do you feel it too the heat of building desire going unfulfilled
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@maddilynmuse
do you feel it too the heat of building desire going unfulfilled
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So much of the angst over Traumatized Child Protagonists centers around responsibility, I think.
There's this idea that it's Unfair and Unjust for the protagonists to have had to suffer, fight evil, etc., in a particular way because they're children. Because of this, the narrative or the authority figures or, heck, the entire genre is treated as corrupt, and as having betrayed and victimized the children.
And sometimes that's fair and true! Sometimes it's actually part of the text. Sometimes it wasn't intended as part of the text but it probably should have been. But these criticisms of child-hero stories end up dismissing a few very important facts:
It is in fact universally the case that, for good to prevail, suffering has to be endured and evil has to be fought by people who had nothing to do with the problems, no culpability in them, and no responsibility other than Being In The Right Place At The Right Time. That's a responsibility that has to be accepted regardless. That's what heroism is.
This is unfair no matter who the hero is, but accepting an unfair burden is different than having it thrust upon you. (See: Frodo Ring-Bearer.)
Children and teenagers ARE, in fact, in possession of enough agency to take on such responsibilities of their own free will. They can also be the only people in The Right Place to accomplish a particular good -- just like adults -- without this meaning they're forced into it.
Children have a DESIRE FOR and a RIGHT TO stories where people of their own age and state of life are heroic!
TL;DR, choosing to do the job that's in front of you even when you could walk away -- to accept responsibilities you wouldn't have to shoulder in a just world -- is heroism, not victimization, and children are and want to be capable of that choice, just as adults are. Flattening all Child Heroes into victims takes that capacity away from them.
stop. analyse that text through the lens of its author's intentions and original historical context. okay now take the author out back and kill them dead and analyse that text as though it were published by your mutual yesterday and is in direct conversation with the contemporary discourse that's most relevant to your life. okay now pick your favorite angle of interpretation and come up with the strongest possible argument against it. now imagine that the text is your best friend and that it means you well and that you naturally give it every benefit of the doubt because you're on its side and you want the best for it. now imagine that the text wants you dead and it'll eat you if you don't eat it first. now pretend that you found this text locked away in a cave with no evidence of when or where it came from and you have to divine its meaning solely through its internal coherence and nothing else. okay now address the elephant in the room aspect of the text you've been ignoring because you find it boring or confusing or uncomfortable and become the number one expert on it. now spend forty minutes assigning all the characters dnd classes with at least three sentences of reasoning each. okay now do the cha cha slide.
I've just finished the first Murderbot book and it's very funny coming from Star Trek to this. In Star Trek you have androids and such actively campaigning for themselves to be considered full people with rights that deserve the same considerations as anyone else. Meanwhile in Murderbot all the humans are telling this guy that it's a person with rights and it's their friend and they like it and its response is basically
One thing I've been meaning to write an essay about for a while and never got around to is the difference between older, Data-style robot people and more modern iterations like Murderbot. You've got two levels of striving for rights here, the modern one built on having internalised the older one. Every time I reflect on them I'm reminded strongly of the public-facing part of the queer rights movement.
Data, who strongly admires and desires humanity, has his story centred around being as humanlike as possible. In Data stories, to be more like a human is viewed as improvement, to be called humanlike is a compliment; everything is framed around his ability to seem similar to humans and he's good because he strives to be more human. He's similar to the nineties and early millennium push of "we're just like you! Our differences are something we were born with and we can't help :( but we can be same as you! Trans people were just born in the wrong body; if we get the right one, we fit in! Gay people can form lifelong partnerships and raise kids! Love is love! <3" in order to appeal for basic rights, safety and autonomy. Data is safe. He asks you to listen to his plea to let him through the gates, not to tear the fences down.
Murderbot is different. Murderbot knows what it is and doesn't strive for humanity. Murderbot does not see being called human as a compliment and, while it will fake being human for strategic reasons, prefers not to be confused for one. The humans in book 1 gaining sympathy for it because of how humanlike it is and talking about it in human terms is not seen as uplifting and positive but as awkward and painfully naive, something that drives Murderbot away and that they have to address in themselves when it comes back. The Preservation Aux system of allowing bots in only with human sponsors to guide them is seen as obviously unfair and condescending, a way for humans to roleplay being charitable sympathetic guides for the poor bots who clearly need their help. Murderbot is the post-aughts queer wave of "whether we are like you or not is irrelevant. We are entitled to rights and safety whether or not we fit into your systems and stroke your egos. Whether you understand us or approve of us is not relevant to this question. It is not our job to treat you as an ideal we are failing to reach in order to make you feel better." Murderbot is not safe. Murderbot does not plead at the gate that it should be let in. Murderbot is not grateful and appreciative of your generosity for opening the gate because in Murderbot's world, the fact that you're still manning the gate means you're a naive annoyance.
This same pattern is true for a lot of types of oppression, of course, though the timelines will be different. I used queer people as an example because it's what I'm most familiar with, but you'll see the same patterns in disability activism, racial equality, et cetera -- a survivalist's appeal to similarity, making the privileged class more comfortable in their assumption as being the default and how generous and open-minded they are for magnanimously fighting for the oppressed class' rights and safety and ability to strive to be more like them despite clearly having been born deficient in [insert topic of bigotry here], and then when the social zeitgeist is in favour of granting such rights, a second wave of "we're fine as we are and we deserve rights and safety anyway, similarity or difference to you is not relevant because we don't measure our worth by how much like you we are".
“your friend is dead, and their corpse is inhabited by something only you can see for what it truly is" is already good horror. but "you begin to love the thing that wears their face"? the blasphemy of it. terror turning into desire. grief turning into longing. being enticed by what should repel you. it twists the knife deeper, because the horror is not based on deception anymore. the fear comes from recognizing the monster in its raw form and finding beauty there. you're not clinging to scraps of your friend, you're surrendering to something other, something wrong, and loving it. you're not holding onto a ghost of the past, it’s the monster itself that you choose
Incredibly violent take of mine but I actually don’t think you need to relate to a story in any way to enjoy it. You can enjoy a story even if you can’t point at a character and insert some aspect of your personality or identity into them. In fact I would argue the need for a character like that to be present in every single story you experience is a sign of stunted growth.
It is a peaceful and serene take, actually.
Not every story is about seeing yourself in it. Sometimes it’s about learning to see other people too.
@tearyeyedcat this was beautifully written, thank you for adding it!
Another excuse for me to post Head Writer of ATLA Aaron Ehasz’s great characters board:
They should invent a being a writer that doesn't come with being isolated and diminishing returns on what you are given back compared to how much you give
So there's this story I love about Paul Williams, right? Famous musician who has done a ton of super popular work over a very long career. Well one thing he really poured his heart and soul into was the movie Phantom of the Paradise which fucking BOMBED. Like, mere words cannot describe how bad this reimagining of Phantom of the Opera But At A Disco went. It absolutely crushed Paul Williams. Broke his heart. His biggest failure.
Except during a tour of his he met who described as a young, nerdy Mexican kid who brought him a copy of the Phantom of the Paradise for him to sign. The kid wouldn't stop talking about how much he loved the soundtrack, and how much it inspired him. This kid was literally one of the few people in the world that loved the movie
It wasn't until Paul Williams ran into the kid all grown up did he realize it was Guillermo del Toro.
And it happened again, too! He also met a pair of young French men who wouldn't stop raving about how much they loved Phantom of the Paradise and how much it inspired them and their own band, Daft Punk. The three of them ended up doing an album together. An album that I would listen to on repeat while writing the early drafts of my book.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes the creative process seems cruel, unforgiving, and thankless. You can pour your heart and soul into something only to make zero waves. But even a so-called-failure can inspire and lift up someone that needs it. So you gotta keep creating, if only to be the next link in the chain of creativity and art.
Also I don't know about you but I haven't seriously written in months and I honestly feel like I'm going to explode from too many words so like, you also gotta keep relating or else you might explode.
i finished reading your story and i must say that, while it's alright, there's so many plot holes because the characters made irrational decisions and didn't think logically 100% of the time. consider fixing this next time please
also, the fact your characters weren’t able to overcome their internal struggles is a massive plot hole. everyone knows emotions are very easy to understand and sort, and the fact your characters acted on them was such a massive story contrivance it broke my sense of belief. please fix this.
In college, I shared a story with a friend. I can't quite remember what it was about, but my friend gave me some timeless advice:
"Your main character is... like... thinking too many thoughts. Could you have him think less and maybe just kick some random guy's ass?"
Intrigued by this, I asked for clarification. He responded with a statement that he doesn't like when fiction makes him "feel things" and he wants to see people who are "badass."
I asked for an example. The gods smiled on me, and he sent a story he wrote. It began with this fantastic opener: "John walked into the bar, looking every inch the badass."
I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:
Fictional characters are objects.
They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.
I know this has good intentions, so I will just add the "how you treat them, even as objects of fiction, can speak about your own character, be careful out there"
Your addition is actually completely antithetical to my message. It is literally the opposite of what I am conveying.
Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.
How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".
It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.
I can write tentacle noncon of my favorite character all day long and be a fierce anti-sexual assault advocate in real life because what I do in my head is not the same thing as what I do in real life.
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i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that's a poem already what's the point
you get it. you get the themes. i dont have time to do it justice. just look at it its on the ceiling
These posts are sisters
reblog if you like to see your own characters tortured
think that everyone has their own personal theme in life
every nolan film is about time. it winds its way through his filmography; it is fractured in memento, distorted in inception, expanded in interstellar, reversed in tenet.
every hopper painting is about stillness. it is found in every brushstroke; at dusk in automat, at dawn in morning sun, at noon in office in a small city, at night in nighthawks.
i have a friend who orbits ideas of power, another who delights in the prosaic and the plain. one weaves around systems and structures, another returns always to wonder at the sea.
there are other elements of course - our lives cannot be measured by single concepts no matter how large they may be - but time and again i think we return to the things that fascinate, the things that intrigue, the things we cannot quite tear ourselves away from. the themes of our lives.
I read Betsy Lerner’s The Forest for the Trees once years ago and have been carrying this idea she has about writers, form, and subject/themes around in my head ever since (bolding mine):
Finding your form is like finding a mate. You really have to search, and you can’t compromise—unless you can compromise, in which case your misery will be of a different variety. But just as there are probably only one or two people to whom you could commit yourself, there are probably only a few things you can write about, and only one genre, or maybe two, in which you might excel. It’s no coincidence that most authors’ bodies of work hover over two or three basic themes or take a single basic shape. Think of the novels of Trollope, Austen, Dickens, or Hardy; think of Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald. They each revisited the same themes, settings, and conflicts over the course of their writing lives. The James Joyces of the world, those who can move from short story to novel to epic, are rare, but then again, few writers master each form the first time out of the gate.
Even though most writers have a limited literary arsenal, readers find infinite pleasure in watching those gestures change and deepen over time. But if you aren’t yet sure what your themes are or what category you should be writing in, you need to take a full accounting of all the reading and all thewriting you have ever done or wanted to do. If you are one of the many people who dream of writing but have never successfully finished or, perhaps, even started a piece, I suggest you compile a list of everything you’ve read over the past six months or year and try to determine if there is a pattern or common denominator. If you read only literary novels, that should tell you something. If you’ve always kept a diary noting the natural world in all its variety, you might want to try writing nature essays.
It never fails to surprise me, in conversations with writers who seek my advice as to what they should write, how many fail to see before their very eyes the hay that might be gold. Instead of honoring the subjects and forms that invade their dreams and diaries, they concoct some ideas about what’s selling or what agents and editors are looking for as they try to fit their odd-shaped pegs into someone else’s hole. There is nothing more refreshing for an editor than to meet a writer or read a query letter that takes him completely by surprise, that brings him into a world he didn’t know existed or awakens him to a notion that had been there all along but that he had nevermuch noticed.
Some of the most striking and successful books in recent history were clearly born of a writer’s obsession and complete disregard for what, supposedly, sells. Few editors would have gone for a queer book about a little-known murder in Savannah that took its sweet time describing every other quirkof the city and its inhabitants before addressing the crime.Whatever John Berendt was thinking when he set out to write Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, it couldn’t have been the bestseller list, because almost anyone in the publishing industry would have told him that nobody would care about the story of a gay antiques dealer who languished in jail after shooting a cheap hustler. The book does, however, draw on what most certainly are Berendt’s strengths as a reporter, as a travel writer, and as a southerner with a gothic sensibility and taste for the macabre. Clearly, he was born to write this book, and he worked through whatever ambivalence and uncertainty he might have felt within himself or encountered from others.
Most writers have very little choice in what they write about. Think of any writer’s body of work, and you will see the thematic pattern incorporating voice, structure, and intent. What is in evidence over and over is a certain set of obsessions, a certain vocabulary, a way of approaching the page. The person who can’t focus is not without his own obsessions, vocabulary, and approach. However, either he can’t find his form or he can’t apply the necessary discipline that ultimately separates the published from the unpublished.
hope is a skill
hope is a weapon you are trained to wield
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You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.
Theodor would approve.
“Creative people have trouble recognising their skills as skills, because eventually they feel like second nature. This stuff really is valuable, if it wasn’t, people wouldn’t be stealing it. Creativity doesn’t feel special or unique until you realise people have to plagiarise it.”
— Hbomberguy on plagiarism.
the author's barely disguised attempts to get you to eat a healthy meal. the author's barely disguised desire for you to get enough sleep. the author's barely disguised encouragement for you to take better care of yourself. the author's barely disguised hope for you to feel better tomorrow than you do today. the author's barely disguised longing for you to make it through tonight, and the next night, and the night after that. the author's barely disguised love for you, dripping off of every page