This is why I read the reddit comments
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@souredwords
This is why I read the reddit comments
while im talking bad fanfic lubes: rosin is only used with bowed string instruments, not plucked ones! it goes on the bow hairs to make them grip the strings better! most importantly, it comes in a SOLID CAKE and is STICKY. it's literally the opposite of lube. and jaskier thewitcher wouldn't be carrying it around anyway, because he plays THE LUTE
Sometimes I see posts on this site and I wonder what inspired them and other times I decide I probably really donât actually want to know
This is killing me omf
also: feed your brain. feed your poetic apparatus, your internal treasure trove of cinematic images. you need a steady influx of radical, challenging work from other people who also truly and deeply love and believe in their work.
PEOPLE KEEP YOU
does anyone feel the layer of plexiglass between themselves and the rest of the world or is that just a me thing
youâre the only one who understands me
You canât win as a woman in fiction. Be too positive, you become a Mary Sue, have flaws and those flaws are why almost nobody likes you. Be moderate, you have wet-cabbage personality, be exuberant, you are an unrealistic example. Have strong morals, and youâre badly developed, be morally corrupt and youâre hated with such vigour fans will send hate mail to the actress who plays the character. Be kind and soft and in love, youâre a representation of sexism, be cruel, harsh and cold and youâre just a bitch. Be a complex, realistic, ambiguous character, and either your flaws or your positive traits will be ignored or blown out of proportion and into oblivion. There is no winning for female characters.
Not every story is about seeing yourself in it. Sometimes itâs about learning to see other people too.
@tearyeyedcat this was beautifully written, thank you for adding it!
another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!
(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.
actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)
a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.
deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.
the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.
and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than RyĆko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.
however.
you do have to know which one you're doing.
the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).
and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding â everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.
the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.
the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.
point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing â airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.
I love fanfic authors. I read a fic once and the author said they had a friend who is a real nuclear physicist teach them all about this radioactive compound and how it reacts with different materials so that their fic could be accurate. It was smut.
âThoth and the Chief Magicianâ, 1925. Evelyn Pau
I love tumblr. I fucking love tumblr. Where else am I going to find shit like this
Sci-fi short stories are so efficient; they take 15 minutes to read and then you think about them for the next 5 years
Hey guys, what if *puts the most horrifying mindblowing concept into your head with about 15 pages*
đč Someone else's fiction cannot cause you physical harm.
đčIf someone else's fiction is causing you emotional or psychological harm, or distress, you can put it down and not read/watch it.
đčYour emotional well-being is not the responsibility of fiction writers.
đčSomeone else's fiction is not about your personal trauma.
đčWhen reading or watching fiction, you always have the power. You can always stop. You are never reading fiction without your own consent.
đčFiction writers are not responsible for other people's mental health.
đčThe content of a piece of fiction does not reflect on the morality of its author.
đčJust because someone writes about bad things happening, doesn't mean they want those things to happen.
đčDon't like? Don't read.
THIS!
Do you guys remember how kidnap fantasies were popular on wattpad because young girls and queer teens were both made to feel shame at the thought of their own sexualities, so the fantasy of being kidnapped totally against their will was a way for them to engage with a romantic or sexual fantasy without feeling morally in the wrong for doing so? Added bonus that the fantasy involved being whisked away from repressive environments like home or school, right?
Finding out that Bram Stoker was in a sexless marriage and that scholars believe that he very likely was closeted gay puts the entire book into perspective as to WHY it reads EXACTLY like a self insert wattpad Dracula kidnap fic:
âI TOTALLY love my wife and would never do anything that an upstanding Good Straight Working Man wouldnât do but oh nooo, big strong man with broad back and strong enough arms to carry me back to bed like a princess trapped me and claimed me as his, completely against my will đđ But he protects me against the bad evil sexual women (who I assure you, I am TOTALLY sexually attracted to, as any straight man with a choice would be) but trust me, I do NOT want ANY of this. Whatâs that? The Count is not capable of feeling love? Would be a shame if I had the special ability to change tha-â
This is also the fantasy behind all those old bodice-ripper romances that people today like to mock or call problematic, by the way.
âOh, my next forty years are going to consist of nothing but washing dishes and keeping house and bearing children for the disdainful man I married right out of high school because my parents said college was for men and I had no other obvious life path open to me? What if a pirate captain thought I was worth stealing away from it all? [what if I ran away but no-one could blame me for leaving]?â
#I read an article a long time ago about a woman who was raised in an incredibly repressive conservative christian community#where all that mattered was purity and virginity etc #She talked about how for a long time rape fantasies were the only way she could derive any pleasure from sex #because she couldnât feel safe exploring the idea of wanting sex #it wasnât really ABOUT rape or eroticizing assault or whatever #it was about creating a scenario where she was free from the shame associated with wanting #i think this is true of a lot of icky-seeming stuff in romance and erotica #itâs an imaginary scenario where nothing you donât really want actually happens #but you canât be blamed or feel guilty for it #you didnât do anything wrong#anyway that article changed my perspective a lot #i think thereâs also something to be said for people who have felt ugly and undesirable their whole lives #enjoying fictional scenarios where a hot alpha werewolf or whatever is so attracted to them he âcant help himselfâ or whatever #because it can also be really shameful to want to be desired #when you feel like youre ugly and gross ( @headspace-hotel )
the urge to write is like a cat meowing for dear life for someone to open the goddamn door, who then shows utter disinterest in said open door