanketed the lab, everything but Danny’s strangled crying, his hand pressed over the muzzle as if to hide it. No- to hold it still, to still the dozen wicked barbs that were digging into his tongue, probably ripping it with each sob.

a little sketch of @liketolaugh-writes amazing one-shot fanfic that you can read here

[harbingerofsoup]

there’s death of the author and then there’s whatever the fuck is up with danny phantom

[angry-kid-with-no-money]

"Nora doesn't know anything about the things she writes about" "aftg is terrible queer rep" "the queer characters in aftg are so problematic"

Idk guys maybe the book series abt problematic ppl set in 2006 and written in the mid 2010s shouldn't be expected to hold up against scrutiny of what we consider to be moral and correct now, in 2024

Idk tho, idk

[tampire]

"Give me Coffee or give me Death"

[artemis-pendragon]

Imagine you're some religious guy who agrees to let an angel inhabit your body for a holy purpose and it all goes great except your wife thinks you're insane and threatens to take your daughter and leave but this is IMPORTANT so you let the angel in anyway. But then BUT THEN. it turns out the angel's mission is to pull Some Guy out of Hell and the fucking angel is gay and insane and rebels against Heaven because he wants to kiss this guy from literal Hell on the mouth so so so bad. Also many years later he does use your now thankfully empty human body (you got killed by Lucifer during the fight to stop the apocalypse btw) to fuck nasty with the guy he rescued because again, he's gay and insane. Every day Jimmy Novak wakes up

[loeh]

From the moment he saw your portrait, his life began to change in ways he could hardly understand. At first, he attended the auction out of obligation. He was indifferent to the event until he saw you, captured in a frame, almost lost among the other items on display.

You didn’t stand out at first. Your beauty wasn’t the kind that demanded immediate attention. Yet, when the bidding for your portrait began, he found himself compelled to participate. Was it boredom? A reckless display of wealth? He couldn’t say, even to himself.

The moment he brought your portrait home, he placed it in his room—an odd choice, one that puzzled him. It started as a mere curiosity. What was it about you that had so many people interested? Why did you look so serene, yet so stern?

Your gown, with its deep crimson velvet, was a masterpiece of craftsmanship, clinging to your form like a whispered secret. The intricate lace on the bodice gracefully embraced your delicate shoulders, while the silk train flowed like liquid fire. It was mesmerizing, yet it was your expression that truly captivated him. It wasn’t one of joy or contentment, but of solemness—a quiet command that demanded respect and obedience.

Each night, as he looked upon the portrait, he became more obsessed, wondering who you were, what thoughts filled your mind when you posed for this image. It was as though you had reached out from the canvas, drawing him into a world where he couldn’t escape your gaze, a world where he was slowly losing himself to an obsession he couldn’t explain.

His curiosity had become an all-consuming obsession. The more he stared at your portrait, the more he needed to know about the woman who had captivated him so completely. He scoured records, questioned merchants, and chased down rumors, but for the longest time, his search led nowhere. You seemed to be a ghost, a figure lost to time.

Finally, after what felt like an endless pursuit, he encountered an elderly man who claimed to know your story. The man spoke with a somber tone, revealing that you were once the Crown Princess of a proud and flourishing kingdom. But tragedy had struck when your father’s own brother, betrayed the royal family. He committed treason, igniting a rebellion that tore the kingdom apart.

Despite being outnumbered and facing overwhelming odds, you stood as the last line of defense. You took up arms, leading the loyalists in a desperate attempt to save your home. The man recounted how you fought with unmatched bravery, refusing to yield even as the kingdom crumbled around you. But in the end, your efforts were not enough.

The last anyone saw of you was during a fierce duel with your once loyal knight and lover on the edge of a cliff. Some say you were killed in that final battle; others believe you vanished, your fate a mystery. The man who recounted this tale was none other than the head butler of your kingdom, a loyal servant who had witnessed the downfall firsthand.

Through further questioning, he learned that after your supposed death, your uncle’s reign quickly fell into chaos. The kingdom, once thriving, could not withstand the internal strife and soon succumbed to external wars. These conflicts were so devastating that they effectively erased the kingdom from history, leaving nothing behind but forgotten ruins and faded memories.

The more he uncovered, the deeper his obsession grew. You were no longer just a figure in a painting; you were a tragic heroine. The thought that your story, your life, could be forgotten by time haunted him. He felt an inexplicable connection to you, as if understanding your past could somehow fill the emptiness he felt within himself.

In the end, his search led him to a humble barhouse where you, once a Crown Princess, were now reduced to serving as a maid. The sight of you, stripped of your former grandeur, struck him like a blow to the heart. How could someone of your noble stature have fallen so low? The injustice of it consumed him, feeding the obsession that had taken root within him.

Determined to restore you to the glory he believed you deserved, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He married you, forcibly and without your consent, convinced that he was saving you from a life of indignity. To him, this was an act of love, a twisted belief that he was doing what was best for you, even if you couldn't see it.

He impregnated you with his children, two daughters who became the center of his world. In his mind, he had found his happy ending—a life with you by his side, a family that completed the vision he had constructed in his obsessive heart. He had given you back everything you had lost, or so he thought.

But you, despite everything, continued to resist. You sought every chance to escape, your spirit undimmed even in the face of his control. You spoke of how you didn't love this life, how you longed to be free from the gilded cage he had created. To him, your words were incomprehensible. How could you not see that he had given you everything? How could you reject the life he had worked so hard to build for you?

In his eyes, your ingratitude was maddening. He had rescued you, loved you, given you the children he believed would bind you to him forever. Yet you still sought to flee, still spoke of a life you wanted to escape from. To him, it was baffling—shouldn't you be more grateful? Shouldn't you love the life he had crafted for you with such care and obsession?

But in his twisted perception of love, he could not see the prison he had built around you, nor the pain he caused in his relentless pursuit of a happiness that was his alone.

Maximillian Ashet, Dylan Sean Blathe, Anastacius de Alger Obelia, Dion Agriche, Cruel Harte, Rezef Hill, Eros Vasilios, Callisto Regulus, Ahin Grace, Theobold von Baden Mismarck, Noah Wynknight, Abel Heilon, Prince Escalus, Luciano Valeztena

[thestuffedalligator]

God do I think a lot about the bit in Monstrous Regiment about old women.

"Women had to cover their hair on Fridays, but there was nothing about this in the Book, which was pretty dar—pretty damn rigorous about most things. It was just a custom. It was done because it had always been done. And if you forgot, or didn’t want to, the old women got you. They had eyes like hawks. They could practically see through walls. And the men took notice, because no man wanted to cross the crones in case they started watching him, so half-hearted punishment would be dealt out. Whenever there was an execution, and especially when there was a whipping, you always found the grannies in the front row, sucking on peppermints."

I can't explain why, I just. God this bit haunts me. This is the most resonant idea that's lived with me for months after I read MR.

[cidr18]

Hehe🫀

[katakaluptastrophy]

Periodically, I remember how absolutely fucked up the necromancers in TLT are meant to look. Like, necromancy does an absolute number on people physically.

Harrow is "rather small and feeble".

Necromantic Ianthe is "the starved shadow" of her non-necromantic twin.

Our first description of Palamedes is "a rangy, underfed young man" who is "gaunt".

Silas is "knife-faced...He had a necromancer build."

Ianthe parodies make-over scenes in House novels with "if the hero’s a necromancer it’ll be described like, ‘His frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral'"

Jod acknowledges to Wake that even small children with aptitude would look odd to non-House eyes: "“I have access to any number of cute pictures of necromantic toddlers with their first bone. They don’t make for fat-cheeked roly-poly babies, but they’ve got a certain something."

In As Yet Unsent, Judith brags about her previous physical fitness: "I could run a kilometre in ten minutes, which was among the fastest for my adept group in the junior reserves." Which is about double the time you might expect for a physically fit woman her age.

In non-necromancer-friendly New Rho, Harrow's body is mistaken for a child's and has to be explained as a result of starvation and trauma to seem plausible: "Pyrrha explained without missing a beat that what with everything Nona had gone through she had been ill and still didn’t eat very much, which was why she was so knobbly and undergrown. The nice lady said that yes, many of the children had problems like that, but it was still hard to imagine Nona was anywhere over fourteen, wasn’t it?"

Tamsyn Muir's descriptions of the Canaan House gang on Tumblr back this up: "Judith is somewhat less completely scrawny than other necromancers on the cast, though she should be less built than Marta is", Palamedes is "seriously underfed" and "bony", Harrow is "scrawny".

And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head - I'm sure there's more.

Anyway, necromancers aren't slender in a conventionally attractive way, they're gaunt in a concerning way...and probably the only reason no one instantly clocked that Coronabeth wasn't a necromancer was because they all just thought it was par for the course that a Third House princess would have had a lot of plastic surgery flesh magic.

[cheezewhis]

"Seperate the art from the artist!!" Or..... Acknowledge that the creator is terrible and be willing to carefully examine the art? Because artists tend to put a lot of themselves into their work a d ignoring that could potentially ignore harmful messages, subtext, worldviews, etc.

It was until JK Rowling outed herself as a terf that I became consciously aware of how she described evil female characters as looking "manish" or more masculine. But once I knew her real views, I looked back at her work and realized that she was sending a message about what she deems "correct" for women to be like. I never would've seen that if I'd just said "seperate her from the art!" and refused any critical thinking.

It's still possible to love the works of a terrible person. I never loved Harry Potter, but I still love the X-Men movies (most of which were directed by a pedophile) and it seems most people on here loved Deadpool and Wolverine (directed by a zionist). Every Buffy fan I hear from is more than willing to discuss the problems with Joss Whedon and how he left his marks on the show for good and bad.

It's perfectly possible to love work make by a bad person, but ignoring that person and pretending their work has nothing to do with their worldviews is ignorant and frankly, lazy. I know people are fighting about that "Good Omes belongs to us" post and yeah I get it. Because Good Omens doesn't belong to you. But the fandom does. Make that a safe space and to do that start by showing you care about victims more than your media. Start by not making excuses for liking something and instead acknowledge the creator's atrocious actions. Start by trying to figure out what parts of the content you want to be represented by when you say you're a fan. Just don't make excuses.

[fallenclan]

shits gettin REAL!!!! who is pumped. i know i am. enjoy the random ass starclan cat cameos that I crammed in here <3

finished this update JUST in time, but next week I'm gonna be even more busy so I guess we'll see!

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