Writing is not about 'telling an epic story' or 'making something that will outlive you'. Writing is about going "You know what would be fucking awesome?" and then committing word crimes
@thebibliosphere
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JBB: An Artblog!
todays bird
RMH

shark vs the universe
Cosmic Funnies

★
sheepfilms
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styofa doing anything

Kaledo Art
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izzy's playlists!
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祝日 / Permanent Vacation

seen from United States
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seen from Oman

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@ryxl-was-here
Writing is not about 'telling an epic story' or 'making something that will outlive you'. Writing is about going "You know what would be fucking awesome?" and then committing word crimes
@thebibliosphere
actually that fits w my theory that fanfiction is closer to literary analysis than it is to creative writing. like i feel like so much of fanfiction is more about “this is my interpretation of the text, and i’m teasing out the complexities of this interpretation by writing it in the format of a creative writing piece” than it is about an original piece of fiction
I have often commented that so much of my fanfic is either “here are all of my headcanons about this setting, in 30k (or 300k) fic format” or “I spent 10 hours of my life trying to get into the head of this character to make sense of their motivations, and y’all get to read the conclusions”
The tag “You gotta GET the original before you can translate it” is SUCH a Very Good Take
This actually fits with what I’ve understood of actors who read fan fiction about their characters. Nearly always it’s someone who wants more analysis of the character than they’re getting from the scripts, so they look to what fans are producing and find those deep dives there.
noticed a pattern in my writing
Black cats are lucky. (via leahweissmuller)
MAN [IN THICK ACCENT]: Black cat bring good luck. Not bad luck. I have black cat - See, him face - And I am not dead today: Good luck!
“See him face”
I sure fucking do see him face
Him face
Reblog him face for good luck in 2021
Reblog him face for good luck in 2021 (2)
REBLOG HIM FACE FOR MOST EXCELLENT LUCK ALL 2022 🖤
Santa is on strike due to global warming. All presents this year will be delivered by Sasha the Christmas Tiger. Milk and cookies may not be sufficient.
“MUST BRING PRESENTS TO GOOD CHILDREN”
“Yes good”
“AND EAT THE BAD ONES”
“Wait no”
“EAT THEM”
“sasha no”
@burstofhope the Christmas tiger is watching
She is making a list
It is not easy with her paws but she is making it
shes almost here
Okay fine this is the ONE Christmas thing I will reblog before Thanksgiving BUT THAT’S IT
SASHA’S BACK ON MY DASH!
Y’all better behave, you have two months
You better watch out
You better watch out
You better watch out
You better watch out
Sasha the Christmas tiger my absolute beloved
On the issue of the ‘q slur’...
So, yesterday, I got into a rather stupid internet argument with someone who was peddling what seemed to me to be a rather insidious narrative about slur-reclamation. Someone in the ensuing notes raised a point which I thought was interesting, and worrying, and probably needed to be addressed in it’s own post. So here we go:
The word ‘queer’ itself seems to be especially touchy for many, so let me begin to address this by way of analogy.
Instead of talking about “queer”, let’s start by talking about “Jew” - a word which I believe is very similar in its usage in some significant ways.
Now, the word “Jew” has been used as a derogatory term for literally hundreds of years. It is used both as a noun (eg. “That guy ripped me off - what a dirty Jew”) and as a verb (eg. “That guy really Jew-ed me”). These usages are deeply, fundamentally, horrifically offensive, and should be used under no circumstances, ever. And yet, I myself have heard both, even as recently as this past year, even in an urban location with plenty of Jews, in a social situation where people should have known better. In short – the word “Jew”, as it is used by certain antisemites, is – quite unambiguously – a slur. Not a dead slur, not a former slur – and active, living slur that most Jews will at some point in their life encounter in a context where the term is being used to denigrate them and their religion.
Now here’s the thing, though: I’m a Jew. I call myself a Jew. I prefer that all non-Jews call me a Jew – so do most Jews I know. “Jew” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Judaism, the same way that “Muslim” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Islam, and “Christian” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Christianity.
In fact, almost all of the terms that non-Jews use to avoid saying “Jew” (eg. “a member of the Jewish persuasion”, “a follower of the Jewish faith”, “coming from a Jewish family”, “identifying as part of the Jewish religion”, etc) are deeply offensive, because these terms imply to us that the speaker sees the term “Jew” (and by extension, what that term stands for) as a dirty word.
“BUT WAIT” – I hear you say – “didn’t you just say that Jew is used as a slur?!?”
Yes. Yes, I did. And also, it is fundamentally offensive not to call us that, because it is our name and our identity.
Let me back up a little bit, and bring you into the world of one of those 2000s PSAs about not using “that’s so gay”. Think of some word that is your identity – something which you consider to be a fundamental and intrinsic part of yourself. It could be “female” or “male”, or “Black” or “white”, “tall” or “short”, “Atheist” or “Mormon” or “Evangelical” – you name it.
Now imagine that people started using that term as a slur.
“What a female thing to do!” they might say. “That teacher doesn’t know anything, he’s so female!”
Or maybe, “Yikes, look at that idiot who’s driving like an atheist. It’s so embarrassing!”
Or perhaps, “Oh gross, that music is so Black, turn it off!”
Now, what would you say if the same groups of people who had been saying those things for years turned around and avoided using those words to describe anything other than an insult?
“Oh, so I see you’re a member of the female persuasion!”
“Is he… a follower of the atheist beliefs? Like does he identify as part of the community of atheist-aligned individuals?”
“So, as a Black-ish identified person yourself – excuse me, as a person who comes from a Black-ish family…”
Here’s the fundamental problem with treating all words that are used as slurs the same, without any regard for how they are used and how they developed – not all slurs are the same.
No one, and I mean no one (except maybe for a small handful of angsty teens who are deliberately making a point of being edgy) self-identifies as a kike. In contrast, essentially all Jews self-identify as Jews. And when non-Jews get weird about that identity on the grounds that “Jew is used as a slur”, despite the fact that it is the name that the Jewish community as a whole resoundingly identifies with, what they are basically saying is that they think that the slur usage is more important than the Jewish community self-identification usage. They are saying, in essence, “we think that your name should be a slur.”
Now, at the top I said that the word “Jew” and the word “queer” had some significant similarities in terms of their usage, and I think that’s pretty apparent if you look at what people in those communities are saying about those terms. When American Jews were being actively threatened by neo-Nazis in the 70s, the slogan of choice was “For every Jew a .22!″. When the American Queer community was marching in the 90s in protest of systemic anti-queer violence, the slogan of choice was “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” Clearly, these are terms that are used by the communities themselves, in reference to themselves. Clearly, these terms are more than simply slurs.
But while there are useful similarities between how the terms “Jew” and “Queer” are used by bigots and by their own communities, I’d also like to point out that there is pretty substantial and important difference:
Unlike for “queer”, there is no organized group of Jewish antisemites who are using the catchphrase “Jew is a slur!” in order to selectively silence and disenfranchise Jews who are part of minority groups within Judaism.
This is the real rub with the term queer – no one was campaigning about it being a slur until less than a decade ago. No one was saying that you needed to warn for the word queer when queer people were establishing the academic discipline of queer studies. No one was ‘think of the children”-ing the umbrella term when queer activists were literally marching for their lives. Go back to even 2010 and the term “q slur” would have been basically unparseable – if I saw someone tag something “q slur”, like most queer people I would have wracked my brains trying to figure out what slur even started with q, and if I learned that it was supposed to be “queer”, my default assumption would be that the post was made by a well-meaning but extremely clueless straight person.
I literally remember this shift – and I remember who started it. Exclusionists didn’t like the fact that queer was an umbrella term. Terfs (or radfems as they like to be called now) didn’t like that queer history included trans history; biphobes and aphobes didn’t like that the queer community was also a community to bisexuals and asexuals. And so what could they possibly say, to drive people away from the term that was protecting the sorts of queer people that they wanted to exclude?
Well, naturally, they turned to “queer is a slur.”
And here’s the thing – queer is a slur, just like Jew is a slur, and no one is denying that. And that fact makes “queer is a slur so don’t use it” a very convincing argument on the surface: 1) queer is still often used as a slur, and 2) you shouldn’t ever use slurs without carefully tagging and warning people about them (and better yet, you should never use them at all), and so therefore 3) you need to tag for “the q slur” and you need to warn people not to call the community “the queer community” or it’s members “queer people” or its study “queer studies” – because it’s a slur!
But the crucial step that’s missing here is exactly the same one above, for the word “Jew” – and that step is that not all slurs are the same. When a term is both used as a slur and used as a self-identity term, then favoring the slur meaning instead of the identity meaning is picking the side of the slur-users over the disadvantaged group!
If you say or tag “q slur” you are sending the message, whether you realize it or not, that people who use “queer” as a slur are more right about its meaning than those who use it as their identity. Tagging for “queer” is one thing. People can filter for “queer” if it triggers them, just like people can filter for anything else. Not everyone has to personally use the term queer, or like the term queer. But there is no circumstance where the term “q slur” does not indicate that you think queer is more of a slur than of an accurate description of a community.
If I, as a Jew, ever came across a post where someone had warned for innocent, positive, non-antisemitic content relating to Judaism with the tag “J slur”, I would be incensed. So would any Jew. The act of tagging a post “J slur” is in and of itself antisemitic and offensive.
Queer people are allowed to feel the same about “q slur”. It is not a neutral warning term – it is an attack on our identity.
This entire post really resonated with me. Especially the part where you say:
“When a term is both used as a slur and used as a self-identity term, then favoring the slur meaning instead of the identity meaning is picking the side of the slur-users over the disadvantaged group!”
If you say or tag “q slur” you are sending the message, whether you realize it or not, that people who use “queer” as a slur are more right about its meaning than those who use it as their identity.
in mesopotamia there were no 'cover letters' or 'curriculum vitaes'. there were just, pots.
And copper ingots. Very high quality ingots from a very reputable merchant
#tumblr's dedication to dragging ea-nasir from across history is one of my fave things about this hellsite
#somewhere in the afterlife #ea-nasir is gaining power #and he has no idea why
Y’know, that’s a really good point. Are we sure we want to be giving the worst businessman in known history more power in the afterlife?!
Yes, because when Trump dies and thinks he’s going to be king shit in the afterlife, ea-nasir is going to one-shot him with a shitty copper ingot upside his empty orange fucking head
Each Reblog adds another copper ingot to ea-nasir's afterlife pile. Each like improves his aim.
I shared this post with my boyfriend and he said "Trump isn't even the biggest grifter alive!"
Faramir said fuck your storyline
‘i did not even want him’ well there’s a faramir mood
this is SUCH a writing mood omg
Strider did this to him too, wayyyyy back when. Just showed up there in Bree, smoking in the corner. Refused to leave or let the story go on without him.
Maybe it’s a Númenorean thing. XD
@lorata with some excellent Tolkien commentary over here
I love that this is a universal experience among writers.
Petition to rename RotK “Return of That Weirdo in the Tavern, I Don’t Know Who He Is or Why He’s Here.”
It’s important that the ponies were all safe tho.
This is literally the best post I have ever seen on tumblr.
I will never not reblog the fact that the Good Professor himself was a plot pantser. He was a masterful world-builder, but plotter, outliner? Nope!
me and tolkien really hitting it off because neither of us plan jackshit like oh who’s that dude? jee i’d like to know myself
Yes I re-read my own fics because I wrote them for ME
Wish that bitch would update though.
With the advent of this Post+ bullshite, I feel it’s my duty as a fandom elder to not just helplessly scream DON’T MONETIZE YOUR FANWORKS at younger fans, but—since Tumblr got sneaky about the TOS and any legal trouble caused by this idiocy will fall directly on posters—to teach you guys, unfortunately, about a part of fandom I thought we’d left behind: the disclaimer.
The disclaimer provides a document you can point to in order to say “I know my rights with regard to fanworks and how this goes, but also your rights with regard to your IP,” and it has several parts. We used to get pretty silly with these, and you can be lighthearted if you wish, but make sure all the parts are there. As an example I’ll be using an unfinished old series of mine called CT-verse. A good, solid disclaimer looks like this:
1) Name the original owners of the IP. “Sailor Moon is a production owned by Toei Animation, Naoko Takeuchi, and Princess Naoko Productions.”
2) Name any concepts belonging to you that are based in the original, if you wish. Just be aware that if the IP holder chooses to use these, you have very little legal standing for compensation. “Sailor Mau is a creation of myself for this series.”
3) Anything of your own that can be removed from the context of the original IP should be named here, along with your wishes surrounding copyright. (This means: if you could put it in a totally different story in a total different fandom, or an original work, and it’d still make sense, it’s yours.) “The Ell conlang and alphabet script are my own creation and may not be used for profit without written permission and acknowledgement of copyright.” Keep in mind you want to keep these wishes reasonable—someone may wish to write fanfic about your fanfic, and also if the copyright lawyers get involved you do NOT want to look like a hypocrite.
4) This one is SUPER-important. YOU CANNOT SKIP THIS. NOT FOR ANYTHING. THIS IS YOUR PARACHUTE. You must state: “This work has not been created for profit or financial compensation, and is a transformative fair use work in accordance with Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act.” Translation: you’re not getting paid and you’re protected under this specific law. For non-US users: you’re okay. You don’t have to replace this section because Tumblr’s servers are housed in the US and therefore governed by US law.
So all put together, it should look like this:
“Sailor Moon is a production owned by Toei Animation, Naoko Takeuchi, and Princess Naoko Productions. Sailor Mau is a creation of myself for this series. The Ell conlang and alphabet are my own creation and may not be used for profit without written permission and acknowledgement of copyright. This work has not been created for profit or financial compensation, and is a transformative fair use work under Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act.”
Post this at the beginning of every story/chapter/section (or post it on the first chapter/section and provide a link to it on every subsequent part). And when I said you can be lighthearted:
“I don’t own Sailor Moon, or I wouldn’t have so many student loans. That’s all Toei and Naoko Takeuchi, this is just a fair use transformative work. I did create the Ell conlang, though, so don’t be a dick and claim it’s yours, k? Ask first.” <— it still has all the important parts. Make sure they’re all there and that you use the words “fair use” and “transformative.” They’re absolutely critical. But you should be okay even if you don’t sound like a lawyer, as long as all the parts are there.
Keep in mind: you can’t just say this. YOU HAVE TO ACT ON IT. Putting this on a paid post does not help you and may harm others. It’s also advisable that if you have a tip jar, you specify that it’s for your original posts and work.
I’m sorry it’s come to this, lovelies. But you’ve got to protect yourselves, because Tumblr is actively trying to harm you. Learn it, share it, use it. Stay safe.
Please please please refrain from paywalling any sort of fanfic. The lack of monetary gain from fanfiction is one of the core reasons we are legally allowed to create/share/read it.
Fair Use doesn't entirely hinge on whether or not we are earning money, but it is one of the biggest factors a court will consider.
The OTW (company responsible for our ability to legally create fanfic; also owns Ao3) already does so much for us legally, and we absolutely do not need to make their job any harder.
People have written a lot of touchy-feely pieces on this subject but I thought I’d get right to the heart of the matter
[The artist, putting a simple cake next to a much fancier one: “Aw man, that guy’s cake is way better than mine.” The Audience, gleefully holding up a knife and fork “HOLY SHIT! TWO CAKES!”]
additions from the og artist (credit)
remember: your feelings of inadequacy are often projection and not reality
good things will happen 🧿
things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿
THIS ONE FUCKING WORKS. REBLOG IT.
queer is a gender, sexuality, romantic orientation, political alignment, and mission statement, babey
queer is literally a slur that means weird and strange
and I most certainly am weird and strange, what else you got?
Don’t ask.
Know your history:
Gay:
Used to mean carefree
Then sexually deviant
Then prostitute
Then slut
Then sodomite
And THEN as we know it today but only as a slur
Reclaimed in the seventies
LGBT:
Invented in the nineties
Has faced constant backlash (from both straight, queer, and LGBT folks from being not inclusive enough or too inclusive)
Every year there are pushes to change to acronym
LGBTQ
LGBTQ+
LGBTQ*
LGBTQIA
Mogai
Alphabet soup
Queer:
Used to mean “other”
Became a slang term for “not straight” in the 1400s
Became a slur in the early 1900s
Reclaimed in the 80s.
Sudden push back from within the queer community to have it seen only as a slur in the 2010s, a push that can be traced back to terf ideology.
Is the only term that includes all non cishet people
Homosexual
A medical diagnosis
Used for decades to make queerness into a mental illness
Used as a slur for the latter half of the 20th century
Rejected by the queer community as an acceptable term for a brief period of time in the early 2000s before coming back into fashion.
Only describes the experience of cis gay men and cis lesbians
Think what you want, believe what you will, but every word we have ever used to describe ourselves is coated in blood.
Op ur so brave to assume people on this site can read well enough to get this
I actually talked to an older queer guy who said he was amazed to see how many young people call themselves gay. When he hears it, he just hears a slur…but he also said he was glad that people are able to reclaim it, and he’s happy to see a generation of lgbt+ people comfortable with it.
People on this site could learn from him
“… every word we have ever used to describe ourselves is coated in blood.”
May the 10 of Pentacles bless your account with more money than you can spend. 💵✨
10 of Pentz came thruuu
Omg this actually works!!! Thank you 10 of Pentacles!!!
I could seriously use this money right now….
Please give me my refund of 400$ soon…
I feel obligated to reblog this every time it shows up in my dash
No bragging, just 100% floored and grateful. Work hard, maintain a positive attitude, and believe that anything can happen.
So I reblogged this exactly a week ago because I thought it was funny and uh lo and behold, a family friend wrote me a big ol’ check just to help me out of a tough financial spot AND my bank refunded me $32 for fees they’d originally taken out. SO UH YEAH. Reblogging this again in hopes that it brings equally good fortune to my followers.
Sure why not? Jobs bring in money and prosperity…
I NEED TO FIX MY CAR DOOR
It fucking WORKED.
Could use this to help with Mini-p’s nursery school, the need to get our winter tires put on rims (which would save us tire-changing money in the long run), maybe someday help me visit my family in the US again, lol… :) Between winter tires at the start of the year, needing to have the garage door fixed, needing a new dryer, then losing the nice subsidized nursery school program, etc…2018 has been a bit spendier than normal. D'oh.
I can always use a boost. Hopefully from book orders!
I mean… The tarot has rarely disappointed me in the past