Mary P. Sue

Practically perfect in every way.

[marypsue]

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Fearleading Squad on AO3

Evil cheerleaders, the Satanic Panic, high school friendship drama, and murder all combine to ruin an innocent gothic rocker’s senior year in this short and sweet horror novella. If you liked Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy, Grady Hendrix’ My Best Friend’s Exorcism, Heathers, Jennifer’s Body, or the fan favourite new kids on the block from Stranger Things season four, this might be up your alley.

[the-real-seebs]

Regarding proshipping and offensive/harmful messages in fiction, do you and/or your readers think there is a difference between fanfic or origfic written as a casual thing and posted online and published media the reader is asked to pay for? Even if it's not a JKR or Orson Scott Card situation where the payment is actively going towards committing harm, I have a gut feeling it's different when money is involved, though I admit that might be silly. Published works are also likely to reach a much broader audience and be viewed by the public with a level of presumed "validity" fanfic doesn't have. Mileage may vary, I'm just wondering what people think.

I ... basically just don't worry about this. Like, I really liked The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I read as a teenager, and there was not even a fraction of a second during which I had any thoughts of "perhaps i should murder my friends to steal their stuff, since this published author portrayed it", because... like I just never actually think anyone gave me the idea that books were supposed to be showing things that were good. They were supposed to be telling interesting stories, and those are often stories in which people behave badly.

I think it's possible for me to imagine a piece which I'd regard as genuinely harmful propaganda, but even then, I just... I mean, I might object to it or say "hey watch out for this", but I wouldn't want it banned, that just seems insane.

I think the big thing that a lot of this discourse misses is that people don't necessarily jump from a fictional depiction to "therefore this is okay". Sometimes they jump from a fictional depiction to "holy shit this is fucked up, and it's been happening to me for years but I never questioned it because life has just been like that".

So basically, I want fiction to continue depicting anything and everything, and yeah, published fiction with broad audiences is great, because those broad audiences might contain more of the people who desperately need to know about the thing.

[alarajrogers]

I'd argue that basically no one ever looks at a single work of fiction to decide what to believe in. Except if it's a holy book like the Bible.

Representation matters in bulk. One presentation of a black starship captain isn't going to single handedly end racism. Fiction tends to reflect the times more than shape it. This is absolutely true of professionally published works that make money, as well.

When stories about handsome men ravishing the book's heroine were all the rage in romance novels, it was not that writing those normalized rape. It's that rape was normalized, so no one thought, "huh, this is skeevy." It took a decade of women pushing back against rape culture via second wave feminism before those stories stopped being quite so prevalent. Likewise, it's a societal problem that many people didn't get the point of Lolita and thought it was a love story, not a horror story, but that is not the fault of the book.

Now, there are nonfiction books I kind of think should be banned. Like "To Train Up A Child" by the Pearls, which is a child abuse how-to manual masquerading as a child rearing manual for Christians. That book has caused deaths. At the very least I feel the publisher should be required to put a warning on it like the kind we see on cigarettes. "The American Pediatrics Association has found that this book has been associated with many cases of child abuse, including some that resulted in the child's death."

But fiction? Fiction isn't real. No one seriously thinks it is unless they have a certain type of mental illness, which is rare, or they are a very small child. So it is very very unlikely that anyone is taking any individual work of fiction and looking to it for life guidance. Lots of fiction with the same bias can have a deleterious effect; I had to deal with a young man once who literally believed that if he kept pestering me , I would eventually want to date him, because that is how it works in TV and movies. But he wasn't looking at one piece of fiction for that guidance -- he was looking at all of Hollywood. (And this is the role of representation -- if there is some trope that isn't a reflection of real life, but it appears a lot in fiction, the point to representation is to demonstrate something different so people have a wider range of possibilities to look at. Representation exists to show a greater diversity of roles in fiction; it's kind of the opposite of censorship, which is what the antis want to see.)

[disease-danger-darkness-silence]

Media informs.

But as Alara said, it informs in bulk.

I like to use a specific episode of Supernatural as an example. They shot the show in Canada, but this episode allegedly took place just outside of New Orleans.

There was one named Black character, who was found dead. There was one singular black extra in the background, existing for maybe 5 to 10 seconds.

Everyone else was white, even the nonspeaking extras.

That's incredibly... Not Louisiana as a whole, let alone the New Orleans area in particular. But this one episode was just the one episode, right?

Except that there are hundreds of episodes of various shows filmed in very white places with little to no Black representation, and claiming to take place within the New Orleans area.

If you saw all of those, you'd subconsciously, maybe, wonder if New Orleans wasn't as Black as you thought, or if perhaps there was a lot of White gentrification going on (which, there is, but there's still a ton of Black people just, you know... Existing) - especially if you don't know the reality behind filming locations and such.

When we consume media for learning's sake - from the news, textbooks, etc. - we are looking for inconsistencies and lies. We have our bullshit filter up.

Buuuuut when we consume media for entertainment, that bullshit filter is borderline nonexistent! So if you see the same message repeated over and over and over again, it might begin to inform some of your subconscious biases.

There are certain things the brain looks for to differentiate between the two, as well, which has been studied at length. A lot of News Organizations use shady tactics to trick your brain into relaxing into Entertainment Mode, like having Loud Correspondants, emotional stories that feel like fiction, et cetera. Fox News is infamous for it, and it's why so many Fox viewers fall for shit - because they are being tricked into lowering that Bullshit Filter. Ancient Aliens does this kind of thing too... A lot of documentaries do. Super Size Me is one. It's... Bad.

Anyway. One episode or one movie or one book or one fanfic featuring a problematic trope isn't going to change the world.

But if it's one out of thousands, or even millions, that's when we, as writers and artists, owe it to ourselves to stop and ponder where that trope came from and why we're leaning on it so much, and if maybe we have some biases to work through.

We also owe it to the marginalized people in our lives to present them better to the world. Fanfic starts trends in writing, and I've been doing fanfic for 30 years so I can say that with relative certainty. If making something popular in fanfic happens, it starts to pop up in books, TV shows, etc.

So no, like. One instance isn't gonna be a huge issue.

It's if your instance is one of thousands or millions. And really, you owe yourself and those around you better than that. Not from a writing standpoint, go ahead and publish whatever (personally, I like to try and make the text point out, in some way, that what happened was Not Okay, even if it's just an idle thought a character has. Just so the cycle of bullshit gets interrupted a little).

But from a growing up and doing better standpoint.

Do better.

You deserve it. As a treat.

[the-real-seebs]

I saw a thing go by recently somewhere commenting that Europeans often think US media is just ridiculously full of careful mandatory diversity, which is maybe a little bit true, and that the actual place isn't like that, which is actually much less true. The US is actually pretty diverse. Like, I live in a small town in Minnesota and I see more diversity-of-color among people in my community than I used to see on TV in depictions of places that were, in fact, much more ethnically-mixed. And it's a weird thing that it takes a conscious effort to make our media look like our world, because without it, you get a lot of pushback like "why does this character have to be black", to which one answer is "they don't but sometimes it just happens and why is this a big deal".

And the answer to that is because a lot of white people will complain about black characters, and a lot of men will complain about characters being women, and in general, the privileged groups will tend to assume that they ought to be the default and anyone who isn't like that in media needs to be somehow explained or justified.

[tuesdayisfordancing]

“Communicate” is almost entirely meaningless advice 90% of the time so here’s a few slightly more specific but still pretty general ideas:

You might be making assumptions you don’t realize you’re making about what another party knows, remembers, or understands. Saying “obvious” things helps clear some of these up. Of course even while making an effort to do this you still might not notice things you’re assuming go without saying; don’t beat yourself up when you discover one of these, discovering it means you’re improving! It’s like playing Zelda: the more you uncover the more you get a sense for where and how to look for things. (Disclaimer: I’ve never played Zelda.)

You can take breaks. I’m thinking of personal relationships here but there’s probably a way to apply a similar concept to other relationships. You can say talking more is too much right now, that you’re tired, that you need to process, that you won’t be at your best if you keep going. One thing that can be really great in a personal relationship is asking if the other person is up for hitting pause and doing something you enjoy together for a while (they might not be up for it, be prepared). You can also hit pause and take some time to yourself.

Communication isn’t just for problems! Tell people when you like and appreciate what they’re doing!

Okay this one is probably as useless or at least almost as “communicate” but: contextualize but don’t over-contextualize. I have made people think something is a bigger or more urgent deal than it is by not starting with “overall this is fine/I like X/whatever” and I have had people entirely mentally reverse my point because I spent longer on the disclaimer than the point.

Anyway. Communication is an actual set of skills that you don’t just magically improve by hearing that “communication is key” often enough. It doesn’t just take effort it also takes learning, trial and error, examples! And best practices for communication vary among people, cultures, specific relationships, etc. This has been Pet Peeves With Tuesday.

[corvys-clover]

Dracula season... it beckons......

(Alts and dress ref ⬇)

[artmagine]

The beautiful art of Thomas Blackshear II

[kingfucko]

i went to his website and saw even more great art! sharing some more which i particularly appreciated

[plus-size-aesthetics]

[zomgcats]

[treasures-and-beauty]

Luxury Cape by Magnate Western Studio

[thenationalyrics]

My head is a buzzing three star hotel

Lights VI: The Spa (1974), Micheal Andrews / Blank Slate (2008), The National

[thebisexualwreckoning]

It’s still incomplete as of now but here’s a little something I’ve been working on since February.

[ames-draws]

[everydaylouie]

good and evil

[thefandomlifechoseme]

so like. when are we getting that wild west ect TV show where right at the end of the first season. right at the end. last ten minutes right at the end. the main character wanders over from America to England to go propose to this really nice girl we've been hearing about all season. and she opens the door and we finally learn the main character's last name.

and The Public still don't even realise that Quincey Morris just wandered his way into the plot of Dracula because no one ever includes him in the adaptations and no one's actually read the book

when are we getting that.

[arte-artem-artibus]

Herbert Bayer - Chromatic intersection, 1966, acrylic on canvas, 101 x 101 cm

[goldensunset]

i know in my heart of hearts that within the pokémon universe it’s all the really cute popular marketable pokémon that have the most irresponsible trainers. small dog syndrome ramped up to a whole new level. that is not a toy that is a lifelong commitment. ma’am please keep your untrained sylveon in its pokéball inside the store. no that is not a service pokémon it wouldn’t be using moonblast on everything if it was

[goldensunset]

sir! sir!!! your pikachu is decimating the ducklett population at the pond and you aren’t even looking! you are NOT ash ketchum you are NOT gonna catch ‘em all because that involves trade evolutions and you have NO friends!!!

[goldensunset]

ok literally. that palafinstagram mom who posts pictures of her rowlet not understanding it’s displaying distress behaviors making fun of the cool person whose best friend is a solosis or rellor or unown letter f

[warrior-kitty]

if one more middle aged mom tells me that i should’ve kept my raichu a pikachu because ‘she’s much cuter that way’ i’m sending out my full team and throwing hands right there in the starbucks

[antlor]

fashionable mystery teen

[ao3commentoftheday]

I keep making posts about short fics, and I'm going to continue doing so because on every short fic post I make, I get people who love short fics but I also get authors who feel guilty because they don't write "full fics" or "complete stories"

Short fics are complete. Short fics are full stories. There are more tales in the world than just novels. There are more ways of sharing your idea than creating an entire world to go along with it.

You can tell a complete story in 100 words. You can call a fic complete and full and fleshed out, even without all of the context or history or world building in your brain.

Your readers have imaginations, just like you do. Have faith that they'll be able to fill in any blanks on their own. Trust that they'll enjoy what you put out, even if it's short.

Stop measuring yourself with a ruler that doesn't even matter. If you want to write a long fic, that's wonderful. I wish you well.

But if you don't want to write novels, please stop apologizing for that. You have nothing to feel bad about. Be proud that you can capture a moment or a feeling or an idea in just a few words. Not everyone can do that.

[spectralgecko]

100% agree

We wrote flash fiction in our short story club today. It was a blast. Each one was a full, complete story.

None of them were over 500 words, and the lowest was 286. We could've gone even shorter with different parameters or if we'd tried. You can accomplish a lot in 100 words.

It's ok to write short stuff. I gravitate to short stories for fanfiction because that's what I have time for. Novels are exhausting and not everyone gels well with the writing process for them. That's ok. Different people write differently, and you'll have different lengths you like for different things! It's great!