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[purr-in-ink]

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

I think one reason writers struggle with writing is that many of us weren't taught how to write fiction. We learned how to write essays but few of us had teachers who sat us down and said "here is a step by step process for going from an idea to a plan to a draft to a final product. Here is a path and a structure you can follow, here are things to do when you get stuck."

Instead most of us just fell in love with finished stories, and were left to ourselves to discover what process might have created them.

[solesurvivorpaigeargot]

Addition: in the USA there ARE some resources provided to kids on storywriting, but they're kinda... yikes? Like they're leftovers from an old 'how to write US propaganda' thing, which is why 'show, don't tell' gets stressed in writing classes-- stories, we are told, should be able to say a thing without saying it. That your reader should just GET what you mean if you're good at the craft.

This is bullshit, and the reason budding authors are told this is so any book that gains any reach can be interpreted as the reader (or, better yet, as the monied classes) WANTS to interpret it. If the book never comes out and says what it means, then it can retroactively mean anything-- particularly after the author is dead.

Show, don't tell is great for visual media. It's kinda crap for books. Say what you mean. Have your protagonist realize the thesis of your work aloud. Allow certainty when it belongs, and don't pussyfoot when someone should be screaming the point into the reader's face.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

holy shit

[blogdifferentbouquettigerstuff]

I disagree that show don’t tell is only for propaganda--my entire English degree would have been very lame if authors had just said the things they meant and I hadn’t been able to pull things out of them. As a queer person being able to interpret characters as like me and my friends was critical and if every author had said “this character is looking at his sister’s panties because right now Freud is really popping and I’m obsessed with incest. He wants to fuck his sister. I cannot stress enough this is not a trans issue, he wants to fuck his sister” then I would have very much not been able to write one of my favorite essays. BUT it shouldn’t be taught to first graders. A child can write “the girl is wearing blue because she is sad” and that is an amazing point of symbolism. It shows me that  she’s brilliant and understands a high level concept. But if she just says blue I’d assume it’s a random detail. By the time you’re 16 ish you can include some more vague work. And if you’re writing for  broad audience then even more so show don’t tell. You can get across what you mean to, but maybe in 100 years someone will see themselves in your story when you hadn’t even thought to consider including them. Vagueness in stories is important, not because “if it’s hard to read that makes it art” like a lot of teachers seem to think, but because, especially in a cannon dominated by old dead cis straight white men, vague writing lets people take the texts for themselves and create representation even where it wasn’t intended--because very few people get enough of it where it is. 

[blogdifferentbouquettigerstuff]

Katsuki vs Endeavor

So I was explaining to a friend why I hate Endeavor and why I’m forgiving Katsuki even though they’re both trying to make things right and I realized, especially with the last chapter why. 

Katuski’s redemption ark is hitting hard because he has never said he was sorry. Normally that’s a trash response, but he knows that Deku would would just forgive him instantly anyway, even though he couldn’t forgive himself. It was his ACTIONS that hurt Deku, as well as his words, and so he is taking action, at his own expense, both as a hero and now physically, to help Deku become the number one hero. He is sacrificing his own goal of always winning to help Deku reach the dream Katsuki tried to take away from him. He’s placing restorative justice on himself, and he’s willing to lose what’s important to him because atonement is even more important. 

Meanwhile Endeavor is all talk, no action. It was directly his horrible abuse that broke his family. Buying a house and just hero-ing harder doesn’t change that. He’s not restoring anything, he’s being an edgelord. Buying a house doesn’t cost him anything but money he has basically an unlimited amount of anyway. Saying he’s sorry and I guess not beating Shouto any more doesn’t restore what was lost. The only real way I could see for him to truly atone at this point in the story is to admit what he did, resign from hero work, and spend the rest of his life trying to support his family, not for his own ego, but for their well being. Even then I’m not sure what that would look like. He took away Rei’s freedom, Shouto’s childhood, and essentially Touya’s life. Now that we know Natsuo was the second youngest, it’s even more traumatic. He was a toddler and his older brother was coming back burned, sobbing, and asking why he had to exist. Fuyumi has been manipulated into trying to play mommy, either not knowing all of what happened to their mom, or worse, afraid that if she slipped up the same would happen to her. And Shouto just heard his oldest brother, who he thought was dead, say that he’d been planning to murder Shouto but would settle for their dad instead. Every member of that family is deeply traumatized. They don’t need a house, Endeavor--they need a father. And a shitload of therapy. 

For right now as the story is, with everything out I honestly think Endeavor’s going to die. I think that he’ll die protecting Shouto, and it’ll be played like he sacrificed something and has been redeemed, when in reality it was just one last trauma Shouto went through, and he gave up a life that had to feel over anyway now that his hero career is over. I do think that the story will likely contain Endeavor stans who either blame Shouto for his death or basically call it fake news, to show how corrupt the society is. I mean hell half of y’all feel bad for Toga because she’s murder-sexual and not being allowed to stab people without getting arrested hurts her fee-fees. So there would totally be sexist pigs who were like “Nah man Rei deserved it”. It’ll be another way to forgive a monster while hypocritically pretending that, in the moment of his death, he no longer was one. 

[lesbianredpanda]

It was ok I guess for a meme, but @ white gays: stop trying to literally "reclaim" proud boys. As someone who has, on several occasions, been in direct confrontation with or completely surrounded by white supremacist militias, that's not a thing you can or want to rehabilitate.

[lesbianredpanda]

This post brought to you by:

[quitetheketch-moved]

Hey fun fact! Gay white supremacists exist! Like, when you do this shit you aren't hurting the scum bags and only make yourself less trustworthy because being gay doesn't not automatically make you safe for people of color, for religious minorities - you are not except from disavowing and actively combating white supremacy because you are gay and you need to be aware of how you conduct yourself if you actually want to be an ally.

[they-callme-ami]

Finally someone said it

[blogdifferentbouquettigerstuff]

TBH this shit is why the right is winning and will win. They’ll take the language, make leftist speech and modes of speaking obsolete because it works. 

Words like triggered, which refers to a specific psychological thing is now just “some 15 year on twitter is angry”,  and “safe space” means “I won’t listen to anyone who disagrees with me”

They will take what they can get. And leftists are too busy purity testing to try and take anything back.  Frogs? Nazis now. Milk? For nazis now. A hand symbol? NAZI

Gay people who are obviously left leaning try to keep nazis from taking the concept of pride for them, but because Nazis tried to take it I guess we’re going to have “aren’t we neat” parades in ten years. Stop letting Nazis take what they want. 

Are there like 1% of nazis using this to infiltrate leftists circles because yes gays can be nazis too? Yeah. But more than that it’s a group of people who are trying to keep from letting the nazis take something from them. And y’all aren’t going to go off on the nazis who are trying to take pride away, you’re going to harass some gay 19 year old who bought a quirky hat to show his meager resistance on twitter until he deletes his account. 

[someemochick]

[itsabirbthing]

What do you mean I need “fresh water”?!

[catchymemes]

[c-u-r-s-e-d-i-m-a-g-e-s]

[glow-cloud--doodles]

[a-ball-of-anxieties]

This may seem controversial, but I don’t think we should have nazis in the police

[loloftheday]

If anti-maskers existed during WWII

[woulddieforperrytheplatypus]

[headspace-hotel]

You can identify a fake redneck by their passionate support of “blue lives matter.” Real rednecks have been in at least one physical fight and/or high-speed chase with police officers and would do it again

[headspace-hotel]

You can identify a fake redneck by their passionate support of “blue lives matter.” Real rednecks have been in at least one physical fight and/or high-speed chase with police officers and would do it again

[glozirina]

[dndaddyissues]

the druid: cmon guys, it’s an innocent sleeping bear. let’s just sneak past and not disturb it

the barbarian: i grapple it!

the lvl 16 werebear monk that had been enjoying a nice quiet nap:

[loudcloudx]

the first MHA Smash really gave us 6 pages of canon gender swaps and nobody said anything

[the-ziggy-starbucks-deactivated]

me to my cat