sometimes i write. a lot of times i read. sideblog; I follow from @freddiekugel name's jess, pronouns are whatever. đđđ bi, genderqueer or something
Black Apocalypse: Afrofuturism at the End of the World
Science fiction imagines aliens and global crises as world-unifying events, both a threat and promise for the future. Black Apocalypse is an introduction to the past and present of black engagement with speculative futures. From Octavia Butler to W.E.B. Du Bois to Sun Ra, Tavia Nyongâo shows that the end of the world is crucial to afrofuturism and reframes the binary of afropessimism and afrofuturism to explore their similarities.
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Interweaving black trans, queer, and feminist theories, Nyong'o examines the social, technological, and existential threats facing our species and reflects on shifting anxieties and hopes for the future. Exploring the apocalypse in movies, art, literature, and music, this book considers the endless afterlives of slavery and inequality and revives the radical black imagination to envision the future of blackness. Black Apocalypse argues that black aesthetics take us to the edge of this world and into the next.
Tavia Nyongâo is the author of The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory and Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life. He is a professor of performance studies at Yale University and a curator at the Park Avenue Armory.
Reject the stigmas of trauma and chronic illness by fostering queer forms of intimacyâand embracing the many ways humans can care for one another.
The writer behind the popular @softcore_trauma Instagram offers a deeply personal memoir for folks seeking healing and better care.
The forms of intimacy and care that weâve been sold are woefully inadequate and problematic. In a world that treats those who are sick and traumatized as problems in need of a cure, nonbinary writer, artist, educator, and Instagram creator Margeaux Feldman offers a different story.
Trauma, which all too often manifests as chronic illness, tells us that there is something deeply wrong with the world we live in. A world that promotes individualism, fractures us from community through violence and systemic oppression, and leaves us traumatized. That is what we need to cure.
While unveiling their own lived experiences caregiving for their sick father, losing their mother, surviving sexual abuse, and grappling with their own chronic illness, Feldman provides roadmaps for embracing queer modes of care, or âhysterical intimacies,â that reject the notion that those who have been labeled sick are broken. Feldman looks at the lengthy history of branding girls, women, and femmesâand their desiresâas sick, from the treatment of hysterics by Jean-Martin Charcot and Sigmund Freud in the 19th and 20th centuries. What emerges is a valiant call for rethinking the ways we seek healing.
This compelling blend of theory, personal narrative, and cultural criticism offers a path forward for reimagining the shapes and forms that intimacy, care, and interdependence can take.
God help my poor readers, I've discovered the Snowflake Method X)
Decided to turn this into a full-blown post after it blew up in Fanfiction Writers Unite! What is the Snowflake Method?
Created by Randy Ingermanson in 2002, the Snowflake Method is a way of outlining novels before the large-scale writing begins. Since I've been struggling with a lot of things while working on my longfic (like context blindness), I decided to see if there was some way I could reduce that.
Here's the Cliff Notes version I wrote up, and there's more detail below:
Start with a 15-word sentence explaining your entire story. Like those blurbs they put on the backs of books.
Turn that sentence into a paragraph, with the same goal.
Make one page summaries of your MAIN characters. Name, motivations, goals, ALL of it.
Go back to your summary paragraph. Turn every sentence in that paragraph into its own paragraph.
Make half-page summaries of all your SIDE characters. Done correctly, all of the character pages you've done should briefly tell the story from each character's POV.
Those paragraphs from step 4? Turn that 1-page plot synopsis into FOUR pages now :)
All your character sheets? M O A R D E T A I L. birthdate, description, history, motivation, goal, etc. Most importantly, how will this character change by the end of the story?
Back to the plot synopsis now--time to make scenes! Randy Ingermanson (the guy who came up with all this) suggests using a spreadsheet to map out all your scenes, what happens in them, whose POV it is, etc. (You could probably pull off something similar in Scrivener. IDK about other writing software.)
OPTIONAL: In your main story doc, expand those scenes from general descriptions into multiple paragraphs. Ingermanson says EVERY scene should have conflict, but for fanfiction I disagree. Nothing wrong with a bit of fluff sometimes :D
(FINAL) Write the thing. All the pieces are in place, just put 'em together!
Under the cut, I have more info on each of these steps, as well as my own analysis of them.
(Full disclosure: some of this is directly copied from Ingermanson's page. This is just for simplicity's sake and nothing more.)
While itâs perfectly valid to write a fic entirely as improv (and often more fun lol), for longfics youâll want some kind of framework. Itâs the same thing as artists transitioning from line art to flat colors to a full-blown painting. The Snowflake Method is the writerâs version of that premiseâand only one potential way of many to go about it! Ingermanson calls his method the Snowflake Method because you essentially design the novel in ever-increasing stages; you start small, then build stuff up in ten(-ish) steps, until it looks like a story.
Note that all of this is recommended to be completed over the course of about a month. Each step supposedly should take at least a week, but the original Snowflake Method was also written in 2002âa long, LONG time ago ^_^; Some of the things listed here can now be completed in a much shorter time (or in much easier ways), but the concept itself could still be quite helpful. Without further ado:
Step 1
Come up with a one-sentence summary of your fic. Ingermansonâs example was âA rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul,â the summary for his first novel, Transgression. Where itâs intended to be a simple selling tool to publishers and literary agents, itâs also the foundation of the Snowflake Method. In fanfic context, think of it as your ficâs first impression. What do you want readers to feel before they even click on your story?
Some hints on what makes a good sentence:
Shorter is better. Ingermanson says to try for fewer than 15 words.
In a fanfic context, character names are optional (though Ingermanson says not to put them). This if FAN fiction; readers want to know who you have doing what!
Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose in this story? Now say what he or she wants to win.
Read some one-line blurbs from books you like to learn how to do this. Writing a one-sentence description is a lot harder than it looks, especially when you want to info dump about your fic so bad X)
Step 2
Expand that sentence to a full paragraph describing the story setup, major disasters, and ending of the novel. This is the second stage of the snowflake. Ingermanson suggests a three-act structure (or as he calls it, âthree disasters plus an endingâ), with each act taking up a quarter of the story. The final quarter should be devoted to the ending and epilogue (if youâre doing one).
Itâs not like you have to be precise about it, thoughâthis is still fanfiction. No sane person is gonna be like âUh akshually yuor secund act wuz 2.034587 words longer than it shuda been!!1!1!!â Please block people who leave comments like that, seriously XD
Step 3
This is the part where you map out storylines for each of your characters. Write a one-page summary sheet that includes:
The characterâs name
A one-sentence summary of the characterâs storyline
The characterâs motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)
The characterâs goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
The characterâs conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)
The characterâs epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?)
A one-paragraph summary of the characterâs storyline
My personal suggestion: if you have an action-heavy story and want to get even more creative with it, try using DND character sheets for this! Theyâre still helpful even if your story doesnât involve magicâjust use the first 2 pages of this one and forget the magic section altogether.
IMPORTANT: You may need to go back and revise your one-sentence summary and/or your one-paragraph summary. Go ahead! Tweaking things is an inevitable part of the design process; better to do them during the planning stages now than when youâre 25k words in. (Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha... đ„Č) You likely wonât get it right from the outsetâand sometimes things will need to change to keep the story manageable, or even as you learn new things during the writing process.
Step 4
By this stage, you should have a good idea of your ficâs overall structure. Getting to this point can take some time, but if the story is broken, you know it now. From here, you keep growing each ânodeâ of your story. Expand each sentence of your summary paragraph into a full paragraph. The final paragraph should say how the fic ends. At the end of the exercise, youâll be left with a one-page skeleton of your longfic (or 2, or whateverâitâll likely be single-digit). The idea is to expand the overall story.
Step 5
Write up a one-page description of each major character and a half-page description of the other important characters. These âcharacter synopsesâ should tell the story from the point of view of each character. If needed, go back to the earlier steps and make revisions as needed.
TIP: If you're dealing with a story that has a large ensemble cast, rate each person in that cast on a scale of 1-10 (or a star rating) in terms of importance to your story.
If we're using ATLA as an example, Aang would be a 10 on the 1-10 scale (since he's the MC) and the cabbage guy would be a 1 or 2. And yet, both characters have distinct storylines; Aang is trying to master the 4 elements, and the cabbage guy just wants to sell his cabbages. Just because a character is a 1 or 2 in plot relevance doesn't mean they have to be boring! (This also tells you that not every storyline has to be overly complicated!)
Step 6
By now, you have a solid story and several story threads, one for each character. Next, expand the one-page plot synopsis to a four-page synopsis. Similar to the last step, youâll be expanding each paragraph from step 4 into a full page. This is to help you figure out the high-level logic of the story and make strategic decisions. Here, you will definitely want to cycle back and fix things in the earlier steps as you gain insight into the story and new ideas whack you in the face.
Step 7
Expand your character descriptions into full-fledged character charts detailing everything there is to know about each character. The standard stuff such as birthdate, description, history, motivation, goal, etc. The most important thing you want to note is this though: how will this character change by the end of the story? Change can be literally anything from "He masters the 4 elements and becomes the Avatar" to "he finally sells a cabbage". (I must be in an ATLA mood today lol)
This is an expansion of your work in step 3, and it will teach you a lot about your characters. You'll probably go back and revise steps 1-6 as your characters become ârealâ to you and begin making petulant demands on the story. This is good â great fiction is character-driven. Take as much time as you need to do this, because youâre just saving time downstream. (It may take a full month of solid effort to get here. Longfics are long for the authors too, y'know?)
Step 8
Take that four-page synopsis and make a list of all the scenes that youâll need to turn the story into a proper longfic. At this point, Ingermanson suggests using a spreadsheet (like Excel). Keep in mind this method was written in 2002, so yeah.
He says to make a spreadsheet detailing the scenes from your four-page plot outline:
one line for each scene
one column for the POV character
another (wide) column saying what happens
(optional): more columns that tell you how many pages you expect to write for the scene
Note: If you have something like Scrivener, you can do something similar by making a file for each scene and noting the POV character, what happens, and so on in the Notes window.
If you use the spreadsheet method, youâll want to make new versions of the story spreadsheet as you progress. Ingermanson suggests determining what scenes go in which chapters after youâre done; I like to do it as I go (since Scrivener lets me drag and drop anyway).
Step 9
Ingermanson says this is optional, but I thought I would include it anyway.
Switch back to your word processor and begin writing a narrative description of the story. Take each line of the spreadsheet and expand it to a multi-paragraph description of the scene. Put in any cool lines of dialogue you think of, and sketch out the essential conflict of that scene. If thereâs no conflict, youâll know it here. Ingermanson says that every scene should have conflict, but for fanfiction I disagree. Nothing wrong with a little fluff now and then :D
Step 10
Start the real first draft of the fic! About midway through a first draft (or if you get writerâs block) take a break and fix all the broken parts of your design docs from all the previous steps, if needed. Nothing left after that than to polishâif you want to!
...Phew that was longer than I thought it was, but I'm glad I got it out there! :D If this was any help to anyone, let me know! (And check out Ingermanson's website, too. It's mostly geared toward novelists that want to get published, and he does sell some books and things, but most of the stuff on his site is free! That's how I wrote all this in the first place! :D)
my heart fell out while i was on a walk through the forest and it got covered in pine needles and then an osprey picked it up but she dropped it in the sea and the fish ate a hole straight through it before it was washed ashore and when i found it again chamomiles were growing in the cavity. i put it back inside of me and now the world seems stranger and more beautiful than ever
"Thank you. Trent, it was lovely talking to you. I suppose I'll see you after the football game then?"
"Yours or mine?"
"Oh, your football game is an afternoon game. My football game will likely go until ten or eleven tonight."
Michelle looks absolutely puzzled at the exchange.
"His football is soccer." Ted says, pointing a thumb back at Trent.
"And his football is rubbish." Trent counters, his accent growing sharper at the edges.
Physically backing up then, Michelle smiles something wildly uneasy. Something that Ted instantly recognizes as knowing. Revelation. Epiphany. His face falls then. Unsure what she is seeing specifically. If the horror is that she is staring down the barrel of two goofs or if she can sense the Queer coming off them in waves. Ted doesn't wait to find out.
--Excerpt from "The Great 90s Mixtape," Chapter 4: Connection, Elastica (British), 10 October 1994
the thing is when people say a specific fanfic trope comes from supernatural they usually mean "it was invented by the supernatural fandom in a fanfic". on the other hand, when people say a specific fanfic trope comes from star trek, they mean "it was the plot of at least one star trek episode"
anyway the thing about fanfic is that it's not essentially bad or good; it's essentially amateur. some people are absolutely out there writing award-worthy prose (some fic writers ARE award-winning writers IRL!), but that's not the point. the point is that we're all telling campfire stories. it's a community, and it's a way to spend some more time in the worlds and stories that we love.
I wish it wasnât a hot take that a story in which two characters of any gender prioritize their purely platonic relationship over any other romantic or sexual interests they might have is a textually queer story
A lot of people really donât understand amatonormativity as another dimension of âthere is a right way to love peopleâ that we have to dismantle.
Amatonormativity 101: Amatonormativity, a term coined by Elizabeth Brake, is the very prevalent idea that there is one relationship type that is above all others. This relationship is an exclusive/monogamous, committed, romantic and sexual relationship.
According to amatonormativity, this specific kind of relationship:
Is something everyone wants (or should want)
Is the most fulfilling relationship it is possible to have
Takes precedence over all other relationships in your life
This goes hand in hand with heteronormativity, which says that this ideal relationship also has to be straight. But if you remove that part, all the normative forces of amatonormativity still exist. And they suck for just about everyone! Amatonormativity says aromantic and asexual people will never experience the âhighestâ form of love. It says single people are inherently less happy than people in a romantic relationship and should always be actively looking for one. It says sex without romance or romance without sex are both lacking a fundamental part of an ideal relationship. It says polyamorous people are failing to choose the one person they can be fully devoted to. It says that your monogamous, committed, romantic/sexual partner is the most important person in your lifeâmore important than your family, your best friend youâve known all your life, etc.
I hope we can all agree that is something queer people, and also people in general, would benefit from dismantling!
Now let me talk about an example of what I was referring to in the original post.
If youâre not familiar, Elementary is a TV series based on the Sherlock Holmes stories. Itâs a modern day adaptation featuring Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective for the NYPD, and Joan (rather than John) Watson, his sober companion and eventually detective partner.
Sherlock has many casual sexual relationships with women throughout the series, while Joan has a string of romantic relationships with men. Neither of them is textually queer (although Sherlock feels very aromantic-coded, if unintentionally, and I personally think an aro reading of both characters has merit).
However, the two of them share a relationship that defies amatonormativity. Sherlock and Joan share almost every part of their lives togetherâfirst because Joan is monitoring Sherlock to help maintain his sobriety, but soon because they have actively chosen to remain in each otherâs lives. They eventually become partners as detectives but are also functionally life partners, living together, sharing their resources, taking care of each other emotionally and physically. At multiple turning points in the story, they express their love for each other. Throughout this progression, their relationship never becomes romantic or sexual. While Sherlock continues to have casual sex and Joan continues to go on dates, itâs clear that Sherlock and Joan remain each otherâs most important person.
This relationship defies amatonormativity, and in my opinion that makes it queer. Queer as in breaking boundaries, defying norms, challenging the idea that there is any right or wrong way to love someone.
Now itâs time for my real hot take. There is a reason I used Elementary as an example, instead of the many other pieces of fiction that have a very similar dynamic between two characters of the same gender.
Those storiesâstories that center a platonic relationship between two characters of the same gender, a relationship that remains platonic but is deep, devoted, and prioritized over other relationships in the characterâs livesâare textually queer. They are not textually gay (although yes, many of them are subtextually gay). But that does not stop them from being queer stories.
If you want to read into whatever subtext might be there and interpret that relationship as a gay romantic/sexual relationship, that's great. But I wish more people shared my opinion that this is not making a previously normative story into a queer one. Usually, itâs trading heteronormativity for amatonormativity, creating a relationship that defies different norms.
Iâm not saying that one or the other interpretation is more valuable (in generalâwhich one is most meaningful to you is a personal preference). I think theyâre both queer interpretations of the story. However, given how often stories like the ones Iâm describing get accused of âqueerbaitingâ or simply ânot being canonically queer,â Iâm pretty sure my opinion on this is not widely shared.
In conclusion: Queerness is a much broader set of concepts than just gay romance. We should consider amatonormativity another dimension of oppression that queerness is in opposition to. Ship or donât ship whatever is more fun or meaningful to you but please donât assign moral righteousness to one kind of queerness while erasing another. Also, please be nice to aro and ace people, we already have enough to deal with. I wish none of this was a hot take. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I'm actually so serious that you all should get into Danez Smith. they're a queer nonbinary Black poet and their work is sooooooo wonderful. I saw them do a reading when I was in college and got a signed copy of Don't Call Us Dead that is one of my prized possessions. their poem "Dinosaurs in the Hood" is one of my favorite poems. get into Danez Smith!!
But this canât be a black movie. This canât be a black movie. This movie canât be a metaphor for black people & extinction. This movie canât
Letâs not forget that he was played on screen by a white man. And the fact that he was black is barely ever mentioned or the book he wrote inspired by his experiences.
chose to take on his slave grandmotherâs last name, Dumas, like his father did before him.
grew up too poor for formal education, so was largely self-taught, including becoming a prolific reader, multilingual, well-travelled, and a foodie, resulting in his writing both a combination encyclopedia/cookbook (which justâ is fucking outrageous to me) AND the adaptation of The Nutcracker on which Tchaikovsky based his ballet
he also wrote a LOOOOT of nonfiction and fiction about history, politics, and revolution, bc he was pro-monarchy, but a radical cuss, and that got him in a lot of hot water at home and abroad.
(âŠa novel which also features a LOAD of PoC beyond the Count, and at LEAST one queer character, btw, bc EVERY MOVIE ADAPTATION OF ANYTHING BY DUMAS IS A LIE; seriously, at LEAST one of the four Musketeers is Black, y'all.)
famously, when some fuckshit or other wanted to come at Dumas with some anti-Black foolishness, Dumas replied, âMy father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.â
and they are still finding stuff old dude wrote, seriously; like discovering âlostâ works as recently as 2002, publishing stuff for the first time as recently as 2005.
when this post first went around (a year ago apparently) I was like BUT WHAT ABOUT DADDY DUMAS THOUGHÂ because basically
daddy general dumas was an immense fierce french warrior who was a 6 foot plus, stunningly gorgeous and charismatic Black gentlemanÂ
he invaded egypt
the native egyptians said âis this napoleon? this must be napoleon. we for one welcome our majestic new overlordâ
then napoleon showed up
napoleon has all the presence of yesterdayâs plain Tesco hummus
the native egyptians were like â⊠no⊠no, weâve thought very hard and weâll have General Dumas actuallyâ
this did not make napoleon happy
in fact it made him jealous
napoleon felt so emasculated that he launched a campaign of revenge against General Dumas, including taking away his pension, that probably inspired a lot of Alexandreâs rather satisfying scenes in which fathers are nobly avenged and the money-grubbing villains are rubbed in the mud
His stuff is in the public domain, you can find them on Project Gutenberg here:
Project Gutenberg offers 73,007 free eBooks for Kindle, iPad, Nook, Android, and iPhone.
And for those of you who would like to try audio versions, this is what is on LibriVox, the free, volunteer run audiobook version of Project Gutenberg:
discoholicmusic
annaxmalina
titsay
origamiaround
gummygunk
izzy806
yousharknotpass
andulkaphoto
jbbartram-illu
janainaart
