#care and feeding of writers

[vera-dauriac]

Someone just left a comment on one of my favorite but least read fics from 8 years ago, and honestly, week made.

[thevioletcaptain]

i genuinely don't care how good a piece of ai generated art or writing looks on the surface. i don't care if it emulates brush strokes and metaphor in a way indistinguishable from those created by a person.

it is not the product of thoughtful creation. it offers no insights into the creator's life or viewpoint. it has no connection to a moment in time or a place or an attitude. it has no perspective. it has no value.

it's empty, it's hollow, and it exists only to generate clicks (and by extension, ad revenue.)

it's just another revolting symptom of the disease that is late stage capitalism, and it fucking sucks.

[mercurygray]

Hey, maybe you want or need to take a week off from fannish writing, for whatever reason. Maybe you are out of creative battery. Maybe you are feeling disconnected from others. Maybe you are feeling disconnected from yourself.

Read other people's stuff. Remember that you're a part of a community, and participation looks like a lot of different things.

Practice commenting. If it helps, do this in a fandom you don't create for, so there's no stakes to get this person to read back. Just do it for the sheer joy of knowing you will be making someone's day with these comments. Be generous and genuine with your praise.

Post what you've already got on ao3 or update what's already there.

Watch a movie. Watch two.

Read a book related to the project you're working on.

Read a book that's totally unrelated to the project you're working on.

Reach out to people who have commented and just say thank you for commenting.

Have a conversation with someone new. (If you're lucky, you can do this one and the previous one at the same time!)

Assess the state of your work in progress folder. What sparks joy? What feels like a chore? Set aside the chores and give yourself some time to think about (but not act on!) what's joy-making.

Take a walk. Pet a dog. Admire flowers.

[bluespiritshonour]

Aang gets a lot of hate for not giving up on Katara in The Guru. While I don't like the fact that they never had a plotline dedicated to the concept of love and attachment not being the same thing, I love Aang as a male protagonist for that reason.

The hero sacrificing his family, friends, lovers, children is a trope as old as time. You find it in Indian mythology, Chinese mythology, Greek mythology. It's what leads to the fridged woman trope, the noir detective’s dead wife, Batman's ‘good soldier’ in modern day pop culture.

You'd also notice how it's a singularly male hero trope. The female hero, rare as she is, never even gets put into a position where she has to choose between her loved ones’ safety and the greater good. Almost as if subconsciously the writers can't fathom a woman choosing to sacrifice her family, no, when it's a woman her most important duty suddenly is about others.

Aang, in his quest to be a hero, didn't let go of the girl he loved. And when he did he did it for her safety and was narratively punished because of it. And if it means the end of world, well, what's it to a woman's love?

Except we also see how Aang takes his responsibility seriously too!—or he'd just have stood his ground on not killing Ozai and not have done any energy bending. I don't care it was a deux ex machina. I'm just glad to have a hero who didn't think his morals were more important than actual breathing people (cough, Batman, cough).

Why is it that a villain is considered a good lover because he won't sacrifice you for the world, but the moment the hero does it, it's a bad thing?

If you're going to say “it's because a he's a hero,” well then, being a hero then equals being a man who only sees the world through his man eyes. Where the narrative makes everyone else's pain his man pain while stripping the same characters of their right to have their pain acknowledged.

[moffnat]

Do you know how hard it's been for me to contain myself?

[i-will-physically-fight-you]

The other day I was having a "struggle day" with writing. Nothing I write is coming out fluid, it is sluggish and stilted. I spent a majority of my time writing outlines, trying to tether abstract images that flicker like a distorted slideshow across my brain to a more concrete tangible form.

But if I was to tell certain people in my life this, their first suggestion would be, "If you're struggling with writing, you should use ChatGPT to help you!"

Pushing past the ethics debacle aside for a moment, I don't know how to describe how much that doesn't help with my plight. As much as I dislike creating a rough draft, it is where the idea takes birth. It's through writing the initial scene where I discover a character's motivation or a facet of the world that never crosses my mind until I begin carving away at its rough edges.

The machine doesn't understand the way I'd take a plot point and expand upon it. The machine can't capture my exact phrasing. Technology hasn't developed enough to take a vague idea sloshing inside my skull and glimmer it into existence in front of me in exactly the way I wanted it to be.

I don't always enjoy the rough draft process, but it is a crucial part of the process. I don't want a "paint by numbers" experience. I want to start with a blank canvas and finish with a nauseating, illustrative kaleidoscope of my innermost thoughts and feelings. I want my hands to be stained by the ink and sweat of my own efforts.

I don't care if I get "lost in the past" for wanting that, I'd rather let my words be unfettered and untainted by the uniformity of what a machine thinks is the most "right" way of phrasing words based on trillions of words unrightfully seized by avarice.

[cator99]

I always get detained at da border because PROFUNC never ended but basically I'm like if a targeted individual didn't even care

[rotzaprachim]

A wild detail about cassian’s character is that he apparently managed to keep a baby alive without grown adults around from presumably the age of like. Six

[possamble]

Oh whoops wrong blog.

[vinegar-rights]

thoughts on my version of little shop of horrors: seymours mother :p (read tags plz)

I like to combine aspects of the 1986 and the 1960 films :3.

He was put up for adoption as a baby, too expensive to care for a child. Seymour grew up assuming he was an orphan and was put into the custody of Mr. Mushnik. As he became older, he figured that he DID have a biological mother and she was still alive. He tried to reach out to meet her, but she refused to keep contact. He never met her until he became more well known, with newspapers covering the story of him and his new special plant. His success reached her and Seymour was delighted to know that he was finally going to meet his mother after so many years. Who knew fame was this powerful?

She requested that he visit her apartment for dinner. The woman was older, with messy gray-white hair and eyes that matched seymours, mousey and nervous. She welcomed her son but not without a quick check-up, only to make sure he won't drop dead right at that moment.

The apartment was messy, but no smell of mildew or sight of mold. A clean-ish hoarding situation, there were boxes everywhere full of who knows what and half-used first aid kits. The lack of bugs is what made Seymour confused, cockroaches were a common bug, especially in more drafty, more run down apartments like in Skid Row. He developed a bit of a phobia, growing up around the critters in skid rows home for boys. Dirty. Gross. Even as an adult he sometimes would sit up in bed in the middle of the night, scanning his room for any nocturnal bugs that would skitter in for shelter from the elements.

Seymour was immediately put off by the kitchen, where dinner was cooking. His mother had been talking the entire time, rambling something about the shop and what was in the paper that day, he tuned her out as he became more aware of his surroundings. The kitchen had bottles full of medicine, pill bottles aligned in rows on the counter, and already there's a napkin out with a glass of water with an assortment of pills that are ready to be consumed.

he noticed Seymour's quietness and slight discomfort, who was gazing at the view of her kitchen. She turned to explain her many issues, bad back, sinus infection, constant cold, her appendix got removed recently, ect. Her explanation managed to visibly calm her son's nerves, but he was still eyeing what was on the stove. Seymour tried not to pay mind to his mother's cooking, she was gracious enough to try to form a connection with him, and even asked him to come over! He turned to her to change the subject, he didn't want it to seem like he was judging her. They talked throughout the afternoon about what happened in the past years, and how they found each other. Most of the conversation was directed at Seymour: How did you find the plant? What kind is it? Oh, its a cross between a flytrap and what exactly? You don't know? You must be getting a lot of press, any opportunities? You were asked to host a TV show?ect. There were so many questions that Seymour wasn't to ask his own, he wanted to know why it took so long to talk to her, where was she this entire time, why didn't she reach out first?

Eventually, she passed him a bowl of whatever was in the pot in the kitchen. He didn't notice any food on the counter. The soup smelled sweet, like cough syrup. He opted to drink more of the water she offered, but he didn't want to be rude, he consumed some of the dinner. She grinned as she ate her food with her son, explaining that this is a staple of her household. The aftertaste after one spoonful made his whole body shiver as if he drank bitter wine. Out of fear of potentially offending her and risking her cutting him off forever, he ate a little bit more, cringing at the taste. Quickly he started becoming nauseous. He paused, looking more closely at the bowl, there was little to no actual food, there was a broth of course, but little to no items that would be the cause of this spike in anxiety and confusion. Something dawned on him. While his mother was watching him in between spoonfuls, she asked if he was okay. He nodded but politely declined any more. His newly reunited mother was either horribly ill all the time or a hypochondriac. He didn't need a high school education to know that. The pills and bottles on the counter were another explanation. This wasn't regular soup. She was drugging him. He sat up from the realization, and his mother became more worried at his sudden change of personality. She asked him if he was alright again, if he didn't like her food. He replied hastily that it was amazing, it's just that he remembered he left the stove on-- no, he needed to check on twoey, around this time her leaves should get washed. She accepted that explanation, and began pushing him out the door to help him on his way to Mushnik and Sons. As soon as Seymour was on the sidewalk outside of her apartment, he turned to an alleyway nearby. Fearful of whatever was in his system, he tried to throw up.

He became experienced when he accidentally ingested pesticide as a child and had to induce vomiting to avoid a hospital visit. He ran home, still feeling some residual effects of the drugs, despite only ingesting a little. The shop was empty and dark, Mr. Mushnik and Audrey went home early that day. He drank water and tried to calm himself. He found himself leaning next to audrey ii's pot, mind racing from the events that transpired. His strange mother, the apartment, the "food".

Tears sprang from his eyes as he thought everything over. She only cared to reach out as soon as he became famous. She didn't care to reach out to what was presumably her only child and never gave an explanation as to why she gave him away. He felt used. Defeated, he cried into his clammy hands. Why is everyone so cruel? Was twoey right? That some people were evil by fault and needed to die? His thoughts were deafening his senses, and didn't notice a vine curl around his body and pulled toward the sentient plant. Twoey could read his mind, which was why she knew what his innermost desires were. Turns out trying to get Seymour to reunite with his mother was a bad idea. He tired himself out after 2 hours, one of her vines snaked around his wrist and fingers, sensing Seymour's ratial artery to monitor his heart rate. He was asleep eventually, blanketed by twoeys vines and leaves. Thanks to Seymour, Orin left twoey satisfied for the past week, though maybe she could convince him again for another meal sometime soon.

[swashbucklery]

Also in honor of @willowsmutfest I’ll be taking (Willow smut flavoured) ask prompts!

How does this work?

Send me an ask, on or off anon, that contains a pairing and a premise. Like, “Kit/Elora, scissoring” or “Kit/Jade, butt stuff” or “Kit/Elora/Jade, orgasm denial, cowboy au.” A medium amount of specificity is preferred; “write whatever” is too vague to be helpful but too many details might be limiting. There is no limit on the number of asks you can send, go wild. I’ll write nearly any permutation of Kit, Elora, and Jade, but I will die a thousand deaths before writing smut about any of the dudes on this show.

I will be responding to these asks with E-rated fanfiction, so if you don’t like to read that uhhhhh don’t send me asks.

Then what happens?

I’ll try to write as many of them as I can. Sometimes this means that I write a little mini-ficlet (500 words or less) as a reply to your ask. Sometimes this inspires me to write a full fic. Sometimes I don’t write people’s asks, because their prompt is not to my taste (YKINMKATO/KINKTOMATO) or because I have more prompts than I can manage in the writing time I have.

When do I send the prompts?

This weekend! I want to have a bit of lead-time before Smutfest starts.

[thegengarprincess]

Get booped!! ✨🌈SEND THIS TO OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING🌈✨

🐙(————> *ALL THE BOOPS IN THE WORLD* get booped miss totallyy normal about Nace Jordan >:33 (I’m also definitely absolutely normal about him N totally don’t simp 4 him on main ☺️/sarc)

Let’s play a game!,How many times can U boop the boy ever?? :3

(If U boop him over a million times,U get a lifetime supply of Nacko cuddles N one free Jure 4 all ur blorbo needs!! :DD)

[daryl-dixon-daydreams]

I'm doing a bit of writing for ya'll and also am a wee bit tired and I just accidentally typed "fengers" instead of fingers and I absolutely lost it laughing.

Say it in your head. Do it. Try not to smile. I dare you.

Fengers.

OW! NOT ME FENGERS!

Alright. I might need sleep. Night night, loves.

[mercurygray]

A few thoughts this evening on writers and prompt culture:

I am trying to get better about leaving prompts for others, because I know that when I am asking for prompts, it is because I am bored, or I am feeling lonely, or because my brain just can't sit still and it needs something to play with.

Giving prompts and receiving prompts, for me, is a way to remind myself that I am part of a community. It is a way for me to reach out, and for other people to reach out to me.

When I give prompts, they are an invitation to write, not an obligation. I treat the prompts I am given in the same way. And I am going to gently suggest to all of my fandom neighbors that anyone who treats the filling of their prompts like it is an obligation and that they are somehow owed the products of your time and your mental energy… probably isn't someone you should be doing writing for.

If taking that time to fill that prompt is not going to bring you joy or is not in line with the person you are now or the writing goals you have for yourself now, release it and let it go. Thank it for the service it has done telling you that someone values your work. It is so kind of that person to ask you for this thing, and you are also being kind to yourself by saying no. You do not value or esteem that person any less because you are choosing not to fill their prompt. If the sight of unfilled prompts in your inbox is causing you stress, this is a permission slip to delete them. If it would make you feel better, you can screenshot the prompts, or record them in a spreadsheet, and perhaps return to them at another time.

[silentstaresfanficandfanart]

The Gremlin who represents my insecurities: If you don't get any ao3 comments on your next chapter you should delete ALL of them! or! or stop posting entirely! end everything on a bad note! bad end for everyone! pain and suffering and misery! pain! Pain! and for art too! yeah! just absolutely stop enjoying things you love because theyre not getting attention from people online!!! yeah!!! suffer!!!!!!!! suffer! internalize the words im saying!!! Me: what the frick are you oh my goodness how did you get into my home what is wrong with your legs why are you walking around on all fours in a setting where bipedal creatures are the norm are you slendermans fursona please get out of my house oh gross please stop staring at me why are your eyes that big please stop leaning closer to me I don't know what you're selling but i don't want it please get out of my house what even are you- also for the record theres a LOT of reasons people wouldnt be commenting on things and its really rude of you to be so weird about it please stop trying to make me feel bad about it im actually having a lot of fun writing right now, so could you like....not interrupt that??? im going to go back to writing and having fun now please-

[girl-next-door-writes]

How to interact with creators

If you enjoy something then REBLOG it. Seriously, share the crap out of it. It doesn't 'fit' your blog aesthetic? That's fine, set up a side blog to reblog stuff. If you don't pass it around for others to see then a tiny part of the creator dies.

2. Leave a comment. This can be a long in depth analysis of the thing. This can be a keyboard smash. This can be a gif. This can be half a sentence because you 'just can't even'. This encourages your creators to create more. It's like giving them the creative version of Red Bull.

3. If you want more, maybe a part 2 or 3, then please don't ask directly for it. Your creator has poured their love and time and attention into this beautiful thing that they have shared with you. It may have taken them many hours, days, weeks, months. They have held up this thing for you and you've looked at it and immediately demanded more. That's not gonna get anyone what they want. Instead, try 'OH MY GOSH I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!! Do you plan on another part?' You're letting your creator know they did good, that you enjoyed it and are hoping for more but not demanding it.

4. If you want to be tagged in a series then please reblog the parts you've consumed before you ask. If something draws you in and you are eager not to miss the next bit then please REBLOG IT! The creators know if you've shared their work, trust me, we take a lot of notice of who reblogs our work. If you come to us wanting to be tagged in a series of work and you haven't reblogged what's already there then it kinda feels a little rude. Now, I know that is probably not your intention, but if it's good enough for you to not want to miss a part then surely it's good enough to share, right?

That's it, really. That is all you need to keep your creators creating. Appreciate your gif creators, your artists, your writers and REBLOG THEIR STUFF!

A like is lovely but it's like taking the thing and putting it in a drawer where you forget about it. Reblogs are like passing around something really cool, or group watching something.

For those of you lovely people who have arrived from other platforms, please reblog. For those of you who have been here since the dawn of time, you know the ancient writings and you should be reblogging.