#me writing stuff

[dukeofankh]

I'm gonna try and be charitable here, which is not something you have done to me so far. Please read the first sentence again. Does your vision for deradicalizing right wing men "begin AND end with other men telling them that that is gross and to stop it"? This posts starts with an if/then statement. If the "if" does not apply to you. The "then" does not apply to you.

Like, this is a response to a very specific idea, one that was plastered all over every social media environment I consume after the US election. The idea was that clearly, since Trump had done better among men, and since misogynistic men don't listen to women, feminist men needed to do their damn jobs and fix men. If they had been doing their jobs already, Harris would have won. Women will (because this was largely coming from radical feminist voices) just haaaave to go full separatist and abandon the project until men had sorted themselves out.

The idea I am railing against here is that men are some monolithic group, wherein feminist men can...pull rank? Peer pressure Trump voters? The idea I am criticizing is one that thinks that "men" and "The patriarchy" are synonyms and if women are looking around in feminist spaces and seeing men who claim to be allies, then they are clearly lying because if they were really feminists they would have gotten their whole gender in line by now.

If you also think that those ideas are dumb, then we are already in agreement. I am not pointing out how difficult this is because I don't think that it's important to try anyway, I'm pointing this out because plenty of people are saying things about how to change men's minds that betray complete ignorance of how patriarchal social structures between men actually operate. Both because a lot of women trust women's read on how men think more than men telling them how men think, and because they are not interested in changing men's minds. They are radfems, pouncing on a very shocked, hurt, and scared population and trying to use the situation to push gender essentialism.

I do, absolutely, do everything I can to push men I know in a less hateful direction. It doesn't do much. But hey, maybe it's doing something. Maybe when I tell my coworker that believing "men and women are just good at different things" is totally incompatible with the clear respect he has for the two female carpenters he works with, it makes him think twice the next time he flips out about trans people after listening to a podcast. I do that sort of thing. I do not just smile and nod. What I am saying is that the current worldwide scourge of misogynistic fascism on the rise is not because your personal male friend is only pretending to be a feminist to hang out with you. He does not, actually, have the ability to mind control every misogynist in the country.

If your vision for the deradicalization of right-wing men begins and ends with "other men telling them that that's gross and to stop it" then I'm sorry, you do not understand how masculinity works.

"Men who hold patriarchal status" and "men who are feminists" are two groups who overlap less than you want them to. I'm sorry. That's not solely because men are so happy with patriarchal status that they don't want to risk it by policing misogyny/queerphobia/racism, It's because being misogynistic, queerphobic, and racist, end expressing other forms of toxic masculinity(and often abusively so) are part of how people establish and maintain patriarchal status. The men who have the ability to stop this via nothing but peer pressure are the very people who are doing it. That's by design. And engaging in feminist intervention is, in and of itself, usually the abrupt end of that status and its associated power to persuade misogynistic men.

Like, I have worked in blue collar jobs as a notably queer person. It was pretty much a constant deluge of verbal abuse. In my experience, most blue collar work environments are exploitative, abusive, and bigoted, and very gleefully so. On the occasions I have spoken up about someone saying something that was super fucking out of line (asking me which of the girls walking by was hottest. We were installing a portable classroom at a middle school), believe it or not, they completely failed to be shamed! Because nobody else on the crew gave a fuck. *I* was the weird one. They ghosted me. A full blown company ghosted me. I suddenly didn't have a job anymore because they just straightforwardly stopped telling me where the next job site was.

Like, this doesn't mean that it's your job to do it, but this vision you have of these big groups of men where everyone is on the fence and there is precisely one shit stirrer who can be shut down by a brave feminist man who can single handedly set the example for all these other guys...you are high. You are describing an "everybody clapped" level absurd scenario. Most of these truly virulent misogynistic guys either have zero friends, because, you know, our society is atomized to fuck, or they are in a group where the feminist guy is actually the weirdo who can be shut down and ostracized much, much easier than the misogynists, because there is no such thing as a man misogynists respect who stands up for women.

You might be saying "well, we're talking about longstanding personal relationships, actually. Like, they need to have to want to spend time with you and then, as a side effect, you can mind control them out of being a threat to us."

Problem with that being:

1: Many feminist men also have no friends, see the atomized society above.

2: Feminist men already stopped hanging out with men who make rape jokes because why the fuck would we want to spend time with them.

3: That isn't just because we respect women so hard. We are in many cases talking about men who are also deeply queerphobic, heirarchical, violent and abusive to other men. What initially drew me to feminism and women was a lack of heirarchical squabbling and constant bullying, and the ability to be openly queer. A lot of men who came to feminism did so because they knew that the patriarchy was not a place they would find success or acceptance. These are not the men who are gonna be able to change right wing minds.

4. Men do not view themselves as a monolith. There is no universal brotherhood of men. The actual meaning of the term "Fragile masculinity" is that men are constantly expected to prove that they are deserving of the status of being a member of their own gender. There are large swathes of men--including most of the men who you'd look to as examples of good, feminist men who you want to undertake this project--who are considered failed men, sissies, f****ts, soyboys, ect. They are. Not. Going. To. Convince. These. Men. Of. Jack. Shit. Much less successfully *shame* them. Jesus.

I know all of this sucks. I know it would be cool to be able to just point at a group and have them be responsible for the work. But nah. It's gonna have to be a societal project, one that will probably outlast all of us. Sorry. The thing you want these men to do is, absolutely, the morally correct thing to do. But presuming that it would be effective is, and once again I am so sorry about this, just ignorance of how these social groups function.

[fivedayslater]

For the WIP ask game: "iron" and/or "boil"?

Didn't find much iron but I found quite a few boils

Christmas Swap sequel where Niji figures some things out

The one where there's like three different Sanji's running around

Band AU where Pudding writes Good 4 U by Olivia Rodrigo about her relationship with Sanji and Zoro writes Misery Business by Paramore as a response

AU where Sanji became Germa's spy and is in Alabasta causing problems on purpose

Learning to Listen but from Sanji's POV

Zosan but make it opla

[dukeofankh]

I cannot express how jarring it was after being raised by a "Porn Addiction Coach" to get into a relationship with a woman and come face to face with the fact that she did actually want me to sexually desire her.

Like, in Evangelical Purity Culture, male desire was basically poison. It was a threat. It was this constant temptation that would destroy everything. And even after leaving, in the sort of queer, feminist spaces i spend most of my time in that wasn't something that pretty much anyone was spending time actively dissuading me from feeling.

But my desire is good. It's not something that I'm being accepted in spite of. It's a positive thing. It's a bonus. Not even just vanilla stuff, all the stuff I'd convinced myself were these weird terrible desires that were shameful to have.

It honestly took me over a decade to fully accept that. To stop dissociating during sex and confront that I was, in fact, being a massive perv and that was fantastic and preferable and that I could accept that into my self-image without shame or self hatred.

But it's important to do. It's important to leave relationships that don't welcome that part of you. To know that your sexuality is valuable and valid and worth owning and celebrating. Because the alternative is just...not being. Either existing as yourself and repressing the part of your identity that is sexual or allowing that sexuality to exist but turning off your self while it does.

[dukeofankh]

...nah though. For real, you don't have to do all that.

Look. Communication is a group project. There is no centralized universal meaning for literally any word or concept. The exact same phrase can read radically differently depending on the cultural context it's placed in. It's not the sole job of the speaker to communicate perfectly. It's also the job of the audience to do the work of trying to understand what they meant.

This thing you're doing? Creating all of these hypothetical audience members and rephrasing what you're saying to accomodate them? It is just as possible for the reader to do that with the speaker. It is possible to read something and go "oh, when they say that bdsm is sex for autistic people, they're probably making a statement about the clear communication and vocalization of expectations and how afterwards you get explicitly told that everyone had a good time so there's no reason to worry. They probably weren't like, saying that all autistic people like bdsm or that if you like bdsm you're autistic." For example.

People just don't tend to do that because empathy is exhausting. Trying to see things from other people's point of view takes effort, and it's pretty common and frankly rational in a lot of cases to just not bother. Because if a person is actively malicious and hates you, seeing things from their perspective hurts.

You don't have to do this nearly as hard in irl conversations because you have a set, concrete context for what is being said and who's saying it. Social media does away with that. Suddenly every statement is anonymous and devoid of context. Anything could be said by a monstrous, malicious asshole, or by a sweet lil angel.

You see just as many posts on this site that demonstrate the other side of this. A commenter radically misunderstanding posts to be endorsements of their way of thinking, even when they're explicitly the target of the criticism.

Frankly, most of the time, people are more likely to decide how they interpret a statement based on who they think said it and their socio-political allegiances than an appraisal of the words they said and what they likely meant--because it's just frankly easier than actually engaging with the intended meaning of a person's words and ideas. And that goes for both enemies and allies.

When talking to toddlers, you have to be extremely, explicitly clear about what you say, cover every possibility you can think of in which they might misunderstand it, and with trial and error and experience, you'll learn to also cover the possibilities that wouldn't have crossed your mind. If you tell a toddler, "whatever you do, do not touch that electric wire. Not even with your pinky finger, because if you do, you will die" and once you're finally sure they understood that, you'll turn your eyes away for two seconds

and they're right at the wire, trying to see what happens if they'll touch it with their pinky toe instead.

You don't usually have to do this with adults. An adult who is allergic to pineapples can hear someone say, "eating pineapple is good for you", evaluate this piece of information, conclude that this is probably true for people who aren't allergic to pineapple, shrug it off and carry on with their day.

Unless you're on tumblr. Tumblr posts must be worded like toddler talk, cover every possibility in which someone might misunderstand it, remember to mention people who do not have this problem you are talking about, cannot employ this solution, or who otherwise have nothing to do with this conversation.

You can't just say "eating pineapple is good for you", you'll have to make sure to specify "eating pineapple is good, unless you are allergic to pineapple, in which case do not eat pineapple". And then get promptly informed that you you forgot to mention people who suffer from some extremely rare cliantro-soap-gene that makes pineapple taste like ass, and consequently offended someone who still ships Harry Potter Characters.

[fivedayslater]

WIP tag game! @sylibane left it open to anyone who wanted to do it, and I've been working very hard, so that includes me!

The game’s to share the most recent line you’ve written for a WIP then tag as many people as there are words, but I'll continue to leave it open to whoever wants to do it

“Well that seems overly complicated,” Sanji huffed, his thumb stroking the side of Zoro’s hand in a way he hoped was comforting, “If someone wants to keep you away they don’t need silver. They just need a bar of soap.”

[dukeofankh]

Leaving toxic masculinity behind as a source of community is pretty much an unmitigated good, especially for men who are chronically underperforming in one or more metric by which hegemonic patriarchal status is measured (heterosexuality, whiteness, ability to perform violence, ect.). No real external spur is needed for leaving. It doesn't even require empathy. Just perspective. Relying on an abusive pyramid scheme for self worth is bad, actually.

But when you leave that, I dunno, call me a whiny incel who expects emotional labour from others, it would be cool if there was some sort of community or support structure in place for progressive men to find celebration and identity and acceptance. It would be nice if we had cultural conceptions of positive masculinity that could be emulated instead of individual, exceptional, disposable blorbos to be fawned over. It would be nice if being masculine wasn't viewed as something that negates or problematises my queerness. It would be nice to even be able to find media about masculinity that isn't poisoned by fascism or more interested in dunking on said misogynists for clout. I feel like I'm trying to build something new from scratch. Why? Why is this such a fucking wasteland.

I don't know about y'all, but I have never felt understood and accepted by any community ever in my fucking life. I have never felt seen. I have never felt at home. I'm not gonna become a misogynist about it but there sure isn't anything positive to lean on or collective vision for a positive future to fucking strive for, is there? Christ.

And like, because I know I do have to end with this, before you try some faux-hopecore bullshit on me that actually seeks to shift the blame right back onto me, I'm already donating to and planning to volunteer for my local left wing party for our upcoming federal election. I already signed up for more classes to fill my time, I'm married, I text my stupid friends who bail on me and don't text back. I have been to therapy several times. I have already poured hundreds of hours trying to build community in male feminist spaces online. Systemic issues do not magically become individual failings when we talk about men.

[fivedayslater]

20 questions for fic writers

@carriecmoney tagged everyone who wanted to do this, and that includes me :) I will also be passing it along and tagging everyone who wants to do it

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

109! The Hetalia fics are posted under a different psued, so they don’t all always show up

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

804,045!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

These days mostly One Piece

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1) Learning to Listen (ZoSan as pain sharing soulmates)

2) Keeping Secrets (Zosan is the worst best kept secret of the Straw Hat pirates)

3) Is technically Call It What You Want, but since I’m basically riding the coattails of 7 much better writers for that, we’ll skip it and say The Proper Reaction (ZoSan au where Sanji brings Zoro home for Christmas to meet Zeff)

4) Hold Me Closer (Zosan, anesthesia makes Zoro forget he’s married to the love of his life, fluff ensues)

5) The Love I Need to See Me Through (ZoSan au where King Zoro kidnaps Prince Sanji)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Not really, mostly because I’m very shy and responded with “thanks I’m glad you enjoyed it” all the time makes me anxious. I’ll reply if someone asks a question.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hard to say, since I mostly like happy endings, but probably the ao3 version of the murder mystery because Spoilers.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Hard to say since again since I like happy endings, most of them end pretty happy. Probably The Christmas Swap, since i was going for “hallmark movie but incredibly gay” and got to make the brothers more accepting thanks to that premise.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Occasionally, but not really. There’s been one persistent anon lately, but I’m wise to their game

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I don’t! I might in the future if the plot calls for it, but we’ll see

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Yes, sometimes! There’s a Kingdom Hearts/Legend of Zelda Epic I’ve been planning since I was like 14 that I want to write one day, but if all the ones I’ve published probably the Hetalia/Ace Attorney crossover.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Thankfully no, or not that I know of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! There’s a Russian translation for Bounty Troubles, and a Chinese translation for the first part of Learning to Listen. I think there are more but I can’t find the links

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! As mentioned I worked on Call It What You Want with some friends, and I worked on This Is How You Lose the Time War with my friend Haru! It was fun writing with them

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Probably ZoSan at this point, there just so versatile and fun to shove in Situations

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

There’s this au where Sanji never left Germa and became there spy and is now on Alabasta causing problems on purpose fic I’ve been chipping away at for years, but who knows maybe someday it’ll be finished

16. What are your writing strengths?

I’m great at dialog, coming up with ideas, and fixing plot holes

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Too many commas, can’t describe shit, reuse the same ideas and phrases, and I can’t stop editing as I go

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I’ve done it! I only speak English so I got some outside help, but I think it’s very effective if the POV can’t understand the language

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Technically powerpuff girls, but that was just for my friends. That I posted online Legend of Zelda, but all those fics are gone now

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Fade Away! I didn’t think I was a good enough writer for the idea when I started, but I wrote it anyway, and as I did I became better

[spider-artdump]

[dukeofankh]

Literally one eighth of the world's population is on TikTok. As pleasant as it would be to ignore it, that unfortunately doesn't make it disappear.

Like...this is some fucking object permanence level shit.

the only reason i know about girl math and girl dinner is because of people on here complaining about those terms. and those people who first started complaining saw it on tiktok. so heres the thing. why dont we all just never look at tiktok again forever. then these things won't happen anymore.

[artemisdesari-blog]

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[valtsv]

being someone who's passionate about their interests when you're a horror fan really is a special layer of hell because every interaction you have with another person where the conversation turns to your hobbies and personal entertainments is a trial where if you show too much unrepentant glee at getting an opportunity to talk about your preferred subject you get to watch them mentally move you onto their list of untrustworthy individuals to avoid in the future in real time

[dukeofankh]

I think that the monogamous expectation that you only ever be attracted to your one selected partner until you die is weird and unrealistic and straight up magical thinking, but also, I think that once you take that to be accurate--or even possible--your standard for realistic expectations is so off-kilter that it effects how you view nonmonogamy even if you believe it's a valid lifestyle for other people.

Like, I think that when people say stuff like "oh, I could never do that, I'd get so jealous", what they are picturing is a sort of logical reversal of typical monogamous expectations. If monogamous people are supposed to never feel desire for other people, then nonmonogamous people are supposed to never feel jealous of other people.

In both cases, people seem to be unaware of the concept of handling your feelings maturely and not blowing up your whole life and relationships because you felt a feeling. Instead, the expectation is that the job of a good partner is just to not feel the wrong feelings, whether those be attraction, love, or jealousy.

People do not work like that.

[dukeofankh]

That means less that people are wrong to associate that with Christianity, though, and more that Milton wrote fanfiction so hard that it became de facto canon for most Christians. Milton's conception of angels being extrabiblical and several hundred years after the original myths doesn't make him not part of Christianity. It's all fake, most of it was written long after it claims to be. He just joined in the grand tradition of his faith and made shit up.

hey uhhh but fr the concept of fallen angels existing but risen demons being an impossibility is kind of a great summary of sin in christianity

[fivedayslater]

Hola! Trick or treat 🎃

Happy Halloween my dear 💜

Your treat is a three sentence fic about a ghost:

They say tonight was the night for ghosts and all things spooky, but tonight of all nights they felt the loneliest. There were no parties for them on the day of their death, no treats to be had or tricks to deliver. All there was was the sound of their own silence in the dead of night, and the world continuing on forever more without them.

[blu-engineer]

favorite stan twins characterization is that they're both equally insane. stanley just gets more air time to show it off. loosely inspired by a post i read earlier but here's some absolutely insane things both of them have done

stanley:

drugged a person and turned them into an exhibit in the mystery shack

had a vegas wedding to a prospector-themed novelty dispenser

gave mabel a grappling hook

failed to steal an animatronic badger

chewed his way out of the trunk of a car

punched at least three bald eagles

is multiply divorced, possibly even with the novelty dispenser

committed premeditated murder on a llama

faked a heart attack to get on Wheel of Fortune

took his clothes off in front of a live studio audience on Wheel of Fortune

has a rivalry with a fifth grader, a grandmother, and a man who exclusively dresses like a corn cob

stanford:

pulled a gun on a bus driver when he wouldn't let a pig on board

directly assisted in mind-controlling ronald reagan during his election in 1980

gave mabel a crossbow

got bitten by a vampire bat and subsequently began sampling human blood

owns contraband outlawed in 9000 dimensions; keeps it in an extremely flimsy plastic case

"accidentally" set a hawk on fire

has exes ranging from as normal as his old college buddy to as weird as a triangle and an alien with 7 eyes who put a metal plate in his head

wears turtlenecks because he's hiding multiple tattoos he regrets, including one themed around "all star" by smash mouth

is an Extremely wanted criminal across hundreds of dimensions; was completely kicked out of one for card counting

is, bizarrely, super into the band Eurythmics

can see shrimp colors

[dukeofankh]

See: Avatar, the Legend of Korra. The first series sets up lightning bending as this extremely powerful and dangerous high-level expression of firebending that is only known to a handful of masters.

Thirty or so years later, a buncha schmoes come in every day and do a shift at the power plant using their now merely kinda impressive powers to fire lightning bolts into the machinery (which would probably be more efficient than even modern real-world power plants, including nuclear, considering that most of them are just fancy ways of boiling water for steam engines).

You know what fantasy writing needs? Working class wizards.

A crew of enchanters maintaining the perpetual flames that run the turbines that generate electricity, covered in ash and grime and stinking of hot chilies and rare mushrooms used for the enchantments

A wizard specializing in construction, casting feather fall on every worker, and enchanting every hammer to drive nails in straight, animating the living clay that makes up the core of the crane

An elderly wizard and her apprentice who transmute fragile broken objects. From furniture, to rotten wood beams, to delicate jewelry

A battle magician, trained with only a few rudimentary spells to solve a shortage of trained wizards on the front who uses his healing spells to help folks around town

Wizarding shops where cheery little mages enchant wooden blocks to be hammered into the sides of homes. Hammer this into the attic and it will scare off termites, toss this in the fire and clean your chimney, throw this in the air and all dust in the room gets sucked up

Wizard loggers who transmute cut trees into solid, square beams, reducing waste, and casting spells to speed up regrowth. The forest, they know, will not be too harsh on them if the lost tree’s children may grow in its place

Wizard farmers who grow their crops in arcane sigils to increase yield, or produce healthier fruit

Factory wizards who control a dozen little constructs that keep machines cleaned and operational, who cast armor to protect the hands of workers, and who, when the factory strikes for better wages, freeze the machines in place to ensure their bosses can’t bring anyone new in.

Anyway, think about it.