Censoring erotic content makes you no different from any other Puritanical asswipe from the dawn of time. I notice you have no problem with violent content, but nope, nope, gotta police the shexy, don’t you know.
What is the demographic of your users, I wonder? Because the corner I occupy is predominately young women, young women who have been able to express their sexuality freely in the safe space….and now you are taking that away. Once again women are punished for being sexual.
Damn you, Tumblr. “A more positive” place? Try homogenized, Bowlderized, neutered, and pointless.
What’s next, Tumblr? Banning “degenerate art?” You and the Nazis, Tumblr, you and the goddamned Nazis.
If you’ve ever read my books, you know I maintain relationships merely because I’ve been lucky enough to find people who don’t throw me away when I reveal myself to be a complete and utter disaster who will sabotage everything we have if given half the chance. I’m a terrible person to give relationship advice.
So here, based on my own failings:
-Say you’re sorry. Mean it.
-But don’t say it all the time.
-Seriously, it loses all meaning.
-Even if you ARE sorry.
-No, sex with that other person isn’t worth it. Yes, I see how good looking they are. Trust me.
-Find ways to show love: notes, trinkets, kisses. Something to show that they are on your mind.
-But not gifts you’d rather just have for yourself, you idiot.
-Don’t buy them a house unless they asked for one.
-Don’t trick them into having children with you because you are afraid they’ll leave you.
-Don’t entrap them.
-Seriously, that one is never going to turn out the way you hope it will.
-Tell the truth. Even when it makes you look terrible.
-Trust them. Yes, especially when you don’t want to trust anyone.
-Tell them the things that scare you about yourself. If they are who you think they are, they can hold them for you.
-Know that they love you, even when they are so angry at you that they can’t bear to look at you.
-Say I love you. Yes, it’s going to hurt. Do it anyway.
“You forgot the most important point.
Allow yourself be loved. No matter how wretched and undeserving you feel.”
my goal isn’t to make anyone think exactly the same way I do. i want you to think for yourself.
don’t swallow my posts wholesale w/out thinking. don’t swallow what fandom policers say wholesale w/out thinking. don’t parrot other people without thinking.
ask yourself if people are being honest before believing them
think about the words people use. ‘always’, ‘all’, ‘never’ and ‘nobody’ are absolutes; in reality, there’s almost always exceptions to the rule.
generalizations are not always trustworthy & can’t be applied to individuals. (that might be a generalization about generalizations.)
there are abusers who call themselves shippers. there are abusers who call themselves anti-pedophilia/incest/abuse. there are abusers who ship pairings you consider abusive and abusers who ship only the fluffy, safe pairings. abusers can use anything to abuse, so don’t believe people who say ‘my space is abuser-free.’ (it isn’t.)
it’s easy to get turned around and thrown off by people who argue dishonestly. if they can’t answer simple questions about their position, you should probably ask somebody else who knows more.
shaming and guilting are not arguments. people who try to shame or guilt you into agreeing with them are not treating you kindly. be cautious about listening to them.
talk to people you trust. get blog recs; read different arguments & come to your own conclusions. know where you stand and why you stand there. know that it’s not wrong to change your mind if new evidence persuades you.
and know that you never have to tell anyone what you conclude if you don’t want to. that’s your business. you don’t have anything to prove to me or anyone else.
I just want everyone to have confidence in their ability to think for themselves and do what’s best for themselves – and not just in fandom. in everything. and I think that learning how to draw your own conclusions is the best way to protect yourself from being used or abused by someone trying to force their ideals down your throat.
“Brown eyes are so plain and ugly you can’t even compare them to gems like emerald and saph-”
Stop.
Carnelian
Cairngorm
Cassiterite
Smoky Quartz
Zircon (brown)
Citrine
Diaspore
Dravite
Enstatite
Hessonite
That’s not even all of GORGEOUS BROWN GEMS THAT EXIST IN THIS WORLD. Just like there are a lot of beautiful brown gems they’re a lot of BEAUTIFUL BROWN EYES. BROWN IS A GORGEOUS COLOR. Start treating it like one.
I am so glad someone did this.
if you don’t want someone to have brown eyes because you can’t compare them to a gem then you’re a bad writer
Not every villain, not every time, and certainly not to everyone at once, but there should be moments. We should, occasionally, be able to see ourselves in the bad guys, be able to understand how they got there.
Because it reminds us not to fucking go there.
Antis who get upset about villains having relatable qualities (often couched as being “romanticized” or “woobified”) are people who cannot bear to ever think of themselves as having the capability of being wrong.
Every human alive is capable of being a horrible person. Relatable villains remind us to keep an eye on that shit.
That thing, in particular, was a thirty dollar Barnes & Noble gift certificate. I was still too young for a part-time job, so I didn’t have this kind of spending cash on me, ever. I felt like a god.
Drunk with power, I fancy-stepped my way to my local B&N. I was ready to choose new books based solely on the most important of qualities…BADASS COVER ART. I walked away with a handful of paperbacks, most of which were horrible (I’m looking at you, Man-Kzin Wars III) or simply forgettable.
One book did not disappoint. I fell down the rabbit hole into a series that proved to be as badass as the cover art promised (Again, Man-Kzin Wars III, way to drop the ball on that one). With more than a dozen books in the series, I devoured them. I bought cassette tapes of ballads sung by bards in the stories. And the characters. Oh, the characters. I loved them. Gryphons, mages, but most importantly, lots of women. Different kinds of women. So many amazing women. I looked up to them, wrote bad fiction that lifted entire portions of dialogue and character descriptions, dreamed of writing something that the author would include in an anthology.
This year I decided in a fit of nostalgia to revisit the books I loved so damn much. I wanted to reconnect with my old friends…
…and I found myself facing Mary Sues. Lots of them. Perfect, perfect, perfect. A fantasy world full of Anakin Skywalkers and Nancy Drews and Wesley Crushers. I felt crushed. I had remembered such complex, deep characters and didn’t see those women in front of me at all anymore. Where were those strong women who kept me safe through the worst four years of my life?
Which led me to an important realization as I soldiered on through book after book. That’s why I needed them. Because they were Mary Sues. These books were not written to draw my attention to all the ugly bumps and whiskers of the real world. They were somewhere to hide. I was painfully aware that I was being judged by my peers and adults and found lacking. I was a fuckup. And sometimes a fuckup needs to feel like a Mary Sue. As an adult, these characters felt a little thin because they lacked the real world knowledge I, as an adult, had learned and earned. But that’s the thing…these books weren’t FOR this current version of myself. Who I am now doesn’t need a flawless hero because I’m comfortable with the idea that valuable people are also flawed.
There is a reason that most fanfiction authors, specifically girls, start with a Mary Sue. It’s because girls are taught that they are never enough. You can’t be too loud, too quiet, too smart, too stupid. You can’t ask too many questions or know too many answers. No one is flocking to you for advice. Then something wonderful happens. The girl who was told she’s stupid finds out that she can be a better wizard than Albus Dumbledore. And that is something very important. Terrible at sports? You’re a warrior who does backflips and Legolas thinks you’re THE BEST. No friends? You get a standing ovation from Han Solo and the entire Rebel Alliance when you crash-land safely on Hoth after blowing up the Super Double Death Star. It’s all about you. Everyone in your favorite universe is TOTALLY ALL ABOUT YOU.
I started writing fanfiction the way most girls did, by re-inventing themselves.
Mary Sues exist because children who are told they’re nothing want to be everything.
As a girl, being “selfish” was the worst thing you could be. Now you live in Narnia and Prince Caspian just proposed marriage to you. Why? Your SELF is what saved everyone from that sea serpent. Plus your hair looks totally great braided like that.
In time, hopefully, these hardworking fanfiction authors realize that it’s okay to be somewhere in the middle and their characters adjust to respond to that. As people grow and learn, characters grow and learn. Turns out your Elven Mage is more interesting if he isn’t also the best swordsman in the kingdom. Not everyone needs to be hopelessly in love with your Queen for her to be a great ruler. There are all kinds of ways for people to start owning who they are, and embracing the things that make them so beautifully weird and complicated.
Personally, though, I think it’s a lot more fun learning how to trust yourself and others if you all happen to be riding dragons.
Mary Sues exist because children who are told they’re nothing want to be everything.
A girl making herself the hero of her own story is a radical act. Stop shaming girls for doing it. Stop shaming yourself for it.
That moment when people are so condescending towards young girls about everything they do they even make fun of their escapism methods
It’s fine if we don’t like it, they aren’t doing this for us anyways
please, keep writing. keep drawing. keep painting. please keep making your art no matter how many may try to push you down. the world does not have nearly enough artists.
Well, unless you are going to only write stories in which nice things happen to nice people, you are going to write stories in which people who do not believe what you believe show up, just like they do in the world. And in which bad things happen, just as they do in the world. And that’s hard.
And if you are going to write awful people, you are going to have to put yourself into their shoes and into their head, just as you do when you write the ones who believe what you believe. Which is also hard.
I think that knowing what you believe, writing fiction informed by what you believe, and knowing that your fiction has a moral grounding (if it does) is the best thing for an author. And not worrying about what readers think of you, any more than you’d worry about what your parents or lovers might think if they read your fiction.
It’s something that I thought a lot about a long time ago, when one young man killed his lover, and then killed himself, and tried to frame Sandman (and me) for it. And the conclusion I came to was that you have to be good in your heart with what you’ve written. And beyond that, you cannot worry.
I-want-my-IWTV 