Sophie French

Sophie, 38, French, mother of two teenage boys, loves writing about two idiots in love. My blog is all about Drarry, and the very occasional side of BBC Sherlock. :)

[olderthannetfic]

You’re totally welcome on my lawn, but I wish you wouldn’t pee on the grass

I see a lot of young-ish fans on Tumblr being uncomfortable with the idea of “old people” still being in fandom. Even episode 17 of One True Podcast, “Stomping On Each Other’s Lawns - Generational Divides in Fandom”, which was trying to have people from both sides of “the generation gap” actually had fans in their early 20s and late 20s and referred to the fact that there were even some people in their 40s and 50s kicking around tumblr–acknowledging older fans while implicitly claiming they’re much rarer than in reality.

Tumblr is:

13-17 - 15%

18-34 - 41%

35-54 - 29%

55+ - 15%

There are plenty of very young people on tumblr. There are plenty of not-so-young people on tumblr. It’s quite a spread.

AO3 was proposed in 2007, almost a decade ago. The people who jumped on board to help build it initially were not primarily students. We were mostly adults with careers already; that’s what gave us the skills to take on a major project like that. A decade later, I am in my mid-30′s. Some are younger; many are much older.

There was that silly wank a while back about the X-Files supposedly being for teens the same way Buffy was marketed for younger people… only The X-Files was blatantly marketed for an adult demographic back in 1993 when it premiered. Twenty-something plus twenty-three years equals a fanbase in its late 40s. The venerable X-Files archive, Gossamer, was started by people who are now officially Old. Same with Fanfiction.net, MediaMiner, and all of the other great fandom infrastructure we’ve known and loved.

I hate that “The kids these days” shit. Young people are just as welcome in fandom as anyone else.

But I wish you guys wouldn’t sell yourselves short by thinking that you have to be ready to build AO3 when you’re a teenager and that you’re passé and must abandon all of your hobbies by 30.

Mainstream media is already going to tell you that adult women are required to take care of other people’s children instead of taking care of ourselves. Culture is already going to tell you that old women can’t have fun or seek pleasure, that women in general are suspect and can’t be trusted to read “problematic” books without being brainwashed.

Fandom is here to tell you that other people’s kids can be your friends if you both choose it, but you’re nobody’s free therapist, nanny, or censorship board.  Fandom is here to tell you that you can backbutton when you want, but you can also read what you want, even if it’s “bad”. Fandom is here to tell you that you can enjoy your hobbies for the next however many decades until they carry you out feet-first.

[hawkland]

[delicatelyhaunted]

Y’all are so excited about the new planetary discovery but I haven’t seen y’all share the Google doodle!

It’s so fucking adorable!

[eeyore9990]

Write Your Story

I just showed my 11-year-old son how many coffee shop AUs there are on AO3.

Why?

He sat down the other day to write a Minecraft story about three kids who go through a portal in their back yard and end up in the world of Minecraft where they have to battle all the big bosses (I didn’t even realize there WERE big bosses in Minecraft but that’s beside the point). He wrote three chapters with a little input from me – his first beta – and y'all?

He was fucking excited. To be writing a story.

Today he came home from school and seemed a little down, so I asked him about it only to find out that some little asshole at his school told him, “There is already a Minecraft story.”

Me: Okay? So what?

Lucifer: If there’s already a story, no one will read mine.

Immediately, I dragged him in and pulled up my AO3 account. My boys know I write fanfiction, so I showed him my account and how many subscribers I have. Then I showed him how many Teen Wolf stories there are. And then, because it seemed like the perfect analogy, I said, “What if I wrote a story where two characters meet in a coffee shop and fall in love? No werewolves, nothing at all to do with the actual Teen Wolf universe. Just Stiles and Derek meet in a coffeeshop and fall in love.”

He laughed.

I showed him Mornings Aren’t For Everyone. Showed him how many hits it had, how many kudos, how many lovely comments.

Then I said, “So do you think, if anyone else wrote a story about those exact same characters meeting in a coffee shop and falling in love… would anyone read it?”

He laughed and said, “No because you already did.”

So I clicked on the Sterek tag and refined to coffee shop AU. His mind was blown to see that they ALL had thousands of hits and kudos and comments. Then I clicked on JUST the coffee shop AU tag and showed him all the fics across all the fandoms written by countless different people.

I’m going to tell you all now what I told him because it applies to everyone.

Write your story. It doesn’t matter that someone else has written a story about that subject. They didn’t write YOUR story. Only you can do that.

And I want to read your story.

[sonia-nevermind-deactivated2019]

A happy little comic for you all!!!

[arbutus-blossoms]

The Drarry sector of HP fandom is in dire lack of waistcoats

☆Some Drarry + Waistcoats sketches for you Anon!  // My Harry Potter Fanart HERE ☆

[sprout2012]

I’m here for this. I repeat- I AM HERE FOR THIS!!

[drarryking]

I agree there should be more wizard waistcoats

[visualjunkee]

‘LOVING VINCENT,’ an Animated Film Featuring 12 Oil Paintings per Second by Over 100 Painters

‘Loving Vincent’ will be the world’s first feature length painted animation, with every shot painted with oil paints on canvas, just as Van Gogh himself painted. Written & Directed by Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman, produced by Poland’s BreakThru Films & UK’s Trademark Films.  The film is scheduled for a 2017 release.

“Every one of the 65,000 frames of the film is an oil-painting hand-painted by 125 professional oil-painters who traveled from all across Europe to the Loving Vincent studios in Poland and Greece to be a part of the production.”

“The film was first shot as a live action film with actors then hand-painted over frame-by-frame in oils. The final effect is an interaction of the performance of the actors playing Vincent’s famous portraits, and the performance of the painting animators, bringing these characters into the medium of paint.”

“Loving Vincent is an investigation delving into the life and controversial death of Vincent Van Gogh, one of the world’s most beloved painters, as told through his paintings and by the characters that inhabit them,”

“The intrigue unfolds through interviews with the characters closest to Vincent and through dramatic reconstructions of the events leading up to his death.”

[otakusiren-deactivated20171214]

Someone out there is waiting for your new stories. 

Someone out there is reading your stories to get through a rough day. 

Someone out there is recommending your fanfics to others with glee. 

Someone out there is appreciating all the hard work you put into your stories. 

Your writing is important. 

Your fanfiction is important. 

Never think your content doesn’t matter to a fandom, because your content might just be the only thing that makes someone else feel like they’re not alone when it comes to shipping certain characters together. 

Please keep writing. 

[wanderlusttheorist]

A Conversation from Six Years Ago: “Good Enough”

Last night, I read on the Guardian and heard on the BBC’s Wales website that a Welsh-born teacher, who coincidentally also happens to be Muslim, was barred from entering the United States. This teacher was going to the US as part of a school trip with fellow colleagues and students. Seeing their teacher being escorted off the plane for a “random inspection” led to confusion. The British teacher felt powerless against authorities and embarrassment. 

In light of the recent Muslim ban that barred citizens from specific countries, one of them wasn’t the U.K. (unless they had dual-citizenship). This teacher, of Bangladeshi descent, isn’t a dual-citizen. He is a British citizen.

This story unsettled me. Yet another one of the many, many stories and reports from the U.S. that have been unsettling me for weeks now.

This morning, I woke up with the recollection of a conversation I had six years ago. 

Six years ago, I was living in Dijon, France. I invited two of my fellow Americans to come to my place so we could bake the most quintessential of American cookies: the chocolate chip cookie. 

(Petit info pour mes amis français: ce que vous appelez “le cookie” est connu comme “chocolate chip cookie” aux States, car le mot “cookie” est le terme global pour parler sur tous types de gâteaux/biscuits.)

Oh, I was so excited to bake chocolate chip cookies! I got the Nestle Tollhouse recipe, bought all of the necessary ingredients, and made the conversions from ounces to grams and mL. 

The two Americans, a Californian and a North Carolinian, came over. We mixed all of the ingredients, evenly spaced out the dough on the baking sheet, and baked the first batch. As the cozy aroma of melting chocolate and crystallized sugar enveloped the kitchen, anticipation for when we could burn our tongues made the twelve-minute wait unbearable. 

The oven went “ding.” Out came the baking tray. Our fingers jolted at the cookies’ heat. 

Before we ate our first cookies, the North Carolinian asked me if I had any cold milk.

Me: “Yeah, I’ve got some in the fridge. What for?”

North Carolinian: “Uh, so we can eat cookies with milk, duh.”

For most Americans, the reflex of pairing cookies with milk comes as naturally as seeing carrots and peas together. For me, it was a habit I never embraced because of my taste preferences of wishing to have non-soggy cookies. (I typically don’t like soggy foods, ugh.) As a consequence, my disgust for spoiled, mushy cookies automatically meant that I had not thought to accommodate to others’s likes. 

Still, it was a minor thing. I could adapt.

I got up, open the fridge, and took out the 1-liter carton of milk. I also furnished two glasses wide enough for dipping the cookies in. I decided to voice my differences about eating cookies, albeit not as eloquently as I would have liked.

Me: “I’ve never eaten chocolate chip cookies with milk before.” (I had tried a similar experiement with Oreos; never again.)

North Carolinian: *scoffs* “Uh, are you sure you’re American?”

Even though she asked this in a jovial tone, I was nevertheless taken aback by such a question. For NO ONE had ever asked me that before. It wasn’t something that was never up for debate.

Me: “Well, yes. I mean, I was born in the United States–”

North Carolinian: *smiling* “That’s not good enough!” 

That’s not good enough?

What may have seemed minor to this North Carolinian wasn’t for me. Being a first-generation American of Cuban and Colombian descent, the idea of cultural identity is one that comes with a delicate circus-show balancing act. I’m not “Colombian” enough. I’m not “Cuban” enough. I’m TOO Cuban. I’m TOO Hispanic/Latina. I’m not Hispanic/Latina enough.

But I’m not “American” enough? My damn birth certificate, passport, upbringing, education, and cultural notions disagree. I’ve stated the Pledge of Allegiance and sung the National Anthem every damn day at school. So sorry if my dislike of disintegrated sludge cookies automatically disqualifies me as being “American” enough. 

To this day, I regret not having voiced my dissatisfaction at such a flippantly-stated comment, but in that moment, I was honestly too stunned to react accordingly. I brushed it off and tried to be a good hostess despite my seething discontent.

That was six years ago. I now live in a different part of France. I feel relatively safe and at ease with my heritage as my French friends fully recognize me as being an American who just so happens to be of Cuban and Colombian descent. 

And not only do I still make chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and flan de queso crema, I can also make brioche from scratch. (My croissants still need more practice…)

Now, in 2017, my country is being run by a racist, xenophobic, crack-down government that targets minorities. For now, they are using the excuse of  only going after so-called “illegal immigrants.”

FOR NOW. 

I’m afraid of waking up and hearing a story about how an American who just so happens to be of Mexican-descent faced expulsion from their birth country. It’s already happened in the past, anyway.

What’s to stop one zealous idiot from arguing that being born in the U.S. is no longer “good enough” for feeling at home? Let alone people like me? Both my Colombian grandmother and mother are naturalized U.S. Citizens. I fear that soon may not be “good enough” for them. They thankfully live in Miami where Latinos and Hispanics of all cultures mix and mingle with relative ease and safety. When will that no longer be a guarantee that is “good enough?” When will the distinctions be forgotten? 

Even now, six years later, this memory makes me sad. I may make some chocolate chip cookies to make me feel better.

More cookies, less racism.

[sophiefrench77]

Wow. Very powerful. I'd read the article from the Guardian too and was appalled by the state of our world. Yours fears are unfortunately totally legit. :(( The upcoming elections in many European countries including France in a couple of months are beyond scary. To see that a candidate from a xenophobic party whose role model is Trump arrives first in the polls is beyond scary. I'd have those cookies with you.

[thingsthatcannotsaveyou]

[wanderlusttheorist]

@sophiefrench77 : If only this book were real! :P

[ameeg-deactivated20190609]

no thats YOUR favourite drarry fic trope sjhkdsjdksj

[sprout2012]

Love that he’s in fitted trousers so Harry can admire his pert bottom.

[gaiabamman]

Using the appropriate vocabulary in your novel

It is very important that the language in your novel reflects the time and place in which the story is set.

For example, my story is set in Italy. My characters would never “ride shotgun”, a term coined in US in the early 1900s referring to riding alongside the driver with a shotgun to gun bandits. 

Do your research! A free tool that I found to be very useful is Ngram Viewer. 

You can type any word and see when it started appearing in books. For example…one of my characters was going to say “gazillion” (I write YA) in 1994. Was “gazillion” used back then?

And the answer is…YES! It started trending in 1988 and was quite popular in 1994.

Enjoy ^_^

[storiesintheashes]

This is really important, especially because language can change in very unexpected ways. 

For example, did you know that before 1986 people never said “I need to”?Instead, they were far more likely to say “I ought to”, “I have to”, “I must”, or “I should”.

Don’t believe me?

Anyway, most people won’t notice subtle changes like that. But your reader will notice and be confused when characters in your medieval world use metaphors involving railroads and rockets.

One of the things you can do besides use Google Ngrams is to read books or watch movies written in the time period you want to set your story. The key here is that they can’t just be set in that time period, they have to have been made in that time period.

Also, there’s a Lexicon Valley episode on this very topic which I highly recommend. It’s called Capturing the Past. 

[tuulikki]

Also: “okay” and “cool” (in the non-temperature sense) were not in usage until the 20th century. And the phrase “are you alright/all right?” didn’t come into usage until around 1860. Historical fic writers be aware!

[aprillikesthings]

I had no idea about “I need to.”

[forfamilygatherings]

Bruce Banner SERVING that truth tea!

[maneth985]

Ha!

[madsrocketship]

[sarakipin]

[coldcigarettes]

A sketch that turned into definitely-not-a-sketch. Formal auror robes, I guess?

[sophiefrench77]

Draco: for the last time, I'm not in love with Potter.

Blaise: then you won't mind if I ask him out.

Draco: don't push it, Blaise.

[purplebuddhaproject]

[smalljewishgirl]

Don’t normalise Nazis

I was reading this article this morning, about Disney cutting ties with PewDiePie, a YouTube star (I’ve never heard of him?) who had included antisemitic content in his videos. This guy has continually claimed that all the antisemitic content he’s produced (which includes statements such as ‘death to all Jews’ and ‘Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong’) is a joke, and that people who are offended simply don’t understand the context, suggesting that it’s ‘laughable’ that he might agree with these viewpoints. So far so unsurprising: we’ve heard all this before.

But at the bottom of the article it points out the response to these videos by the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, which now describes itself as ‘the number 1 PewDiePie fansite’. The Daily Stormer stated: “He could be doing all this only to cause a stir things up and get free publicity […] Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, since the effect is the same; it normalizes Nazism, and marginalizes our enemies.”

The point is this: if you are making racist or antisemitic jokes, it doesn’t matter if you were only joking, or messing around, or that you would never subscribe to those views; the effect is the same. Regardless of whether you agree with what you are saying, you are emboldening, normalising and legitimising Nazis. You are permitting fascism to take root in our society. Jokes matter. This is where extreme views creep in, take hold and are normalised. Think about what you’re saying: words have power. Stop normalising Nazis.