#autobiographical notes

[fred-leforgeur-baudelaire]

“Le coeur enclavé dans le jazz des nuits folles et les baisers humides troqués, je cherche l'amour disparu dans les rues brumeuses de la cité. Mais le silence de mon âme errante demeure captif d'une mélancolie inachevée.„

~•~

“With my heart locked in the jazz of wild nights and wet kisses exchanged, i search for lost love in the foggy streets of the city. But the silence of my wandering soul remains captive to an unfinished melancholy.„

~•~

— Fred Leforgeur-Baudelaire

Applied Visual Art : Yulia Luchkina “Full Moon"

[fishandshesmygills]

we need to STOP assuming songs are autobiographical. i would say it's the taylorswiftification of popular music but also like even taylor swift is like hey these songs are fictional narratives that aren't about me and then her entire fanbase still acts like they're her personal experience. man. treat songwriting like creative writing and dont make assumptions. this is what mitski is always talking about, devaluing women's art in particular by saying it's like a diary rather than an intentional craft. and art that is vulnerable and personal and like a diary is of course valuable but you have no way of knowing if that's the case if the artist doesnt share and frankly as a music listener its none of your business if it's "true" or not

[noisytenant]

pale fire is so fucking good. read the final 999 line poem where one of the greatest contemporary poets reflects on his life, inspirations, and relationship to death, as edited and annotated by his psychosexually obsessed neighbor who relates the poem to a conspiracy to assassinate an exiled european king... that might be said editor himself.

[remma-demma]

G'raha, clearly upset: Pls help me, N'ephele's been avoiding me and I don't know why

Some Scion: You mean you don't know...?

G'raha: What? Know what????

Scion: .

G'raha, realizing why this is upsetting him so much: Oooooh... I'm in love with him.

Scion, wincing: Oooooh..... so close.

[lightyakami]

22/29/30!

hello isa thank you!!

22. category you read the most of aus for sure, i am all about aus all the time. every so often i venture out of au territory and that is exciting but mostly i am All About AUs. within that i read almost exclusively realism and/or magical realism.

29. do you have any works that are required reading for (fandom?) wouldn't it be funny if i answered this for a fandom that wasn't death note. anyway. modern classics:

lacuna: canon divergence noir yearning. we both know and love this. required reading not just because it's good but because it tackles and builds upon the recurring themes within both death note itself and the fandom as a whole. i feel people who read this will walk away with a fuller understanding of both.

who shall be debased, and who exalted: mikalight hierophilia. i feel u may perhaps be aware of this one. required reading both because its good in and of itself and because religious imagery has become a staple part of the fandom; it is so rare and wonderful to see a fic that treats them with such gravity and care, and also does so outside of the christian hegemony.

a divine power: L has a magic dick. i feel fandom in general has kind of drifted away from 'stories that are fun and hot for the sake of it' and this captures the joy that a lot of stories are kind of afraid to embrace.

older classics:

the hinterland doctrine: light is a politician. idek how to describe this, it's just really really fucking good and also extremely influential within the death note fandom. i also feel it does a truly incredible job of interfacing with the misogyny in death note; a lot of fics kind of pay lip service that but the hinterland doctrine delves right in

just that and paper cranes: darkeyedwolf was an influential writer back in the day & 'just that and paper cranes' is perhaps the best fluff fic of all time. stellar characterization, deft balance of melancholy vs. hope, and as a bonus was written prior to the completion of death note so you can get a nice snapshot of the early fandom

poison apple: ok unlike everything else on this list, this isn't necessarily a rec because i don't feel time has been kind to it -- by which i don't mean that the fic is bad, but rather that it relies on a lot of tropes that have fallen out of popularity and therefore come across a bit poorly. this being said, poison apple was an incredibly popular fic that imo had a significant influence on how the fandom as a whole characterizes lawlight. it's also a really good example of how most early 2k fics were constructed both linguistically and narratively, so if you want a peek into early anime & death note fandom this is a good story to read. note that there is significant graphic noncon, which is not warned for (as was typical for the time.)

30. biggest surprise for you as a reader this year?

this kind of feels like the year of f/f genderswaps, which i am VERY here for. also i came back to the death note fandom after a long absence and i feel the general characterization of L has changed in a way i find a bit startling -- it kind of seems more common these days to characterize him as somewhat harsh and morally bankrupt. it isn't at all a bad thing, but it did surprise me. i have theories about what happened here but i'm not sure what the actual cause is.

readers asks

[sofipitch]

I saw a performance of the Crucible where the actor playing the main guy would yell his lines for dramatic emphasis, but he did it so much that once we got to the climax it kind of had no emotional resonance at all, because it was the same tone as the entire play had been conducted, this scene wasn't more emotional/powerful/impactful than the others. The whole play felt very blah and I got tired of that guy's yelling. Anyways that's how I feel about the lyrics in tortured poets department. It needs to be massively scaled back, don't use 5 metaphors, it dulls the impact of what one good one could do and makes everything sound the same.

[orlaite]

And you best believe btw that I'm including every bit of homosexual implications I can find textual evidence for and using it in my thesis to support my arguments about autobiographical conventions and the paratextual context of Seven Pillars that should inform a historical analysis of the book. I'm not fucking around with that "person could read this text and walk away with the impression that it was about a heterosexual man" type of Academia

[knife-at-a-knife-fight]

the reason i need to get things published and have a successful career while i’m alive is so that i can leave things in my will to be published after my death. I don’t think I’m going straight O’Neill and making it 25 years after my death (and we know how that turned out for him); I think I’m fine with��“published six months - a year after my death” Because there are some things that i don’t want to answer any questions about, you make of it what you will. 

And I think i should also have a companion book with any of these post mortis publications - but the companions are slated to be released notably after. give scholars 25 years to theorise first and come to their own conclusions, then drop the actual intention on them, see how they take it. well, i won’t see it. but i think it would make some young academics very happy to see their profs have to go “okay so i apparently was completely off on that. I was no where near close.”

“Death to the author” darling; that’s when my best work is coming out 

[fred-leforgeur-baudelaire]

“Dans l'antre du club de jazz, où l'obscurité se marie à l'ivresse, je m'enfonce dans l'ombre, isolé dans ma détresse. Le serveur, parfois messager discret des prémices concubines, me transmet, sur un voile, une écriture divine.

"Bonjour, Monsieur", alors, commence l'histoire de cette nouvelle vie ; une femme élégante, envoûtante mélodie. Elle désire être le chemin où nos pas se confondent, où nos empreintes tracent ensemble une autre ronde.

Dans l'attente fébrile, je pose ma plume sur le papier. "Bonjour, Madame," ma réponse, fragile pensée - peut-être, sur le chemin où je me suis égaré, nous croiserons-nous - vouée à découvrir nos affinités.

Le serveur, tel un oiseau portant mon émoi, la serviette en main, vers elle se déploie. Et ainsi, entre les harmonies et les murmures ensorcelants, s'ouvre l'étrange bal de deux amants au destin voluptueux et troublant.„

~•~

“In the den of the jazz club, where darkness blends with intoxication, i sink into the shadows, isolated in my distress. The waiter, sometimes the discreet messenger of concubine premices, transmits divine writing to me on a veil.

"Bonjour, Monsieur", then, begins the story of this new life ; an elegant woman, bewitching melody. She wants to be the path where our footsteps merge, where our footprints trace together another round.

In feverish anticipation, i put pen to paper. "Bonjour, Madame," my reply, a fragile thought - perhaps, on the path where i've lost my way, we'll cross paths - destined to discover our affinities.

The waiter, like a bird carrying my emotion, napkin in hand, towards her, unfurls. And so, between bewitching harmonies and murmurs, the strange dance of two lovers with a voluptuous and troubling destiny begins.„

~•~

— Fred Leforgeur-Baudelaire

Visual art applied : Watercolor, felt-tip pens and oil : FLB (Fred Leforgeur-Baudelaire)

[asmuchasidliketo]

#I thought it was fall trauma  #but it's clear the other demons have no such issues  #and now that we KNOW crowley was powerful and it's heavily implied he was an archangel  #the memory loss for him specifically makes sense  #especially how many times they emphasize it this season  tags by ⬆️

#The way they probably erased Crowley's memory of heaven. Also the way Crowley offered a hot chocolate to Gabriel just after even though he still hated him because he knew how it feels to remember nothing (insp from this post by @perpetualcontrolleddrowning)

[prokopetz]

i remember you writing a list of something in some fucking context (i remember nothing), and on that list there was a lesbian ttrpg that really stuck out to me that i didn't save. It was a real edgy one about being lesbian violent and mean (i think), which isn't really much to go off. Where i'm going to is, would you be interested in just listing every lesbain indie ttrpg you know of? Its fine if you dont wanna, of course.

You're probably thinking of this thread here, though you're quite correct that "mean violent lesbians" isn't sufficient to pick out a specific entry – several of the titles plugged in that thread would easily qualify!

As for "listing every lesbian indie ttrpg [i] know of", that's a trickier demarcation problem than you might imagine. What is a lesbian tabletop RPG? Is it one where the player characters are obligatorily lesbians? (If so, we end up excluding games which are explicitly about the lesbian experience, but feature some other type of character.) Is it one written, at least in part, by lesbians? (If so, we bump into the problem that not all indie tabletop RPGs are autobiographical, the maunderings of certain self-appointed critics notwithstanding.) Is it one where the game itself is a lesbian? (Not an impossible brief, but now we're catering exclusively to folks who are into meta bullshit.)

Ultimately I'm going to pass the problem down the line and just ask folks in the notes to name the first game that comes to mind when they think of the phrase "lesbian indie ttrpg". Let's see what sort of consensus evolves.

[toscrollperchancetomeme]

Not to get too autobiographic, but some of you clearly didn't watch "Velvet Goldmine" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" in your late teens to early twenties and made it your whole personality and it's showing. xD If I have to read one more post saying that Rockstar Lestat / "Long Face" is cringe… it's CAMP. That's the word you're looking for! CAMP!!! Just like an 18th century bisexual blond french mentally unstable drama queen would be! <3

On a more serious note, I have seen a lot of people worrying about how the tonal shift will work and...

Watch those two movies! I beg you! Ten times so if you're a queer person! They are incredibly good and especially Hedwig will give you a very good idea of where they seem to be going with the storytelling!

It's a framing device! Dubai had a vastly different tone from New Orleans/Paris and yet the overall tone worked perfectly! Why should this not work in the same way - just with a bit more fun! Some parts of Lestat's story are truly and deeply horrific, we need a balance and this will do the job so well!

The tonal change is part of the experience! This is the same whiplash every book reader had when going from IwtV to TLV. Enjoy and embrace it! To quote Lestat: Now we're having fuuuuuuuuun!

[lightyakami]

this is my question. okay. if we can all pretty much agree that there’s no sensible way to interpret light as a straight man, why would one assume that ohba wrote him with the intention of creating a straight man? like ohba did not find him in a field. all the characteristics which make him read very clearly as queer were written by ohba. like yes there’s no way to be sure of authorial intent and to a large degree it doesn’t actually matter but also i truly do not understand the widespread reluctance to consider the possibility that this was done on purpose.

like i truly just do not think you could fuck up writing a straight person badly enough to create light. how would that even happen. how could that occur. is the assumption that o&o have never met a straight person in their entire life. what circumstances could have led them to the assumption that 'dislikes having sex with woman' is a standard straight male preference.

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode 1958

"Johnny B. Goode" is a song by American musician Chuck Berry, written and sung by Berry in 1958. It peaked at number two on the Hot R&B Sides chart and number eight on its pre-Hot 100 chart. The song remains a staple of early and later rock music. "Johnny B. Goode" is considered one of the most recognizable songs in the history of popular music. Credited as "the first rock & roll hit about rock & roll stardom", it has been covered by various other artists and has received several honors and accolades. This includes being one of the 27 songs on the Voyager Golden Record, a collection of music, images, and sounds designed to serve as a record of humanity, that is travelling into deep space outside the solar system.

Berry acknowledged that the song is partly autobiographical and that the original lyrics referred to Johnny as a "colored boy", but he changed it to "country boy" to ensure radio play. As well as suggesting that the guitar player is good, the title hints at autobiographic elements, because Berry was born at 2520 Goode Avenue, in St. Louis. The song was initially inspired by Johnnie Johnson, the regular piano player in Berry's band, but developed into a song mainly about Berry himself. The opening guitar riff of "Johnny B. Goode" borrows from the opening single-note solo on Louis Jordan's "Ain't That Just Like a Woman" (1946), played by guitarist Carl Hogan.

"Johnny B. Goode" received 86% total yes votes! The other 14% are just not ready for it yet…but their kids are gonna love it.

[dumbingofage]

You've mentioned a few times that Joyce is autobiographical for you, which comes off as pretty obvious in the pages because people who haven't been through her life wouldn't be giving her the grace or room to grow that she's gotten. Its entirely too common to just have her be another Mary and forget about her. And I really appreciate her a lot, I've been binging the comic for the first time this past week and I think I posted a couple dozen Joyce pages to my friends with various notes about how relatable to my own experience they are. So, y'know, thank you <3

P.S. I'm still catching up (hello from the past in Book 11) and I'm excited for her to stop being a Reddit Atheist

former fundies have all, sadly, had our own reddit atheist metamorphosis stage

just gotta make sure it's not our final form

though sometimes its hard not to slip back into when somebody mentions how noah successfully fit all the world's animals on the ark

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Coming-of-Age Story

A story featuring an adolescent making the mental leap from child to adult.

In real life, this happens over the course of several years.

Literature, films and some television series are media that have the space to show the story at a slow pace. Things have to be compressed to several months at the most, so expect some really accelerated character development.

Writing Tips: Coming-of-Age Story

When writing a coming of age story, consider these steps to increase the emotional power and appeal to readers:

Develop a clear voice. Many coming-of-age stories are in first person, giving the reader an immediate impression of the protagonist. Work on developing a voice for your protagonist—think about how the character speaks, how they address other characters vs. how they address the reader, and what kind of opinions they have.

Seek originality. Try to find a novel way of approaching the experience of character growth. You can create an unusual character or a strange event to highlight the change and its effects.

Work motifs into the story. As with any narrative, the use of motifs, such as images that resonate with the theme, can be a great way to strengthen your story. Carefully evoke some of the possible throughlines, like markers of change, loss of innocence, childhood versus adulthood, moral growth, and knowledge.

Find the conflict. Reaching adulthood has plenty of built-in conflict. To make a solid, affecting story, focus on specific instances of conflict. This can be between a child and their parents, between the character and an institution (such as school), or between different youths with varying experiences and personalities. Having these scenes in mind can be especially helpful when planning the plot points of your story.

Draw from personal experience. Many coming-of-age stories are wholly or partially autobiographical. While your own experiences can be a valuable resource, such self-exposure takes courage and often involves personal details of others who might not want to be written about. Carefully choose personal information to work into your story.

Identify the pivotal events. Often, coming-of-age stories center around a particular event or a few key events that are formative to character development. This will be one of the most significant emotional beats in the narrative

Find your writing approach. No two writers have the same approach to writing a story. Some take extensive notes, while others meticulously plan every scene before writing the details, descriptions, and dialogue. Other writers make much of their narrative up as they proceed; finding out which approach is right for you takes practice and a certain amount of trial and error.

Types of Coming-of-Age Stories

Bildungsroman: Bildungsroman, which translates to “novel of education” or “novel of formation,” chronicles a character’s journey from young innocence to worldly adulthood. This is a specific type of coming-of-age story in which the character gains knowledge and experience, even as innocence is lost.

Sexual awakening: Many coming-of-age books and movies center around the momentous changes brought about by discovering sexuality. This can be a highly-charged emotional experience to write about, and the dramatic possibilities are rich and varied, making it an excellent material for revealing personal growth.

Discovery of identity: This type of coming-of-age tale involves a character coming to discover, and hopefully embrace, their identity. This type of story might focus on gender identity, sexual identity, political identity, racial identity, or a combination of identities to expand the depth and emotional heft of the story.

Betrayal: Growing up can be a painful process. When shaping a coming-of-age narrative, it can be helpful to emphasize how increased knowledge, especially about other people and their motivations, can cause suffering for the protagonist. A character might emerge from this experience with more pain but more knowledge of themselves and the world.

The words bildungsroman (Ger. "educational novel") or bildungsgeschichte (Ger. "educational story") are sometimes used to describe these kinds of stories.

A note on the translation: the terms originated in the Age of Enlightenment, when "Bildung" meant not only "education" but also "self-improvement" (cf. English "building") — or as Werner Heisenberg put it, Bildung is "that which is still there after you've forgotten everything you had ever learned".

In other words, it's not a "novel to educate the readers" but a "novel about the hero becoming someone".

Examples of Coming-of-Age Novels

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951): The main character is Holden, a jaded teenager expelled from boarding school who is easily annoyed by everyone and everything. The book follows his journey from living a life of angst to finding true happiness.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960): This novel tells the story of a young girl who experiences hate from her community when her father defends a Black man accused of committing a crime in the south. At the beginning of the novel, she’s an innocent, immature girl. But as the story progresses and she witnesses injustice and racial prejudice, she learns that life isn’t always fair.

In Film

Coming-of-age movies belong to a genre that focuses on young adults.

A coming-of-age movie - a film that follows a protagonist as they transition from childhood to adulthood.

This genre of storytelling is popular for literature and movies in Hollywood and often features stories about critical junctures between childhood and adulthood, such as first romantic relationships, graduating from middle school or high school, and moving away from home.

Characteristics of Coming-of-Age Movies

Coming-of-age films typically feature these standard storytelling devices:

Character growth: These films usually follow a character realizing their future, which propels their development from an innocent child to a perceptive young adult. The films focus on the characters’ mental, emotional, and personal growth.

Dialogue: Coming-of-age films focus on the interior lives and emotions of the characters, rather than an outside action or adventure that’s driving the narrative. These films feature more dialogue and moments of stillness than dramatic actions or events.

Social commentary: Coming-of-age films address issues that teens face today, like coming out in Moonlight (2016), teen pregnancy in Juno (2007), or race and violence in Boyz n the Hood (1991).

Examples in Film

The Breakfast Club (1985): Arguably one of the most well-known teen films and coming-of-age films, John Hughes' movie is set one weekend where a group of teens from different backgrounds are trapped together in detention.

Boyhood (2014): This coming-of-age movie from filmmaker Richard Linklater was filmed over twelve years. It follows one boy from age six to eighteen.

Moonlight (2016): This film follows a man through three stages of his life—childhood, teenage years, and adulthood—as he slowly comes to terms with his sexuality.

Call Me By Your Name (2017): This Italian-set movie is a love story, following the relationship between a young man as he falls in love for the first time.

Lady Bird (2017): Lady Bird is Greta Gerwig's solo directorial debut. It follows a teenage girl applying for college far from home in New York and navigating a fraught relationship with her overbearing mother.

We wouldn’t call all films or books “coming-of-age” stories simply because the main character matures.

The genre has certain hallmarks denoting not just change, but the loss of innocence in the transition.

To put it another way, childhood must be left behind and the lessons of adulthood will be complex, ambiguous, and arduous.

That’s not to say that every coming-of-age story is a downer, but there is a realization that the past is lost and gone forever, so there is a bittersweet element at play.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs