Just an Experiment :)

Mickie 22 She/Her. Experimenting with some OC and Fanfiction writing. Will mostly be posting story snippets/chapters and helpful writing references

[jewfrogs]

this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about

[naamahdarling]

I have a friend who is an editor, and gets submissions of mostly poetry and short stories.

I have had a glimpse into her slush pile, and let me tell you, the contents were unbelievable and immediately disabused me of the notion that reading through submissions is in any way glamorous. People have the nerve to submit unhinged paranoid ramblings, fetish porn, and a seemingly endless supply of poems about masturbation.

I no longer feel like my fiction is somehow an imposition on the people who read it. It may be forgettable, but at least it isn't typeset to look like sperm.

Do not be afraid to submit your work. Your competition is not only worse than you think, it's worse than you ever imagined.

[silverhand]

Do these three things to get to the top of the slush pile:

The place has a style sheet. Use it. They say they want your MS in 16.5 point Papyrus italic with 0.8 inch margins all around, guess what you're doing before you send it off? Save As, reformat, send it. In the absence of a specific guide: Courier 12 pt (Times New Roman if you must), double spaced, align left, tab 0.5 at each new paragraph.

Check the word count. Don't submit novellas to 2500 word short story venues. BTW, you format the MS in that old style above because the question isn't literal words. Courier 12pt double spaced gives you 250 words per page for typesetting purposes. 2500 words is 10 ms pages, 5000 is 20 pages, etc.

Don't send your romance to Analog or your war story to Harlequin. If it's a cross-genre story, be sure there's enough of what the publication is focused on to interest them, but breaking through is hard if that's not something they usually do.

That's basically what every single editors' panel at every con I've ever been to has boiled down to. And invariably, someone tries to get up and argue with them, not realizing it's not a discussion.

Bonus tip: Don't be in any way cute in your cover letter. Just the facts/Luke Skywalker's message to Jabba the Hut in ROTJ.

Enclosed/attached is my story <Title> for your publication <Magazine>. It is x (rounded to the nearest 500) words. I can be reached at <email> (that you check regularly and isn't likely to dump things into spam) and <phone>.

(If submitting a hard copy: The manuscript is disposable. A SASE is enclosed for your response./A SASE is included for return of the manuscript and your response.)

Thank you for your consideration.

If submitting a novella length piece or greater, a brief and complete summary is appropriate.

In the midst of an interstellar revolt against an evil galactic Empire, vital weapon plans fall into the hands of a farm boy on the edges of the galaxy. With the help of an aging warrior from the Old Republic, and a smuggler with a dark past and his imposing alien copilot, the four set out to deliver them to the rebel forces but are instead flung into a rescue mission to save the beautiful princess who stole the plans as worlds are destroyed by the might of the Empire's weapon, the Death Star.

Captured by the Death Star on route to deliver the plans, they manage to escape the base with the princess, the old warrior sacrificing himself to make this possible. As the Death Star approaches the rebel base, they use the captured plans to stage a desperate final stand. In a fierce space battle of single-pilot ships over the surface of the moon-sized weapon, the farm boy manages to make the critical shot with an unexpected assist from the smuggler, destroying it.

Never under any circumstance put a cliffhanger into a query letter summary. There is no faster way to get the entire MS binned than doing that.

Happy writing.

PS "Top of the slush pile" means into the top 25% of manuscripts received. Three quarters of the submissions don't take the trouble to do even those three basic steps.

Now, that still means 25/100 submissions or 250/1000 submissions, but it still improves your odds and forms the basis for starting a relationship with the publisher for the next piece you send them.

PPS This is obviously about prose. Poetry certainly has its own submission rules, and I know none of them. If you're writing poetry, find out what they are.

[ariaste]

This goes for query letters to agents as well.

Also, that emphasis on the submission guidelines (or style sheet) and formatting things EXACTLY the way they requested it? Yeah, that's so that they know at a glance whether you have a brain in your head and can fucking read. Didn't follow the guidelines? They can discard your submission in an instant rather than wasting the two minutes it takes to read your cover letter.

FOLLOW THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES!!!!! THIS IS STEP ONE OF "PROVING YOU'RE A PROFESSIONAL AKA SOMEONE WHO SHOULD BE PAID MONEY FOR THEIR WORK". FOLLOW! THE! SUBMISSION! GUIDELINES!

Wait hang on there's still a couple of you who are not internalizing Follow The Submission Guidelines. I will tell you a story.

Couple years ago, I taught a college course on Writing & Publishing Scifi/Fantasy. Towards the end of the 8-week workshop, I told the class that they were going to learn what it is like to be a literary agent. I asked them to tell me a few things about what their dream novel would be if they were an agent (genre, themes, etc) and then I went and wrote fake a fake query letter for each of them. Then I scraped together a bunch of other query letters from Queryshark, and then I wrote some unhinged ones. Printed them all out, put them in a box, walked into class on the day, said "The first person to find their Dream Client in the slush pile wins Twenty Real Human Dollars." The air in the room suddenly became *FERAL*. RABID. College students will literally kill a man for $20. I dumped the box on the floor, screamed "GO!" and watched them throw themselves into it.

You know what happened? Almost instantaneously they developed a sense of "UGH FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES." They were ruthlessly throwing things aside simply because it did not include a "Dear [your name]," salutation. They were crying, "NO!" when they got a query letter for a short story instead of a novel. When confronted with a pile of garbage with a couple gems in it, they figured out in nanoseconds that the #1 red flag for garbage is "did not follow the submission guidelines."

FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES!!!!!!

[asymbina]

Back in the days when it was all done by snail mail, I had a gift subscription to the magazine Writer's Digest, and there's one thing that has stuck in my memory from an article (which was published probably 35 years ago) about sending unsolicited manuscripts for novels to a publisher: make your envelope or box distinctive anything other than plain, stark, unadorned white. Every publisher, according to the article, had stacks and stacks of manuscripts in undifferentiated white packages and they just sort of all blurred together when you looked at the physical slush pile, so if one was in a colorful box or they'd drawn or written something on the side it'd immediately jump out and get their attention.

Bear in mind that they were also very, very clear to always follow the submission guidelines.

I don't work in publishing and you could not pay me enough to work a slush pile, but I know I'd quickly start looking for the manuscripts that stand out like a hot pink giant document mailer, but that still followed the submission guidelines, because that's the sign that you're someone the venue can work with. When I was doing research for publication in refereed journals, I worked for an organization that had an entire editing and proofreading department dedicated to ensuring that all the researchers' journal submissions would follow the submission guidelines, because otherwise it wouldn't even make it past the first step of submission.

Again, I'm not an editor and you couldn't pay me enough to be one — I'm extremely happy to torture data until the numbers come out for a living — but I do understand how this part works, and I hope that you understand the subtle FOLLOW message THE I'm SUBMISSION sending GUIDELINES here.

FOLLOW THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

[writersisland]

Locations to make your story’s (fantasy) setting feel ancient

with a healthy dose of the realisation „we are not the first civilisation to walk these lands“

✦ ruins so ancient that no one knows who they‘re from or what they were used for… but people have theories

✦ the giant skeleton of some mythical creature (like a dragon) which acts as namesake for the area, thanks to the myth about the slaying of said creature—or maybe it is considered the land‘s protector

✦ a scrapyard filled with unconventional tools and weapons, partially made from unknown materials

✦ caves with hundrets of sword marks in the walls, as though a grande battle had once been fought

✦ a wasteland where nothing grows, and no one is sure why

✦ smooth stone paths because so many people have walked it that the stone is worn down

✦ burial sites with rites unknown to every existing culture

✦ exploring a cave, believing to be the first ones to walk this path… only to find a common tool someone must‘ve dropped here once

✦ words in a language no one speaks anymore carved into stone

✦ structural remnants of buildings and walls in the middle of nowhere, with no telling what happened here

✦ a cave entrance covered with rocks, and once opened revealing skeletons in armor with weapons, as though a group of soldiers hid but was trapped by a rockslide

[johannestevans]

Also, consider. A magical version of the bends. Whenever someone from a non- or low-magical land has to go into a very magic rich forest or land or dimension, having to take breaks to let their bodies adjust to the new magic exposure or else their blood will boil in their veins or they'll Transform

[wormtoxin]

actually the bends only kicks in when you try to LEAVE the high pressure area. or in this case, magic rich area?

Getting deeper and deeper into feywilds and knowing that however deep you get, it’s gonna take twice as long to escape without magic tearing its way out of you

[esoteric-goblin]

on worldbuilding, and what people think is going on

there is one facet of fantasy worldbuilding that is, to me, the most interesting and essential but i don't see it come up in worldbuilding guides or writing prompts or anything, and that is the question of:

what do the inhabitants of your world believe about how the world works, and how are they wrong? a lot of fantasy media will set up their cosmology, gods, magic systems, planar systems, concepts of the afterlife, &c., and proceed as though the inhabitants of the world know and understand them.

from someone whose entire academic career is focused on studying human culture in various regions and time periods, with a focus on belief systems (religion, occultism, mythology, folklore): that sort of worldbuilding is unrealistic and missing out on so much fun.

people are always seeking new understanding about how the world works, and they are mostly wrong. how many models of the solar system were proposed before we reached our current one? look at the long, turbulent history of medicine and our various bizarre models for understanding the human body and how to fix it. so many religions and occult/magical traditions arise from people disagreeing with or adapting various models of the world based on new ideas, methods, technologies. many of them are wrong, but all of them are interesting and reflect a lot about the culture, beliefs, values, and fears of the people creating/practising them.

there is so much more to the story of what people believe about the world than just what is true.

to be clear: i think it's fine and important for the author to have a coherent explanation for where magic comes from or who the gods are, so they can maintain consistency in their story. but they should also be asking what people in the world (especially different people, in different regions/nations and different times) think is happening when they do magic, or say a prayer, or practise medicine, or grieve their dead. it is a rich vein for conflict between individuals and nations alike when two models of the world disagree. it is fascinating how different magic systems might develop according to different underlying beliefs.

personally, i think it is the most fun to spawn many diverse models of the world, but give none of them the 'right' answer.

(bonus points if you also have a thriving academic system in the world with its own theory, research, and discourse between factions! as an academic, it is very fun to imagine fictional academic debate over the topics i'm worldbuilding. sometimes i will be working out details for some underlying mechanic of the world and start imagining the papers being written by scholars researching it)

[that-house]

Making a shitty one-page RPG called Oh Shit It’s the Killer. The premise is simple: you’re a high schooler spending the weekend in the woods with your besties. The Killer is there also. He is trying to the Kill you

[that-house]

I say shitty not to demean the quality of my work but because it’s less an exercise in good game design and more an attempt to induce paranoid internal conflict that turns into murder (in game of course). It has like three mechanics and one of them actively encourages you to murder the other PCs

[that-house]

Great news!

It’s done

I put like three braincells into this, so if there’s anything about it that outright sucks, uh. Sorry not sorry, L + ratio + let’s use the 1-page restriction as an excuse for any unfun mechanics

[that-house]

“What if there was a game about being a genre-savvy slasher protagonist murdering their way to the role of Final Girl?”

“Sounds cool when exactly does the PvP start”

“character creation”

[alrightnightlight]

Writing Complex Dissociation: Which Disorder Does (/Should) My Character Have?

I want to say first and foremost that not all dissociative disorders inherently make someone a system. Not even dissociative tendencies. You can have complex PTSD, for example, and dissociate a lot, and not be a system. In the same way you can have a dissociative disorder and not be a system -- the only subtype of OSDD that implies systemhood is OSDD-1; types 2, 3, and 4 don't.

Dissociation on its own is a symptom of a lot of things, and we all experience mild forms of it daily throughout our lives (ex: sleep/wake transition stage, getting lost in thought). It is the structural elements, interference in day-to-day life, and the complexity of said dissociation that inform whether 1) someone's dissociation is disabling, and 2) whether that disability is related to systemhood. This post is going to be centering writing system characters in particular.

DID, P-DID, and OSDD-1 are all complex disorders that are all too often simplified and demonized in stories meant to "include" us. Taking the first step into doing proper research is already miles above what most people do, and I and so many others appreciate that!

And I'm glad you're starting here, with what you're going to be writing in particular.

That said: even if you don't want to outright say in direct words what your dissociative character has, and would rather show it subtextually, it'd be good to have an idea so you have a framework to build off of, and so you have a consistent, well-established facet of your OC's identity.

DID, OSDD, P-DID - What's the Difference?

Good question! And it's important to note before anything else that the diagnostic criteria for something like DID versus, say, OSDD-1, will vary in some ways depending on where you live! In one country, what is considered OSDD might be read as DID if the exact same person is seen somewhere else!

Systems and dissociative disorders ARE observed globally. This is not a "Western phenomenon" or "something US Americans made up" -- DID has been observed as far south or east as South Africa, Australia, Japan. Population ratios between those with DID and without it are also very consistent in countries that have performed that research!

(It is very much a worldwide thing, and very much an intersectional thing. We are not all Cis White Man From Boston. Just doesn't work that way!)

And on top of that, covert dissociative disorders can be incredibly hard to diagnose due to how well they can slip under the radar or mask as other things. Standalone PTSD, personality disorders, that sort of thing -- the lines can be very blurry, and what you're seen as to a professional can vary from PTSD to DID to OSDD depending on how you present that day. So cases aren't often clear-cut, especially not from an outside point of view!

By no means am I making a comprehensive post here, but it's good to have a baseline idea for the differences so that you can do more applicable research moving forward. This is generally what those differences compose of:

[Long post (VERY long post) under the cut!]

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

– “Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession (...)” and “marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning.”

"Two or more": keep that in mind! There is a minimum number of two alters a system can have (host included, the host is also an alter), but no maximum. This is due to how individual each DID experience can be! Someone can have exactly two alters in their system, while others can have 100+. (These experiences are known as polyfragmented DID. This type of DID is developed under very specific circumstances, highly complex, and highly under-researched, to the point where I'm only not going over it longer because I feel as if it warrants its own post.)

The average reported system count is around 8-13. If you need a baseline, go off of that!

Marked discontinuity in "sense of self and agency" can be a lot of different things; affect and motor functioning refers to tone, cadence, the way you speak and move and hold yourself, cognition/perception/memory refers to amnesiac barriers, outlook, morals, likes and dislikes -- everything down to the way you think can and will differ.

People with DID often feel indecisive, or inconsistent, and don't understand quite why until it's revealed (if ever). You can have one opinion one day and the complete opposite the next because of conflicting interests in alters. You may have to explain why your feelings and views contradict so frequently without consciously remembering that conflict happening.

It's also noted that changes in behavior may be noticed by others, but not always. And if they do, it rarely is thought to be DID -- my sibling, for example, while I was still in high school, would notice blatant switches and assume I was just having a "weird day" or I was "stressed". They noticed the consistency in behavioral changes, but thought nothing of it because I'd always been like that. EXTREMELY subtle symptom presentation is the norm.

– “Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting.”

Day-to-day life, important events, personal details, years and years of childhood and later, will just be gone. It's not there. Inaccessible. You might not even notice it's missing, either.

Due to the nature of dissociative disorders being dissociative, these gaps are very good at camouflaging themselves. You aren't paying attention to these things like your peers are, so you don't pick up on warning signs right away. And it takes even longer to notice patterns.

This can also look like having the same realization about the same thing multiple times. And it feeling new, and world changing, Every Time. It can feel like you're going in circles indefinitely with everything you do.

– “The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”

It's A Disability If It Disables You Basically. Again, some level of dissociation is normal to experience, it is the severity that is the problem. Like how daydreaming itself is fine, but could become maladaptive and disrupting in daily life.

– “The disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice. Note: In children, the symptoms are not better explained by imaginary playmates or other fantasy play.”

This is why tulpamancy is not and should not be lumped in with dissociative disorders. It is a closed practice, and something only a Tibetan Buddhist can speak on, which I am not, so I can't. What I will say: the implications you might see from people that tulpamancy is in any way comparable to a trauma-centric dissociative disorder are both ableist (implying OSDDID is a "practice" or something somebody can decide to "do") and extremely culturally insensitive (there is nothing disordered about Buddhist practices).

(Additionally: the idea of "tulpas" the way most Westerners practice it is a skewed interpretation of something only lightly "inspired" by Tibetan Buddhism. It is a very similar situation to how white people will talk about the "seven chakras" when that is nothing at all close to what chakras are. Not only is it appropriation, people are also defining it incorrectly! I plan on compiling my own post about misinformation related to these things once I have enough applied knowledge to be able to do that.)

On topic again:

If the experiences line up with cultural or religious practice and are not disabling to the person, it is not OSDDID because it did not form the same way. If a child is engaging in escapism via fantasy play and said play is controllable by the child, it is not OSDDID because the motions are voluntary.

These experiences are all still real! And deserve respect! But they cannot be categorized the same -- like how generalized epilepsy and psychogenic non-epileptic seizures present similarly in some ways but aren't the same thing, or how a fainting spell might look like a seizure but isn't a seizure. It'd do a disservice to both to lump them in with one another, if that makes sense!

– “The symptoms are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or other medical condition (e.g., complex partial seizures) (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).”

Speaks for itself but I'm Including It Anyway.

— All criteria backed by the DSM-5. All quoted text brought from the linked organization (DID Research) and goes into further detail than I have, if that's something you're interested in. (And you should be! Don't take my word alone for it, look deeper!)

———

All other types (OSDD, P-DID) are disorders that mostly fall under this criteria, but diverge in some significant way. This does NOT make anyone with these disorders "less real", it only means they have a different experience with structural dissociation -- and structural dissociation is highly individual, dependent on the person and their situation (so you'll be hard pressed to find two systems that experience their disorder the exact same way).

This is just something that happens. Very confusing disorder to have!

———

Partial Dissociative Identity Disorder (P-DID)

– All criteria for DID diagnosis is met, EXCEPT:

– “(...) the person still experiences a disruption of their identity, like in DID, but there is a ‘dominant’ personality which is usually at the front. Intrusions from other parts are infrequent and irregular, perhaps only happening during a particularly distressing or emotional experience.” — “What are the Dissociative Disorders?”, International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation

By "intrusions", people mean switching, or executive control. Different terms that mean the same thing.

In OSDDID cases outside of P-DID, alters will have the ability to take executive control of the body -- this is something that, most of the time, is not present in P-DID. I've seen it described by a P-DID system through the roommates allegory: that collective is there in the building, and they all share the space, but only one of them answers the door.

This is usually the case, but a P-DID system can break out of that -- switching, etc. can still happen in some P-DID systems, particularly when under severe distress.

P-DID, as said by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, is most commonly recognized and diagnosed outside of North America. P-DID is also the least discussed from what I've seen, which may or may not be correlated in some way. (Again, how these things are labeled and understood will vary from place to place and group to group! It's important to get multiple perspectives on a given subject for that reason.)

———

“Other specified dissociative disorder (OSDD) is a dissociative disorder that serves as a catch-all category for symptom clusters that do not fit neatly within another dissociative disorder diagnosis.” — “DID Versus OSDD-1”, DID Research

Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder, Type 1A (OSDD-1A)

– All criteria for DID diagnosis is met, EXCEPT:

– Alters are not distinct enough for the circumstances to be treated the same as DID. For this reason, this particular type of system will especially go under the radar, often misdiagnosed as PTSD or BPD, or not read as a disorder at all.

Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder, Type 1B (OSDD-1B)

– All criteria for DID diagnosis is met, EXCEPT:

– Inter-identity amnesia is not present. Emotional amnesia is more common than complete blackouts; I hear the term "greyout" used quite often in reference to this kind of amnesia.

NOTABLY: I distinguish between the two here because they used to be more heavily utilized in the diagnostic process, but aren't anymore. It is NOW mostly refered to as OSDD-1 and that is IT, but I wanted to include this information anyway because of how often it circulates. The labels may be outdated in some places, but they will come up in research so it's handy to at least know what they mean.

AND ANOTHER THING TO ADD: because of this some systems with OSDD have been diagnosed under the old criteria and may self-identity as having 1A or 1B instead of OSDD-1 on its own. It is their right to self-label how they feel fits their circumstances. Please do not go around telling people not to call their disorder the name they've been using for forever. It's not like the case of autism versus "Asperger's" it is NOTHING like that the context is SO different PLEASE!!

Back on topic, and As Said Above. Both of these OSDD types above fall under type 1. Types 2, 3, and 4 are also considered OSDD, but are not system disorders.

Presentation of a dissociative disorder, overt and covert, is also nearly never this cut-and-dry. [For all intents and purposes you CAN be very straightforward as you build your character at first, but the disorder is complex and messy, so if somebody doesn't seem to fit cleanly into one type as you write at first, that's alright!]

What About UDD?

Unspecified dissociative disorder (UDD), from my understanding, is used in the way that DDNOS (dissociative disorder not otherwise specified) used to be. A medical note of UDD is there to clarify that a given patient has a dissociative disorder, but it is not yet clear which category they fall into.

UDD encompasses any disordered experiences outside of specific known conditions, and many (but not all) people with a UDD diagnosis are given more specific names for their condition later -- someone could have P-DID and have UDD in their medical record because they haven't got the chance to be fully evaluated yet, for example!

“This diagnosis, along with Other Specified Dissociative Disorder, act as a "residual category for dissociative symptoms which do not fit within a more specific category" and either the clinician decides not to specify the reason that the criteria for other Dissociative Disorders aren't met, or not information information exists to make a more specific diagnosis.”

“If a reason can be specified, e.g., dissociative trance, then Other Specified Dissociative Disorder should be diagnosed instead.” — “Unspecified Dissociative Disorders”, Trauma Dissociation

The ICD approaches unspecified dissociative disorder the same way the DSM does: “it cannot be diagnosed when a more specific diagnosis is appropriate.”

If your character is going to have experiences that would fall into the unspecified category, then go right ahead! Because people do have experiences that may fall outside of a typical presentation for a dissociative disorder, but still have a dissociative disorder. UDD just encompasses all of those cases, so be very specific with what kind of experiences you're going to be writing so it isn't unrealistic or disrespectful. Make sure you don't write something contradictory without intent!

Writing Complex Dissociation: Narrow Down What Type, Then Do Specific Research

Overall: I ask that you be very mindful of exactly what condition you're writing and why. (And where -- remember, regional differences can impact labels, perception, treatment, everything!) But if your character's story is a more complicated one, that's perfectly fine, I'd even say it's more realistic! The nature of complex dissociation is that it isn't clean and clear-cut and easy to define!

Nothing is as blatant or linear as how it looks on paper. I recommend before starting any specific writing, of course, to pinpoint which type of structural dissociation you're going to be modeling off of and what you want to achieve by doing that; we can get into all the gritty details once that foundation is established!

And again, this is a GENERAL post! I did not go NEARLY as in-depth as I could have and encourage everyone to do their own research (with discretion)!

———

References:

– DID Research.

– International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.

– Trauma Dissociation.

———

Next: Comorbidity in OSDDID [In Progress] →

[anonymous-gambito]

Sometimes you see a post of someone saying dark fiction should be banned and then another person will respond to that saying "No, there's nothing wrong with dark fiction, as long as the bad things are portrayed as bad", and the thing is... I also don't agree with that.

I think what people don't realize when they say stuff like that is that those are literal Hay's Code guidelines. "Yes you can portray the bad thing, as long as it's explicitly said to be bad, and done by bad people, and all the bad people are punished for it".

Saying "dark themes can be portrayed, but only if they're portrayed as bad" is not advocating in favor of art, it's more advocating in favor of propaganda. The main purpose of art is not to be didactic, or to teach good morals or a guideline to tell people how to live their lives.

So yeah, characters can have shitty harmful opinions and never learn or be corrected in the narrative, villains might never be punished for their actions, the evil toxic romance might be portrayed as sexy, and no one will turn to the camera to tell you how the bad thing is bad and you shouldn't do it in real life.

Because just as we say that porn is fiction and not sex-ed, fiction in general shouldn't be taken as educational material and it should not need to be that, it's not its job. We are not gullible little kids, and I don't want to be treated like one. I'm old enough to know not to replicate something just because I saw it in a cartoon, let's tone down with the infantilization and paternalism please.

[inkfire-scribe]

So here's what really gets me about what I'll generously call "the argument from harm reduction." We'll assume for the sake of argument that they genuinely do mean it when they say they want to eliminate "bad influences" in media, and we'll assume for the sake of argument that there is some measurable correlation between a person's actions and the media they like to consume.

(I know there's not, really, but just pretend for a second that "violent video games make people more violent" or similar is simply a true statement.)

There is a difference between paternalism and actually being a parent.

When you are a parent, you are responsible for the actions of a person who does not have the experience/knowledge to reasonably make informed decisions, and who may not be capable of differentiating between fantasy and reality. My 2-year-old niece, for example, is not currently capable of comprehending the consequences of stabbing someone with a sharp implement, because she's 2. The contextual knowledge very simply isn't present in her mushy toddler brain.

When you are exercising paternalistic moral authority, you are telling a Whole Ass Adult that you have the right to limit or remove their autonomy because you disagree with their preferences or opinions.

Regardless of what potential future actions you may or may not be exerting an influence over by doing so, you are literally curtailing someone's freedoms based on your personal opinion. That is never an acceptable course of action.

Hot Take: Paternalism is Bad, Actually

You should never, under any circumstances, treat a grown adult human as if they are a toddler that doesn't know any better.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

some words for characterization (pt. 1)

Personality

aggression, arrogance, artifice, atrocity, audacity, bearing, best, bravery, buoyancy/buoyance, calm, character, charisma, charm, compliance, confidence, courage, dash, dedication, determination, disposition, distinction, effrontery, egoism/egotism, empathy, endurance, enterprise, esprit de corps, fettle, fight, foible, fortitude, gall, generosity, gentility, go, good will/goodwill, grit, gusto, hauteur, heroism, hubris, identity, ilk, individuality, inhibition, innocence, kind, laziness, longevity, magnetism, manner, martyrdom, mettle, might, monstrosity, morale, motivation, mystique, nerve, obedience, oomph, patience, penchant, perseverance, pizzazz, point, potency, presence of mind, prima donna, proclivity, property, psyche, qualify, reputation, savor, self-respect/self-esteem, shortcoming, soul, spirit, spunk, stamina, staying power, taste, temper, tenacity, thing, trick, twist, valor, verve, vigor, vitality, weakness, willpower, zeal, zing, zip

Attributes of Personality: aboveboard, adventurous, airy, amenable, approachable, arrogant, assertive, assured, august, bashful, belonging to, big hearted, blasé, blithe, boastful, boorish, brash, buoyant, callous, captious, catty, charming, cheeky, childlike, chilly, churlish, clear, clinical, cocky/cocksure, co dependent, colorful, combative, confident, cool, coy, culpable, cute, dainty, dastardly, dedicated, delicate, demonic/demoniac/demoniacal, dependent, despicable, determined, dewy-eyed, die-hard, dignified, dispassionate, distant, dynamic, easygoing, egocentric, egotistic/egoistic, embittered, endearing, engaging, even-tempered, exalted, exemplary, feckless, finicky, flatulent, forbearing, forward, free, frigid, gallant, garrulous, generous, genteel, glacial, good, good humored, good-natured, gregarious, gutless, halcyon, happy-golucky, hardhearted, hard-nosed/hardheaded, hell-bent, high and mighty, high-strung, hyperactive, icy, ill natured, immovable, imperturbable, individual, indulgent, infamous, inherent, innocent, insouciant, intrinsic, inveterate, irresponsible, jazzed-up, kindhearted, kosher, laid-back, latent, liberal, likable, loutish, low, loyal, magnetic, matronly, meritorious, mincing, miserly, mulish, native, nice, nonchalant, obedient, obsequious, odd/oddball, officious, openhearted, open-minded, opprobrious, ossified, outspoken, particular, peculiar, perfidious, persistent, personable, philanthropic, pigheaded, predictable, prim, proper, pushy, quick-tempered, recluse/reclusive, reserved, rotten, saintly, Satanic, selective, self-assured, self-centered, self-confident, self-conscious, self-satisfied, self-sufficient, shabby, shifty, slothful, snotty, spick and-span, spotless, spunky, squeamish, staid, standoffish, stoic/stoical, stubborn, suave, sweet, thick skinned, trustworthy/trusty, unapproachable, unpretentious, unsuspecting, uppity, vain, valorous, virile, vocal, winning, wishy-washy, zealous

Intelligence

acquaintance, anticipation, apprehension, attention, bent, capacity, clarity, cognizance/cognition, comprehension, consciousness, creativity, darkness, depth, education, empathy, erudition, expertise/expertness, familiarity, feeling, foresight, genius, grasp, head, ignorance, imagination, innocence, intellect, interpretation, invention, ken, know-how, learning, literacy, mentality, misconception, nirvana, observation, perception, proficiency, sagacity, sanity, scholarship, sensibility, skill, soul, understanding, wit/wits, workmanship

Attributes of Intelligence: able, abstruse, accident-prone, acute, alert, analytic/analytical, apt, astute, aware, bewildered, blind, brilliant, canny, cerebral, clairvoyant, clever, cognizant, common-sense, comprehensible, considered, conversant, cunning, deducible, delirious, designedly, dim, dizzy, down-to-earth, dumb, eagle-eyed, efficient, empty, empty-headed, erudite, expert, farsighted, feeble-minded, frivolous, gullible, hazy, idiotic, illiterate, impressionable, incomprehensible, ineligible, inexperienced, ingenious, inquisitive, insipid, intelligent, inventive, judicious, knowing, learned, logical, lucid, mindful, moronic, not born yesterday, observant, omniscient, penetrating, perceptive, philosophical/philosophic, privy, proficient, psychic, quick-witted, rational, reasonable, sagacious, sane, savvy, scholarly, seasoned, sensible, shallow, shrewd, skillful, slow, soft, studious, subtle, thick, thoughtless, unaware, uneducated, uninformed, unknowing, vacant, versed, veteran, weak, well-balanced, well-defined, wide-awake, with-it

Social state

abasement, affirmative action, association, awkwardness, behind, belonging, bond, breach, breeding, calm, care, celebrity, censorship, circumstances, class, coherence, companionship, complicity, concord, conjunction, consanguinity, contact, cooperation, courtesy, credit, culture, degree, détente, dignitary, diplomacy, disagreement, disfavor, disharmony, disorder, dissolution, disturbance, duty, echelon, eminence, entertainment, entry, estate, excitement, falling out, familiarity, fellowship, fidelity, foreplay, friendship, fun, fuss, genre/genus, get along, glory, height, hit it off, hospitality, hubbub, humiliation, immunity, infidelity, intrigue, juncture, laissez-faire, lather, level, liberty, luxury, marriage, men’s movement, mortification, mutiny, nepotism, nobility, nonviolence, notoriety, odium, opprobrium, partnership, piffle, place, pleasure, polygamy, popularity, predicament, prestige, rage, rapport, rate, relationship, reproach, reputation, ruckus, rupture, seclusion, servitude, shame, situation, society, sophistication, split, standing, state, status, stillness, stink, support, sympathy, taste, terms, tomfoolery, uncertainty, variance, whirl

NOTE

The above are concepts classified according to subject and usage. It not only helps writers and thinkers to organize their ideas but leads them from those very ideas to the words that can best express them.

It was, in part, created to turn an idea into a specific word. By linking together the main entries that share similar concepts, the index makes possible creative semantic connections between words in our language, stimulating thought and broadening vocabulary. Writing Resources PDFs

Source ⚜ Writing Basics & Refreshers ⚜ On Vocabulary

[mythcreantsblog]

Nine Reasons for a Villain to Spare the Hero

"I want to break their spirit" doesn't cut it.

We don’t design cool villains intending to leave them out of every scene. Yet once our villains appear on stage, they often look like pushovers. Cool villains win; they don’t fail and then whine about how they’ll get the hero next time. But if the villain wins, what keeps the hero alive?

An important trick is for the hero to succeed at escaping but otherwise lose ground to the villain. However, one trick won’t always be enough. A more robust solution is to give your villain an incentive to leave the hero alive – a believable one. To that end, let’s look at nine reasons a villain might spare the hero.

[bloodiedbriars]

A special item at an auction for supernaturals

“And next up, we’ve got a real beauty,” the auctioneer jeered. In a swift movement he tore the curtain back, revealing a cage made of thick iron. In the middle sat a hunched figure, shackled to the ground and shaking with emotion.

“A freshly caught, untouched human,” the auctioneer continued and pulled whumpee’s head up by their hair. “A healthy adult, bloodtype 0, a ritual virgin and lots of energy, so you are guaranteed to get plenty uses out of the specimen before they break!”

Wings fluttered, fangs bared and growls echoed. Eyes light up with interest and thirst. The crowd was engaged.

The auctioneer grinned. He knew he was offering one of a kind. “The bidding starts at 200 gold coins.”

(31 Days of Horror, Day 17: Auction)

[novella-november]

If you are worried about accidentally using racist stereotypes in your writing, the main thing it comes down to is to actually look into these topics, and take the time to read essays and perspectives and lived experiences from the people who do experience racism in all its forms.

If you can understand what real world racism looks like, and how and why it exists, it is so much easier to see what the badly-done fantasy equivalents look like, And more importantly, what makes those fantasy equivalents *badly written.*

Because nine times out of ten, badly-written fantasy racism is written by people who fundamentally, at a core level, do not actually *grasp* the basic levels of what racism is, and why it exists.

This is why you will endlessly see series after series where the badly-handled fantasy racism is based on cold hard facts, where the fantasy racism is justified by atrocities committed by the people being fantasy racially profiled, why series after series perpetuates racist propaganda on a deep, inescapable level while on the surface painting itself as 'progressive'.

People who do the work of reading essays and perspectives from activists of color, who listen to speeches, both current and historical about the Civil Rights Movement, who actually engage with Black Authors and creators, and listen when Black people talk about the racism perpetuated in media, are going to be much better at avoiding racist stereotypes and tropes than someone who just shrugs and says

"I'm not an Evil Conservative™ who vocally hates Black people, therefore I'm not racist and can't possibly do anything racist, because racism only exists as a deliberate act, and not as unconscious bias!"

To be actually Anti-racist, you have to actually put in the work and listen to first hand accounts and lived experiences of people who experience racism. You have to acknowledge that we live in a racist society that has anti-Blackness baked into it to the core, and that just because you have Black friends does not mean you're incapable of being racist.

Even other marginalized groups who "should know better" are not immune to being racist, which makes it all the more hurtful.

You have to be aware and acknowledge the harm of racist tropes, even in your favorite media, if you want to avoid perpetuating those in your own works.

You have to be an actual, active ally to the marginalized groups around you, and listen when they criticize media -- especially your favorite media-- instead of burying your head in the sand and insisting your favorite media can't possibly have anything racist in it because the author Isn't An Evil Conservative™ .

An author or show runner doesn't need to be marching in the streets in a white hood to be racist; racism is not a personality trait, and if you convice yourself that only Bad Evil People™ are capable of racism, you're probably going to end up writing something very alienating in your story without even realizing it.

Just. Listen when people talk about racism and oppression before you go writing fantasy allegories. Your writing will be so much better, and your fans will thank you.

[taimasart]

I've been bad at posting any of my art lately, but I got into Pixel art and here's some of the stuff I've made!

Many of these are commissions, others are gifts or my own oc's! They are all made in a size to fit the Virtual Tabletop "One More Multiverse" where they've been used as player sprites.

I do take commissions too, you can find the details on my ko-fi. c:

[hacvek]

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

[olyia-stories]

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

[dragonpyre]

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

[serinos-kitt]

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

[dragonpyre]

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

[serinos-kitt]

So what is a rain shadow?

[lethalbutterfly]

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

[roach-works]

this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.

[beatrice-otter]

#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."

[whetstonefires]

I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.

[beatrice-otter]

#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains

[cannibalcharon]

Western Washington vs Eastern Washington is a good example of a rain shadows effects for fellow writers.

Western Washington:

Eastern Washington:

For fantasy writers, Washington is a really cool state to study because we have nearly every biome from alpine forests, desert, alpine desert, rainforest, riparian forests, wetlands, coastal, and so on. We have two main mountain ranges, the Olympics and the Cascades. We sit on three tectonic plates which give us said mountains (and earthquakes). Our ecology is really neat here.

[ghostflowerdreams]

Other Important Survival Skills & Information

For whatever reason you’re here, knowing survival skills can save your life or your character’s life (especially for those writers out there that are researching this topic).

Basic Rules If You Are Lost And Alone In The Wilderness

Basic Wilderness Survival Skills

Celestial Navigation & Land Navigation - Navigation without a Compass

Finding True North Without a Compass

Telling Time Without A Clock: Scandinavian Daymarks

Wilderness Survival - Field-Expedient Direction Finding

Wilderness Survival - Contact With People

Wilderness Survival - Clouds: Foretellers Of Weather

Wilderness Survival - Camouflage

Wilderness Survival - Sea Survival

Wilderness Survival - Cold Weather Survival

Wilderness Survival - Tropical Survival

Wilderness Survival - Desert Survival

Wilderness Survival - Field-Expedient Weapons, Tools, And Equipment

Wilderness Survival - Psychology of Survival

Wilderness Survival - Signaling Techniques

Morse Code

The Survivalist - Survival Gear: Make Your Own Signal Whistle

The Survivalist - Survival Skills: Signal Whistle Codes

The Survivalist - Survival Gear: How To Make A Compass

The Survivalist - Survival Skills: Folk Wisdom Weather Predictors

The Survivalist - How To Make Rope From Natural Fibers

The Survivalist - Tying Knots That Work

The Survivalist - More Knots That Work

The Survivalist - How To Make Your Own Tick And Bug Repellent

The Survivalist - How To Make A Toothbrush In The Field

The Survivalist - Insulate You Clothes To Survive The Cold

The Survivalist - Survival Skills: Find Natural Toilet Paper

Going To The Bathroom In The Woods 101

How To Go In The Woods

Plants That Repel Mosquitoes

One Green Planet - DIY Natural Insect Repellent

Preventing Bug Bites In The Woods

Homemade Natural Bug Spray Recipes

Bushcraft Camp Hygiene

Wilderness Hygiene

Preparing For Your First Year Trip — Wilderness Living

Camping and Cramping: How To Handle Your Period While You Enjoy The Great Outdoors

Hiking While Menstruating?

What Did Women Use For Menstruation In Europe and America From 1700 - 1900, And Probably Earlier?

Menstruation, Menstrual Hygiene and Woman’s Health in Ancient Egypt

Survival: Animal Attacks

How to Survive Wild Animal Attacks

[heywriters]

Old links, but some are still alive! Visit old websites, remind them they still matter!

[mythcreantsblog]

So, Your Fantasy World Is Based on D&D

For the increasing number of DMs thinking "I should write this down."

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) has been a part of fantasy for just over five decades now, influencing and being influenced by various trends in the genre. When writers channel their experience from the gaming table, it can mean great things. But it can also result in a complete mess, which is why I’ve written on the subject many times before, from general plotting advice for dungeon masters (DM) to how you can ensure that your story will have plenty of treasure without seeming contrived. 

But the world is different now and, for once, not entirely for the worse. D&D is more popular than it has ever been,* and that’s reflected in the manuscripts I work on. More and more of them are written by authors for whom D&D was their entry into the genre. For some, it remains their only point of reference. 

[mythcreantsblog]

So, Your Fantasy World Is Based on D&D

For the increasing number of DMs thinking "I should write this down."

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) has been a part of fantasy for just over five decades now, influencing and being influenced by various trends in the genre. When writers channel their experience from the gaming table, it can mean great things. But it can also result in a complete mess, which is why I’ve written on the subject many times before, from general plotting advice for dungeon masters (DM) to how you can ensure that your story will have plenty of treasure without seeming contrived. 

But the world is different now and, for once, not entirely for the worse. D&D is more popular than it has ever been,* and that’s reflected in the manuscripts I work on. More and more of them are written by authors for whom D&D was their entry into the genre. For some, it remains their only point of reference. 

[redstonedust]

character whos very willing to self sacrifice themselves works best if they never get a chance to. guy who is so ready to die for her friends but her friends want nothing more than for her to live. guy who didnt think she would survive the end of the story and has to learn to be a real person again. thats the good shit.

[redstonedust]

and of course the equal and opposite of this: the selfish one having to sacrifice themselves. guy who is TERRIFIED of death and clings to survival over all else making a deadly decision because they have no other choice. chefs kiss.