Tag: thinky thoughts

While many people think fanfiction is about inserting sex into texts (like Tolkien’s) where it doesn’t belong, Brancher sees it differently: “I was desperate to read about sex that included great friendship; I was repurposing Tolkien’s text in order to do that. It wasn’t that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be … friendship-ized.” Many fanfiction writers write about sex in conjunction with beloved texts and characters not because they think those texts are incomplete, but because they’re looking for stories where sex is profound and meaningful. This is part of what makes fan fiction different from pornography: unlike pornography, fanfic features characters we already care deeply about, and who tend to already have long-standing and complex relationships with each other. It’s a genre of sexual subjectification: the very opposite of objectification. It’s benefits with friendship.

Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to The Dwarf’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader (via rembrandtswife)

*bangs fist on the table* YES GOOD.

(via gaslightgallows)

aniquotes:

“People don’t understand the word ruthless. They think it means ‘mean.’ It’s not about being mean. It’s about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B. The line that goes from motive to means. Beginning to end. It’s about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. Not caring about anything else but the perfection of it.”

– Marco, Book #30: The Reunion, pg. 71 (by K.A. Applegate)

Hey tumblrmom, I just wanted to complain about this and I felt you’d understand because you’re a writer; but it upsets me that men in so many stories never have to shave. I was reading a story the other day where the two male characters had been running ’round the woods for several days, then there was a point where the author said that one put their hand on the others “smooth cheek.” Just no! Shave at 9 and you’ll have stubble by 5. Facial hair is a thing and so many authors seem to forget it.

thebibliosphere:

artemisgarden:

thebibliosphere:

It is also a pet peeve of mine, which is why I always seem to write men shaving lol.

Also the infamous “fantasy male character takes a piss behind a tree” scene that is always, always guaranteed, but we never ever talk about menstruation. Which is why I always make a little point of having characters bleeding, shaving and all the other little human things that make us human. And no one ever takes a fucking piss behind a tree because I fucking hate that obligatory scene.

@thebibliosphere omg this is so relevant to my life…kind of!

I watched The Hobbit movies (finally) the other day and was thinking about how different it and LOTR would be with a female (uterus having might be more correct, I think) character. Like…if it was me going for an indefinite amount of time you can bet your ass I’d have a year+ supply of menstrual products and toilet paper and probably hand sanitizer AT LEAST

If you were in the hobbit you’d likely be using cloth menstrual pads which you’d need to take off and wash in cold river water (cold is better, hot water sets blood stains), beating them against stones to get them clean and wringing them out to dry before hanging them up in front of the campfire to dry, possibly using meager salt rations to get any leakage stains (fyi in case no one knows, if you bleed through and think you’ve ruined something, soak em in a bucket of cold water and salt asap, the salt lifts the blood out) out of your visible outerwear.

As for hand sanitizer, you’d likely be using ashes from the fire and straining them thoroughly with clean water to create lye, rubbing your hands together then rinsing them thoroughly to get the caustic lye off. If you’re lucky you might find a yucca plant or something else containing saponins which are a kind of soap. Alternatively you’d be using up meager rations of animal fat soaps mixed in with herbs, most likely lavender to kill fungi and ward off bugs that bite.

I’ve actually written scenes with characters attending to these kind of needs before, for another story idea that has been bumping around my head since I first started reading fantasy as a child and realized, hey, why does no one deal with the things I have to deal with. Why is no one curled up in their sleep roll with a pigs bladder filled with hot water clutched to their back/stomach, why is not a single god damn person here, including the gods damned blood witch, talking about periods. 15 pages about ‘women’s magic’ and the full moon, and not one motherfucker is bleeding, but I still have to read about Johnny Hero boy taking a piss behind a tree.

What the fuck.

moranion:

teaberryblue:

Being female-assigned, female-presenting nonbinary on International Women’s Day just highlights how much our language fails people with liminal identities.

There aren’t easy words to describe people whose identities are tied together by our external experiences. We’ve got acronyms– FAAB or AFAB– to describe our physiology, but that feels blank and statistical, and assuming external experience is associated only with physiology is flawed and gender-essentialist in its own way. “Woman” and “female” both belong to people who share an internal identity I don’t share. Female-presenting centers the absence of identity, makes me feel as if the only way to describe myself is as an empty facade. Femme is inaccurate; femme is a word that belongs to a different type of identity that I don’t inhabit.

Self-describing “as a woman” not only erases my own nonbinary identity, but also does a great discredit to transgender women by suggesting that “woman” is a descriptor tied to physiology or external experience rather than identity or expression. 

What we don’t have is a word that ties together all of us who share an external experience based on how we are perceived because of our gender assignment and/or perceived presentation. That’s not womanhood, not for all of us, and it’s not the only kind of womanhood. Womanhood, our understanding of womanhood, needs to belong both to women who were never seen for who they were because they were assigned female and women who were never seen for who they were because they were assigned male. 

I share a kinship based on experience with both cis women and trans women, and some things I share more with cis women, and other things I share more with trans women, and some things I share with both and other things I share with neither. But we have no language that lets me relate simply and accurately, because my internal identity isn’t theirs, and we have words to describe internal identity, but none to describe experiencing the same things as a group without truly being part of that group– none that feel right, none that feel inclusive rather than sidelining ourselves by definition.  And it makes it hard to claim and relate experiences, even in places where I feel welcome, without feeling in some way deceitful or erased. 

I want a word to describe internal identity, another to describe physiology, another to describe external experience, because all of those are valid things to identify with and to talk about in regard to their commonalities, but it needs to be very clear in our language that they’re all different things, and that they’re not mutually inclusive in the way our society still generally implies they must be. 

So, anyway. I’m feeling very much on the outside looking in, feeling strong solidarity but no way to express it with the words I’ve got access to. But thanks to all the women out there and all the people our world defines as women for being yourselves and for doing the work you do. 

oh my fucking god, thank you for writing this. mom called to wish me a happy 8th of march this morning and i felt like a total fraud. on the other hand, women’s right to vote, to abortion, to contraception – in short, everything that concerns me as someone assigned female and with a ‘female’ on my ID still concerns me and will possibly concern me for a very long time. 

that’s the problem you get if you generalise and scream how only women’s experiences are valid in feminism – what about people who get some of the women’s experiences because we are assigned female? 

mercy-misrule:

sharpestrose:

mercy-misrule:

mercy-misrule:

From the Full Body Project, by Leonard Nimoy.

This picture is a version of the three graces

image

It’s a classic pose

Both versions are beautiful,  but I much prefer the Full Body Project version because these women are so beautiful and lovely and make me happy. Happy to be queer, happy to be a woman, happy to be fat and to love other fat people.

Every single hater is invited to acquaint themselves with my fists.

leonard nimoy was important to so many people for a lot of reasons, but for me, The Full Body Project will always be top of the list

just one of the most beautiful, tender, respectful portrayals of fat bodies

it helped me move from indifference about my own body to begin to love it

I’m so glad I own a copy of the book, and I feel so lucky that Leonard Nimoy signed it

The most important thing to me about the Full Body Project is that it came about because someone asked him “why are all your models thin?” and instead of getting defensive or making up some answer about aesthetics, Leonard Nimoy stopped and went “wait, why are all my models thin?” and set about exploring that automatic choice within himself through what became the Full Body Project — it wasn’t just about portraying fat bodies beautifully and classically (the images echo famous statues, supermodel photographs, friezes, etc) but also about sharply interrogating himself as an artist as to why he’d had to go out and deliberately learn how to see fat bodies as beautiful, rather than being able to do so automatically as he had with thin bodies. 

He was just an astonishingly cool man in so many ways. 

Yes this too! 

As a creator, as an artist, to take criticism and to give birth to something so good and pure and honest stemmed from it, I have nothing but admiration.

It’s what I want art to hope to be, celebrations of humanity and understanding of the self and choices we make.

It made such a profound difference to me, to see these images of fat people happy and beautiful and taken with an air of reverence and respect.

And through these pictures you see his transformation as an artist as well.

inkskinned:

i make a funny post about my feelings of numbness; a person points out i have executive dysfunction. for a second i snort; i know i have mental illness, nothing new here under the sun. but then i realize how many of my symptoms i forget are symptoms. that it’s not normal to be tired all the time. that it’s not normal to get angry for no reason. that the fact i carefully balance between depression and anxiety isn’t a normal railroad track to be walking – i know that it’s not normal to constantly wonder if the train is coming; i forget other people aren’t standing in the way, that being hit isn’t even an option.

there are a lot of posts that make me laugh at first. “do you ever feel you’re running out of time for no reason?” the person asks. “anxiety,” another replies. it’s sort of sad-funny. but i wonder how many of us are asking “am i okay?” “is this me or a symptom or normal?” 

how very sad none of us know what to expect out of this. i have a diagnosis and i still wonder if it’s normal to panic on buses. is it normal i’ve been having panic attacks since i was young? i picture my seven-year-old self with new technology. would i have typed into google why can’t i sleep or would i have assumed everyone constantly feels like they woke up from a bad dream?

do people who are healthy ask “does anyone else”? do people who are healthy ever have to wonder if they’re in one piece? what is it like? 

“anyone else get bad feelings in classrooms?” i wonder aloud. somebody looks at me with pity. now it comes down to the question: is it me or anxiety?

koiotchka:

abigailnussbaum:

xekstrin:

“Why do you like the villains when they did terrible things but dislike the heroes for doing annoying things”

because this is fiction and im here to be entertained; being annoying and unlikeable IS a much, much graver sin than any fictional atrocity any villain commits

Also, when bad characters do terrible things, it’s usually highlighted and signposted by the narrative.  When the heroes do annoying – and, sometimes, also terrible – things, the narrative usually intends me to ignore it, or think that those terrible things are actually cool and justified.

I don’t need to disapprove of the villains because the narrative is doing it for me.  But when I have to read against the text to disapprove of the shitty stuff the heroes get away with, that’s more work and, more importantly, frustrating and unrewarding work, because you know there’s never going to be any comeuppance for these characters.  Which makes it ten times as annoying.

JUDY HOPPS ugh

finnglas:

teacupnosaucer:

chitarra10:

wolfburied:

I think a big part of why I read way more fanfiction than books is that there’s just a hell of a lot less exposition

the first 10 pages of most books are always “these are the main characters and here’s some background on each of them and this is the setting etc etc” and it’s such a fucking hassle getting to the plot sometimes

fanfic is just like “fuck it you know all of this already let’s go”

That’s a really good point.

this is actually one of the most challenging transitions to make as a fanfic writer going pro author. how to introduce people to characters and settings smoothly.. but more importantly, how to get people INVESTED in your characters, since with fanfic that investment is often something your readers are bringing in with them already

As far as back story, my transitional phase here was AU fanfiction – because you have to set up what’s different and what’s the same in an AU, so when I started writing original fiction, I just kind of… jumped off there.

However, when it comes to getting you invested in the characters…ehn, I’m not sure how good I am at that in the beginning. I just assume you’re going to love them because I love them and away we go.