Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.
It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.
Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.
Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.
Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)
Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!
You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!
If you want it in a simple phrase:
You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.
That ‘comment on your a03 work’ email hits like a line of cocaine every time. unmatched dopamine increase. shoutout to everyone who leaves a comment on fics. you deserve the world
cant do the mutual first memory rb game because i genuinely cant remember anything. i dont know you were all my mutuals at birth. we were joined by the stars and by blogging
I kept meaning to reblog this at the right time and hey, it’s the last day of Pride so Friday or not this is the right time.
This is so fun, I love the brightness and joyfulness of the art, and Elliot so clearly being a little menace and their very different angry expressions. And the scar on Luke’s head from the trigon ball!
I absolutely love the progression here, not just Elliot from lil snot to much bigger snot in jock denial, but the progression of the weird table’s dynamic. Luke and Serene, who were platonic love at first sight, Elliot’s undeniable bisexuality and the celebratory way it’s shown.
And since it is the last day of Pride, I do have some other things to say. Things are rough right now. I hope in an extinction burst way, where people are being awful because they know the tide is turning against them. I hope things will get better and better. In some ways they are! LGBT representation has come a long way since I was first published in 2009. There was behind the scenes pushback then I don’t get now. I watched Queer as Folk back in the day, but all my friends weren’t watching it the way they all watched Heated Rivalry.
At the same time, the way is rocky and full of stumbling back. Tasha Suri (genius author of the lady knight/witch Arthuriana tale ISLE IN THE SILVER SEA) showed me this link about how Heated Rivalry spawned… straight hockey shows? (Well said by the lead and writer of Fire Island, a very excellent gay modern take on Pride & Prejudice.)
The actor says the industry is doubling down on hockey, not queer representation.
And my head spun round and round. And yet… before Heated Rivalry, last year publishers in various markets were saying no thanks to LGBT fiction, and now they’re saying yes again. Baby steps through the rocks.
There is a reason I wrote IN OTHER LANDS on my blog, and that it was published by a small press. For the record, if any book with a straight romance at its centre had made the sales numbers IN OTHER LANDS did, it would have been SNAPPED up by a big publisher. And several editors over the years have tried. (Whenever I talk critically about publishing, I mean the institution, most people in publishing are beautiful story-loving souls.) All of this is incredibly frustrating for those of us who want to celebrate love and share stories.
Still I do think there’s a rising tide of love and change. There are more writers sharing more diverse stories than ever before.
For obvious reasons, LONG LIVE EVIL is the story that means the most to me, and that I think of as my best. (I’d hope my writing has improved in 10 years, or what is it all about). And Time of Iron is making a lot of points about queerness as a way of breaking free from the narrative that I couldn’t quite articulate, back then.
But I know for many of my readers IN OTHER LANDS will be the book that means most to them, the big magical joyful bi coming of age tale that came to them at an important time. I have read and cried over emails and letters telling me that they read it and came out, to their families or themselves, that Elliot was their first bi MC. I’ve heard from other writers that it inspired them, as books like Swordspoint inspired me. And this book survived, and in a large part my career survived, when books I published with big publishers went out of print, because of readers loving this book which for so long I didn’t even know was a book. I wrote it long enough ago now that I experience the book through my readers most: I love it again through their eyes. You bring the tale and the joy back to life for me.
I wrote some of this book sitting in the London beer garden of a gay pub with my friends, drinks in jamjars, drenched in sunlight, lying to them that I had a deadline. Playing with my awful and awfully good Elliot, Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, and golden Luke. Telling the story mattered, and so does love and celebration.
I see you and I love you, readers. And I’ll always love them. We had so much fun.
not telling anybody to trust me but go to settings -> wifi-> dns then type dns.adguard.com it gets rid of all app ads and browser ads too i use it to not have to watch ads on ibispaint idk if it works on youtube
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