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@trillianswan
Ch 49 of Tell Mama is up!
So, I did it, finally. :) Tell Mama, Chapter 49: A Tricky Situation Summary: Quentin makes pancakes. Eliot makes plans. Trick makes a butterfly. Teddy makes a drink. https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751351/chapters/82105093
Tell Mama Ch 48 is up!
Chapter 48: ...And Plums.
Quentin and Eliot clean house. Arielle and Rand eat popcorn.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751351/chapters/76780304 Our boys have some things to work out, once and for all...
what is a writer, if not a miserable little pile of ideas and half written google docs
what people think is hard about writing: describing the joy, love, beauty, grief, loss and hope that form the richness of human experience
what is actually hard about writing: describing basic actions such as turning, leaning over, reclining, gesturing, saying something in a quiet voice, breathing, getting up from chairs, and walking across rooms
I’ll spill out a brilliant, wrenching portrayal of a character’s struggle with grief over a loss and his complex regrets and guilt and then a page later I’ll have to write that a character who’s lying prone raises his head and shoulders up to look at something without fully getting up and I’ll get so angry I want to strangle an eagle with my bare hands
I call this bodies-in-space and it’s usually something I have to go back in and add after I write the good stuff :)
I’m????
Oh my God this actually explains so much.
So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.
So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.
So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.
This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner.
So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.
The only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s okay to love your friends. It’s okay to share your needs and your problems with your friends. It’s okay to lean on your friends, to hug your friends, to be weak with your friends. Only if this is okay for boys to do with their male friends can this problem be resolved… so men, this one’s on you. Women can’t fix this for you; you don’t listen to us about matters of what it means to be a man. Fix your own shit and teach your brothers and sons and friends that this is okay, or everyone suffers.
The next time a guy says, “What? You don't want to be my friend?” I’ll text him this and then ask if he really wants to be friends or just have another potential girlfriend.
y’all I am living for these analyses where the new way to fight the patriarchy is to teach men to love each other and themselves
Im a communication student and can confirm the above is absolutely 100% accurate and it’s called agentic vs communal friendship theorized by Steven McCornack
This is absolutely un-not-reblogable.
Tell Mama update
So, listen.
Listen.
It’s not that I’m not spending hours every day on Chapter 48. It’s just that I want to get this really, really right. (And I’m very slow!) I had it all done-- except for one pivotal line, and I couldn’t figure it out.
And then I realized what was wrong was that the four chapters that preceded it were wrong, they put me in the wrong place to make the turn I needed. Today I rewrote one and edited the heck out of two more to match. I need one more rewritten, and then some more editing. Listen. :) I want this posted as much as you do! My house is a wreck, my self care is in the bin, and it’s killing me to hang on to this, but I have to, to get it right. You deserve it for all of the patience and kindness you’ve shown me through this whole journey. Give me just a few more days, k? Then everybody gets cake. Slices upon slices of Queliot cake, I promise. :)
things I wish I’d known when I started writing fic on ao3
use & for friendships, colleagues, familial relationships and use / for romantic or sexual relationships (or encounters)
not everyone reads fic. Lots of people use screen readers, and screen readers can’t see what’s on images. use descriptive text to help them out.
lots of people download fic to read on other devices, not all downloads capture images too.
there’s a big difference between No Archive Warnings Apply (NAWA) and Author Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings (CNTW). NAWA means that there’s nothing in the fic that needs to be warned for using the official Archive Warning system. CNTW means there might be something that requires a warning and the author is either avoiding giving out spoilers or they are unsure how to interpret their plot point with respect to the official Warnings. (in both cases, additional tags are where it’s at - you can explain yourself there)
the reason why the number of bookmarks in the fic is different from the number of bookmarks on your stats page is because your stats page number includes bookmarks that are hidden
there’s a preference setting where you can receive emails with your own comments/replies.
there’s a site skin that hides stats so you don’t have to see them
writing in rich text format makes my life easier
knowing html allows me to do fun things in the comments section like comment/reply with reaction gifs
knowing html also allows me to do interesting formatting in my fics that I can’t do with rich text alone
those little blue bubbles with the question marks in them will answer my questions a lot of the time - and also teach me something new
the FAQ is linked under the word About in the header
if you write your fic in the draft window, you might end up losing it so make sure you copy the text before you hit Post, just in case
they aren’t kidding when they say drafts are deleted after 30 days
Here’s some additions.
The Anonymous collection will allow you to post anything you want and retain ownership over it.
Your identifying information will not be anywhere within the fic to any other reader. Though you will see it from your end when looking at it as a logged in user.
When you reply to a comment, it will anonymize you, so feel free to respond to your commenters!
You can take your fic off Anonymous at any time
When you are signed into AO3, you can easily access your Anonymous fics by looking at the “Works In Collections” tab on your page. Nobody else will see these Anonymous works on this page.
Works can be added to the Anonymous collection at any time
Just because a fic is Anonymous does not mean it is Abandoned or Orphaned.
Speaking of Orphaned fics:
If you have posted a story and for whatever reason you no longer want it on your account or associated with you, you can Orphan the fic.
Orphaning fics will remove all of your control and ownership of the story.
Orphaning fics is not a reversible process. Once a fic has been Orphaned it cannot be taken back. You cannot delete it. You can’t check stats and it does not show up on your Works page anymore.
Orphaning and the Anonymous collection are great options for when you no longer want a fic associated with you, but you don’t want to delete it either.
Also: dark mode skins are great! I use Reversi on this page and it’s much easier on the eyes than the white background. Here’s how to use skins.
Also also: how to use html om AO3.
Don’t know if someone else has already said this in the notes but unless your bookmark is private the author can look and see what tags or additional notes you’ve put on the bookmark (I like to check them to see if anyone has :D). Also, yes, you can add your own tags to bookmarks and make different lists to organize them! You can comment on fics anonymously (though I think you have to log out to do so as of now, really wish it was an option while signed in but still great it’s even an option at all!) You can save new chapters on fics as a draft (without the 30 day limit if I remember). I do this a lot. There is separate sections for both beginning and ending author’s notes (you can use both on the same chapter or one shot) and using the author’s note doesn’t include your rambling as part of the word count. Which is nice as it doesn’t artificially inflate the numbers.
On site skins:
You can combine existing skins by creating you own skin scroll to the bottom under ADVANCED and then Parent Skins. Example, i use AO3s Reversi and then XParrots Shortening Long Tag Field
Also, you can exclude stories in this area too! I got this from another tumblr post so i can’t take credit for it, nor do i know how to expand it to other things like tags or pairing or author.
.blurb#work_430075 { display: none; }
Just replace the numbers with the work you dont want to see anymore.
Just a few points to add that I hadn’t seen listed above:
-In addition to beginning and ending author’s notes for the overall story, there are also beginning and ending author’s notes for each chapter of a multipart story. When you first create the story, before you add additional chapters, it will treat your author’s notes as overall story notes – meaning your “so that’s chapter 1!” note will be kicked to the end of every subsequent chapter unless you move it to chapter 1 specifically.
-There is, in fact, a character limit in the author’s notes. I’ve run up against it a few times.
in case you all needed to be reminded of the way eliot waugh looks at his actual canon soulmate quentin coldwater
Tell Mama’s Ch 47 is live!
Tell Mama: Chapter 47: Peaches and Plums, Part 1: Shipping Channels
Quentin brushes his hair. Eliot annoys some squirrels. Rand makes a list. Arielle has too much wine.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751351/chapters/74988840 I split what I was working on into two chapters, so here’s the first one. It won’t be long before I post the other half, but I’m not sad I have a little while longer to scroll and poke at it.
my King
The latest on Tell Mama
Okay. The next chapter is written, tho it continues to need editing somewhat. It’s HELLA LONG, 24K! I could cut into two, but if I do I’ll post them both at once, since I did promise a final Queliot reunion and it doesn’t happen until the second half. Buckle up, chickens, it’s a hell of a ride... See you there in a couple of days...
favorite character meme ♔ six outfits (2/6)
Quick update on Tell Mama
Chapter 47, like most chapters, is proving hard to break. Like 46, I’ve tried it several different ways, looking for the one that unlocks all the goodness. (46 didn’t work until I made it Mama’s chapter.) I think I’ve found it for 47. Still a lot of writing and editing to do, followed by the possibility that it doesn’t work or I think of something even better, and I chuck it all out and start over. :) But if this is the one, then I’m guessing (but not promising) it’ll be another week if it goes well, and two-plus if it’s tricky. I know this is a hard one to wait for. I want to get it right, y’all deserve that. Thank you for your patience, which you proved by waiting 10 months for me to come back, only to flood me with hits. Y’all are so generous and kind! You might have noticed that I put in the final chapter count, 50. (Keep in mind when I started I thought it would be 6!) I have the end. And I’ve started the sequel, which I’m going to post the first couple of chapters of at the same time I end Tell Mama. It’s called Lovely, keep an eye out for it. Chapter 47 is called Peaches and Plums...
“I think it’s fated that they ended up together,” Appleman shared. “Living out the end of their days. I think that’s not an accident. I think that it’s fated for them to have this kind of connection.”
Chapter 46 of Tell Mama is up!
Chapter 46: All In Due Time Chapter 46 of Tell Mama is up!
https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751351/chapters/73671075
This one took a long time, I must have written it four different ways until I finally hit on the right one. Enjoy!
Tell Mama is back!
Change of plans, I only got you Chapter 45 with the rest to follow, it was too much to try to get done with the original I’m writing too. But, BUT! After ten months I present... Chapter 45: Home https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751351/chapters/72259530
im sorry but
