you’ll have a body of work despite yourself

book sideblog run on mostly queue. occasional posts about writing and fanfic. title from "write a fucking poem” by mike golden goodreads | main blog | ao3

[rustchild]

desperately craving weird surrealist arthurania. Knights with no faces wandering through the mists. Seams between Christian and pre-Christian Britain gaping like open wounds. Beafts and visions. Maybe a monk. Maybe the monk is gay

[mournfulroses]

Tove Ditlevsen, from a poem featured in There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die: Selected Poems

[corpseprize]

the reality of being a writer

[ohwaitimthewriter]

Especially the last one!

[yu-sigao]

You’re going to die in your best friend’s arms. And you play along because it’s funny, because it’s written down, you’ve memorized it, it’s all you know.

Richard Siken, “Planet of Love”

You could tell your tale differently this time, I suppose. But you won’t. Your name will always be Ivan Nikolayevich. You will always go into that tent. You will see her scar, below her eye,  and  wonder where  she  got  it.  You  will  always be amazed at how one woman can have so much black hair. You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again. I am only here to make sure it happens.

Catherynne M. Valente, “Deathless”

[maysread]

The Orange and Other Poems - Wendy Cope

[writingdose]

being a writer means there are times where you don’t write anything for a week or so, and then there are times where you write 10,000 words in one day

[primulaceas]

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

[muzaktomyears]

why does this sound like the intro to an a/b/o fic

[wildehacked]

things in fic I'm used to people kind of faking their way through writing about:

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

what french toast is

[headspace-hotel]

read through the notes on this one trust me

[kiragecko]

Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

ANIMALS:

catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear

piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave

pluto-lichen: horses

misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like

pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially

SEX:

dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.

dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like “I mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it works”

SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:

thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad

shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze

sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon

alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices

dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.

the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes

typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy

draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices

11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note

fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is

emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#🤣🤣🤣

NON-FOOD STUFF:

red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.

bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket

nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English

sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp

danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author

meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does

vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'

leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake

fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?

dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic

msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate

shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September

baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird

twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)

waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up

violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours

purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.

[byjove]

The Lady of the Lake loves Lancelot SOOOO much. Most of the other characters in Arthurian legend are orphaned or have a strained relationship with their parents but Lancelot’s mommy shows up to take care of him if he gets sick. He’s got her on speed dial on a magical ring she gave him. She’s acting like a stage mom to further his knightly career. She is more committed to this baby she stole than the humans in Arthurian legend are committed to their children. King Arthur himself killed at least two of his kids but the Lady of the Lake is keeping Lancelot alive against all odds through magical means.

[twothousandeight]

Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller

[writingdose]

genuine writers getting wrongly accused of using ai because of witch hunt and proper grammar/structure in their works must be what being a woman in the 1600s who is wrongly accused of being a witch because she can read and is intelligent feels like

[olivesocks]

I hate Twitter because this was such a funny joke but nobody will ever see it smh

[thehobbitchronicles]

— Morgan Harper Nichols

[madgirlscosm-deactivated2025051]

(excerpted from Leila Chatti's poem: "Tea", published in Missouri Review)

[paperplateprose]

not now kitten. daddy's realizing that the scene he invested 1000 words into could be significantly improved but only if he started over from scratch

[andthentheywilleatthestars]

We need to bring up that Ursula K LeGuin quote about commodified fantasy more often. We need to be meaner.

[andthentheywilleatthestars]