#mod lockea

[fanfiction-tips-and-tricks]

To The New Year, 2017

Hello everyone. As some of our followers may know, the mods have had a very hectic end of 2016. We’ve all changed jobs and two of us are about to move so we apologize that the blog has fallen a bit by the wayside.

Con Schedule

We’re working to finalize our convention schedule for 2017 right now. Because of the move, Lockea and Kattitina are going to miss the convention deadline for Sakuracon. We apologize to our Sakuracon fans and we hope to be back in 2018. Metrocon, on the other hand, will likely still happen, pending approval by Metrocon’s staff. 

For those who are unfamiliar with how panels at conventions work, Fanfiction Tips and Tricks mods apply to the convention 3-6 months in advance. We’d love to do more cons in 2017 but must limit ourselves to what we can reasonably drive or fly to without breaking the bank. So if you plan to attend a con on the east coast and would like the FTAT team to host a panel, please don’t hesitate to drop us an ask. If one of us can make it to the con, we will apply for the panel. As I said before, we need a minimum of 3 months notice so we can apply for the panel and hopefully be accepted before we attend.

That said, Lockea and Kattitina are adding Otakon, Katsucon, and Anime USA to the potential con list, although we have missed the deadline for Katsucon we will still likely be there if only to scope out what conventions a little further north are like. Please keep an eye out for announcements as we finalize our con list for 2017.

Call for Mods

Feel like you’re an experienced fanfiction writer? Want to help impart knowledge unto the next generation? Comfortable answering questions and/or potentially running a panel? We’re looking to add to our team. This is 100% a voluntary position but does come with requirements. Overall, it’s a pretty easy gig. Your main duties are:

-Reblog content relating to writing, fandom life, and especially fanfiction tips -Write original content on topics of your choice pertaining to fanfiction -Maintain open communication with the other mods, especially Lockea and Kattitina.

We’d also love someone who would feel comfortable assisting during a panel or running the panel on their own -- don’t worry, you won’t be left alone. We have a powerpoint and guidelines we use when hosting our panels and you’ll have access to our three years of paneling and teaching experience to help you get the hang of paneling.

Please send a message to @lockea if you’re interested and would like to learn more. 

Topics for 2017

Last but not least, we’re looking to know what tips and tricks you guys would like to learn in 2017. Please feel free to comment with what topics you’d like to see the panels and blog cover. We don’t have time for everything in our panel (hence why we run a blog in the first place). Some topics we’d like to expand upon in 2017 include:

-How to tag for AO3, tumblr, and Wattpad -Finish off Kink for Fanfiction Writers (please send us topics!) -Brief History of Fanworks -History of Fandom, Disclaimers, and Censorship

Basically, we’d like to talk a little more about some history because one thing we’ve learned its that fandom needs some historians around. However, we run this blog for the sake of our followers, so if you have anything at all you’d like for us to talk about our ask box is open. 

We hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season, and may 2017 suck less than 2016 did. May all your fanfictions get reviews and may most of the words you write be worth keeping.

~Fanfiction Tips and Tricks

[fanfiction-tips-and-tricks]

On Writing Mental Illness

This is a bit different for FTAT because this is a general writing post about a subject near and dear to my heart -- mental illness. If you follow my personal blog you may know that I (Lockea) have struggled with diagnosis and misdiagnosis when it comes to mental illness for about twelve years now. As someone who has been inpatient in a hospital for mental illness four times, I know my way around the system and how mental illness affects people. In writing, I’ve seen well written characters and poorly written characters both.

For this post we’re going to use six mentally ill characters to illustrate what to do and what not to do when it comes to writing mental illness. A huge shout out goes to @warchilduniverse​ for three of these characters, Evan, Jos, and Yuri who all represent distinct characterization. When people praise George RR Martin for writing distinctly good female characters, what they are really praising is inclusiveness of diverse characters. Similarly, by writing multiple characters who have dealt with trauma in different ways, Lowachee’s work reminds us that trauma is not one size fits all. The other three characters are Melinda from Speak, Sophie from The Fosters, and Callie from Cut.

Let’s start with an example of a well written mentally ill character -- Melinda.

Melinda begins the book as a girl who doesn’t speak. She suffers from selective mutism and nobody knows why she’s not speaking. Melinda is funny and wry, an easy to relate to character. Even ten years after reading the book, I still remember her quip about eating in the living room precisely because it is so funny. Perhaps one of the things Anderson did best in her book was approach Melinda first as a character and second as someone who has endured trauma. When speaking about the book, Anderson admitted she had no idea why Melinda was not speaking. By allowing the character to grow organically, Melinda feels human to us. Just like in real life, the circumstances around trauma may not be known, but the effects are still there. While I don’t recommend Anderson’s approach, I think it’s a wonderful example of allowing the character to be more than their mental illness.

Contrast this to Callie and you can see a stark difference. McCormick worked for three years researching cutters and cutting to write Cut. While research is never a bad thing, McCormick lost sight of her character’s voice in the process, in an effort to make her relatable, Callie became generic and voiceless. I have yet to meet a cutter (myself included) who could relate to Callie. She was Every Cutter and in the process became No One’s Cutter. 

On the other hand, I relate a lot with Yuri despite the fact that he is nothing like me in terms of personality or life experiences. He’s dealt with trauma and that has made him bitter and cold. I’ve often heard other fans of the book he comes from, Cagebird, state that Yuri is difficult to relate to because he is so different from them, but I’ve found that because he isn’t at all like me but still feels the same isolation, anger, and emotion that drove me to cutting, he’s more relatable than generic Callie ever was. Yuri has a distinct voice and a warped way of looking at the world. He is angry and bitter and hurting, all emotions that can be soothed by cutting. 

As I stated before, by writing multiple characters with a similar trait, you can easily grant diversity and relatability to your story. No one character must be the authority on what it’s like to suffer from mental illness. Jos and Evan, though having similar life experiences to Yuri and to each other, deal in different ways. Jos is completely withdrawn and does not allow people to get close to him while Evan feels insecure when he’s not with someone else. Evan, I would say, probably has Borderline, the same mental illness I suffer from. He craves approval in whatever form he can get it and becomes isolated and depressed when he fails to receive it. This is very different from Yuri and Jos who are not as dependent on others as Evan is.

Mentally ill characters need not be the center of your story to be well written. Sophie from The Fosters is a tertiary character, only appearing in one season and occasionally in recent episodes. However, Sophie fails where Evan succeeds because we have no emotional connection to Sophie. She just is. While the story is told from Callie’s perspective (not the same Callie from Cut), her little sister falls by the wayside. Sophie feels hopeless and useless and lost but we never really see her fleshed out beyond those characteristics. She suffers from the same Generic Mental Illness problem that affected Callie in Cut. Sophie’s mental illness feels further shoehorned in by the message that plays after she attempts suicide, reminding the audience that there is a helpline for the mentally ill and suicidal. 

When minority characters are written in as part of a Very Special Episode (something The Fosters is notorious for) they lose their meaning as real characters. This is one of the reasons why I’m glad the issue books of the late nineties and early millennium are no longer popular. This is true of any minority, not just the mentally ill. Characters need first to be characters. They should have diverse life experiences and hobbies and their reactions to situations should be a reflection of who they are. 

In an essay from the book, Yes Means Yes, one of the essayists mentions that in America we have created a narrative around trauma, specifically rape, in that there is only one “correct” way to experience it -- that of the broken damsel. This is most definitely not true of trauma and mental illness. There are multiple ways to experience these aspects of life and characters deserve to have the full spread of emotions laid out for them. You need not be like Lowachee or Martin and have a whole range of diverse characters to make it believable, but rather allow the characters their differences from the stated narrative. For example, have your trauma survivor be angry and bitter at the world. Have your depressed character smile through the pain. Have your Borderline character experience the amazing highs that come with the illness as well as the crippling lows and difficulties with codependency. 

Just remember, like any human being, we are more than just our illness. Write like that, and you can write someone who will be some young person’s new favorite character. 

[fanfiction-tips-and-tricks]

Friendly reminder that NOBODY is allowed to shame you for what you choose to write. Any comment that attacks your story or your person is a violation of Archive of Our Own’s TOS.