For the Gothic Heroine

Lovely ladies and the horrid things they like

[forthegothicheroine]

My ask box is once again open.

I do not respond to fundraising requests from people I do not know, and prefer to give to reputable charities. If you ignore this post, I will assume your message or tagged post is spam.

[weepylucifer]

You know how we call things "pseudoscience"... the media analysis that's being done on twitter and tumblr should be pseudohumanities

[blujayonthewing]

[hyumjim]

We can try and invent discourse as a joke all we want but nothing will compare to the real home grown takes on here such as hating landfillslop consumerism is actually Catholic

[vampiregirlestrogen]

i did not moan while i was drinking your blood and even if i did it meant nothing. i hate you.

[bongjoonhoe]

M (1931) dir. Fritz Lang

[maddie-grove]

I do appreciate that, in a musical ostensibly meant to highlight the individuality of the six wives of Henry VIII, the portrayal of Anne Boleyn is notably disrespectful among the portrayal of the other wives and other fictional versions of Anne Boleyn (both crowded fields).

[talesfromthecrypts]

This year's "people told me Spirit Halloween had cool shit and it turns out its terrible" thing is that all the lost boys merch with the poster on it appears to completely erase Dwayne and Paul for no reason

[louisegluckpdf]

i think every publisher should have to institute a ban on books that fail what i’m calling the “little life” and “what else?” tests

[louisegluckpdf]

for reference.

[tothewhirlwind]

I don't like this as general advice because it's basically uninterpretable outside of its context. What on earth is actually wrong with writing about your dead sister or your life? We don't know. Morrison's and Glück's students had more than we get here. Glück's student knows her own piece, has an easier time figuring out what weaknesses Glück saw in it, and probably got to talk more about it; Morrison's students had a lot more background statements to read her comments against. So the specific audiences of these remarks could make something useful out of it. But anyone reading this in Post Form is just going to project whatever they think Glück or Morrison meant (in the best case scenario they've read the authors' works but many won't have). So people aren't even really going to take away any good writing guidance except what they already thought, mutated by these memeified remarks.

[tsarina-anadyomene]

Well I think there is a recognizable tendency of young writers, the kind you would find in a creative writing class to write sad stories about their lives and to present them in as "raw" a fashion as possible. And they're all really, really boring and they really suck to grade. And I think "no one cares" is just a useful tool for producing better writing from your students and the people trying to submit to your shitty literary journal. It's fine. The memefied form is fine.

[adam-is-adam]

Has this post successfully made a point? Dare we read the notes and find out? Here are the types of responses I've spotted:

You want to ban books. Like the nazis did.

Books about small, trivial aspects of your life can be beautiful! Why are you saying they can never be?

I have no idea what this writing advice means. You never outlined an actual test. You never clarified what to do or even, really, what not to do.

You people are all idiots. The advice is obviously that you should write things you haven't experienced.

You people are all idiots. The advice is obviously that you should only write what you have personally experienced.

You people are all idiots. The advice is obviously that you should add more detail in your writing.

You people are all idiots. The advice is obviously that you should add less detail in your writing.

You people are all idiots. The advice is obviously that there needs to be a plot.

You people are all idiots. The advice is obviously criticizing the specific person that really annoyed me in my writing class.

Well done everyone!

[littlefleamart]

(source)

[pmamtraveller]

Mammal in a Sunday Dress, by Georgina M. Cox, 2026

[prokopetz]

"Why would you publish an original OSR game that's just a very lightly modified version of OD&D/Mentzer Basic/etc. when those already exist?" you need to understand that nothing is more old-school than writing and publishing a whole-ass game just to "fix" one paragraph of some random version of Dungeons & Dragons.

[prokopetz]

(For clarity, I'm speaking 100% literally. The practice is genuinely old-school, in the sense that folks regularly did it when Basic was contemporary. The entire reason we have the term "fantasy heartbreaker" is that in the pre-Internet era, folks used to self-publish their BD&D fixups in hardcopy and bankrupt themselves in the process!)

[forthegothicheroine]

I do sometime comfort myself when things are hard with my stroke recovery by imagining aliens going "Humans take care of each other when they get sick! They help each other practice walking and talking again! That's so cute!" Though I assume the reason they find it cute is that they do it too.

[greatwhitecarcharodon]

he doesn’t know it but russell crowe’s dream job is playing the king at a renaissance festival. horseback riding. grand monologues. silly little outfits. a fuckass accent. leading the tavern in a singalong. unlimited beer on tap. nobody gets to speak to him unless they make it through his entourage. putting people in the stocks. getting put in the stocks himself.

[prokopetz]

My unpopular sci-fi/fantasy opinion is that "humans are the best community-builders" is just the old "humans have the greatest Will to Power" trope wearing a progressive hat.

[jukashi]

To be fair, there's not a lot of traits humans have, that other sophonts wouldn't have, that can't be squeezed to 'superior Will to Power' by an audience looking for it. Good colour vision is eye for detail is inquisitiveness is Will to Power. Being good at throwing things is Man The Hunter is ambition and drive is Will to Power. And I don't need to tell you what happened with 'relatively oversized penis'!

[prokopetz]

Well, yes – you're talking to the guy whose Tumblr post popularised "anomalously high cardiovascular endurance due to an evolutionary history of persistence predation" as humans' Special Hat and ultimately gave rise to the Humans Are Space Orcs meme; you don't need to explain to me how even relatively innocuous traits can be twisted around into "superior Will to Power"! – but my point is that the humans-are-the-best-community-builders thing isn't even a twist. It's a more or less direct attempt to rehabilitate old-school science fiction's "humans are naturally suited to Lead The Lesser Races because of our superior Will to Power" thing into "oh, we don't have an inherent right to dominion, we just coincidentally happen to be meritocratically suited to being in charge owing to our natural superiority at the virtues of leadership".

[starcrossedconverse]

some of you think the bad terrible evil parts of the source material don't affect you because you only participate in fics and shared headcanons. and you're in for a nasty shock when you realize that mass headcanons with no basis in canon are often more stereotypical in a more racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, etc way than the source material ever could be.

[starcrossedconverse]

good tags by @burning-moths

[unusual-suspects]

x

[eyepool]

“Let’s go into the occult book section and get a rundown on witchcraft!”

[forthegothicheroine]

The thing about anti-libby posts, because ebooks have to be paid for yearly while physical books only have to be paid for once, is that yes, physical books are cheaper for the library to acquire- but the library has a budget they chose to allocate, whether it's on software, subscriptions to digital encyclopedias, or ebook rentals. If they chose to rent ebooks, it was because they want you to read them, and using any of their services looks good for them. Check out physical books by all means, but don't feel guilty about checking out ebooks.

[forthegothicheroine]

I feel a little bad about this post now because it was only one anti-libby post I saw, and I made my own post rather than respond because I didn't want to dogpile them. Now that my post has gotten popular, I worry I've rallied forces against an Army of Guys to be Mad At who may not exist in great numbers..