#authors in conversation

[iamnmbr3]

Really wish people could learn the difference between a plot hole and a character making a mistake. Just because the character messed up doesn’t mean the author did.

[thatsbelievable]

[thebluelittlewitch]

Brightheart take my hand Brightheart i will save you from the evil canon i love you Brightheart

[disgracefulthings]

I like how we add the most overused and corny tropes and bullshit worldbuilding to our fics and immediately blame Airplane for it

Shang Qinghua: Hang on, this isn't my fault!! It's the fanfiction author's fault, dammit!

[tsuchinokoroyale]

Him: I bet that ass would look good crawling up the stairs 😈

Me: you be the judge 👹👹👹

[erinwantstowrite]

seeing a lot of people complaining about the fics they don't see, and not enough people picking up a pen to write it themselves 🤨

[wolfgirliosef]

it’s so funny she just had this ready to go. if *I* were ivan the terrible i would’ve done it SO MUCH BETTER.

[moeblob]

Gavin mentally: wait... that doesn't add up........

[disastergenius]

My bold take is that R.F. Kuang and Suzanne Collins are actually doing very similar things with their books/writing and both are doing it very well (but notably only one is getting criticized for it, for which there are many reasons, some fair and most not).

They are both making very specific and strategic points about the way that class, class consciousness and allyship, exploitative systems, propaganda, and rebellions work, just to name a few themes. And it’s far more interesting to examine their respective fictional worlds, both of which are heavily influenced by real-world events and history and hold it as a parallel to our own.

[It is also far more interesting to not boil their work down to shipping, “capitalism is the bad guy,” and oppression olympics for fictional characters with far too much projection into the real world.]

[alloaroworlds]

Over the past few years, I've seen umpteen ally-authored positivity posts telling me that my aromantic experience and identity is not lessened, weakened, negated or erased by allosexuality.

But I've been wondering at the wording.

What if we were also told that our aromanticism can be nurtured, empowered, encouraged or even enriched by our allosexuality? That it can be regarded as much more than a not-diminishing-or-erasing accompaniment to my aromanticism?

At any point in my years as an aro, have allies ever told me that my allosexuality holds the potential to enrich my aromantic identity?

(Have I ever conceived of the idea to write this myself, in all the words--fictional and non-fictional--I have devoted to exploring allosexual aromanticism? What would I write about if I took my aromanticism is empowered by my allosexuality as my thesis?)

Over and over again, I am explicitly told that my allosexuality doesn't make me less aromantic than if I were asexual and/or not-allosexual.

(In practice, however, I am still subject to a thundering chorus of implicit messages stating the direct opposite.)

In ally-authored validations directed at allo-aros, messages telling us that we are not a negative concept, or our allosexuality is not a negative concept, are still more common than stand-alone celebratory, affirming language. Positivity less commonly exists without reference to the negative stereotypes, erasure or antagonism we experience as allosexual aromantics.

What I hear is this: I am not the awfulness our allosexuality isn't or shouldn't be (or doesn't actually contribute to), as aromantics. While true, this message is more about what allosexuality is not than what affirming or celebratory things (especially in relationship to our aromantic experiences and identities) it is or can be.

Maybe it's just me--but positivity posts telling me only what my allosexuality isn't no longer feel quite so revolutionary.

[elegantmarigold]

Gwen said "Lena won't be as laid back as I am about this" with so much confidence and then left the room thinking she handled that so well, completely oblivious to the atmosphere of the room. this woman has never read a social cue a day in her life and I sincerely hope it stays that way.

[notbecauseofvictories]

I have a...contentious relationship with the posts that drift across my dashboard occasionally, especially those which essentially ask, "what if this concept was different, and Good(tm) instead?" I've had feelings about it with immortals, I've had feelings about it with historical same-sex marriages, and now I'm going to have it about "king stealthily gathers the best minds around him, playing them off as 'just' concubines."

mostly, if you think you can gather a bunch of very intelligent people in a room and not have them hate each other for about 3-5 different reasons (each. each person hates each other person for 3-5 distinct reasons.) then I'm sorry---you are living in a fantasy world. And not the fun kind, where the divine right of kings somehow got it right this time.

I like most of my colleagues. I respect them and the knowledge they bring to the table; I do genuinely want to work with people rather than against them. But I have yet to work for a corporation that is not the densest, most intricate web of shifting alliances, unspoken (or spoken, some people are very open about it) hatreds, histories that you may or may not be be privy to; easy-to-make missteps, blame games, and people working out their personal psychoses on each other.

In this fictional scenario, you are making it so, so much worse---or so implausible that it beggars belief. You are essentially setting up a singular ruler who is (a) charming enough to recruit this Band of Brilliants (because of course this would be a different story if the king was forcing their participation, we would expect a different response); while also being (b) smart enough to recognize their superior knowledge and clever enough to maintain a singular grip on power, while floridly lying to the other members of the court; yet nevertheless (c) socially-sophisticated enough to settle the Brilliants' conflicts, or even just the legitimate disagreements (because there will be just plain old infighting and jealousies!) and make all these geniuses get along. Not to mention, no one is right all of the time---I really hope this prize without price has figured out how he and the kingdom will deal if his meteorologist concubine misses a horrendous drought, or if his naval battle concubine miscalculates how many ships their enemy would bring to bear.

If that's not an issue? Then at that point, you're talking about god himself---and even he had to put up with a coup by his COO.

[thatsbelievable]

[draurer]

actually, my body doesn't feel the difference between torture and the fact that Percy and Oliver haven't even spoken in canon

[innocuousghost]

Since the article about Neil Gaiman I've seen a lot of people reassessing their relationship with Terry Pratchett. Which to a certain extent does make sense: they were co-authors and as a part of his cult of personality Neil Gaiman frequently presented himself as The Guy Who Knew Terry Pratchett. So in the public consciousness their legacies seem very intertwined.

So I can understand the pivot to asking about Terry Pratchett.

But a lot of what I've seen strikes me as being paranoid and conspiratorial in a way that I do not think is healthy or particularly useful. ("Did he know? Did he not know? Was Neil Gaiman overstating their friendship? Why did Terry Pratchett really have his hard drive destroyed?")

Now, I never met Terry Pratchett. But for my money? It seems pretty likely that he didn't know what was going on. The article itself states that most of Neil Gaiman's living friends didn't know what was going on: "But in my conversations with Gaiman’s old friends, collaborators, and peers, nearly all of them told me that they never imagined that Gaiman’s affairs could have been anything but enthusiastically consensual." And throughout most of the timeline of assaults the article covers Terry Pratchett was largely either in the late stages of dimentia on another continent or dead.

Though obviously we can't say for sure he didn't know something. (Even if he genuinely didn't know it's not like he would have turned to Rihanna Pratchett and said "Just in case anybody ever asks I want it on the record that to my knowledge Neil Gaiman is not and never has been a serial rapist.")

But ultimately. That's not actually the core issue that's keeping people awake at night I don't think. I think it's "How do I continue being fans of creatives knowing that some of them are secretly capable of legitimate evil without me ever being made aware of it?"

There is a pretty loud and unpleasant contingent on the internet whose solution to that problem seems to be "You can't. The only way to eschew blind celebrity worship is to live your life every second assuming in the back of your mind that every creative living or dead could be revealed to be a serial rapist at any moment. Just in case it turns out they actually are." Which. Doesn't strike me as particularly helpful. Or even feasible. And that is certainly not a lens I would recommend universally applying to strangers. Not even famous ones.

Instead I think it's probably helpful to look at famous strangers the way you would look at strangers in your own life - like the barista at your coffee shop: that they are probably flawed but also presumably decent. And much like with a barista, in your limited interactions (largely exchanges of product for money, with perhaps a smattering of surface level small talk. Much like with celebrities) you probably won't have much opportunity to discover if they're secretly a bad person. So if it turns out they are, it really isn't your fault that you didn't notice.

And based on what I saw in his books and interviews and his memoir by Rob Wilkins - though he was presumably decent I also certainly think Terry Pratchett was flawed. He was occasionally rude (based on anecdotes from people who knew him), some of the jokes in his books about the counterweight content strike me as being in poor taste and despite his flashes of acab I'd say the perspective of the city watch books was actually largely police reformist rather than abolitionist.

Yet I continue like his work (and what small slice I know about him as a person) anyways.

And understanding creatives as being flawed doesn't even mean "there's something unequivocally problematic out there! Hiding! In their work! In their interviews! And if you employ enough of a bad faith reading then you'll be able to find it!" No. (I mean, there might be some genuinely ethically dubious stuff in there but there also might not.) In my experience even just seeing the little flaws, like flaws in their craft are enough to knock creatives off of the perfect pedestal in your mind. Like, stuff you don't even have to be super knowledgeable about the craft in question to notice. "Eh that scene really dragged. That joke didn't really land. Anyways" And I certainly think Terry Pratchett had his craft issues. Just look at the first two Discworlds and some of the middle rincewind books for proof of that. And it can even be smaller than that. Tiny personality flaws that annoy you: Terry Pratchett was very snobby about Doctor Who in a way that strikes me as overly pedantic enough to be worthy of an eyeroll.

We should see the creatives who you admire, who make work you love as earthly and human. Not as untouchable gods who can do no wrong. (Clearly that isn't working out for us for a variety of reasons)

And setting aside the total monsters, I think it's a good thing that the stuff you like was made by people who are flawed. Humans are flawed, the people in your fandom are flawed, your friends are flawed, and you're flawed. But look at all the cool stuff you all make anyways.

[morgansram]

Happy pride. Here's a funny image I came across months earlier.