#i literally cannot write any more the text block is maxed out but

[scoopsgf]

hi! so as everyone knows, rory isn’t the most loved character out there. The common conclusion is that she went completely downhill after season 4. Or in other words: “She was always an entitled brat that everyone spoiled rotten, and it became obvious in college”

ik you’re a rory defender (cause that’s what people who like her are lol), so i’m kinda curious what your opinion on this take is. I’ve also noticed people like to point out it was “how she was always going to end up” which i really disagree with tbh

i’ll be honest this take is so stupid and reflects really bad critical thinking skills. rory was never spoiled. i know we like to point this out a lot, but she spent the first eleven years of her life living in a garden shed. i think it’s emphasised a lot amongst the tumblr circle bc the show didn’t focus too much on it, but we know it for a fact and i mean—just think about that: they had one room and probably only one bed that rory and lorelai shared, and clearly no money to their name. emily and richard may have been her grandparents, but anyone who thinks that relation brought about any financial benefit for rory before chilton seriously needs to go back and re-watch the first few eps of s1, where it’s very clearly established that they’ve been estranged for years and they’re all just starting to get to know one another. anyway, i think that debunks ‘spoiled’, but i also just wanna point out that everyone putting rory on a pedestal was absolutely detrimental to her in the long run, had no benefit, and was never anything she asked for. however, the townsfolk and lorelai believed she could do no wrong for a reason: because she was a good kid. she did well in school because she was smart and because she put in the effort; she helped out during dorky town events without complaint; she helped luke at the diner after his uncle died, she helped her mom out at the inn, etc etc. she cultivated a reputation as a responsible, kind person, because that’s just who she was. this interpretation of her character was not fictitiously created. that being said, rory was never perfect by any means. everyone is human and everyone has flaws (which is largely what gilmore girls is about—anyone expecting to find ‘perfect’ characters here should go watch another show). people in her life turning a blind eye to those flaws is ultimately what caused her to spiral—because everyone in her life had told her that she could do anything, she could be anyone, she was a great writer, etc etc., and then to be told by the head of a media conglomerate that she couldn’t and wasn’t? that would be crushing. that would be horrible for anyone to hear. should she have stolen a yacht? no. should she have dropped out of yale? also no. but do i understand why she did those things? yes. as for it ‘becoming obvious in college’, I really think this has more to do with logan’s influence. not to pin everything on him, but it’s not like s4 yale rory was living a privileged lifestyle. she was regularly visiting the hollow still and trying to make good grades as a freshman. her first big mistake was really the thing with dean, which i’ve talked about a lot but: imagine you’re rory and your boyfriend of almost a year who you were in love with just up and leaves without any explanation, and you can’t talk to your mother/best friend about it because said mother/best friend hated your boyfriend’s guts, so you have to shove everything you’re feeling down and hide your pain and internalise it. then your first boyfriend who has a fiancé/wife keeps showing up in your life and you think “oh, he’s steady, he’s reliable, he stayed. maybe i made a mistake, maybe i chose wrong.” then said ex comes to your house and convinces you he and his wife are through, and he’s leaving her, and he essentially begs you to sleep with him. i mean, seriously: no she shouldn’t have done it, but there was a lot of coercion involved in what happened that night (as well as a lot of unresolved feelings toward jess). in the fight with lorelai she asks something like: aren’t you glad it was with someone who’s good? someone who loves me? because that’s what rory wanted: someone who wouldn’t leave, someone who was obvious about their love for her. anyway, i’ve gotten completely off track but the gist is: no she isn’t spoiled, and no that isn’t always how she was gonna end up. she made some mistakes just like everyone else does and the majority of the audience crucify her for it because they, like all the people of stars hollow and lorelai herself, bought into the idea that she was a faultless angel.

[strangeswift]

Controversial opinion but I cannot take non-straight!Eddie / Steve / Nancy / Max / Lucas / El etc headcanons or theories seriously.

I get that ppl all have headcanons about the characters and it is also because they want to see themselves in these characters or like certain dynamics between the chaarcters. But for the love of me, I just cannot really like it. Fanfics are fun and all but there's just something that irks me about non-straight!Steve or Eddie headcanons. Because there is literally nothing that shows or suggests that these guys are actually non-straight, nor there is any actual romantic dynamic written between them. It is also annoying that they are put in the same place as ships like Byler that actually has canon evidence and is half-way canon already. It is also that the writers havent spent so much time on queercoding Will and Mike's characters but then they just..... forgot to actually queercode Nancy, Max, Lucas and El? I heavily dislike it when ppl say Nancy must be a lesbian bc she doesnt actually love Steve or Jonathan. I dislike it when Max must be bisexual because... uh... because what? Because she might have had a crush on El? People basing Lucas ''bisexuality'' on Lucas's ST book bc he described a fellow black kid bc he was happy that he found another black kid like himself.... just doesnt sit right with me. I dont like it when ppl say El is a lesbian bc 'she got stuck in the lab and called nancy and other females pretty too'.

Bruh not everyone is non-straight, ok? Some characters (actually most characters) are straight on this show and dont have that sort of characterization. I am sorry i just cannot take Stddie seriously even if the fic is written well

Hi anon! I believe you are conflating headcanons and theories.

Let's define our terms!

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, "Headcanon refers to something that a fan imagines to be true about a character even though no information supporting that belief is spelled out in the text. Sometimes that involves filling in your own explanation for a character’s strange motivation, or projecting aspects onto a character that make them more relatable to you."

So headcanons aren't something to be "taken seriously" in the first place. They're just for fun. And if headcanons about characters being queer aren't fun for you, just don't engage with the content. Unfollow, block, filter, whatever you gotta do.

Now... Is this the part where I remind everyone that I DON'T LIKE ST3DDIE EITHER. (Obligatory link to my St3ddie post that I will CONTINUE TO LINK in every single one of my responses on this topic.) I agree that Steve being heterosexual in canon is important to his character, and I don't personally HC him as queer for that reason. People HCing Steve as queer isn't problematic though because HCs don't affect canon and they don't even need to be based in canon! Because they are for fun! I promoted the St3ddie script because I'm a huge fan of Ella's writing and I enjoyed it for that reason. And she doesn't ship St3ddie either! It wasn't meant to be taken so seriously. It was for fun.

Also.

Most people who HC the characters you mentioned as queer fully realize that they were not written as such and aren't trying to comvince you that they are. Personally? My sexuality HCs (except Mike, but that's more of a theory than a HC) are based mostly on vibes.

For example: Lucas is bi to me because one time I saw a tweet that said that Lucas had a little crush on Will when they were younger, and I thought that was cute. And it's fun! Based in canon? No. Cute? Yes!! I hadn't even heard about the section in his book, and obviously when I did, I recognized that it was not meant to imply that Lucas was attracted to that kid (and yes it also rubs me wrong when people misinterpret it as such, because it takes away from the real meaning.) But Lucas is bi to me because I think it's cute and fun, not because there's any canonical evidence. And I literally don't care. Because it's a headcanon.

Max is bi because she's cool, and straight people are not cool.

Nancy Wheeler is bi because I want her so bad.

El is a lesbian because that's how I personally choose to interpret some of her actions. Not because I believe the Duffers wrote her that way.

Anyway. Hope this helps.

[emptymanuscript]

Sleuthing Writer’s Block

Orson Scott Card said to me in a workshop that writer’s block is a gift because it tells you there is a problem. The trick is simply solving that problem. But that’s quite a trick, isn’t it. Because writer’s block only tells you that there IS a problem, not what the problem is. 

This is like a murder mystery. You come in on the body, no explanation, and you as the writer/detective must solve who has left the corpus of your writing on the floor, what they did it with, why they did it, and then how to right the scales of justice. It’s a big task. And all you’ve got to work with is that body.

Now, luckily, like with a murder mystery, there are basic facts and logical steps we can use. In a cozy, the detective is locked up with the body and all the possible suspects. The same is true for you and your story. There are only a few suspects or classes of suspect. Your eight suspects are: 

Milieu/Setting/Worldbuilding 

Ideas/Concept/Genre

Character/Characterization 

Event/Plot/Structure

Theme/Metaphor

Voice/Style

Scene Execution

Boredom / Disbelief / Poor Development

Chances are that scene execution, voice/style, and Theme/Metaphor are most likely innocent. But we’ll still cover them just in case. You’ll also note that the first four suspects match up with Orson Scott Card’s MICE Quotient, there really is a reason I’m so into it ;) 

So let’s interrogate. 

1) Suspect number 1 defines a lot of your choices. Yes, Milieu declares if there are spaceships or dragons but it is just as important if you are writing a slice of life set in the here and now. There are rules to it. Things that say one thing must occur while another cannot possibly occur. Is the scene you are trying to write attempting to violate one of the rules of your world? Or has a scene you recently wrote violated them? Is one of the rules of the world that you need in order to move on missing from earlier in the work? What about just a detail? Details are almost always something that needs to be fixed earlier in the work, rather than right where you are, in order for you to hang later developments on that detail. Are there vampires but you’re balking right as you are about to have them fly in? Then it might be that you need a hint of vampiric possibility earlier in the text to make yourself ok with it. 

2) The Ideas / Concept / Genre suspect is a lot like Milieu. It sets a lot of rules. Most importantly, this class sets the rule of consistency. Everything that occurs inside a text must match the idea that dictates the text. What if a vampire fell in love with a UFO? If that’s the idea you’re running with, then everything that happens inside your text must either support, contrast, or complicate the vampire falling in love with a UFO. Which means if a werewolf shows up to fight the vampire over their deforestation investments... that scene probably needs to be cut. That may be an extreme example but suppose you are just writing a normal woman coming of age and discovering she’s a lesbian story. That is also a confining idea. The werewolf would be just as out of place. So, most likely, would be her struggles with her POS first car because that’s harder to feed in to the idea of “What if Shelly was a lesbian?” Is what you are trying to write consistent with your what if statement? If you are having trouble early on, do you have a working what if statement? Do you feel like you need to contrast the statement in order to give it a starker definition? Do you feel like your what if statement has given you enough conflict? We’ll come back to conflict because it is a major issue over and over. But in this case, your idea needs to give you several moments of tension over whether the goal of the character can be accomplished or not. If the vampire falls in love with the UFO then how, literally on Earth, is the Vampire going to meet up with it? That’s a problem that grows out of the idea. If Shelly is a lesbian, then how is she going to come to suspect it? Etc. Do you need that sort of problem work to go on? 

3) I’m going to be honest, Character is one of your likelier suspects. Especially if you have filled out twenty character questionnaires of 300 questions each and know every little thing about them including which hand they hold their toothbrush with. Much more important than knowing every little thing about your character is being able to predict your character. Because if you just don’t know what your character is going to do, that is likely to give you block because your brain can’t use the instructions you have given it. Do you know what your character wants in the situation you are blocked about? Do you know what your character is afraid of at this time? Do you know how your character is going to approach getting what they want and avoiding what they are afraid of? Are they brainy? Are they aggressive? Are they avoidant? Etc. How will your character know they have succeeded/failed with their current goal? How have they been defined by their backstory in relation to your idea? Contrariwise, suppose you do know the answer to those questions. Then the question might be, has the character deviated from what should be their predictable behavior? Have they gone someplace or done some thing that doesn’t fit with what you need to say about them? Finally, does your character have a good reason to participate in their conflict? Or does your character have a good reason to feel incapable of avoiding it? If your character doesn’t, then they may simply be refusing until you tailor your conflict more closely to their heart. 

4) Even more likely than Character, your plot / structure has the scent of manuscript murder all over it. Plot is usually the vaguest thing a writer goes into a manuscript with. You often have a point A and a point Z and maybe, maybe some notion of an M. The rest of the alphabet we are determined to wing. Which means all too often we’re left with ok, what next? In which case the question to ask is: what has to happen? What dramatic event needs to occur? In some ways you can rely on your genre for this. In horror, the characters split up. The heroine is abducted by the monster. These are tropes that have often turned into clichés but see Cabin in the Woods, it plays with it but the event still happens, right where it is supposed to. You can ask yourself, what trope should go here, and then play with it to see what new you can create. You can also rely on structural dictates such as the monomyth. Certain things, such as refusing to participate in the story that is about to occur, are expected and can be just the right thing to do, even if only as a place holder. The other question to ask is if your plot meshes with all of your other choices. Do the events of your plot, especially where you are blocked, illustrate and play out your What If? Does the plot fit the genre expectations? Would this part of your plot happen in the world you have so far described? Or is your plot to linear? Is it all too easy for your character? Can you see the ending from the starting line? In which case the question might be how to move to a parallel course, how can you change the path so it still gets you approximately where you want to go but does so in a different way?

5) Theme / Metaphor is an unlikely suspect because it’s polished into a story far more often than it is built into a story from the get go. There is a reason every lousy writer who is really a failure alcoholic depicted on the silver screen talks about what their story is ‘really about.’ All the screenwriters know that is mostly bs. Mostly. But our minds are playing with such things and they are deeply powerful. And when it goes awry, that power can derail everything. The real question to ask yourself here is what deeper meaning are you trying to put into your story? And this does need to be somewhat nebulous, you are playing with metaphor. If it requires an essay to talk about it, it isn’t going to work. And you’re going to need to get comfortable with imprecision. Because it doesn’t communicate very well in words. My book is about family... but it clearly isn’t. Mad Max: Fury Road is about something like women deserving to be free. But the actual literal words for it are lost, you just... feel it in the middle of all the action which is all connected by that nebulous feeling or rebellion and righteousness. The Da Vinci code is about organized belief as a deceitful authority. It’s more obvious in the Da Vinci code but the depth of it also runs into where that deceitful authority isn’t the obvious villain of Christianity existing for the power of a few men. What is your theme? Have you been playing it out, or have you diverged from it and so need to go back and change direction? Is what you think you want to write in conflict with it? Does it just feel like things aren’t connecting correctly? And finally are any of the metaphors you are using conflicting with your theme?

6) Voice / Style isn’t guilty. Ok, maybe. But it is unlikely. Does it feel like the flow of your writing has changed? Is the way you are saying things feeling forced instead of natural to you? That actually is the most likely reason that style will block you, if you don’t really like the way you are writing and want to write a different way instead. You’re much better off writing in a way you are comfortable. The block here comes from writing being just too difficult and not resonating with your writer’s soul. Some people love flowing beautiful prose. Some of us do not. And whether we enjoy writing it can be an entirely different spectrum than our enjoyment. Write the way you want to write. This does mean, sometimes, that you can’t write the exact plot you want to write. My writing style does mean I can’t write high literature, my choices and comforts don’t mesh with the genre expectations for it. And this may be true of you as well. If this is actually your block it is about taking a long hard look in the mirror and going with the flow of your personality instead of against it. Because you are going to have substantial problems as long as you are working against yourself. 

7) Scene execution is about the actual how of how you deliver your story. Have you delivered the story expositions you need up to this point to move on? Are you delivering the information you need to deliver to the reader at this point? What action on the part of the character will deliver that information? Do you need to just state the information and move on, maybe restate it more eloquently later? Every scene has a job. It is to show a particular set of actions that move a character toward or away from their goals. Do you know the goal?  While the scene does its job, it must also do the job well, which means it must also convey information necessary to the greater story as a whole. Do you know what overarching goal this particular scene goal relates to? Do you know what you want the reader to know in the context of the greater story by having this scene play out? Has the scene that this scene relies on provided the information it needs to move forward? Do you know what forward means in this particular case? If this is your block, then you are looking for something relatively small and concrete. The problem will be where you are or in a scene related to where you are. It’s not an overarching story problem. It’s just getting this scene to do its job and making sure it has all the tools it needs to do it.

8) And here, unfortunately, is where we get to the real problems. Ones where there aren’t simple answers no matter how many questions you ask. These are actually derived from questions, which I also got from Orson Scott Card: Huh? I don’t get it. Oh yeah? I don’t believe it. So What? I don’t care. In all these cases it is about truly going back to the drawing board.

Huh, I don’t get it = poor development. There is a point at which you may just not have any idea about your story. You don’t know where to go. You don’t know what to do. You’re not even sure what you were doing. What this is not understanding your own story to the point that your brain balks and refuses to go any farther until you do the underlying work. This is writer’s block because you don’t have the materials to work with. Which means you need to develop a story. All of that stuff above can help. Just use it as a means to develop your story instead of question it. Work out your MICE Quotient and figure out your what ifs. Who is your character for story purposes? How do you want to challenge them? Where would that conflict be most powerful for you?

Oh yeah, I don’t believe it = disbelief. I know, really complex. But belief actually is a fairly complex system and suspension of disbelief doubly so. If you’ve stopped believing in your story all together then the problem most likely orbits around the various elements of your story not supporting each other well enough. Or you may have too many gimmes. My example of a vampire falling in love with a UFO is a lot of gimmes right on the face of it. Attempting to put anything else nonstandard in is going to throw most readers. I might not be able to make myself believe it. So, sometimes you need to step back and ask if your elements are working against each other? Might it be better just to have a human fall in love with a UFO or a vampire fall in love with a more mundane vehicle? And does it all just seem too ridiculous. The thing is, for each element you are going to have to give it the smell test. Can you believe what you have put together? And if not, what can you change to make it more believable?

So what, I don’t care = boredom. Sometimes you are just bored with a story. Sometimes you don’t like it anymore. Sometimes it is just time to put it down and go on to try something else. It is a hard truth but it happens. I’m not saying you have to give up just because you’re bored but it is something to consider. If you want to keep at it then it is time to treat the story almost as if it is new. Large changes are probably in order. Ask yourself honestly which elements bore you. And scrap them in favor of something new. Shelly may need to be relegated to a minor character in the story about the actually interesting girl she has a crush on. Instead of a coming of age realizing it is a Lesbian story, it may need to be a drag racing story that happens to star a teenage lesbian and her fearlessness behind the wheel is echoed by her fearlessness in her identity. Maybe you hate that story. It might also be worth asking what elements you like and simply taking those and reworking the rest around it. If none of that sounds good, put your story in a drawer and work on something else for a while and come back to it in six months or so. In six months the story will look very different and problems will be more obvious. 

9) Wait a minute, nine? There were only eight suspects. Well every so often someone gets the brilliant idea that the detective did it. It generally doesn’t work but it is a possibility. You may be “the problem” and not your story. In which case it is definitely time to put the manuscript away. I once heard Stephen King say in a speech that he saw himself as a father first, a husband second, and a writer as a distant distant third. He may have even put it lower on the list. Life comes first. The truth that many writers and writing advice givers don’t want to acknowledge is that you can’t write every day. As someone who did write close enough to every day for government work for five years before I started harming myself because of it, I am telling you that it isn’t a good idea. And your brain is going to let you know. If you are giving too much energy to writing, your brain is going to go all out to try and stop you. Writer’s block can be an early-ish symptom of this. I cannot tell you the number of times I said I don’t have any ideas. I should have stopped then. The way that writer’s block felt to me was like a well gone dry. Like it was eating my life. Like I would rather cut off my hands than put them on the keyboard. Let it go. Life comes first. Take care of yourself first. You will get infinitely more writing done if you get yourself healthy and in a good space than you will trying to kill yourself doing it.