#i dont often publish or show my writing

[marielaanything]

Has it ever happened to you? Opinions?

I've noticed, when you're arguing with a snater and the snater runs out of argument they resort to the typical:

"JK rowling said snape is evil so it's canon"

I send them quotes and arguments from the book and they come up with that.

It's so funny and frustrating at the same time. Like How do you respond to that level of poor argument ?

My opinion is that if you have to resort to jk rowling instead of the canon of the book it is a poor argument, especially if what she says sounds more like "an opinion" than canon. And considering JK's track record on Twitter.... Let's just say she wasn't saying a lot of coherent things

And I feel that when the author publishes the book, the book is no longer totally the author's, it becomes part of popular culture

I understand that JK wanted to write snape as an evil character, because she disliked her chemistry teacher.... But she failed to write snape evil as she wanted. It was her mistake as a writer. Show dont tell. She is just telling her opinion of snape, but she didn't show him like that in the books. So.... 🤷🏻‍♀️

Idk I would love to see other opinions and if it happens more often than I thought that snaters always resort to "JK said blablabla...."

[angstics]

I’m kinda a new fan had some questions. Are any of the members religious? I saw Gerard say god spoke in his head or something (I hear alot of Christians say this)

Regarding that whole thing does he hallucinate? I don’t mean to be rude I’m just wondering if he’s kinda schizophrenic. I really don’t mean to be rude.

Were they on drugs during the creation of black parade? Did they do drugs during the creative process at all? (Sorry to be weird)

Did Gerard write comics before the band? Was he successful? Did he actually work at CNN? Did he want to join military after 9/11 (I’ve heard him say he wanted to join in a tweet) ? Is there any pic of his art portfolio during college?

Did Mikey go to college?

hi! these arent weird questions. you just want to know what everyone else knows. im gonna answer your questions as best as i can from my own recollection. anyone can add if im wrong or forgot something. disclaimer, of course, there's a lot the public doesnt know so ill just be regurgitating What Is Known, and where you might have gotten these ideas. below the cut ->

"Are any of the members religious?"

the ways grew up catholic. Gerard has talked about his relationship with religion a few times. Most substantially this twitlonger in 2013 (from this tweet). i dont know if we know his Current Status. i feel like he talked about it in this 2019 podcast maybe. he def talks about his and his wife's relationship to "witchcraft" in there. In the second nj 2022 show he referred to bury me in black as a song from back in the "catholic days". whatever that means

frank used to go to catholic school. i think he no longer identifies with catholicism. i dont think we know what ray or mikey practice.

"I saw Gerard say god spoke in his head or something (I hear alot of Christians say this)"

he probably did say that, i just cant remember when. what i do remember is that he often talked about "hearing voices" (2014) and "being touched by god" (2007), particularly relating it to joan of arc.

"Regarding that whole thing does he hallucinate? I don’t mean to be rude I’m just wondering if he’s kinda schizophrenic."

so, he's never talked about any specific mental illnesses. he's only ever talked about symptoms. on purpose! there's this infamous tweet of his, "Labels: my therapist and I don't use them. I am chemically imbalanced, so I take medication to help with that. In fact-" "I don't use labels for anything. Using labels only gives others the leverage needed to categorize you or use you as a political tool." (2016 1, 2)

he talked about depression & mania. he's talked about "hearing voices" around the break up period, 2013-15. some attribute the paramour mansion hauntings to mental illness. it's vague

"Were they on drugs during the creation of black parade? Did they do drugs during the creative process at all?"

frank and gerard talked about doing drugs during the recording of three cheers in 2003 (2011, good discussion "After our grandmother died..." on). gerard went sober second half of 2004 and the band has talked about being sober around him in support. so i dont think they did any drugs while making black parade (which was when they were touring 2005 & in 2006). i think they've even said they smoked a lot of cigs because they couldnt do drugs.

frank has talked about his drug dependence during the black parade tour 2007-08 ish. mikey went sober around the break up. i dont think ray did drugs (in the last source, ray said, "I had no idea any of that stuff [drug use] was going on [in 2003]. I was so naïve.")

drinking & weed & cigs not withstanding

"Did Gerard write comics before the band? Was he successful?"

afaik gerard only worked on three published comics before umbrella academy in 2007.

1993 (age 16): "On Raven's Wings" (writer, 2 issues)

1998 (21): DC's "The Big Book of the Weird Wild West" (pencils & inks, page in 1 issue)

2000 (23): "Foot Soldiers" (writer, back up story in 1 issue)

"Did he actually work at CNN?"

he interred for CN (cartoon network) & pitched a cartoon to them that wasnt accepted.

"Did he want to join military after 9/11 (I’ve heard him say he wanted to join in a tweet)?

just the one time, he talked about considering joining the military at 23, which wouldve been 2000 (2014). he never talked about joining the army after 9/11

"Is there any pic of his art portfolio during college?"

i dont think there's photos of his portfolio anywhere. but there are photos of his college artwork. collected here and here.

"Did Mikey go to college?"

he did for a short bit! dropped out. only gerard & ray have degrees. i dont have any sources for the following info so im just going to give you want i remember. I THINK: mikey went to college to meet people to get in a band, met frank there, dropped out before mcr started, and worked for eyeball records.

[doctorweebmd]

so. i've been reflecting a lot about the existential grief people go through as they face the fact they're dying. the ones that i've been thinking about recently are the desire to 'leave a legacy' and to 'not be forgotten.'

it rings true to what i feared as a suicidal teenager. i was terrified of having no impact on the world. of existing for 'no reason.' of being forgotten when i'm gone. the idea of not mattering to anyone was even more painful than the sadness and grief within. its not an uncommon sentiment. people want to believe there are silent lovers in this world. that they matter more than they think they do. that if they disappeared, a myriad of people would emerge, saying 'i wish i was kinder to them' or 'i loved them all along and never said anything' or 'they changed my life for the better.'

this does not disappear with age. for adults, this often shows up in having children, grandchildren, a 'biological' legacy. of having their names live on in posterity. of writing a memoir or publishing art or getting their name on something that's been donated - of leaving a piece of their soul on this planet when their body passes. people want to be remembered. they want to matter.

this has changed for me over the years. why that is, i'm not quite sure. it could be from what i do for a living and the desensitization to dying. it could be from being assured in the love i have in my life and assured in who i am. it could be in the acceptance that i am just a human being that will likely never change the world, but hopefully i can put a little more kindness into it, and thats more than enough for me. and i want to be forgotten. i dont want the people that i love grieving me. i dont want to be a ghost haunting any joy they might find after my death. or to feel any guilt regarding me before or after death. like. if i'm dying let me die. pull every plug in the hospital room and turn off the lights. leave my ashes in the kiln throw them in the garbage i do not CAREEE. move on. i love you and all I want is for you to be happy. with or without me. that is ITTT.

[bookofmac]

okay okay okay, thinking thoughts

So I find the concept of Names really interesting in Camlann, reading into the extracanonical stuff put on the tumblr is giving me food for theory crafting. The Catacylsm seems to be some kind of return of magic to the world (possibly heralded by the return of The King of the Britons in their hour of need?) and thus people with significant Names have access to something because of it. they fall into the stories of their namesakes; Perry, Gwaine, and Kay are Knights, Morgan is Morgana Le Fay, and we now have a Gwen in Shújūn.

Based on Kay's dicussion with Perry if more people can fill in the roles of their stories to more 'to plan' the stories will go, Of course this is not good news if you know the general end point of Arthurian legend (Betrayal, muderer, war, most everyone dead, the 'Glory' of camelot gone). It's inherently kind of a doomsday cult if you stay in those stories, you know where parts of this are going (i'll get back to this)

it also seems like there may be some, for lack of a better term, kin drama going on. There are 900 members of the court and Kay mentions that Peredur is a really uncommon name outside of Wales, meaning there are certain knights who are more common, i assume Lancelot's, Kay's, maybe a few Talisin's, a bunch of Gareth's, and like 50 Elaines like in the legends lol

We also dont have the context for how Names work full yet and neither do our characters. I think theres a lot of answers to be had with Shújūn/Gwen with how it works, how you know other than the buzzing in you're head and desire go through the motions and Follow the Story

Now, where does Dai fit in all this?

Dai doesn't have a Name, and I think theres going to be a point where he changes his name in a major way, but not to a Name, but a Bardic name. In welsh poetic and story telling tradtions Welsh poets, THE OG Bards, will take on pseudonyms tell their stories. This practice stems from the medievil era, but goes forth to today, and many modern Welsh and welsh heritage poets have connections to this tradition (Dylan Thomas' middle name was his great uncles bardic name, Sarah Williams published her work under the name Sadie), I believe it's also a requirement to have one if you intend to perform in the major Eisteddfod, (I am Australian so my experiance of Eisteddfods here is very different so if i'm wrong on that let me know)

Why would he do this? I think Dai is going to, at least try, to write him and his friends a way out.

Much ink is spilt over how Arthurian legend doesnt have an 'orginal text', and as such there are lots of stories that are inherently contradictory; Bedwyr is the best knight, but so are Gwaine, Lancelot, and Galahad. Mordred is some random king until his Arthur's son. Arthur has a sister, no he has two, actually he has three and one of them is an Elaine. This could be used to explain any doubles (are you my Gwaine), as well as why we see a few different spelling varients which are, the very welsh Peredur as opposed to Percival or Parzifal, the anglisised and more boarish Kay as opposed to Cei or Caius (this last one might just to keep Dai and Kay distinct tho). These variations are no more or less 'canon' than any other telling of the story, and so often the writer of a given telling of Arthurian legend is going to have their own bias. But things dont HAVE to end the way they always do, and sometime you need to have someone outside the story you're caught in to tell you a new one.

You are not locked into that ever looming cloud of Thomas Mallory and Le Morte d'Arthur.

Other evidence I have for this is that Dai sings at the begining of each episode, and sings in welsh at that. He also is, to a point our narrator, existing both in and out of the current narative. Also his name is an a lyric of Sosban Fach (a song i would be surprised if it wasn't in the show at some point) 'Dai bach y sowldiwr' which is also not from the text the song was based on. Tangential yes, but i think it's worth thinking about.

I think there is also something to be said about choice in what your name is and how it feeds into the overall theme of identiy, and how that plays into other themes at play in the story, like Transness, Imperialism, and Predestination

TL:DR; While he doesnt have a Name, Dai's gonna give himself an epic bard name and save them all by writing a killer hook to get them out of the story

[aquaquadrant]

hey aqua, i'm here to ramble about your stupidly amazing au that's got me bouncing off the walls between chapters being posted

firstly, i put all the fics in a doc (because you know, I gotta keep track of what i've read and haven't read, and it's totally not because i want to save it forever and pass it on to my grandchildren)

the doc contains the warnings, summaries, a/n's and everything in between but i wouldn't think it would make a huge difference to the 100K WORDCOUNT

so here is is, the horrifying word count that is honestly longer than most actual published novels and the amount of pages, which to be honest, would be larger if this was actually printed in book size (font size proportionately to the page size), to which the page number would be.... too much, honestly. even I don't want to calculate that and i'm insane

now i assume you knew all this already, since you probably have also been writing this in a google doc to keep track of it, but then again docs slows down dramatically under 397 pages of brainrot-inducing writing so i dont expect you to be using it too often. if you are, congratulations and have a gold star

it's more of i'm collecting useless bits of information like this to show to whoever has read the series, because it's so good, it's so ridiculously amazing, and it so could be turned into a book if someone tried hard enough and i need people to back me up

heck, it's written so much better compared to most novels, it's just that good. i even turn to it when i don't feel like writing. i read it, and then through some miracle, i have all the writing talent and motivation in the world, seemingly having absorbed it from your work.

tldr: htpau is amazing. if you haven't read it you should read it. and it's that good that it literally could be a book. zero exaggeration. (can you tell that this thought has kept me awake many nights)

now hopefully you weren't too baffled to see such a long ask in your inbox, and hopefully you don't question me, as someone who hasn't read a proper novel in years, who has basically reread every chapter once or twice basically as soon as it comes out

i don't need therapy, i need more of your writing. (because hels no does chapter nine end like this) ba dum tss

and then, i leave you, with a gold star and many thanks ⭐

HAGAJDHJA HOLY SHIT

i do use google docs but i make a new one for every chapter for the reason u mentioned, once they’re past a certain page count it gets real slow and i don’t have the patience for that. so uh yeah, i don’t think i ever bothered to calculate the total running word count. it’s not the longest fic i’ve ever written, and i don’t think it will be by the time i finish it, but that’s definitely a NOT INSIGNIFICANT number of words, goddamn.

someone did bind one of my fics into an actual hard cover book once, just for their own personal use. man, that was sick. now i don’t think i’d ever try to alter a fic of mine to actually publish it, cuz so much of what i write hinges too much on the original content, but fan-bindings are A-OKAY so long as i get to see pics :3

anyway, no worries about the long ask, i love hearing from u guys. i’m flattered u went thru the trouble of consolidating it and i’m glad ur enjoying the au!

[coco6420]

@naori-is-nidaime-hokage had this amazing reply on @katerinaaqu 's post and i did reply, but wanted to make a post with more thoughts

Here was my reply: (thoughts are quite scattered, you should read the better list at the bottom lol)

YES!!!! i need this. how uncomfortable and wierd about this controlling relationship + gender roles and how odd to persephone is it but how she doesn't have our modern terms and words to express it. the love of demeter for her daughter. the love of a goddess, of a motherly figure so strong she would lessen her own domain, her own self for it. i will never ever shut up about persephone and demeter. DONT MAKE HER A HELICOPTER PARENT!! youd be upset if someone kidnapped your daughter whom you love very much. the tension of hades/persephone in a very very cursed and dark romanc-y way, except persephone isnt in love and its fucked up. hades not understanding what we as the modern reader does, doesn't understand the scale of what he's doing, feels off about it and probably knows theres an issue but not caring anyway. we can write a good story without generalisation. it can be a social commentary AND stick to the original story and what they would've been like in ways that aren't offensive. we can write a feminist greek myth inspired story without making it generalised to women good men bad. we can make a story ACTUALLY about the charcaters and narrative instead of writing the outline and then sticking modern feminist phrases onto it without adding anything new. make it creepy, make it like those weird gothic manipulation romances where one of them runs off into the night after 1000 years in a bad relationship or something. i need this actually 😭🤞make it about hades' "love" for persephone and demeter's love for her and how they collide, how fucked up this situation is. not about modern values and how myths are sexist! women from thousands of years ago SURELY speak like us! we already knew that myths are this way. make it about the NARRATIVE and characters. i would do great things for a respectful story like this i fear. make changes that have reason and respect, not ones for marketing or for fitting YOUR narrative over the one you're supposedly ret

reply pt 2: retelling and letting shine. sorry i ran out of letters lol. retellings should be a way for stories to shone in different ways without removing or removing too much (because it's a retelling, not an inspired off of) it should not be a word that has a weird stigma cuz of this shit

okay okay a list of some additional ideas + old ones for a modern persephone/hades + demeter story

- obviously, one of the big problems with actual, non hypothetical retellings today is that they are barely retellings. they are literally just a fluffy romance + helicopter parent but with popular names slapped on for sales. this is a big no in this hypothetical retelling (im sure that'd be hard to achieve anyway considering this post comes from someone who wants a retelling of the damn story as opposed to money and sales).

- consulting people who could help needs to be a very big step. victims of kidnapping and abusive relationships, parents of those people, greeks and others who have expertise, trusted authors and poets. seems obvious, but clearly no one actually publishing these famous books bothered to do any of this shit. and if they did, it does not show.

- you can make it feminist. i know there's a wierd (deserved) stigma around "feminist retellings" and for good reason. but it's definitely possible. often, these books have the main character (a woman, which they seem to think automatically makes it feminist) narrate is such modern terms (eg: bri/hippodameia from pat barker's the women of troy). i want this persephone to speak in no such way. she has no such words to express the feeling that something is very wrong and she hates this, because if you grew up in a world where generally, women as individuals aren't worth anything, you're going to believe it. this perfectly compliments ideas for the dark, uncomfortable themes, because not only is she uncomfortable: she is unsure about it and what to say.

- these retellings also often aren't feminist. they are just sexiest but towards men, even when they did not in fact do any bad against women or at all. hades can be a big bad evil figure, representing sexism towards women, but not all men are like this obviously. not that it should ideally be a requirement but i think it would be good to have something representing and reiterating that not all men suck. something like a side character, who, obviously also does not have the modern words and ideas around gender equality we do today while making it very clear kidnapping is bad and Hades is in the wrong and not completly innocent even growing up in such an environment where women = nothing if not something to a man. dont just make him a big bad, yes he did this evil shit, but explore his character too, even as an antagonist. how he is affected and the fucked up reasons behind why he does this and that to persephone. gets to call an unwilling bride his wife for the rest of eternity. you can make a character symbolic and evil without making them one dimensional. pay homage to his character. he is a just god in some cases: he does bad in others. you can play around with hades a little more without crossing the line as he is the god of THE dead as opposed to the dead, meaning his behaviour as a caricature human is inherently a little more vague free to interpretation.

- demeter. as mentioned in the comment, there is ideally a nice amount of focus on demeter. obviously NOT as a strict parent of a runaway juliet, but as a griever. it would be quite interesting to explore feelings and personal takes on what her personality would be like if Gods were more human (like in this hypothetical story). Demeter the griever, how she changes when she thinks about what the hell Hades is doing and making her daughter feel. making her worried and loving and fierce like in myths, not an overly controlling maniac of a parent. make it deep, uncomfortable, infinite and inescapable. write about the feeling she gets as a mother thinking about the feelings persephone gets when demeter if forced to hand her back every year.

- establish the relationship between persephone and demeter. it is plain and clear persephone loved demeter too! she wasnt just her annoying mother for fucks sake. show the deep bond, research on what makes sense and how they would act, factoring in the relationship between the harvest and the spring with real life examples as a fun detail a d nod to the real life figures outside of myths and stories (you know what i mean, just here clarifying that i am not calling myths inherently fictional). give the tragic, loving dynamic. them agaisnt the world (or their world) almost.

anyway im in too deep and mayyyy just have to write this but i'm not sure i trust myself with the writing part 😅 consulting people is easy enough, but i will be very upset if i can't do this idea justice. probably wont happen by me anytime soon :((

YOU CAN WRUTE A RETELLING THAT PROMOTES FEMINIST VALUES WITHOUT MAKING YOUR CHARACTERS MODERN FEMINISTS!!! THEY DONT HAVE TO BE FEMINIST NOR SEXIST!

they are nuanced and terms like this get wierd when u apply it to times the ideas didnt exist as we know them. you can debate about calling ancient athens a democracy or x person a queer lable all day, but in the end, it doesn't work so neatly.

[actualbird]

my main problem with being stuck in 🔥REVISION-AS-YOU-GO-ALONG PURGATORY🔥 is that i actually really like revising 😭

in fact i'd say i probably like revising more than i do actually writing

(I suck at making plots and connecting plot points, the last time I wrote a plot heavy story was years ago and it was basically another fetch quest style story)

The only thing that's really worked for me in terms of reducing the time i spend on drafting is to straight up NOT look at what I wrote before while I draft, which I also don't manage to do very often hhh

I only get beta readers after I finish writing because otherwise I'm like, "hey can you beta read for me" "yea sure" and then i send them a finished draft like 6 months later.

also this is pretty unrelated but do you think it's still worth it to major in english with the rise of gen ai? i've heard of people losing their jobs to gen ai, my parents are obsessed with gen ai, i'm worried about not having job opportunities in the future with an english degree. (but also english is like the one thing i enjoy)

-📄

hi again drafts!anon :D

omg you and i seem like we're on opposite ends of the spectrum. i love writing and hate revising, you hate writing but love revising. if our brains merged together we could create a functioning writer. KBSKJDFBSDF

"The only thing that's really worked for me in terms of reducing the time i spend on drafting is to straight up NOT look at what I wrote before while I draft" if this works then maybe theres something here!! maybe you can like....idk somehow hide everything youve written as you go along. like writing on a super horizontally narrow window or highlighting what uve written in black?? ive never tried these but if what works is Not Seeing It, then perhaps that could be an option!!

as for ur last question, i DEFINITELY think it's still worth it. i didnt major in english, i got a degree in creative writing, but lord the world still very much needs and employs writers and those with good communication and critical thinking. off the top of my head, you'd still have a lot of opportunities in the publishing industry or in advertising

gen AI is really scary and it indeed has taken jobs away from people, which is horrible. but the thing about gen AI is that it still cant do the job of writing at the end of the day. even if it does, a real human writer needs to be brought in to refine the work of the nefarious gen AI. i truly believe that gen AI is a fad trend that will fade eventually. it wont ever be gone, not really, but eventually people will realize its limits (because everything has limits) and come to the conclusion that it's literally more convenient, productive, and cost-efficient to just hire a real ass human being

like, personally, as a writer in the advertising industry, i know gen AI cant replace me. because for it to do that, clients will actually have to be able to know and articulate what they want exactly, which is never gonna happen. it's more common for clients to have a Vague Idea of what they want and then theyll only really understand what they Really Want after we've showed them options of our work.

additionally, within the advertising industry, people have also become wary of writing created by gen AI. they generally look down on it, looking at it as the easy way out. which is a good thing!! because it means they value human work more than gen AI work!!

in general, dont stress about it too much. itll still be tough to get a job, because in General it's tough to get a job these days. but gen AI isnt gonna render your choices down to 0. there will always be places looking for people with your skills.

[dexterlittle]

Comics?

Hi Ghoap people! And shippers from the COD universe! I see comics are popular (Im also a sucker for those so dont worry!)

And I was wondering: What are the bare minimums for you to enjoy a comic? You see, I never really worked on a comic. I tried years ago for a project of some sort in my local area but never got anywhere. I always struggled with my art, perfection, proportion etc I put a lot of pressure on myself and projects a lot and either i dont do much effort or I do WAY too much and it burns me out. I get overwhelmed and it’s not fun. I am always feeling some imaginary pressure from others as I often got judged in the past and got my things examined closely and it started to get me paranoid and make me feel not good enough. Thats why I never published art before I joined Ghoap in over ten years or so. Im also terrified of art thieves and even more of all that AI shit going around. I want to be credited and known for my art, not be forgotten while my art keeps being reposted you know? SO if I were to make a comic (at least try) and tell a story, what are the bare minimums requirements? I see some comics have amazing art and I know I can’t deliver that. But I do see diversity of style from the 1Farm1 AU from Grimmzee to the Monster 141 AU from Bluegiragi to the CoffeeShop AU from Blueishfishfood and many more I’ve seen here and there. Some have backgrounds, some dont and some have simple elements. Some have amazing details and shading, some have basic shadings etc But what they all have in common is: getting proportions quite good if not excellent. And amazing angles instead of the basic standing/sitting. And all those nice facial expression that makes it nice to read what the character might feel. Especially the eyes for characters such as Ghost or Roach. Aaaand I know colors don’t matter. So at least there’s that. So what are the minimum requirements? I don’t expect doing amazing fight scenes like the Monster AU, I am clearly not that talented ahah but I know that it’s more interesting to have… something more than standing characters all the time. So please in the comments, let me know? Show me exemples? Doesnt have to be COD related but just comics from people around the internet who do it for fun and not professionals working for DC Comics for example ahah I just want to tell stories so badly but I know that writing is… a lot for me. Too much even. I’ll keep trying… but it’s complicated for now. And I know that comics are a great way to see your art get better with time! Lots of mangaka got better the more time passed so.. Why not me? Oh also another comic I’ve been following for years is A Tales of Two Rulers by Figmentforms And THAT is something I can never achieve. The attention to details and the shading and… UGH <3 But it still makes me want to tell a story. So please, comment and let me know! <3 Thank you! -Dexterlittle

[serpercival]

your recent reblog of the 'post this from your wip' reminded me i meant to do this, specifically because monkey brain saw you use the word 'miasma' and went "!!!!! fellow miasma-user!!!" and therefore unlocked further brain power;

the long and the short of it is, you write beautifully. im not as big of a reader as i used to be, but tiptoeing through some of your stuff has put me back in gradeschool just inhaling literature with fervour again. ive only looked at your MASH stuff, granted, solely cause its all i know, but if youre this talented with one cast, ive got no doubt you knocked it out of the park with others.

you balance the silliness inherent within the show on the end of your fingers perfectly, especially with your banter between the goobs. you also touch on poetic phrasing delicately, just enough to give the reader... idk a sense of nostalgia? not quite the word im reaching for but you get the gist, that airy dreamy sense you get in memories. just sort of tender, gentle moments.

i also dont know how to put this but you do... yucky really well? as in like. yknow. grossness- in the general sense; dirt, grime, sweat, whatever, you visualize it well enough that i get the urge to wash my hands. people get lazy with that stuff too often, you dont slack on stuff. and this is only in a positive way. its Delicious. you evoke imagery very well is what im trying to say

i love your passion for writing, your expert chunking of your writing making it into digestible pieces, and your commitment to the craft.

anyway i made this after reading chapter 22 specifically and seeing trapper make hawkeye's french toast [for bj and hawkeye and the kiddos] after i'd already published my own scene of hawkeye making french toast [for trapper and bj]

much love, keep at em tiger you're knocking it out of the park, godspeed you magnificent bastard 🫡

THANK YOU SO SO MUCH!!! I saw in my kudos email this morning that you'd started reading Mating Habits and I was unbelievably hyped about it but I hadn't realized you'd gotten that far!! Wagh thank you. The entirety of the foxtrap series is so near and dear to my heart and it's thrilling every time someone new gets on board with him.

I get what you're talking about with the grossness—there's a bit in Crabapple Cove - Part Four (Chapter Ten) of Mating Habits where Trapper's going ham on a chicken thigh that I was really pleased with. Funnily enough in regards to both that and the comment about "easily digestible pieces," one of the upcoming chapters for that includes him going insane about Chinese takeout chicken in the middle of what's turning out to be like... a 15k chapter. Hopefully. It's sitting at 12.7k right now and I'm not quite done with it, and my editing process usually adds rather than subtracts, but there's genuinely nowhere to split it because it's all stuff that takes place in the span of about two hours without any time skips lol. It was some of the first material that got planned for the verse so I need to do it justice! That's why I took a break on Mating Habits and went to write Professional Courtesy instead for a little while—it's very intimidating to be going into a section where you know everything that needs to happen and exactly how it needs to happen, but it needs to be convincing. The upcoming upload is very much a reward for the past what, 50k of Beej angst? I think it's sincerely some of the best work I've ever done so I'm very glad I took that break to work up the courage to tackle it instead of trying to push through and potentially messing it up.

This was such a good pick-me-up, thank you so much for sending it in!!! I've posted about it a couple of times recently but I have a creative writing class I'm suffering through right now that's been real rough on the old motivation because the professor's insane and has some very firm opinions about the fact that apparently "genre fiction" and romance don't count as "true art" ksdhgshgdsh. Girl if you knew I've written ~150k total (so far) of an AU for hit 1970s sitcom M*A*S*H where Trapper is a foxboy and he's in a romantic relationship with both Hawkeye and BJ, would you just keel over or what? POINT BEING I sincerely appreciate the compliments and will be channeling them into exploding her with my mind. Kisses!

[spookyrobbins]

What does your writing process look like?

it’s honestly not super exciting or even all that rigid. i generally don’t write in silence but it kinda varies what i listen to or watch in the background. for some things it’s more relevant but most of the time it’s just random spotify playlists.

i do generally start at the beginning and just go straight through. only on much longer things do i skip around (notably smbr was not written start to finish). i’d guess like 60% of the published ones were written in almost a single sitting or at least in a day or two where that’s the only thing i was working on. i often have sort of a starting point and an end point and just see how to get there. i used to plot things out a ton but i don’t really do that so much but im also generally not working on things longer than one shots.

i do keep sort of like graveyard docs where it’s lines or scenes that didn’t quite fit in something but i might find a use for later. i also generally have like a huge pile of wips that are in varying stages of development and i’ll flip through them from time to time.

i also really like running or going for a long walk before writing. and i also really like working on a stationary bike while i write (i have a lil desk set up) i almost always write at home and don’t really go elsewhere when im writing.

of note i often drink when i write smut for whatever reason. i find smut the hardest to write (it’s the logistics!). angst is easily the easiest for me especially when i have the character voice down (ie arizonas angst is easier than callie’s) i do move around a lot when im writing a scene that has some sort of physicality bc i want it to be at least somewhat logical.

i do kind of a lot of research even if it’s just for a small detail that isn’t really relevant for the broader plot. like if i make a reference to calzona watching a show together, it’s not just bc they needed to watch a show it’s bc i’ve actually gone in and checked what could possibly be on tv that day. and same for pretty much everything. like the most throwaway detail and ill do a bit of research for it. i often have full backstories and all that for details but i dont tend to dump it all in. i kinda consider it like the middle name conundrum - ie its common in fics to talk a lot about middle names and give lots of meaning to them etc but that’s generally not how people are. so while i might have an entire backstory and details and reasons for arizonas middle name in a fic odds are i’ll never include them even if i have that info.

it’s rare that i have a title for something before or even while i’m writing it. i think smbr (“and i’ll be yours to keep”) and “he ain’t heavy” are some of the only ones i can think of that i had the title in mind really early on. most of the time i finish something and then as im uploading into ao3 im flipping through playlists for title inspo. id guess like 95% of my titles come from music, i’ve never really pulled lines from within the fic or anything. i do often have a running note with tags for fics bc i think they’re funny

i don’t use a beta and never really have. i do have a couple people who i’d say get kinda previews of what im working on but id say they’re more of a vibe check than really editing content. i dont really have a robust editing process myself. like i might skim through something a bit but honestly its much more a full send situation. if theres like a glaring error ill retroactively fix it but im pretty good about editing as i go and using spell check etc.

i do almost always upload to ao3 before ffn bc there’s more to do on ao3 and then i can use aspects of that for ffn.

once it’s uploaded i’ll probably keep the tab open for ages and will absolutely refresh it like a mad man to see how it’s doing.

i know some authors say that replying to comments on ao3 is just a way to boost comments but i strongly disagree with that and do genuinely try to reply as many comments as i can. although im not always perfect about it once we’re like a month out from when the story was published.

this is a very chaotic description of my writing process but i’d say my writing process is somewhat chaotic anyway

[elephant-in-the-pride-parade]

I saw my first AI "fic" today.

The user who posted the AI creation added "goes to show we still need writers" I took that to mean they were uploading it to show how bad the AI creation was. Due to that, I felt more okay opening it for investigatory purposes (I made a post a while ago saying that AI would produce a facimile of creativity and I was curious how correct that would prove to be).

In a word, I was extremely correct. The fic had no-to minimal scene intros or transitions, banal dialogue, characters flat enough to feel ooc, silly to non existent conflicts, and it "tells" everything (no showing, no extended metaphors or insightful similes).

Scarily though, each snippet was coherent. Like sure, the characters were flat and the conflicts (when they exist) one dimensional and the turns of phrase often felt cliche (which is exactly what one would expect to get from an AI, which formulates sentences based off of how often words go next to eachother). But the scenes themselves make sense. If AI wasnt in the title I wouldnt have been able to tell the difference between this and a 15 yo's first fic.

The danger of course is that this is how AI starts out. The more people use them, and input content into them they will get better at producing this facimile of a creative work. AI could probably learn to produce some or all of the common components of storytelling that I've noticed this and other AI products lack.The scarier danger for me is when it becomes good enough to justify publishing houses and studios attempting to replace expensive human writers. (And to a degree clogging up AO3... although I hope enough people in fandom are here for the human connections that that wouldnt be a concern...).

Look, AI will never be keeping human writers out of fandom. Theres no finite number of spots on AO3. But AI could keep human writers out of screenwriting and book writing (which do have finite spots/finite funds for written works) and then... we lose something beautiful and precious.

The beauty of human writers is that they constantly have new things to say because every lived experience is so unique and precious. no two people will write a character's emotions the same way or capture the tension of a plot with the same words. I have read and will keep reading thousands of fanfics about the same canon characters because each person captures their pain and love and failures and triumphs in new and exciting ways. Humans always bring something new to the table. Humans always keep learning. Experimenting. Changing the conversation. An AI will never be able to say anything new. They are actively doing the opposite of human thinking and creating. Theyre not doing research or looking up new words or playing with new turns of phrase. Instead theyre cycling through a fixed set of applicable word choices and chosing the one with the highest percent match for what should come after the previous word.

So three bad things happen if you all start using AI as a fic production shortcut:

The AI improves its deepfakes of creativity. your requests, inputted content, and feedback all help it update the word selection math it is doing in the background. This makes it more likely that canon content stops being created by real people and instead starts being replwced by AI products.

You learn and feel nothing. I mean it. Writing is a joy because every creation is a new research rabbit hole. a new word looked up in the thesaurus. a new way to make your readers sob from the feels. AI robs you of that process. So you think less. You explore characters less. You are deprived the joy of marinating in your blorbos angst and pain and love and joy while you decide exactly how to put that into words. Youre deprived the satisfaction of your own work. (And by being deprived of the process above you also dont learn how to write. because the AI is not writing.)

Your readers lose out. Sure the AI has produced something perfectly spelled and grammared... but nothing new has been said. The grand conversation we are constantly having by writing and reading fic and exclaiming about characters stagnates and then festers. No new stories get told. AI is only producing things that look like what came before. your readers dont get any joy from new thoughts. new ideas. changed minds. changed perspectives... none of that happens. (Again I want to go back to point one. Im not worried about AO3 drowning in AI fics as much as I am worried that canon content will become overrun with it).

[rarepairnation]

20 questions for writers!

tagged by @emyn-arnens literally over a month ago and im finally getting to it now lol much love thank you for continuing to tag me in things even though im the worst at doing them sometimes.

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 65 (15 of them are under my archive pseud though lol)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 265,381

3. What fandoms do you write for? actively writing for lotr, pacific rim, my secret little marvel rarepair

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? these are so funny they're all my avatar work from before i remade on this blog. well throwback i guess. they're still dear to me.

open arms, atla sokka coming out to his dad

earth system history, atla sokka/zuko college au where zuko is an earth scientist

[redacted h*rry p*tter work from 2016]

love's not for show, atla bato/hakoda sokka creates a master plan to get his dad and bato to admit that theyre dating but they're NOT

knife loves heart, human loves human, james bond 007/q post-spectre fixit fic (my Only 00q and possibly also my only fixit fic?)

5. Do you respond to comments? i try so so so hard but the executive function that allows me to say anything coherent only comes around every so often lol

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? a couple contenders for this one but if we're talking strictly the ending probably i'm not leaving (til we make it home) (exu calamity patia & laerryn / patia & the ring of brass exploring her relationship with love and loneliness and finally being free to express how much she loves her friends only in the last hours of her life and dying happy for it).

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? also a couple contenders for this one but i feel like many of them are tinged with not a small amount of melancholy. so we are going with a big throwback to sun through open windows (atlok mako/wu plotless little morning routines fic that is about nothing in particular but also about realizing you have everything your younger self thought you would never have).

8. Do you get hate on fics? not in a long long time (like probably 7-8 years) thank god!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? yes although none of it is published (yet). what kind? idk man whatever im horny about this month. ok but for serious. really been into character developing smut. do u know what i mean. i’m telling you something about who each of these people are and how they view each other through the way they fuck. this probably says quite a lot about me

10. Do you write crossovers? i'm not much for the kind where characters from different franchises Interact, but i am partial to taking some guys and translating them to a different setting. ah to put characters in a situation and watch as the fundamental core of their being stays the same....

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? hope not lol

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? not that i'm aware of!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? yes! we have not finished it but it's absolutely CORE thesis-level influential on my entire psyche. even if we never get back to it i'll think about it until the day i die and that is not an exaggeration.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship? of ALL TIME? i straight up dont know if i can answer this one. ALL TIME???? my long-term emotional permanence is NOT good enough and my recency bias is too strong for this. ok i think the only way i can answer this is with the ship that has gotten the deepest into my psyche and my soul. which is yancytendo pacific rim. they. affect me. on a level i will probably never be able to fully explain. the 'giving a guy built only to be a thematic device a personality and a history and deep gut-wrenching grief' of it all. the 'you are in love with a guy who is doomed by the narrative and despite your best efforts it means that he is a personification of all the grief you carry inside of you' of it all. yancy becket you will live forever in my heart tendo choi you will ALWAYS be famous. augh. yeah i picked right

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

hmm probably something about the way you look tonight, my mallorytanner thesis statement fic, the genesis of which was genuinely a life-altering event to me. i was listening to the titular elton john song walking home from a general chemistry exam in the snow and i was struck so violently with An Image for truly the first time in my life. truly not ONCE before that moment had that happened to me. this was in my freshman year of college this fic has existed in various forms for going on FIVE YEARS. will it ever be done. GOD i fucking hope so. i actually do hold out hope for that one.

the one i am actually hopeless on ever finishing is orogenesis, the sprawling expanded stemverse pianjeong backstory au fic. the whole structure of it is quite clear in my head actually. i just didn't have the life experience to create the plot structure to go with the emotional beats when it generated itself in my mind in 2020-21 and now that i DO have it the problem is that the inciting event is incredibly clear to me and yet bears too close of a resemblance to. personal events and horrors. for me to ever finish it! i'll think about it forever though. creating and writing that au changed my life for real it was the longest thing i'd ever written and the best when i wrote it and it's still very close to my heart.

16. What are your writing strengths? characterization and character development baby. evocative use of metaphor in descriptions of both character and setting. lavish description.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? PLOT. cant create that from my brain and i rarely attempt it. i have plenty of stuff to write about that does not require it. relatedly not great at worldbuilding.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? generally don't do it much except for a stray word or two. i don't mind reading it though! tolkien fic writers who translate full sentences you are god's strongest soldiers.

19. First fandom you wrote for? ough this one will be embarrassing. entering the archive pseud. wait is it also tolkien that's funny. life is a circle in some ways. this is first fandom on my ao3 account btw. the VERY first one i wrote for...i will take that knowledge to the grave.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

ah i feel like my answer for this one changes every time but i can't help it, i love many of my darlings equally. this time im giving the spotlight to life holds onto you, my chris pike & jim kirk post-star trek 2009 fic that is a few thousand words of 'what if your sort of son feared that you thought he was taking everything you ever wanted from you and he is right that you have thought that but you are learning how wrong you are.' i cried in the university library writing it and reread it recently and remembered it was good. recency bias baby

tagging the usual suspects @potatoesandsunshine @aaronstveit

[ceasarslegion]

So FNV is my fav right not a hot take but I am curious about your takes on the other games? Personally I don’t think the Bethesda games deserve as much hate as they get, like Fo76 is fun for the gameplay and the way they designed the environment and 4 is like a fun camp action movie to me in a way I can’t explain. And admittedly haven’t given 3 a full college try, it feels too restrictive in its narrative for me to enjoy even though 4 is similar in its approach, maybe it’s the extra faction options in 4? Idk

The bethesda games dont deserve the hate they get at all, ive noticed that this trend is completely self-serving and often done by people who haven't even played them all the way through.

Fallout 3 was my first fallout game, and it's my favourite fallout game. Saying that is often enough to have at least 3 people jump down my throat about how shitty they think it is both story-wise and mechanically, often while forgetting that fo3 was the first 3D fallout game and was bound to have some amount of the frontrunner curse: it was the one they made all the mistakes on. This doesn't make it a bad game, it makes it the first one. And in my opinion, I love the story of it. I feel that every single fallout game gets compared to FNV retroactively and then folks don't even give any others a try.

Another thing I've noticed is that the fallout fandom tends to be plagued with the fallout equivalent of genwunners, except that the same criticisms they tear down every bethesda game for are even more prevalent in the interplay games. Not "enough" endings, mechanical issues, etc.

And my take that people really didnt and continue to not like me for regarding besthesda is that bethesda has owned fallout for much much longer than anybody else has at this point. They've made the most installments, contributed all of the lore after the base was established in the 90s, and are the reason the franchise still even exists. Bethesda does not "misunderstand" fallout because you cant misunderstand your own book that you're writing yourself. It's their thing at this point whether the fandom likes it or not. FNV was a spinoff, and obsidian were really not these darling saviors to the lore that theyre presented to be, theyre just any other game studio that made a publishing deal with a different one. And the just... CONSTANT barrage of hate and vitriol towards bethesda feels so unnecessary and self-serving at this point. There's no diversity of opinion in the wider fandom because if you do like the bethesda properties you're treated like some intellectual traitor, which is a red flag to me.

In my opinion, the fallout "fandom" on tumblr doesnt even like fallout. Anything that's not FNV gets crickets of engagement and if its bethesda then its treated like some cardinal sin to have anything positive to say about it without a bunch of caveats attached about how bad it is. And don't even get me started on the utter meltdown there was about one frame of the fallout show because they didn't like what ending bethesda just teased FNV to have had. Any other game fandom would be overjoyed at having a professionally produced show at all, but from the moment it was announced to the moment it finally aired it was NOTHING but criticism and negativity, even before it aired. It's no wonder that bethesda doesn't consider this "fandom" worth listening to when they decide in advance that nothing they make will ever be good enough.

Sorry... this turned into a bit of a bitter rant about the reasons why i left the fallout fandom entirely. I grew up on fo3 and i loved fo4 just as much as any other fallout game, and im loving the show so far (im on episode 5). I love the franchise as a whole, which makes it very hard to engage in anything the fandom does anymore. I like FNV just as much, but i find it hard to engage in anymore because of the constant attitude i got from its fans about the ones i like, especially fo3. Which i know is unfair to it, but i just can not mentally decouple it from that vitriol very well anymore, which is a shame.

And i just... i dont want to hear how much everybody hates the things i love in the same place that claims to be superfans of the franchise in the first place.

Again, sorry. This wasn't your question, and I dont mean to sound like im yelling at you specifically, im really not. I think ive just been a little too consistently hurt by the attitude in the fallout "fandom" to be able to talk about it without bringing it up anymore. I legitimately had some of the most negative and toxic fandom experiences of my life in that community, all because my favourite fallout game wasnt the only one deemed acceptable.

[dufrau]

My favorite fic of yours

ONE? You want me to pick ONE!?!?! pfff. no. Red&White&Blue&Gold, the Fall Funfair one, and Orange Crush are the funny ones that jump to mind first that will always have a place in my heart, and then also the watertower fic and all of the TLOU AU fics. and also all of the bigfoot AU. and also just all of your stories.

Something I remember vividly from reading one of your fics

Bean cans and sexy disarmament from Entirely on Purpose. Chicken names (lol) and chicken deaths (oh no!) in TLOU au. Losing Barb in Into Dust.

What made me the most emotional after reading

Into Dust and just all of the TLOU AU

What I like the most about your writing

First off: you write fantastic dialogue and awesome banter!

But even more than that, the thing I love about your writing is that you are SO good at writing emotional complexity - both in your silly/funny stories and in the ones that make me cry. By which I think I mean you always write characters simultaneously feeling multiple things at once, often in ways that they aren't even fully aware of themselves. Like .... you're good at writing the conflict between the words people say (and the fronts they put up) versus the underlying feelings that they're either pushing away or leaning into, if that makes sense? Which works so well because you use descriptions of actions/physical sensations just very well and very judiciously. It's a lot of 'show don't tell' kinda work and its amazing.

Also, you're very very good at having a sort of lyricism/poetic-ness - with repeated phrases or callbacks and such - about your prose that just makes the vibes of your stories like ... really rich and satisfying (like a good stew... if it was also a piece of music? idk. I'm mixing my metaphors here.)

A question I have about one of your fics

Any favorite lines/parts you want to talk about from the last few fics you published??

(numbering got fucked up in this ask somehow - sorry!)

Brroooooo this is so nice 😭 Can you write my resume please you make me sound so good lol

I dont even know how to respond to all the nice things you said besides to say thank you for being nice to me 💜💜💜

I think this might actually motivate me to write today lol so thank you for that also.

Hmm. Things I want to talk about from my recent fics. Well. First of all I think the proposal in the boot fic is very sweet and i am really fond of that one and almost nobody has read it and they should because its cute.

And I really liked writing the Elaine scene in the jancy breakup fic, I never really write OCs and she only exists for like a paragraph but I am kind of obsessed with her. Also just that fic in general I think is sort of interesting structurally and I think I captured the mid twenties lostness of it pretty well.

And tbh I really enjoyed playing with their dynamic in the falafel smut? It's the smuttiest thing I have ever written but I feel like there is interesting character stuff happening there that made it fun to write in a way I often do not find smut writing to be.

now i just need to write something new to talk about lol.

thank youuuu!!

(questions)

[vagevurig]

//fills out this questionnaire for @sonic-oc-showdown

featuring Lily being a GREMLIN

Name: Lilium "Lily" Gale (born as Lilium Ludmore Tenebris) Species: Wolf (Albino) Type: I usually assign her Flight. Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (on a good day) Home: Some midwestern corn town that likely has an eldritch entity hiding in the corn. You know the sort.

rest under the cut

✨ How did you come up with the OC's name?

I originally named her "Moonlight" (bcs she was very moonthemed), and eventually gave her the nickname "Lilly". During a multitude of character revisions (all within like 2 years of making her), I dropped her original full name, as well as one the L's. Her current full name, "Lilium", comes from the Elfen Lied OP |D

🌼 How old are they? (Or approximate age range)

She's 20/21 ish~ Her birthday is on June 29th, but I keep her age pretty static rn.

🌺 Do they have any love interest(s)?

SHE IS HARCORE SHIPPED WITH @darthsammi's NICKI CASSIDY! THEY ARE DISASTER LESBIANS WHO FUCK SHIT UP TOGETHER AND I LOVE THEM!!

(art by @xmooncanary)

🍕 What is their favorite food?

Hot Dogs! Which is actually based on me lmao,

💼 What do they do for a living?

She doesn't currently have a job, but she aspires to be a published author!

🎹 Do they have any hobbies?

Beyond writing, she's also just a general consumer of pop culture (books, movies/shows, games), researches ancient forbidden texts, and is super into freestyle parkour~ She also collects bugs, and octopus/squid/jellyfish plushies

🎯 What do they do best?

BEING AN IDIOT (She's also very intelligent and analytical, but her absolute idiocy often outshines it)

🥊 What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

I feel like i described her loves two questions ago, though she does really like vibin w/ Nicki. drabbling down some story ideas while Nicki plays some chords on her guitar. She quite dislikes having to do anything with her biological family though. Not for any reason to do with them, she just doesnt know them?? And she's annoyed by suddenly having to reconnect with them. It's to figure out why she suddenly has Shadow Powers:tm:

❤️ What is one of your OC's best memories?

Once when she was twelve, a friend mentioned that she taught there was a monster in the corn fields. Lily, 0 fear and Super Interested in monsters, went in to look for it. And she found it! And though she doesnt remember much of it afterwards, she holds it as her bestest memory.

✂️ What is one of your OC's worst memories?

She has 0 control over her Shadow Powers and during a particularly dark night (new moon), she got stuck in an intangible shadow person form. Unable to be heard or seen by anyone else, it was the most isolated she had ever felt in her life. It is probably the one and only time she had a panic attack.

🧊 Is their current design the first one?

HAHAHAHAHAH n o. I change Lily's design like a girl changes clothes. I barely ever drew her the same to begin with, and overal she's gone through a few major redesigns, and plenty of smaller ones.

Little timeline! not every stage is represented, but it the major redesigns at least!

🍀 What originally inspired the OC?

Believe it or not; a dream. It was a weird ass dream not at all related to Sonic but it featured a sort of moon spirit and my brain was just "I like her" and tried bringing her to the waking world with limited success.

🌂 What genre do they belong in?

Adventure crossed with cosmic and gothic horror? I dont limit myself |D

💚 What is your OC's gender identity and sexuality?

Demigirl, Bisexual

🙌 How many siblings does your OC have?

She has one older foster sister (Swinde) she absolutely loves with her whole heart, as well as 3 biological siblings (1 older; Jillian, and 2 younger; Hilja & Eiju) who she barely knows.

🍎 What is the OC's relationship w/ their parents like?

She has an absolutely Wonderful relationship with her foster mom Lauren, but is more estranged to her biological father, which doesnt become much better :)

🧠 What do you like most about the OC?

everything. She's one of my oldest characters and is one of a few who comforts me when i feel down so. comfort character.

✏️ How often do you draw/write about the OC?

I do NOT draw her enough, and i really aught to change that, but I talk alot about her with aforementioned Darth Sammi!! I hope that counts |D?

💎 Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?

I can kill her off I have killed her off before and I will kill her off again in the future :)

💀 Does your OC have any phobias?

Phobias require someone to feel fear at all~ //SLAPPED (She deeply fears fading from existence)

🍩 Who is your OC's arch-nemesis/rival?

She doesnt really have a set one!

🎓 How long have you had the OC?

I made her in February of 2012, when I was 11, so that's 11 years and a few months now. oh man, Lily is almost older now than I was when i made her wack...

[grandhotelabyss]

Thoughts on Hemmingway? I am so ignorant of literature, that I kinda have to take people like Logo Daedalus for their word when he says that he is basically a hacky Bukowski writter. Still I read "The Man and the Sea" and thought it was alright, but still, I'm not sure if it's just do to my more than limited knowledge and experience with real literature or if Logo's takes on literature are also "flawed" (like I dont take him serious in shit like tv shows, like he was praising that shitty "The chosen" show till it had some neocon austerity propoganda in it, ignoring how cynically "soulles" and cheap it was from the start ((also trying to say the live action One Piece isnt totall garbage which should be obvious to everybody, but thats just my own pet peeve lol))

Judgments of Hemingway have been so wrapped up in political signaling and counter-signaling since at least the advent of second-wave feminism that it's hard to know what to say—and in a different sort of signaling and counter-signaling, this time aesthetic, about the merits of minimalism vs. maximalism in narrative prose.

Politically, Hemingway was still the paragon of male chauvinism when I was educated, whereas he has now re-appeared, thanks largely to Ken Burns's (very good) PBS documentary, as the disabled trans heroine we've been waiting for. I tend to look on those kinds of shifts with amusement, since they are essentially academic squabbles, but I am glad we've caught up to his posthumous queer novel, The Garden of Eden, which I read this year and found excellent despite its supposedly being unfinished. (I think it is finished; he just knew he couldn't publish it in the '50s.) It's obviously a book written at white heat; it feels like it might combust in your hand.

The quality of that novel aside, and of The Sun Also Rises, I tend to believe he's best approached as a poet: a writer who explored his unique sensibility in his particular epoch in a brand-new style, a style that transformed not only his own language but several other languages as well (he was and remains beloved in France, Russia, China...). He is a lyric writer, fundamentally, and had a lyric writer's effect: on the very way we speak and write. His American renovation of English, his new democratization of literature, makes him a 20th-century Walt Whitman. He was also, though he didn't flaunt it, a very learned man who knew exactly what he was doing. He didn't write simply because he was stupid!

On the other hand, he's bound to look inadequate next to a preternaturally gifted true novelist like Faulkner, who was rather an American Shakespeare. Faulkner's own critique of Hemingway—here comes the minimalism vs. maximalism debate—was that he did not show courage as a writer, that, in other words, his famously rigorous style was too controlled and even too populist to touch greatness. I probably agree with this, less as a critique of Hemingway at his best than as a critique of the idea of making him the model writer whom everyone had to imitate, which is what he became in the middle of the 20th century and in some creative-writing pedagogy.

(Minimalism and maximalism should be thought of as techniques always available to any writer, to be used depending on the needs of a particular project. Even my own work exhibits both extremes, with The Quarantine of St. Sebastian House and The Class of 2000 more toward the Hemingway end of the spectrum and Portraits and Ashes and Major Arcana more toward the Faulkner. The power of the great late-20th-century American novelists—McCarthy, Morrison, DeLillo—is that they could do both, often in a single book.)

Speaking personally, I fell in love with Hemingway when I discovered him as a teen. I always had a tendency to write purple prose, so I needed to learn that minimalist lesson, and I found him at just the right time for it. Before I read him, I never knew you could do so much with so little. I could see even then that he was uneven, that The Old Man and the Sea was labored and portentous and A Farewell to Arms beautifully written but not much of a novel, compared to the perfect crystalline crispness of short stories like "Soldier's Home" or "In Another Country" or even the taut, dramatic The Sun Also Rises.

(I've never read For Whom the Bell Tolls, I should admit; you probably need to read that one to form a complete judgment.)

In short, I like Hemingway, I even love Hemingway. I would not put him in the front rank of the novelists, but I would put him in the front rank of artists who work in language, if you get my distinction. If you want to know where to start with Hemingway, I would get either a selection of short stories or The Sun Also Rises, not The Old Man and the Sea.