凌危贊 of Shiranui Editorial

Yo! Name’s 凌危贊 (they/them) | Adult (21+) | Mixed Asian-Oceanian | Culturally sensitive editor & onomast 🌈🧠🤟🏽🔇

[shiranuieditorial]

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[dronna-le-chat]

French Pet Names & Headcanons (Loki, Charles, Noa, Hugo)

I’ve read a lot of fanfics where French characters call their lover “ma chérie” or “ma belle”, so I wanted to share some other pet names, because “ma chérie” is rarely used between young people or even between lovers in general.

Of course, there are exceptions, this is just my opinion !!

• Ma chérie / mon chéri → mostly used in family relationships (a parent talking to a young family member) or between girls (friendship).

• Chérie / chéri (without “ma” / “mon”) → used by lovers, but less common among young people.

• For lovers, all ages, very common (gender-neutral) : mon amour, mon cœur

• For lovers, mostly young people, very common (gender-neutral) : mon chat (with or without “mon”), bébé (usually without “mon”)

• Used by lovers and family members : mon ange, chaton, poussin, mon petit cœur

• To flirt with a girl : princesse, ma jolie, beauté (without “ma”), poupée (but poupée sounds like the kind of nickname an annoying bad boy would use)

• “Ma chérie”, “ma belle”, and “ma vie” are also mostly used between girls (friendship)

Personal Headcanons

♡ Julien Loki

♦ He calls his lover mon cœur because he sees them as a part of himself, the core of his feelings. ♦ He likes being called mon amour by his lover. ♦ Nicknames his loved ones use for him : “Ju”. No one ever calls him “Juju” (which is mostly used for girls named “Juliette” or “Julie”).

♡ Charles Chevalier

♦ He gives his lover cute nicknames like doudou or chouchou in casual contexts. Both can be used for men and women. ♦ I see him calling a girl “princesse”, "Chevalier" means "Knight" ♦ More seriously : mon chat, bébé ♦ He likes being called pretty much any pet name, but I think mon chat suits him best. ♦ Nicknames : “Charlie” (the most common nickname for someone named Charles), “Charlou” or “Chachou” (mostly just to annoy him because those nicknames sound ridiculous).

♡ Noël Noa

♦ How he calls his lover : mon amour (simple, efficient, common), chéri(e) because he’s old-fashioned. ♦ This man has no idea how to flirt, so he gets awkward and uses weird pet names. ♦ Nickname : “Nono” but he HATES being called “Nono”, but it’s actually really cute and sounds a little childish.

♡ Vivien Hugo

♦ He calls his lover mon amour because he believes he only has ONE LOVE in his life : a soulmate, the person made for him (it's really common to say "we are made for each other" / "nous sommes faits l'un pour l'autre") ♦ He flirts by using beauté with a completely neutral expression. ♦ Nicknames : “Viv’”, “Vivi” but he HATES it because it’s like “Nono”, and above all, “Vivi” sounds girly.

[creatingblackcharacters]

"Defying the Default"- Skin Tones and the Presence of Black Characters

Okay, this one is going to be half lesson and half a thought experiment- it may get a bit frustrating, as conversations like this often do- but remember, discomfort is not always a bad thing! So I ask that you walk with me for this one.

It’s also interesting, because I’m going to direct this towards everyone (readers included!), but specifically towards my fanfic writers of media with no visual medium, as I’ve noticed this pattern there, and it makes up a good amount of creators on this site. Okay? Okay.

Behold! Many shades of brown!

I had to wade through a lot of colorism for this, and even this link is subtly racist in its introduction- the idea that brown is ‘unexciting’ 🙄.

Anyway, you know where I’m going with this:

"Chocolate and Coffee"

Even the link above pulled this! Writers who use this... they’re not ‘wrong’ per se but… often uninspired. It feels... Lazy. When you can tell an author has put no thought into the brown of choice, it makes Black readers feel like you believe these are the only shades of brown- that that’s all we look like. Even chocolate is more diverse (white, milk, dark, marbled, cookies and cream?) Coffee can come in numerous shades as well (light, medium, dark roast? Type of bean?)

My first direction to help with this: make it a point to know what shade that character is (whether canonically, or if you're the original creator, look at a reference and write it down) and find a name! Be consistent! Find similar browns to one another. If the canon Black character's skin color is done poorly, find something similar and use that! (I'll get more into this in the next lesson!)

Our skin colors may modify as we age, it changes over the seasons/presence in the sun, and some people even have vitiligo! But we're not gonna be “dark roast coffee” one morning and “light milk chocolate” suddenly. We're not chameleons lmao.

And you know what? That shade you choose might very well be 'coffee'! But it's not going to be because you didn't look and assumed we're all some random brown! That’s the intent showing! If we can find endless ways to describe the beauty of white/pale skin, we absolutely can for brown! Be willing to unpack why you may not believe brown to be capable of beauty, and work through unlearning that- it will show in your writing! One way is by pausing with yourself, and recognizing when you had a biased thought. Even by this, you’re learning!

Here’s where I want us to get into the thought experiment:

I want you to think about the description of characters in stories (as a whole). Challenge yourself- in the fics and stories you read, how often is anyone blatantly labeled 'White'? Read a story or fic; how long can you imagine them as not-White before it's ever clarified? Because not even 'pale' automatically implies a White person!

You know how I’ve mentioned before that 'Black people are not a monolith'? I can find you at least some examples of Black people fitting some of the common descriptions of white characters.

"Brunette with brown eyes"

(Fun fact: I actually learned back in my Masters program that genetically no one has ‘black’ hair- our eyes are processing it as black, but it’s really just dark brown due to eumelanin. Regardless, if you stand us in the direct sunlight, you will see that our hair is usually just dark brown!)

"Red hair with pale skin"

“‘tanned’ skin with hazel/green eyes”

“blond hair" (period!)

Now, I’m not saying that blond haired Black people or Black folk with albinism are overly representative of my people. What I AM saying is that it needs to not be taken for granted that a reader is automatically assuming a character is White in your piece of fiction- I can assume your character looks like anything if it's not stated! Especially if the OG source is a book or a podcast! We’re just used to assigning these features- and characters- as white until ‘proven not’! The default!

I am guilty of this too! Even still, I reread many of my works and go ‘ah, I didn’t clarify.’ And I have to work on doing better at it. This is having intent for your Black characters, but really, it’s having intent for all of them!

(This doesn't mean going “the Black man said,” the way sometimes people say “the Chinese said” (which…. Tbh we should all stop doing that anyway, it's weird and racist))

My Next Challenge:

Some people may disagree, but- Ahem:

Say BLACK!

Breathe lmao! Take the time to recognize that it's OKAY to introduce a character as Black, to say Black, it's fine! Obviously be sensitive about it, don't shove it in there to “win your diversity points”, but like… People are Black. It's not a bad word. What matters is the context in which you used it!

You don't even have to say it every single time. Really just the first, introductory sentence will do. For example:

“[Character A], a bright, young, Black girl with knotless braids to her mid back, glittering hair clips matching her bright green t-shirt, and a brilliant smile that shined against her bistre skin.”

I recognize that some might argue that by saying “bistre”, you don't need to say Black. But 1) you don't have to be Black to be brown or dark skinned, and 2) There's a social stigma behind even saying Black- of discussing race in general, because it leads to discomfort. Race (as a sociological construct) exists. When we say nothing about it, allowing Whiteness to be the default, we're still emphasizing race, however silently! If you're already doing it... Why not mention it? 🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️

(here's a good clip of Ijeoma Oluo discussing the difficulty of discussing race; while I highly recommend the whole thing, the relevant clip is 4:25-5:39)

Maybe they're in the Black student organization in a lead position, maybe they're in a Black main cast of a play- it's okay to have those things in the story to help develop the idea that your Black character is actively Black! Just do your research to make sure you’re not leaning into stereotypes!

“There’s no races in my fantasy/future world!”

That’s fair! But I want to give you an example of how people will still project these identities onto your characters anyway:

No one has an explicitly stated 'race' in Avatar: The Last Airbender (afaik); they’re all divided by element culture. YET, many people were offended that a mixed-Korean actress was cast in her role in the live action- they ‘just didn’t see it’, because subconsciously they'd imagined her ‘face claims’ as WHITE, despite it never once being mentioned in the canon! (there’s also a firm sexualization and east Asian fetishization argument to be made about it, but that’s not within the scope of this particular conversation.)

Point is, if you are including humanoid characters in your fantasy stories, fine. You don't need to say ‘Black’ outright. But, that just means that you’re going to have to be even more detailed in your description. Because if I were watching a TV show and a Black actor shows up as an elf… I know what features I’m seeing! Entire protests have occurred over the casting of Black actors in a role ‘meant for a white person’; so... everyone sees it!

Conclusion

This is another reason why intention in character design and writing is important! Context clues and socialization help me understand who your character is. If it works like this for white characters, it can work like that for everyone else! You just have to know enough about me to write it in (and that's where the social and societal bias lie, because how much do you really know about me?)

A way to better understand this is reading books by Black authors (for fantasy, I would highly recommend Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko and Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi) as well as Black literary classics! Finding and reading Black fic authors in fandoms with Black characters! By learning how we describe ourselves and our skin colors, you’ll learn and practice how to appropriately describe us!

Now I can't make you do any of this! But I do want you all- writers especially- to start noticing our bias, how we may default to the experience of whiteness- and how that affects the way we write. When we have Black characters, and really any character of color, we need to start paying attention to how often their features, culture, and activities are emphasized, even for what we may consider to be 'background' details. That’s how we normalize creation and understanding, and become better at writing!

It’s just something to practice; remember, it’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers!

In addition, if you are interested in a simple read into why approaching race is so uncomfortable as a whole, I've attached Robin DiAngelo's book here! Thank you to the PDF guru @toiletpotato for the link!

[bouquet-and-pearls]

I love how this is broken down, it reminds me of a video I watched when I was still in Uni, it was essentially an essay presentation, that covered this topic (I wish I could remember the presenter, I might have to try and find it) but the food word descriptors resonate with me a lot. Growing up, I never really heard people use that to describe people and it wasn't until I think around the age of 6 or 7 or something like that, that a kid called me caramel and in my head at that tender age I was thinking, "Caramel?? I'm not a piece of candy???🤨" and it felt...strange. I don't think the kid was being malicious but they kept calling me that. I ended up telling my mother and she was concerned and basically (to spare the long details) told me "You aren't a food, don't let people call you that." I think because of that (and a lot more incidents like that, malicious or otherwise) made me avoid using those descriptors because it made me feel weird, but I like the point that it's not inherently 'wrong' but better ways to go about it. I also never thought about being too descriptive because my characters (oc's) were/are always either Black or Black biracial (because they're a part of me) I see my characters and see me, that is my default, but this is food for thought even for myself.

Anyway, before I go on a tangent and write an essay, beautifully written and explained and I loved the examples.

[writingdose]

I don’t know about y’all but my first draft is literally always my final draft and this has been the case since I started writing fics almost a decade ago. I proofread my works for typos, plot holes or grammatical errors but that’s it 😭

[everythingelseisspokenfor]

Oh yeahhh! For sure. I don't even start writing a fic till my imagination is so technicolor it demands a physical form. After that rewriting it feels like a sin 😂. And I don't feel obligated to make multiple drafts, just edits

[shiranuieditorial]

The rewriting-multiple-drafts method works neatly for some folks. The multiple-editing-rounds-on-the-same-draft method works splendidly for some folks. A mix of both could also work well for some folks who feel like each project needs a different treatment.

And guess what? Those are all valid and okay! There is not a single correct way to be a writer.

Keep experimenting around until you find what works for you! 🤗

[ahotknife]

i love the point in the hero’s journey where he gets bent over and railed until he cries

[noctthedoor]

Don’t leave this in the tags

[cupcake-bee-boy]

[Image ID: # I think that's called the climax]

[rneliflua]

[ohnoitstbskyen]

What it looks like to me is that these churns of outrage aren't actually about anything that these creators say or do, so much as they are a kind of reflexive action in response to literally any kind of friction. Like an angry infected rash flaring up with pain when it is brushed by a feather.

The show you like is telling a slightly different story than what you want? Friction is the same as pain so it is hurting me, AAAA!!! Your expectation of what was going to happen to that character you liked didn't pan out? Friction! Friction hurts! You're hurting me!!

But where the Disney Corporation can run a fucking angle grinder across the rash and barely provoke an "ow," indie creators (especially if they are not men), can get nearly run off the internet for things like factually answering a direct question or stating that the story they are writing has main characters.

There's a lot of misogyny in that, obviously, and in many awful flavors, but I think there's also mixed in there a very peculiar kind of consumer-brained entitlement. We expect that the big corporations will fuck us over every two seconds, and we expect to be utterly powerless to do anything about it because all they give a shit about is Line Go Up, but indie creators (especially if they are not men) are expected to be the balm to that infected rash. Where everything else in the world is painful and mean and uncomfortable, independent queer creators are expected to produce the comfortable swaddling bandage that dulls the pain and soothes the sensitivity. This is supposed to be our happy place, our safe place. It's supposed to be ours and belong to us and serve us.

And so they moment they produce friction, any friction, literally the tiniest amount of friction imaginable, well that's a failure! You are failing to live up to your purpose, and that's not just a creative failure but a moral and personal and spiritual failure too. It's a sin, in fact, it is a kind of evil. Friction hurts, and that means you are hurting me!

It creates this fucked up upside-down bizarro logic wherein the corpos and the companies can transgress to almost literally any degree, as much as they want, as often as they want, but queer independent creators (and I cannot stress this enough: especially if they are not men) have to walk tightrope on a razor wire and may God help their souls if they ever put a foot wrong. We will shake and shake and shake the towers until they each fall down; I didn't like that step I think you were taking, how dare you believe you deserve to be up there!

[darkspaceboytoy]

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.

[darkspaceboytoy]

Ask that someone sent a blog I follow that inspired this. You are twisting yourself into some incredibly bizarre pretzels so you can go “aha, a character I Relate To” and it’s just like. Well actually there just may not be parts of this film you can see yourself in. And that’s okay. You can enjoy this movie for many of its merits that aren’t “I am in it”.

[lexofexcel]

One of the main points of fiction is the opportunity to experience viewpoints and forms of existence that are different from our own. You can find a character or story interesting without it being like you somehow.

[doomhamster]

I honestly think it's because people took the core of representation - "everyone should be able to see themselves in media - and turned it into "everyone should be able to see themselves in EVERY INDIVIDUAL PIECE OF MEDIA".

I also think there's something interesting to be found in the dichotomy of right-wingers going "every piece of media is For Me and characters who aren't Like Me aren't allowed to be in it" vs. left-wingers going "every piece of media is For Me and so it's fine for me to "reinterpret" characters until they are Like Me, even if that means ruining their story or making it more stereotypical". Sadly I'm not braining well enough today to tease it all out.

[fiendish-illos]

hey dont cry Autism Creature speculative biology

[candiedwords]

Guys, should I make the Tibietch a native animal in my fictional country of Baksog (in my sci-fi/fantasy world)? 👉🏽👈🏽🥺 Autism is the norm in Bakskog because it's mostly populated by fairies, and my Celestialverse fairies are Autistic coded.

[shiranuieditorial]

Big yes!!! 🤩

[maxkirin]

Hi, I have a question! Do you find it’s easier to start with an outline, or write as you go? If the latter, how do you avoid drafting burnout? If the former, how do you know when you’re “ready” to start writing? Thanks!

Honestly, I do only the slightest amount of outlining before writing a novel. We're talking like, two afternoon of writing down notes and I'm all set to go. This is mostly because I used to outline (a lot) and that led to drafting burnout, so there's my solution to that little problem!

As to how to know when I'm ready to write, here's a little secret:

I don't outline until I'm ready to write the book. I outline until I'm ready to write the first chapter.

The thing about outlining is that it is quite a rabbit hole, and its easy to fall into thinking that you have to plan everything before you start. But you don't. The thing nobody ever tells young writers is that books take a while to write, and you're going to have plenty of time to figure out what's going to happen in your story.

If you're anything like me, you likely spend a large portion of your day thinking about your stories. Thinking about your characters. Thinking about what is going to happen next in their tale.

That's why, once I have enough to get started, I do. I know I'm going to have time to figure out what follows next. I think of this as passive outlining, and it's the reason why I love going on walks and doing the dishes.

I hope this helps! Thank you for your question~ 💛💙

[samiholloway]

I outline AFTER writing. Not until at least half way through, usually further, mostly to make sure everything is coming together right for the end rather than setting things up beforehand. Outlining just feels like writing, making writing feel like writing the same thing again, which kills the fun!

[maxkirin]

So, someone wanted some tips on planning/outlining their novel and instead I made this. It kind of happened.

If you’re new to my silliness let me introduce myself.

My name is M. Kirin and I write books. If you’re interested in writer resources, inspiration, and the adventures of a dork, you could do a lot worse than me :3

[the-writers-manual]

This is literally the best resource I’ve come across to get your novel-writing journey started. Its so effective.

[the-world-of-naiyara]

This is Magic!!!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

words for when your characters ______

Agree

accede, acceptance, accord, acknowledgment, acquiescence, align, avowal, bear, cohere, compromise, consent, contract, draft, enlist, give in/give up, go along/go along with, grant, negotiate, unanimous, yield

Deny

abjure, abuse, affront, attack, backstab, bad-mouth, belie, blacken, blemish, confront, curse, darn, defamation, defile, demur, denigrate, detract, dig, disclaim, discountenance, disgrace, disown, disparagement, downplay, explode, flout, fulminate, gainsay, gird, invective, jeer, lament, lecture, malign, minimize, mouth, needle, oppose, protest, put down, put-down, rebuff, refute, remonstrate, renunciation, run down, satirize, scold, show up, sit-in, slander, smear, snap, snub, squeal, sully, swearing, taunt, tirade, turn, underestimate, vituperation, write off, yammer

Explain

account for, admit, apprise, cite, clarify, come clean, concede, confirm, corroborate, defense, demonstrate, dilate, elucidate, enlighten, evidence, expand, explicate, gloss, illustrate, itemize, let on, palliate, plea, prove, recite, simplify, speak out/speak up, spell out, translator, warrant

Fabricate

aspersion, belie, disprove, profane

Inform

acknowledge, address, advertise, allow, allusion, apprise, bare, betrayal, blab, breathe, briefing, broadcast, chronicle, clue, come out with, confession, convey, debunk, define, detail, dictate, divulge, expose, feature, furnish, give, gossip, hint, intimate, issue, lecture, newscaster, orate, out of the closet, pass, post, proclaim, promulgate, publication, publish, release, reveal, show up, speak, spill, squeal, talk, tip, uncover, unveil, weatherperson, whisper

Instruct

bar, educate, prescribe

Persuade

advance, argument, bend, budge, carry, coerce, convince, discourage, draw, drum up, elicit, entice, forward, goad, hammer away/hammer into, induce, influence, invite, lobby, motivate, negotiation, pitch, prevail upon/prevail on, prompt, reason, spur, sway, urge, win/win over

Promise

assurance, avow, commitment, ensure, go back/go back on, oath, portend, vouch, warrant, word

Suggest

advice, advocate, ask, come up with, connote, drum into, exhort, fish for, get at, guide, imply, insinuate, moralize, move, nomination, pontificate, preach, propose, recommend, urge

Praise

accent, acclamation, accredit, adulation, apotheosis, applause, benediction, bless, champion, citation, commend, compliment, congratulations, credit, dedicate, deify, elevate, endorse, eulogize, exalt, extol, flatter, flattery, glorify, homage, laud, lionize, obsequy, plaudits, puff, salute, thanks, tribute, worship

Warn

admonish, alert, caution, caveat, defy, enjoin, exhortation, foreboding, foretell, page, remind, warning

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.

Source ⚜ Writing Basics & Refreshers ⚜ On Vocabulary

[mauannacreates]

Ooh, these are some good words that I might have to go back to when I need to think of words to use, some which are complicated and even I haven't heard of until today.

So thanks for that.

[kayforpay]

history fucked me up

oxford was built and operational as a college before the rise of the mayans and cleopatra lived in a time nearer to pizza hut’s invention than to the pyramids being built

[kayforpay]

I need a noncomprehensive history book that covers Known World History in time periods, like “in this century, all this shit was happening concurrently” and not just all spread out so I have to piece it together like some unpaid uneducated scholar

[archaeologysucks]

You mean like this?

The Timetables of History by Bernard Grun

I grew up with this book, which is frickin’ enormous, and it was endlessly fascinating to young me to pour over the side by side comparison of events taking place concurrently under different headings and in different parts of the world.

Or if you want something you can put on your wall, there’s this:

World History Timeline

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I had this book! My grandpa gave it to me and it was really freakin useful!!

[mckitterick]

I loved this book! Same for The Timetables of Science: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Science.

Same for The Timetables of Technology: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Technology. Great references!

[lepetitpoete]

okay but here’s an even cooler (free!) visualization that goes a step further and tracks ideas, devices, infrastructures, and systems of power

Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500

✨️with a special focus on colonialism, militarization, automation, and enclosure✨️

You can spend hours upon hours exploring this

[dancinggrimm]

If you’re a more visual learner, you might enjoy this

It has gorseous, detailed spreads and a very charming art style

[whetstonefires]

funny grammatical oddity i keep seeing circulating in fanfiction lately is the phrase 'donned in.'

as in, a character will be described as 'donned in' something, usually a color.

it's a pretty straightforward backformation sort of thing--'to don' is roughly to wear, and it's more formal and poetic sounding than the verbs we normally use for that.

so, at some point, people started mistakenly shoving 'donned' (as a gerund describing something that happens to clothes) into the grammatical niche of 'dressed' (as a gerund describing a state a person experiences relative to clothes), and picking this mistake up from one another. because if you've read it a few times and don't know any better it sounds perfectly cromulent.

completely unaware that this makes their writing sound sort of childish.

[whetstonefires]

because...there are specific conventions in english around which prepositions do what with which verbs, you know? and how any given verb relates to its direct and indirect objects.

these conventions encode information. they are functioning parts of the language, doing real work.

[whetstonefires]

to 'don' an item of apparel is specifically to put it on. referring to people as 'donning' a uniform etc that they already have on completely is emphasizing their choice to put it on; it's a little poetic but it has a long history and parses fairly readily.

you don't naturally say someone is 'donned in' any sort of outfit because that's not respecting the...the vector of the verb, see? which way it's facing.

donning is something you do to the clothes. it's like 'wear,' but with an emphasis on the process of getting there. if you try to invert it and make it function as a synonym of 'dressed' you have a really awkward sentence. the verb is pointing the wrong way.

verbs are highly motile parts of speech! the direction in which they happen is often an important part of their meaning!

[whetstonefires]

this oddity isn't really something that's being done in everyday speech, so i don't think it counts as natural language evolution. this is specifically a quirk of people writing in a slightly higher register than they're fully fluent in, so i think it's likely to continue looking sort of silly for a very long time.

the fancypants vaguely archaic substitute for 'dressed' is 'garbed.' it takes the same prepositions and points in the same directions.

am i making any sense here? a person who is 'donned' is someone who is being worn. stop making me picture that.

[navigatorsghost]

YES THIS.

Btw, if you want the Ye Olde counterpart word for the act of removing an outfit or an item of clothing, the verb you are looking for is "to doff". If you need a mnemonic, you can think of "don" and "doff" as contractions of "do on" and "do off", which is not exactly historically correct but it's close enough, and once you think of that it's really easy to remember which one is which and how they both work.

(In actual use I've seen "doff" by far the most often in the context of hats, incidentally, because it was historically a common term for the act of momentarily raising or removing one's hat as a gesture of acknowledgement or respect. To "doff one's cap" meant to briefly take it off, and you might very likely see that usage in old fiction here and there.)

[anarchistmemedistro]

I noticed you have tagged posts ableist language on posts which I haven’t noticed the ableist language in. Sometimes in further reflection I can see why you have added that tag, and sometimes not. If you’ve ever got the time/inclination, could you explain some of the more nuanced ableist language usages?

sure thing! (and obviously, trigger warning for ableist language to follow)

I know many may feel I take a pretty radical stance, but i've studied enough linguistics to know how powerful the words we use can be, even when we don't intend it in that way. so I use the ableist language tag for when people are not being ableist but are using language which reinforces ableism. this can get a bit tricky as the people who are the subjects of ableist terms may often identify with or reclaim those terms, like calling someone a cripple is ableist, but many people self-identify as cripples, like the cripple punk movement.

I think they generally fall in three categories:

intelligence: stupid, idiot, moron, etc. intelligence and iq are not real, they're eugenicist myths and insulting people's intelligence only feeds these myths and serves the ruling class. build solidarity by seeing everyone as your equal. there is no moral value to having received a better or worse education than someone else. also many of these terms come directly from eugenics, such as their classifications of types or degrees of autism.

diagnoses: psycho, dumb, schizo, bipolar etc. these are real health conditions and i shouldn't have to explain why using them as insults is deeply offensive.

saneism: insane, crazy, mad, etc. the sane/insane dichotomy, if it was ever helpful, which I doubt, has been outdated for generations. there is no medical diagnosis of 'insane', there are hundreds of mental health conditions and an infinite number of combinations which we are barely beginning to understand. but none of them have or convey a moral value. using them as insults only stigmatizes those of us who have them, to the benefit of the ruling class and detriment of solidarity.

even if you are skeptical or attached to this language I'd challenge you to try not using it. you'll find it improves your vocabulary and your speaking and writing skills. not just that but it will deepen how you think about your fellow humans.

[ymirjotunn]

some additions from a disability justice worker:

there's casual ableist language centered on physical disabilities, too: lame and spaz are the ones i hear the most. people who have difficulty walking or who cannot walk are not inherently uncool or worse; people with cerebral palsy or tremor are not inherently crazy, wild/wacky, uncontrollable, or less intelligent.

sentiments like "unemployed behavior" and "you must be a total shut-in/touch grass" and other things that imply employment or leaving the house (privileges that many disabled people do not have) are necessary for being good, worthwhile, or intelligent are increasingly frequent on tumblr. especially with the increasing frequency of people who are housebound or bedbound and/or cannot work due to chronic conditions like long covid, it's becoming increasingly more harmful to pretend these sentiments are not empowered as insults by structural ableism.

calling someone braindead or accusing them of "being brain damaged" or "having brain rot" or "being smooth-brained" and the like are all also serious, common issues. brain damage does not make someone "worse" or "evil" or "less intelligent."

words with -tard and -oid at the end are references to slurs for people with intellectual disabilities. for example, "rightoid" is not a progressive or silly way to refer to right-wingers, it's ableist and racist.

the most common reclaimed ableist slurs you'll see include: mad (often capitalized), crazy (my personal preference), cripple, and crip (the disabled equivalent of "queer;" i know some Black disability justice scholars who choose to spell this krip as well).

final note: the vast majority of people are not in a position to reclaim the r slur, even if they are autistic. its primary targets are people who do not have access to speech, who have intellectual disabilities, and/or who have developmental genetic syndromes ("behavioral phenotypes") like down syndrome -- not just any autistic person, and not just any person who was in segregated education, either. the majority of this population does not have access to social media, and in my experience vanishingly few of them want anything to do with the r slur or the sentiments that accompany it. i have met people with intellectual disability who prefer to call themselves dumb or stupid, but this is an individual choice and should never be assumed.

for more on why this matters, i strongly recommend ly xīnzhèn zhǎngsūn's 2014 (accessible) essay "violence in language: circling back to linguistic ableism"

[bellaswansong]

another perk to dropping these words is that their re emergence in your vocabulary can become an early warning sign for burnout

[scarlet-rosepetals]

I think a really positive step that I would encourage people to take even more so than cutting out lists of words is to just, consider why you’re saying them and what they’re conveying. Are you actually getting to the heart of what you want to say, or are you just parroting a bunch of words you’ve been taught are Things You Say When You Don’t Like Someone?

As an example, I once watched a video from a creator over on YouTube (Thought Slime, if you’re curious) where they mentioned replacing words like “stupid” in their vocabulary with “incurious”, and that change in language totally shifted my perspective to better understand why I was frustrated with the behavior I’d been describing as “stupid”. A transphobe for example, who’s hateful towards trans people and sports a willful ignorance towards their experiences, is not “being stupid”, they’re displaying an absence of the curiosity that generally comes with caring about the world outside yourself. They’re being incurious and callous, and saying that is infinitely more accurate than throwing out slang rooted in ableist concepts of so-called intelligence.

I suggest this because 1. I firmly believe in being a little shit-talking hater and want to give people the tools for proper griping, and 2. because I’ve noticed that so often when people are told “this language is problematic”, they just carry forward the unkindness of that language with words they’ve yet to see on a list of problematic terms (think people who say shit like “that’s so stupid oops I mean neurodivergent”) and/or eventually burn out altogether trying to keep track of all the information they see on what words they should and shouldn’t use and have no means of reconciling when different sources contradict each other.

There’s just no substitute for putting your own critical thought into what you’re saying. I truly can’t recommend it enough.

[amygdalae]

My problem with heterosexual romance novels (which I am reading under duress due to my coworker book club but find somewhat entertaining cuz they're not something I normally wld read) is that whenever the love interest is an asshole the author also makes him all dommy dom. when what I really want is for him to be thoroughly put in his place. All of these shithead Christian grey knockoff guys in these books would be excellent brat material but nobody cares what I want. Nobody cares what I want

[catblinker]

privileged asshole who's never been told no getting domesticated tonite? guy who's never encountered real hardship and thinks he deserves to take what he wants taught to sit pretty and beg when he wants something tonite queen? taking a guy who thinks he can claim you and breaking him so hard he takes joy in being less than you because he gets to be yours tonite?

[i-might-be-vanny]

nepo baby used to building an income off of stealing his underlings' ideas getting the absolute shit pegged out of him? finance bro who's never known a woman's touch finally getting his chance only for the woman to bend him over his own desk and rail him until he forgets his own name? married ceo who explores some seemingly uncharted twitter territory only to find out he's actually a massive whalesub?

[avelera]

The Causal Chain And Why Your Story Needs It

The most obnoxious thing my writing teacher taught me every story needed, that I absolutely loathed studying in the moment and that only later, after months of resisting and fighting realized she was right, was something called the causal chain.

Simply put, the causal chain is the linked cause-and-effect that must logically connect every event, reaction, and beat that takes place in your story to the ones before and after.

The Causal Chain is exhausting to go through. It is infuriating when someone points out that an event or a character beat comes out of nowhere, unmoored from events around it.

It is profoundly necessary to learn and include because a cause-and-effect chain is what allows readers to follow your story logically which means they can start anticipating what happens next, which is what is required for a writer to be able to build suspense and cognitively engage the audience, to surprise them, and to not infuriate them with random coincidences that hurt or help the characters in order to clumsily advance the author's goals.

By all means, write your story as you want to write it in the first draft, and don't worry about this principle too much. This is an editing tool, not a first draft tool. But one of the first things you should do when retroactively begin preparing your story to be read by others is going step by step through each event and confirming that a previous event leads to it and that subsequent events are impacted by it on the page.

[elidyce]

When your character is standing knee-deep in literal or metaphorical shit with a weapon in one hand and their last hope of surviving evaporating around them, and they’re wondering how their simple smuggling job/adulthood ritual/simple morning in an ordinary village led to ALL OF THIS, both they and the reader need to be able to backtrack through every single choice, mishap, attempt at fixing earlier problems and panicky flight or fib led them unerringly to this moment. That chain cannot have breaks in it, or you lose the whole impact. 

[greersarchive]

If you need any more evidence for why this is important, go back and look at the 2006 Star Trek reboot film. You notice how there's a big scene where Kirk runs to the bridge and explains to everyone how they're warping into a trap? And then when they drop out of warp, the Enterprise winds up being the only survivor of the small fleet sent to deal with the problem? Yeah, those two events are completely unrelated to each other. The reason the Enterprise survives has nothing to do with Kirk's revelation, it happens because Sulu accidentally left the parking brake on. What was the point of Kirk's revelation then? ... Well he needed to be on the bridge in the next scene. That's about it.

[shiranuieditorial]

There is no creation out of nothing. Everything has an origin, and even if the characters are not aware of or cannot explain these causal chains, the author (ideally) should develop them fully, record them in the story bible, and be constantly conscious of them throughout the project’s entire production process (and might also extend to post-publication if it’s part of a series).

This is a key point in your book(/screenplay/game script/comic series/whatever project medium) we editors look out for during developmental editing rounds, usually starting from the big picture (e.g., “Does the setting follow a cosmic history identical to ours, with the big bang, the dinosaurs, the Chicxulub impactor, the surviving organisms’ adaptive radiation, and so on?”, “Do these significant events in the plot make sense, given the constraints of this world?”, “Is this action actually feasible, given the constraints of this particular society and their education level?”, etc.) and slowly trickling down to the smaller picture (e.g., “Which of these possible reactions would most likely happen for this character, given their personality, neurotype, upbringing, and the current environment they are in?”, “Is the POV character in the appropriate headspace to be noticing these things?”, the “hamburger and french fries” etymological dilemma, etc.), encompassing every detail we can possibly think of. Then, the author and editor brainstorm and work them out together to ensure (a) the logic adds up in your whole story, and (b) when the logic doesn’t look like it adds up, it is intentional and can actually be explained behind the scenes (→ This is especially great for a lead-up to the next instalment! 👌🏽).

This is our opportunity to be as pedantic as we want!

[azrielsshadows42]

There are two types of writers:

1. 'It's fiction, it doesn't need to make sense!'

2. 'I didn't account for the rotation of the planet and how that affects the constalations while my characters stargazed at different times of year, I have failed as a writer, and this entire thing is trash'

[shiranuieditorial]