Okay Sorry, One Other Thing Annoyed Me About That Writing Class. One Of The Students Is This Super Clean-cut

okay sorry, one other thing annoyed me about that writing class. one of the students is this super clean-cut doctor who works at an HIV clinic, and he asked the prof "do you ever get distracted while reading books, because you find yourself analyzing the craft of them instead of sinking into the story?"

and she said "no," and turned away. and the whole class laughed awkwardly, bc it was a pretty abrupt and dismissive answer. so then she turned back to him and said "you wouldn't ask a musician if they get distracted listening to songs. they just enjoy the music."

but I dunno, I'm a newbie writer with only one (scheduled-to-be-published) book under my belt, but I get distracted sometimes when I'm reading. if I find I'm not sinking into a block of text, I'll squint at it and be like "okay, they're using too much passive voice, that's why my brain isn't grabbing on to it." so I'm sorry Mr. HIV doctor, I thought your question was reasonable!

More Posts from Ealdwineoldfriend and Others

5 months ago

screaming, crying, throwing up, as I force myself to write a story i'm very passionate about and love writing and have no obligation to write except that i want to

4 months ago

Listen, I'm having fun playing with the ultra patriotic voice, but after a couple years in blue-collar landscaping jobs, you really do need to phrase things like that.

"I'm pretty sure that fella ain't here legally."

"Well, that ain't your business Chip, it's his."

They hate being preached to. If you pull out words like 'gender wage gap' they'll tell you you're brainwashed by the far left media.

"He's one of them transgenders."

"He got freedoms too, Jimmy."

4 months ago

one of my favorite things to do in limited perspective is write sentences about the things someone doesn't do. he doesn't open his eyes. he doesn't reach out. i LOVE sentences like that. if it's describing the narrator, it's a reflection of their desires, something they're holding themselves back from. there's a tension between urge and action. it makes you ask why they wanted or felt compelled to do that, and also why they ultimately didn't. and if it's describing someone else, it tells you about the narrator's expectations. how they perceive that other person or their relationship. what they thought the other person was going to do, or thought the other person should have done, but failed to. negative action sentences are everything.

4 months ago

Discussions of what "counts" as "canon" queer representation fall apart the second you start talking about media older than about five years or so. If your only metric for "canon queerness" is a character looking directly into the camera and explaining their identity in specific, modern, US-American-English terminology, you're not going to get a good picture of what queer media looks like. If your barometer for what counts as "canon" requires two characters of the same gender to kiss on-screen, you're not going to get a good picture of what queer media looks like.

Dr. Septimus Pretorius (portrayed by Ernest Thesiger in 1935's Bride of Frankenstein) was never going to look directly into the camera and explain his sexuality in 2024 terms, but he remains an icon in queer media history. You cannot look at that character (blatantly queer-coded in the manner of the time, played by a queer man in a film directed by another queer man) and tell me that he isn't a part of queer media history.

To be honest, even when discussing modern queer media, I would argue that the popular idea of what "counts" as "canon" is very narrow and flawed. I've seen multiple posts in the past few days that say the Nimona movie is "implied" trans representation, and I just...no, y'all, it's not "implied," it's an allegory. The entire damn movie is about transgender struggle, and the original comic is deeply tied into N.D. Stevenson's own queer journey. It isn't subtle. You cannot look at that movie and pretend that it isn't about trans struggle. It's blatant, and to say that Nimona "isn't canonically trans" is a take that misses the story's entire message, and the blatant queerphobia that almost kept the movie from happening. (I wrote a five thousand word essay about the topic.)

Queer themes, queer coding, queer exploration, and queer representation can all exist in a piece of media that doesn't seem to have "canon queer characters" on the surface. Most queer characters are never going to be able to explicitly state their specific identity labels, be it due to censorship or just due to the fact that scenes like that don't fit in some narratives. Some stories aren't conducive to a big "so what's your identity?" scene.

Explicit, undeniable, "this is my identity in no uncertain terms" scenes are very important and radical, and I'm not saying they shouldn't ever exist. I am saying that you can't consider those scenes the only way for queerness in a piece of media to be "canon."

2 months ago

Hello! I’m a horror & dark whimsy writer/content creator, and I was just published for the first time a couple months ago with my environmental horror short story β€œHAUSTORIUM.” It’d mean a lot if folks checked it out! Keep an eye on this space, more to come πŸ‘€πŸ‘»πŸŒ²

4 months ago

I can’t find a good app to make a private world building wiki. All of them are either specifically tailored to roleplaying games to an annoying degree or force you to make your wiki public or put all the decent features behind a paywall or something. I’m broke and just want the ability to write little articles for myself with links so I can remember what I was doing.

4 months ago

now say it with me: authors/artists dont owe you moral purity. an author/artist job is not to hold you by the hand & tell you exactly what is Goodβ„’ & what is Badβ„’. you should be able to think for yourself

4 months ago
I’ve Never In My Life Seen Or Been Taught Sentence Structure Like This. It Seems Incredibly Interesting,
I’ve Never In My Life Seen Or Been Taught Sentence Structure Like This. It Seems Incredibly Interesting,

I’ve never in my life seen or been taught sentence structure like this. It seems incredibly interesting, though. Do any of my followers know anything about this or were taught this?

(Source: satrayreads on threads)

@satrayreads (@satrayreads) on Threads
Threads
You know what I realized… schools are not teaching students how to diagram sentences anymore and it SHOWS. This used to be the bane of my ex
4 months ago

Bones isn’t xenophobic toward Vulcans, he just roasts Spock, specifically, for being Vulcan the same way my siblings roast me for being gay. They’re both in on the joke, and if Spock asked Bones to stop, he would. Instead, this sassy motherfucker insults humanity as a whole and Bones’s abilities as a doctor in retaliation.

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ealdwineoldfriend - Ealdwine Grisly
Ealdwine Grisly

I write things sometimes. she/her, but I'll take whatever pronouns suite the bit

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