yeah i just love it when a character is in an escapable torment nexus for a huge portion of their life and it defines every aspect of their existence forever. also whats cptsd
whatās the point of giving your character severe trauma if it doesnāt make them an asshole to work with. not in a cute way. they should be a fucking cunt. they have to make problems on purpose. they have to lash out at their friends without even being provoked, just because theyāre having a bad day and they want to hurt someone to cope with it. on purpose. they have to want to hurt someone on purpose. they can regret it later, but they canāt just say something mean on accident, it has to be calculated and cruel and so, so intentional.
I know it's mainly just ignorance of what the term means but I do wonder if this happens in part bcos 'death of the author' sounds so dramatic like oh this author is dead to me, I don't care about them anymore. Whereas 'separating the art from the artist' is a lot more neutral and well. In CERTAIN CASES it is kind of immediately apparent that you cannot.
Death of the Author is a term coined by Roland Barthes for his essay of the same name in 1967.
In brief: death of the author is the concept that analysis of a work of art should not be focused on the artist's intent; the artist's intended reading of their own work is just A reading and no more valid than anyone else's.
A good straightforward example of this in practice is the response to Andy Weir and Project Hail Mary. Weir is adamant that his work contains no politics but I would say that PHM is pretty clearly a story about climate change.
You can apply death of the author to any work of fiction and it has nothing to do with whether the author is a good or bad person.
Hello howdy hi! Iāve maybe mentioned it before, but I have congenital hyposmia! That means I have an extremely reduced ability to smell things (basically nonexistent except for once in a blue moon) and have been like this for as long as I can remember. For reference, having no sense of smell is called anosmia. Smell disorders gained some publicity during the height of the COVID 19 pandemic, but anosmic characters are still pretty rare. I reached out to @cripplecharacters and they encouraged me to write out some of my own experiences for folks interested in writing anosmic characters, so here we are!
As a caveat, I am but one person with one perspective and can only talk about my own experiences. For more information, you can also visit the r/anosmia community on reddit; though, as of writing, the latest post was published a year ago. If you have any other questions, feel free to shoot them my way, I'd be happy to take a crack at them (though I am in no way a medical expert, haha)!
Growing Up
Ah yes, a sense of smell, a thing we all definitely haveā¦
I fully just accepted that everyone was exaggerating about being able to smell things. Entirely convinced we were all just in on the same lie. Haha, right, sure, you āsmelledā that.Ā
In my defense, I also thought everyone was already exaggerating about things like āhaving a gender identity that aligns with their assigned sex,ā āgetting crushes,ā āmentally picturing things,ā ānot being in pain after standing too long,ā or āliking meatloafā (turns out Iām transgender, arospec, and have aphantasia and high arches. Thereās no reason for the meatloaf one, I just hated it so much that I genuinely thought people were lying about liking it). Adding ābeing able to smell thingsā to the list of things that weāre all pretending to do/be/have wasnāt too big of a leap in logic for me.
āWait, you guys are actually smelling things?ā
Eventually it became apparent that other people genuinely were smelling the things they said they were smelling, and that I was the odd one out. Some of the things that tipped me off were when my family was able to tell our dog had pooped somewhere in the house, that something in the oven was burning, or that someone had silently farted, which all seemed like some sort of witchcraft to me. I donāt remember the exact conversation I had with my parents about it, but I do remember finding out they had already been fighting an uphill battle against my body odor for me for my whole life ^^ā
Safety Concerns
Gas leaks
Typically, oderants are added to natural gas lines, so if there is a leak, then people will be able to smell it and evacuate the area. This is, obviously, useless if you donāt have a sense of smell. There are gas detectors that function like smoke detectors, but they are less widespread, and generally, unless I have been explicitly told otherwise, I assume any given building has none. Being alone in a building can be a bit nerve-racking.
Kitchen Mishaps
Being able to smell what youāre cooking is pretty handy when it comes to not burning dinner. My smoke detectors, for example, will trigger if there is actually a fire, but food can start letting off smoke well before that point, which I donāt always notice. Some recipes will specifically say to ādo [x] until it gives off a(n) [adjective] odor,ā which is basically useless. Additionally, because of the impact smell has on taste, itās entirely possible for me to make a dish that I think tastes fine, and everyone else thinks tastes terrible.
Spoiled Food
There are some foods, such as milk, that develop bad odors when they start to spoil. Unless the flavor, texture, or appearance also clearly changes, there is a very real possibility that I will not notice and eat it anyways. If something is suspect, then I usually have to get someone else to check if itās still good or not. If thereās nobody there to check for me, then I have to toss it, or risk food poisoning. I have accidentally eaten a lot of spoiled food before learning this lesson.
Hygiene Concerns
"Do I smell okay?"
I cannot smell my own body odor. As a kid, this meant skipping showers and not doing anything about my bad breath. Now that I know other people actually can smell me, it means I have to do my best to maintain an undetectable standard with no idea how well Iām doing, or risk social isolation. As a result I often have to ask people I trust if I smell okay. Most people will default to the polite answer, which is nice, but if Iām asking it is because I genuinely cannot tell and need to know if I have to go shower.
Overcompensating
I know there are some garments that can be worn multiple times between washes without starting to stink too bad, but since I canāt tell, I assume everything I wear becomes stinky after being worn once. As a result, my options are either ādo laundry more oftenā or āown more clothesā in order to not run out of clean things to wear, each option coming with its own drawbacks.Ā
Common Questions
Flavor versus Taste
Scent plays a huge role in the flavor of food, so sometimes people will ask if Iām able to taste what Iām eating. The answer is... kinda? Flavor IS heavily reliant on scent, but the taste buds on the tongue can detect sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and savoriness with no smelling needed. So, I can tell if something is sweet, or sour, or savory, etc, but I canāt really differentiate similar-tasting thingsāplain chocolate ice cream is more or less the same as plain vanilla ice cream. As a result, texture is a big part in what makes a food "distinct." (Fun fact, Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerryās ice cream is anosmic, which is why their ice creams are so full of mix-ins!)
When do I tell people I can't smell?
Well, itās not something I usually bring up in casual conversation with strangers. For new friends, I might bring it up in conversation if it's relevant to an anecdote I'm sharing or, more often, when they ask me to smell something and I have to explain that's not a thing I can do. However, if I'm going to be in close proximity with someone for a while, I usually have to bring it up sooner than I'd like. When I lived in campus housing, Iād usually let my new dormmate(s) know early on, because I needed them to tell me ASAP if there was a smell, either because I needed to clean something or because there was a leak in our building. Thatās a lot of trust to put in a near-stranger.
"No, it's not COVID-19 related"
When I do mention that I donāt have a sense of smell to someone that didnāt already know, I usually have to clarify right away that itās not because of COVID-19, because thatās become most peopleās first reaction. I donāt really blame them, and itās nice that more people are aware that smell disabilities are A Thing, but itās not fun that most people first associate anosmia with the pandemic.
"What do you mean [thing] has a smell??"
Logically, I understand most, if not all, things have a smell. However, I am still regularly caught off guard when someone says āit smells like [thing].ā Like, what do you mean, a ācucumberā smell?? A cucumber is like 99% water. What next, water has a smell???? And you expect me to believe this isnāt all some big scam?? ā¦I mean, I do still ask my family to describe scents for me. Mostly because it's funny to watch them try to come up with comparisons that don't rely on other scents or flavors.
(Hyposmia-specific) Once in a Blue Moon...
VERY occasionally, for seemingly no rhyme or reason, I am able to actually smell something. I'm sure I'd be able to find a common thread if I really tried, but it happens rarely enough that I haven't bothered to.
Anyways. When I can smell something, it is basically guaranteed to be an unpleasant experience. I have had to leave rooms before because a sudden scent (which didn't bother anyone else) overwhelmed me to the point that it felt painful. I've yet to experience a "good" scent.
Thanks for reading! Again, feel free to send me any questions you may have, and I'll take a shot at it.
Writers have two modes and they are "i haven't written in three weeks and i am rotting from the inside and everything feels wrong and i don't know who i am anymore" and "i wrote for four hours straight and forgot to eat and it's dark outside and when did that happen and i feel like a god" and there is nothing in between. no chill. no medium setting. just famine or feast and a very confused nervous system.
// When creating a story, I know the vast majority will not entertain the idea and find enjoyment out of what I make. Thatās fine. Itās not for you. There are plenty of other works that will cater to your interests and expectations from a story.
However.
Itās a whole other thing if you demand the expectations from creators who have zero obligations to meet your interests. Especially when there is the obvious āmass produced productā vs āsmall creator exploration.ā If you find something lacking, you need to create what you demand. No one serves you.
prguitarman
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