please please please please reblog if you’re a writer and have at some point felt like your writing is getting worse. I need to know if I’m the only one who’s struggling with these thoughts
This is going to sound really mean, but sometimes your writing is going to be worse. Or your drawings. Or your photography. Sometimes you just end up hitting your creative head against a creative brick wall for a while and that’s fine. You edit the piece, or you scrap it, or you start again, or you move on, and the next one will be better. Or the one after that. It’s only ever going to stop you making things if you let it, and there’s always going to be a hundred different ways to approach the same piece. Sometimes you just have to retrace your steps a little before you get there.
As in all things, development is non-linear. And getting better at something is just another term for developing in that area. Let your creativity develop, and let yourself enjoy the act of creating. Even when you have to pass over an idea that doesn’t want to come to fruition at the moment
Video captions: And stop trying to show your ex what they missed out on! Stop trying to teach your family a lesson for not believing in you! Stop trying to shit on your haters! Do it for you! Do it because you deserve it! Do it for YOU! Water your dreams with love! Don’t put no hate and resentment, and try to — “oh Imma fucking show them, Imma show” — FUCK THEM! Fuck them, do it for you! They don’t matter! They NEVER mattered.
worlds slowest fanfic author tries really really hard
everyone in the notes we are all holding hands. everyone who hasnt worked on a wip in weeks or months or years, its okay. we are going slow but we are going
yes yes orlok as the grotesque manifestation of ellen’s hideous lust, monsterfucking blah blah blah. Hot.
But thomas… the lover that witnesses.. accepts… soothes… He saw her at her most depraved and still held her… you guys. He was the only other person who had *seen* what she saw in her dreams. He was there in that castle… was inflicted by orlok’s perversions. In the flesh. Still he made it home. Then he watched her, frothing at the mouth and shaking in demonic fury, to then crawling and begging at his waist for mercy, then a moment laters she’s looking up at him with the very devil in her eyes and tongue… and still, he held her! As she truly sobbed. He told her it was okay, that he had seen it too. Continued to love her as his woman, descend to hell and destroy the demon for her. And Ellen loved him too! She says she felt he was sent to her, made her feel normal and okay. Her salvation. A love that feels like depollution… to be so inspired by your love for somebody that for them you go, willing, to the altar as a sacrificial lamb. Her love for him gave her purpose! I love them… not orlok nor any contract could ever dissolve the bond between them.
* Gently places a grenade inside of a wasp’s nest *
Alright, so now that that’s out of the way, lets talk. I first read Worm in, oh, around 2014 when I was stuck in a city I didn’t live in with nothing to do for the better part of a week because all my plans had collapsed. I found it by googling something like “original superhero fiction”. I read it again in the last few years, and then read Ward. I say this because it means I read both pieces as complete works, and never engaged with them in progress - I didn’t stop to read the comments or even really spend any time in the fan community until quite recently, so I didn’t really have a handle on how other people were reacting to the text.
Which means that I’m having an opinion about something that I’ve seen other people talking about in the parahuman tags, and I’m about to make that our problem together - that is to say, describing Victoria Dallon as a Cop.
And, to be fair, that’s a pretty sensible thing to saddle her with; she do be upholding unjust power structures for the benefit of the strong at the expense of the weak. Its just that she also, sometimes, upholds unjust power structures for the benefit of the weak at the expense of the strong. Or the benefit of the strong at the expense of the strong. Or the benefit of the weak at the expense of the weak.
My favourite thing about Victoria Dallon, as of her stint as the protagonist of Ward, is that her only guiding Moral Principle is “I will do whatever I want, and I will justify to myself that it was the right thing to do” and that is so much more fun than just being cop-brained. Do what is Right (as defined by Vicky’s parliament of Herself, Herself but a Kid, Herself but a Wise Mentor Figure, Herself but a Nerd and Herself but Not Fucked Up) unless she doesn’t want to. Do what is Legal unless she doesn’t want to. Do whatever she wants that she wants to. She gets first pick on whatever the moral high ground is, because wherever she’s standing is the moral high ground - even if she’s just making the Tough Decision in a Bad Situation with No Good Outcome, she gets to place herself in a position of control and good judgment.
And that’s a fascinating place to shove your protagonist, because it elucidates a lot of the inconsistencies in how Vicky views the world - . How can putting “criminals” in prison be imperative if Rain and Ashley going to prison is unbearably stupid? Vicky, ultimately, gets to square away the inconsistencies in her ethical axioms, because she doesn’t let them get in the way of her doing/feeling what she wants.
Which is a great flaw for a protagonist to have - the text even gestures at it when we get a quick look from The Fragile One’s perspective, because Vicky’s Genocide Alien Piece thinks its absolutely rad that Victoria will do anything to get her way and justify it to herself the whole time since that might make it possible for them to take over the world together and crush it beneath a forcefielded boot. Its a really natural flaw for Vicky to have, as well, because its all about manifesting control - she has to be right, she has to set her own path, because otherwise someone else could be setting it for her and that’s not something she can accept or go back to.
Vicky’s not a Cop because she’s, in some way, better than that - she’s not. Its just that I feel like describing someone as a Cop implies that they’re following some kind of code, defending some kind of institution, part of some kind of group that is acting in its own interests or the interests of its superiors. Victoria might seem like she’s doing that, but its incidental - the only one or only thing that she’s accountable to is herself, and even then only if its convenient.
(Where this all breaks down, of course, is that Wildblow decided at some point that Vicky actually was just right about everything which takes some of the wind out of my sails)
AO3 Comments are SO SO SOOOOOOO important because you can only leave Kudos ONCE. You add to the hit count ONCE (every 24 hours).
So whenever someone updates their fic, the ONLY way an author knows who their regular readers are is if they comment on each chapter. And we WANT to know who’s still reading.
Believe it or not, some of us think about the name that pops up constantly in the comments and go “omg I can’t wait to see what they think of THIS SPECIFIC SCENE cuz I KNOW they’ll say something about it!!!”
Absolutely true, I love seeing the few regular commenters and being like “I wanna know what you thiiinnkkkl!!!”
ALT
