I was just recording myself talking about the Anita Blake series for my I Review Books While You Look At Snorlax videos that may never happen, and I had to keep being like, I'm not trying to slut shame, but....

This process is reminding me of how many series I have where I'm just like, I've read 10-20 books in this series. I wouldn't recommend it.

we Need more characters in media who are disabled just because their body did that. having disabled characters at all is so rare and usually they were injured in some disaster and they Should still exist but like !! as someone who slowly became disabled for no apparent reason. i want character like me, too

Some ways that difficulty with change / attachment to routine impacts me, an autistic person, that aren't keeping a strict daily or weekly routine:

Not every autistic person is the same, and what does or doesn't bother me has no real bearing on what does or doesn't bother other autistic people. One of the key things to note here, though, is that in basically all of these cases the issue is not that I dislike the change being made, it's that I struggle with the fact that a change is being made.

If these do bother you, one of the things that's helped me a lot is to force myself to go through the mental exercise of whether the issue is that I dislike/disagree with the change or whether my issue is just the fact that it's changing. Do I have a reason to want it to stay the same beyond the fact that I dislike change?

And sometimes the answer is yes. In the case of the first work example, there were suggestions that I fundamentally disagreed with and thought that our original plan was better, whether because of content or because of required level of effort in the time we had. But there were a lot of suggestions that I realized were right and doable. I could only distinguish those two because I forced myself to parse them out.

Sometimes you won't be able to work through this, whether because you don't have time or it's beyond your emotional regulation at that moment. That's okay! But figuring out why you're reacting can really help.

I hate I when I get an idea for a novel. Like oh no here starts the slow sad slip n’ slide to dissapointment again.

You ever been 30,000 words and hundreds of research hours into a project when you realize hey wait a minute. I don’t like this. This is bad.

Ok adding to this though that even though it is extremely relatable, this is a KNOWN thing with professional writing. 10k is often referred to as "having a pot boiling" or "having a stew" - it's the point where you often see an idea coming together and it's exciting! But THEN... 30k-50k is the point where that fun has to start coming together. In theatre, it's usually week 3 of a 5 week rehearsal period where you have to stop talking about the play and really get it all up on its feet and cohesive. In art, it's committing to what are going to be the final visible layers of colour and texture, in sculpture the moment where you're truly at the point of no return with carving out the shape.

It usually feels really bad. Because this is the point it becomes real craft. It's so, so difficult to really be able to identify if it's truly not going to be anything or you're just in the hardest part of the process, and really the only way to know is to... write through it. Write it badly. Or, if you really can't, put it in a drawer and come back to it after a few months of breathing space. Remember, you can fix so much in the edit, but you can't fix nothing!

(I say, fully looking at my latest draft of my book and considering throwing it in the bin. But my editor said exactly this to me, so I'm passing it along.)

On twitter I’m seeing dozens of threads from Black activists warning people against burnout, giving all sorts of useful tips about preventing and managing it for the sake of a long-term, sustainable effort.

On tumblr I’m seeing a hell of a lot of young white kids yelling at anyone who actually follows those steps, and acting like burnout is a moral falling rather than a well-proven psychological phenomenon.

Be careful who you get your information from. Don’t let guilt lead you to make choices that will harm both you and the movement.

I’m going to reblog this again since I see more individuals are inquiring about burnout prevention tips in the notes and it’s why I sought out this resource. I hope it helps you!

source

I've talked about this a bit before, but I want to add that, even if you don't consider yourself an activist, if you spend a significant portion of your time reading about/tracking extremely harsh or horrifying situations (e.g., tracking what's going on in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen; tracking or compiling info about anti-trans bills; tracking gun violence or terrorism), you can also burn out.

It doesn't require going out and marching or organizing for this to happen, and it is not a moral failing. You are not somehow doing less important work or are somehow less deserving of rest and recovery if your work is behind a screen compiling data.

You are allowed to look away. You are allowed to take breaks. There is no moral superiority in suffering for the sake of suffering.

If you are starting to feel like you can't look away, like something will fall through the cracks if you take a break, or if you start to feel like your suffering is somehow part of your activism or your work, that is a sign that you are burning out. So look at the recommendations laid out above, or read other people's advice, and take care of yourself.

If you're interested in reading about how fiction shapes people's views on and actions regarding real-world issues, this article has a decent section on it.

So I was thinking more about this, and actually specifically about the Propaganda Model (PM) and then attempts to extend the PM out to entertainment (e.g., the Hollywood Propaganda Model). And I was thinking of them specifically in the context of fandom. (This is going to get a little technical. Sorry.)

The PM is a model created by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in the early 2000s (or at least that's when the book came out) to analyze and explain news media in the United States. Analyzing news media isn't my area of expertise and I haven't read that full paper, but the gist of it is that Herman and Chomsky argue that coverage about the U.S. gets filtered down by a number of factors to get it within the bounds of what is allowed to be expressed in the media. Those filters are "concentrated ownership, the economic importance of advertising, the centrality of the government as a source of information, the ability of the powerful to issue flak, and a dominant ideology of a superior 'us' in the West versus a backward 'them' overseas."(1)

Matthew Alford proposed a Hollywood Propaganda Model, built off of this, to attempt the same thing but with film instead of news media. He also had five filters: concentrated corporate ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak and enforcers, and anti-"other" as control mechanism.(2)

For both of these, a lot of the core to this is the idea that it's forces beyond the writers/direct creators (e.g., corporate owners, advertisers, U.S. government) who are essentially putting their fingers on the scale and either squashing or minimizing content critical of the U.S. government or its actions or pushing content positive towards the U.S. government and its actions. I don't necessarily disagree with this idea--we know for a fact that the government and especially the military plays a big role in films about the military.(3)

But I think a lot of this discounts the sentiment held by many directors, producers, and even writers that is largely positive towards the U.S. government and the military. I think a lot of the content would be pretty much within that same bounds of acceptable even without the corporate/government thumbs on the scale. For TV, I think about cop shows--Donald Bellisario and Dick Wolf, of NCIS and Law and Order fame respectively, are massive fans of the military and the police. They were going to write pro-military and pro-cop shows regardless, and their shows make up a ridiculous fraction of all of the police procedurals that have aired over the last 30 years. Maybe the fact that it's such a large fraction of what gets on air is because of the corporate thumb, but I don't think the actual pro-military/cop bent of the show is.

But also, I look at fanfiction. And even within fanfiction, it largely fits within the exact same boundaries of somewhat-critical through extremely-positive towards the U.S. and its policies as the stuff I'm seeing on TV, and it does it all without a corporate thumb on the scale.

Now, I haven't done a full study on fanfiction for this topic, and I can't say with any certainty if my instincts are correct, but I've read a lot of it, and I can't remember reading much of anything that stood out to me as particularly more critical of the U.S. government or its actions than published material. The same is true (or even maybe more true) of the self-published materials I've read, which similarly don't have those corporate, advertising, and government filters that Herman, Chomsky, and Alford talk about.

None of this is to say that they're necessarily wrong(4) but rather than I would be interested to see where fanfiction and self-published fiction falls in comparison, and also that I think that they underestimate the degree to which many people who are creating work for public consumption are relatively uncritical of the U.S. government and its actions. This is not to say that many people don't disagree with the U.S. government or actions it takes, but rather that most people don't actually see the U.S. as a "terrorist state", "rogue state", or "failed state"(5) and so aren't writing it as such not because of the corporate overlords but because of their own beliefs.

(1) From Matthew Alford's "Why Not a Propaganda Model for Hollywood"

(2) Ibid.

(3) From Alford: "At least a quarter of major 1991-2002 films depicting the application of US force received full cooperation from the Pentagon..."

(4) I disagree with some fundamental parts of what Chomsky says, including in this, but that's the subject of a different essay

(5) From Matthew Alford's book The Propaganda Model Today. The quotation marks are his--he's quoting Chomsky talking about the U.S.

A Visual #Fashion Guide For Women - Necklines, Skirt Types & More!

By KikiCloset.com

Rebloggimg for writing reference

Another storytelling rule I think people should remember is the law of diminishing returns. If you keep on ramping up the stakes higher and higher and higher, after a point it gets to where the audience can’t really care anymore.

this is why u gotta do a killing god episode and then a putt putt golf episode so it evens out

My redesign hot take is that if you’re aiming to “desexualize” a female character, don’t make her boobs smaller. You’re implying a lot here.

Instead of shrinking her boobs, try:

There are probably lots more options too! I’m not an artist! Just a person with a big chest and back pain!

it disturbs me that a significant number of people think that the issue with sexual violence, gendered violence, and misogyny is sexual desire rather than dehumanization, so they are relentlessly suspicious of others' (and their own) desires while simultaneously never at all interrogating others' (and their own) dehumanizing beliefs about other people, both within and outside of sexual contexts

#and at the root you'll find the misunderstanding of sexual violence as a violent extension of sex. #when in reality sexual violence is a sexual extension of violence. and the distinction is important.

“Show Don’t Tell”? Not Always. Here’s When to Use Summary.

I was inspired to write this post after getting a great anonymous question in my Ask: “What’s your opinion on the whole ‘show don’t tell’ advice? Do you have any tips for when to show and when to tell?”

Here’s my response:

I honestly think that “show don’t tell” is one of the most over-quoted and least-understood pieces of writing advice out there.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, “show don’t tell” means that instead of explaining or telling something to your reader (“Sheila was reckless and impulsive”), you should show Sheila’s impulsiveness through action or dialogue. For example, “Even though her rent was overdue, after she got her paycheck Sheila spent $400 on an antique toilet.” This would allow the reader to draw the conclusion that Sheila was impulsive for themselves, rather than being told.

Theoretically, this is great advice for new fiction writers, who, left to their own devices, tend to write their stories entirely in “telling” mode.

But summary (telling) has a place in fiction as well, and it’s an important one.

For one thing, summary allows you to pace your story. If everything is shown in the moment, a story can sometimes seem to be unfolding with breathtaking speed. Alternating with a bit of summary allows your reader to slow down for a break every once in a while.

Secondly, scene takes a lot longer to write than summary. In the earlier example, it might take several scenes or hundreds of words to thoroughly show and convince the reader of Sheila’s impulsiveness. Whereas the sentence “Sheila was impulsive” takes three words. So summary can allow you to fit more into your story or novel and keep it a reasonable length whereas if you wrote every single little thing that happened in scene your story might be prohibitively long.

So summary helps control the pacing of the story and also helps the writer moderate the story’s length.

Even the most fervent supporters of “show don’t tell,” as far as I know, do not dispute that every story can make use of and benefit from summary.

Try it yourself: Pick up your favorite story or book off of the shelf and see if you can locate parts of the story that are told, explained, or summarize to the reader. It’s there. It’s part of the package. Good writers use summary, and they know how to use it well.

So how do you decide when and where to use summary?

The answer is in itself another question and topic. But here’s a quick guideline:

Use summary to give the reader any information she needs which is not important enough to the story to warrant a scene, or to show the passing of time between important parts of the story.

Example #1 Using summary to quickly present inconsequential information.

If the fact that Sheila is reckless and impulsive is a central part of the story—maybe this is a story about how Sheila, your protagonist, learns to overcome her impulsiveness, for example, or maybe in this story it becomes a major issue in Sheila’s relationship that she is impulsive, etc.—then by all means show Sheila’s impulsiveness in scenes.

But if Sheila is, for example, a minor character who is only mentioned by two or three times in passing, and whose behavior doesn’t really affect the story one way or another, then go ahead and summarize Sheila’s behavior. For example, if Sheila is a distant cousin of the protagonist and is only mentioned in a few sentences when the protagonist bumps into her at a family reunion. She is not a central part of the story, but for whatever reason it’s important for the reader to know a few minor details about her.

Example #2: Using summary to show time passing between important scenes.

If your story is about a couple being trapped inside a cabin for a long winter, by all means show the bitter cold days in full scene. That’s the essence of your story, you wouldn’t want to summarize it and deny the reader the chance to experience it.

But if your story is about two friends who share a friendship at summer camp every year, you might want to recap the winter that passed between their visits in a paragraph or two.

Another time to quickly summarize time passing is to use a sentence or two when characters transition from one important location to another, e.g. “They left the movie, drove back to the house, and started dinner.” Again, check up on your favorite writers. I promise you they are not showing every single tiny action blow-by-blow. It would be tedious as hell and make it almost impossible for the reader to figure out what’s important and what’s not.

A few final words about “show don’t tell”:

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@theliteraryarchitect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler, a writer and developmental editor. For more writing help, download my Free Resource Library for Fiction Writers, join my email list, or check out my book The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

Genuine question: can someone explain the appeal of (straight) romance where the main dynamic is that the man is mean to the woman, forces her, stalks her, etc.?

I'm not looking for judgement of that dynamic or those tropes, just an actual explanation, preferably from someone who enjoys it.

I think it's a couple possible things:

1) internalized misogyny - the women in the audience feel they aren't "supposed" to pursue sex, are always supposed to deny it, so when the male protagonist is relentless, the reader gets the sex that is desired while "absolving" the reader from wanting the thing she wants that she isn't supposed to want (Drogo / Dany)

2) control fantasy - the man is a mean evil monster and the power of love from the right woman changes him (Sansa / Sandor)

3) trope subversion - the man is a mean evil monster but all that falls apart in the face of a woman who kicks his ass figuratively and or literally (Brienne / Jaime)

It's possible what I'm thinking of is a difference of degree, not of type, but those all are pretty tame compared to, for example, many dark romances (it's been a while since I've read any of ASOIAF, so I could be forgetting details).

I was reading one recently where he drugs her twice, marries her against her will (while she's drugged), tattoos her against her will (while she's drugged), and changes out her birth control with a placebo without her knowledge to trap her even further in the relationship. And he doesn't change at the end of it, she changes by deciding she's okay with the relationship and his behavior.

I've seen people lauding books where the man breaks her legs to keep her from leaving, or stalks her, kidnaps her, etc.

And the way that people talk about it isn't shy about wanting sex, so I struggle to believe that for all the ones where the man doesn't change that it's just internalized misogyny.

But maybe it is that the man is seen as changing, because he stops physically or sexually threatening or assaulting her (because she is now giving him what he wants), and his controlling nature can be viewed as protectiveness in the right light.

So anyway maybe I've talked myself back into believing your arguments.