#writing philosophy

[the-golden-comet]

I'm curious, why do you also post your stories on AO3 if you also get them copyrighted? I've just never heard of anyone doing that before and I wasn't even sure it was possible. Also, why did you chose to sell it on Amazon under the pseudonym Goldencomet69 instead of another fake name that sounded more, idk, author-y, like Jay Doe or something?

These are genuine questions that I mean in the nicest way possible because I've never heard of someone doing those things.

I’ll be happy to answer those questions! Thank you for the ask!

Being an author isn’t my main source of income. It is my hobby. It’s a passion project. It’s the same reason I write music and illustrate for free. I’m fortunate enough to be in a place where I can do that.

My main philosophy is that I want my works to be accessible to all, to be enjoyed and shared by all, and to create a positive art-sharing culture that (hopefully) inspires adult readers to become adult writers. If I get a little extra from Amazon royalties, great! If not, it’s no big deal.

I had the option to sign up for Amazon Unlimited, but the caveat was that my works would not be able to be accessible elsewhere. I said, “fuck that” and just did the basic KDP because it doesn’t matter if these novels sell. What matters is that people enjoy them.

Instead of doing something like Patreon, I figured that Amazon was the next best thing. I treat it as a supplemental, and so far it has been working out well for me! 💫

As far as copyright? Well, it’s still my intellectual property. Usually the people who abuse IPs on original works are larger corporations, so I added that as an extra protection on my work. I still highly encourage fanart and fanworks, and in fact have received wonderful art of my novels. Teamwork makes the dream work ✨

As far as my pseudonym goes? It’s also incredibly purposeful to my branding. People usually wish upon shooting stars to make their dreams come true, to find comfort, or as a spectacle that can be enjoyed. A fleeting moment. That’s what I hope to accomplish with my works (and my favorite color is gold). As for the 69? Well…haha….also purposeful. I don’t take myself too seriously, and the works I produce are adult fiction, so take that as you will. (It’s also a running joke with friends from my first published fanfiction The Wingman, because I write fanfics too and put them on Archive Of Our Own. I don’t sell fanfiction because that harms sites like AO3, the characters from The Legend of Zelda franchise aren’t mine, and I don’t want Nintendo suing me)

I appreciate all your questions! Thank you so much for the ask!

[maspers]

I think it'd be very interesting to have a villain that like, doesn't fill the typical villain boxes at all except for the fact that they're intentionally responsible for all the crap the heroes have gone through. This villain doesn't have a Freudian excuse or mental disability. They're not trying to make some philosophical point. They're not reveling in their evil, nor are they cold and somber. They just look like a regular dude, and a bland one at that. Maybe they can be twist villain who was a minor side character who faked their death early on (like, REALLY early on, before the audience can get attached, and ideally when a bunch of side characters die together), but that's about as exciting as it gets, and they only did that to avoid being the center of attention. They don't care about theatrics, and they're not trying to make a point or accomplish something great. They just woke up one morning and decided on a whim to jumpstart mass chaos. They're a tad interested in seeing what happens as a result and are observing the proceedings somewhat. But mostly they're just sitting there playing Mario kart and waiting for it all to blow over, so that they can resume life as normal in whatever the new status quo is. If they get killed in the process then oh well that's life.

Give me a villain who just doesn't really care. It was all a spontaneous action to them, nothing more. 

The heroes hunt them down, raging and screaming and trying to get closure for all the hell they've been through, and the villain is just like "oh, hey guys" and just kinda sits there eating a sandwich. The heroes try to interrogate them about their motives and are stunned to find there isn't one. One of them maybe kills the villain in a rage ("...Huh." is the villain's last word) but there's no relief to it. The villain is just another corpse to add to the pile. Nothing has been really fixed by their death. There's no feeling of victory, just a hollow emptiness. Even if the heroes manage to end the conflict and rebuild society, they'll be forever scarred. 

A villain who can't be defeated because they didn't have anything to defeat. A villain who won at the outset because they weren't trying to win anything. A villain that just felt like doing one or two really evil things for no particular reason. 

Don't get me wrong, I love the villains that ham it up and the villains that pose deep moral questions. But I want to see if everyone finds the concept of this kind of villain as terrifying as I do.

[medusas-stylist]

on the gods

i’ve been thinking a lot about the the gods lately; being in greece does that to you, because you see the insane landscapes, the monumental ruins, and the wonderful people, and you start to realize that the ancient gods were far more than the stories we have; every time i pass by a church, i see greeks making the cross in passing too, and as i spend my days digging up the athenian agora, through homes of christians and pagans, i am starting to understand just how much religion permeates greek society. it doesn’t much matter the name or number of deities, religion is and was—i’m a terrible prognosticator, so take this with as many grains of salt as needed—and will be a central part of greek society.

all this thinking has made me realize how little i think gods as human characters in myths actually mattered to the ancient greeks. yes, plato complained about bad behavior from the gods, and yes eventually lots of religious symbolism was used by hellenistic kings and then roman emperors as propaganda, as well as legions of poets for dramatic/poetic effect. but in the end, the ancient greek probably behaved much similar to depictions of regular people in the homeric epics or as hesiod.

this really clashes with our modern view of the gods as characters in a world of myths and lore and magic, which has become so mainstream we mock the idea of the gods being worshipped. i mean the entire pjo and hoo series is essentially telling you the ancient greeks were stupid for worshipping such capricious and greedy beings. this is, of course, not developed out of thin air—pagans were systemically removed from greece after the conversion of constantine, and the “rediscovery” of “classical” thought didn’t lead to a revival of paganism but instead a caricaturing of those gods. christian scholars latched on to depictions of the gods in ovid, or even homeric depictions (taken entirely out of context), in an attempt to remove any sense of wonder or worship-ability from them. the gods were recasted, with copious help from the ancients themselves (though it is conspicuous that much of what remains, transcribed by christian monks, is negative towards the gods), as bit characters in plays: capricious, hedonistic, powerful, greedy, and jealous.

pjo, and the extended riordanverse that’s sprung up from it, isn’t necessarily the “culmination” of thought on the greek gods over the past half-thousand years, but it is a synthesis. the gods are out-of-touch, horny, opulent, and narrow-minded. they jealously guard their power, ironically at the expense of their power as they refuse to deal with the rising threat of kronos or gaia. their behavior in hoo is even more despicable, as they close themselves off, upset they couldn’t win a war on their own.

both kronos and gaia are, in most interpretations of the story i think, the lesser villain. they are the big bad in both series, but there’s never really a fear that they’re going to win. i mean, it’s a kids/ya series. there is, however, a feeling that maybe the gods won’t do enough or won’t do enough on time, and a favorite character will die, or something bad will happen, and it will be blamed on the gods’ absence. the gods aren’t “villains” per se, but they aren’t a source of good. the gods don’t fall neatly into the modern american/protestant ideas of manichaean good and evil, a benevolent God and a sadistic Devil. thus they end up leaning towards the devil. they are greedy forces that sap away the pure good of characters like percy or ruin the good of characters like luke with meaningless quests to get “glory” (which is a whole other topic; why are we so willing to throw under the bus other societies’ universal goods? have we just not heard of other societies beyond Western society?). of course, the gods can be good too, like Hestia and maybe Poseidon, and Apollo in that horror story called ToA that I will forever refuse to read. there, they are benevolent parents, or watchful guardians, helping the hero along to defeat the big bad.

the gods in the riordanverse are saddled, then, either with “semi-evil dick” or “mournful parent” (or Hestia). most of the world’s issues are blamed on them. kronos? zeus’ blindness and the other gods’ aloofness. gaia? zeus’ blindness and the other gods’ complicity. polluted rivers? poseidon isn’t doing enough. ww2? the gods got horny. corrupt industries? nero’s fault (and the other ones that’s about the extent of my ToA knowledge). [i’ll return to pan, dw.] it’s not humans at fault, at the end of the day, but the gods’.

much of this comes from depictions of gods as rulers in the hellenistic and roman periods, specifically apollonios and ovid as well as the most cherry-picked moments from the homeric poems and ovid. most of it, it can seem to any classicist reading pjo, didn’t even come from the source material, but from condensed modern versions like edith hamilton’s, which hammered out the inconsistencies into a semi-coherent story that just didn’t exist in antiquity. because of this, much of the source material is taken out of context, stripped from its original society and inserted into 21st century America without a thought about the culture that came up with the original mythology. as a result, characterizations of gods that align with hellenistic rulers or roman emperors moreso than widespread popular beliefs become our modern ideas about those gods, while any thought of diachronic or geo-social differences goes out the window.

none of this is to say rick needed to be a classicist, or that any of us need to be in order to engage with the material. because we don’t. this material is free for us to use as we wish. i don’t mean to gatekeep at all; one of my guiding principles is that chaos is good, so go buck wild. what i mean to deal with more here is how the gods map onto modern political thought and our own philosophies about how the world works. i’ve seen this trend way too much, and it’s gotten… tiring as of late.

the gods take their characterization mainly from hellenic rulers and roman emperors/generals. but in rick’s work, they often end up being very similar to politicians, especially zeus, and especially politicians from 2006-09. now, before we get started, this is not to suggest that rick’s work was intended to have these political undertones. i just believe that, as a man who i presume stays up to date on things, rick has preconceived notions about power and power systems that permeate his writing. in the 2000s, conniving politicians led the west into a disastrous war in iraq, more or less blind, lying to the world through their teeth about their true intentions. they cracked down on a disastrous war against drugs and policing systems that led to thousands of black and brown americans dead, incarcerated, and poor. they installed massive surveillance systems that upended travel and the way we go online. they mismanaged a financial crisis that turned out to be the worst in seventy years, one that many people saw coming. and to top it all off, they sat on their hands about climate change. the gods, too, led demigods on pointless quests that led to massive young death tolls, or didn’t help them survive even to 12. they listened to every word of demigods for blasphemy and insult, but didn’t lift a finger if they were in trouble. they nearly went to war with each other many times over pointless issues. and they refused to look kronos or gaia in the eyes as a real threat, choosing instead to sit on their hands and hope for the best.

with or without intention, rick’s gods are similar to 2000s politicians. because of course they are. once you characterize gods, make them human, then they’re just really powerful humans. and in our day and age, powerful humans are called politicians (and businessmen). even if this wasn’t intended at all, it was still going to happen.

and just like we blame politicians and businessmen for our problems, we blame the gods for percy and cos’ issues. it’s just so much easier blaming the gods or politicians or businessmen than having to look back at ourselves and ask who decided to move to the suburbs and create car culture, who ate the red meat about the iraq war, who voted for george bush again, who still buys from amazon, who sat home for election after election? a lot of this can seem like putting the burden on the individual for societal issues, of course. but it is not. just in the same way the gods are not at fault, nor is any one of us individually. instead, we as a society are at fault, because we as a society are so much more comfortable not dealing with the issue until it’s staring us dead in the face. we go about life like rote machines, consumed with myself rather than us. we’ve built a culture around social media, focused on the individual rather than the community; zoned community buildings out of our neighborhoods; fled to the suburbs and pulled money out of public schools; we buy and buy because we’ve been conditioned to get just a little bit of relief from material goods. we just constantly want more, and not for us as a community, but for me.

there is no such thing as a wrong interpretation of anything. but i do think “the gods are bad” is a bad interpretation. it turns the burden of responsibility from the society to the individual, to overly powerful beings who happen—just like politicians—to have the same faults as each one of us. which is even more ironic, because the ancient greeks, the pre-platonics, believed so strongly in ideas of hubris and justice, in a deep sense of suffering on earth that was only relieved by the emergence of highly community-oriented political groupings called the polis. and no, not hubris like annabeth’s pride and desire to build big. but hubris in the sense of humans reaching too high, breaking the natural order of things, and as a result being punished. not by greedy gods who wished to hoard their power, but by just protectors of the natural order—the environment, the legal system, peace. this is not to say the ancient greeks were at all progressive, because they were not. but they would not have been shocked by how we reached for too much—a unipolar world, all the material goods we could ever want, endless development, the ability to communicate with anyone instantly, heck, even equal rights—without pushback. the natural order—the conservative order, one might say—would always pushback. we did not foresee the challenges to our hubris—people who don’t want to live in the western world, rampant pollution and waste, environmental degradation and climate change, social fragmentation, and illiberalism. this is an issue not so much of mindless buying and giving into consumerism, or of overlooking systemic oppression in society, but also of failing to see that we were losing. perhaps reaching too high is a touchy term, because for many of these things, it is about giving people the rights and justice they deserve. but we did, in many cases, reach out without understanding what would push us back. we failed to realize that progress isn’t natural. it’s hard.

greek mythology isn’t a story about gods being greedy or capricious. it’s a story about mortals being greedy and not understanding their limits. we can blame gods, we can blame politicians and businessmen all we want for our ills, but until we understand it is a societal issue facing us, we won’t ever truly succeed.

[bitletsanddrabbles]

All writers secretly want to be psychologists.

Jonathan Johnson, writing professor and published author

[missyourflight]

[thewhalehastalestoo]

Omg posting this now because it's relevant lmao My TT feed has been full of IWTV and I was recently accused of only writing angst essentially but 👀👀👀 I mean I won't get into my opinions on how I think the accuser views me as a person but this little post neatly summarises my feelings on ficiton and why I write the kind of stories I do. 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️

---

No because I've been thinking abt A LOT lately and maybe it's just because I'm in my super horny era but like... something abt dark fantasy romance tht is actually dark and not just immature ppl who think being violent makes you cool

Idk man

A lot of my stories are actually quite dark but I didn't think I personally like dark fiction until I realized the media I am OBSESSED with and haunts my dreams are actually quite dismal lmao

A lot of "Now live with what you've done." ass vibes.

I think because I also love Romance and Happy Endings I didn't really pick up on the edge but...I'ma be honest...I LIKE despair! I like when the hero is forced to make "unthinkable" choices. I like toxicity. Lmao

However it's abt OVERCOMING the trials of life. I just enjoy seeing those trials be so seemingly insurmountable, we gotta lose our minds a lil bit before it gets better. But it will get better.

Not enough ppl understand the importance of THAT part. Because life is an insurmountable challenge. How it becomes "good" or "better" is by having faith we will make it through.

Like, I'm a Black, queer, neurodivergent, disabled femme...life is kicking my ass. Life IS horror to me. I won't even get into what life is like as a spiritual person. Like, I face horrors every day few other can conceptualize. I have no moment awake or sleep where I'm not faced by life's terrors.

I need media that acknowledges the inherent existential terror filled burden of living, and the truth that being loved is what gets us through it all. All the many forms this love comes in.

It's why you'll always have a strong divine presence in my stories. From that which can't be seen to the very dirt under your boot, there is a relationship characters have with the world around them. The whole world is an influence. This means the stakes also are always high.

To count on others is to always risk being let down. That's the best case scenario. Worst case you'll never survive what's been done to you.

To live is to be in terror of living.

I suppose something else to add to the conversation around Vampire fiction and Power. To live is to always be in conflict. In death is the only time you'll have full power over anything. You're dead. There are finally no choices to make. It's over. That's where all the freedom is.

[charabistouille]

"If i don't write for more than some days, I start to feel empty"

I've seen this quote a very long time ago from a very talented writer which will more likely never be found again. I always felt writing to be some sort of feral but calming process. And It's beautiful, in the way beauty scares you and obsess you.

[lenainwonderland]

- Jane Austen

[jaynovz]

if yall ever want like serious advice from me about how to solve burnout as a creative it's like...

literally ignore it. stop pushing. go do something else, enjoy your life, fill it with other things, do what brings you joy in the moment if you can.

go to the gym, take a walk to touch grass and look at dogs and smell flowers, cook dinner, watch tv with your friends, talk about your feelings as needed with ppl you trust, take a drive and blast your music, do the chores you need to do, the job hunting slog you need to do, read books that aren't for research, stop cordoning off your brain for The Craft or The Draft or whatever the fuck

forget about the project, stop thinking about it for as long as it takes to be excited again.

fuckin rest, basically

[lucidloving]

D. Alan Holmes, Enlightenment // Signet Amenti // @cryptonature // Alan Wilsom Watts // Evan M. Cohen, "Oceans" // Nikita Gill // @pauladoodles // Julian Gough, "Minecraft End Poem" // Sleeping At Last—Saturn

[y2kaee]

"I was looked at,

but I wasn't seen."

Albert Camus, The misunderstanding.

[whispersingreen]

I'm a pile of unfinished things, unsaid feelings, unthought thoughts, and unlived lives.

[oozins]

life has an inner side

[mundrakan]

Writing with vague hints of whats going on

I do it myself, and I love when people do it: writing something, where there is only hinted on certain parts. Like... trust your reader to understand what you are hinting at, you don't have to spell out everything.

Of course it doesn't always work out. Not all people have the same background knowledge, red flags and so on, but I love that too. Going after the hints like a PI to find out, what the hints were pointing at, and how that plays into the background of the writer.

[jaggedjawjosh]

You asked for my trust, then marred it with betrayal, wondering why the faith was lost.