Tag: don’t be a dick
I find the whole concept of being “tumblr famous” to be really weird, like I am aware I have a fairly large and consistent following for someone who isn’t running say, a community blog or a clickbaity style blog where the content is taken from elsewhere. But I don’t really think of it as…I don’t know.
I don’t really have the words for it.
I think perhaps because it was something I fell into, rather than planned, so it’s just this really surreal thing that’s happening in my life and I’m not really sure how to handle it, so I’m just…kind of carrying on like normal and pretending the numbers don’t exist? Like I don’t want that to be the focus of what I’m doing.
And then sometimes it hits me, oh, this is actually a thing. My words are everywhere on the internet, usually without credit, but they are there. I see my fear quote go past my dash every other day being misattributed to Dune. I’ve been approached for interviews, I’ve given quotes. People recognize me in the super market and shout “hi mom!” and wave. People have referenced me in their masters thesis.
Other people, high up people in publishing companies I could only ever dream of working at, have—when I’m introduced to them by a mutual—snapped their fingers in recognition and gone “oh right, you’re the online entertainer, I love your stuff! we actually used your disability in fantasy article to talk about…” and I have a brief out of body experience because how.
How is this my life? What did I ever do to deserve this?
I mean, apart from black out and recount the story of Crucifix Nail Nipples.
…
Yeah, no, actually.
That…that sounds about right.
@logarithmicpanda said
What’s the fear quote? 😮 I don’t think I’ve seen that one yet
“Acknowledge your fear. Let it pass over and through you,
breathe it in and hold it in your lungs, then let it out like fire. You do not
need to be a ray of sunshine to be the positive change you want to see in the
world. Sometimes you can be a very small, very afraid flicker in the darkness.Just don’t let that flicker go out.”
It’s actually from this post, which has comparatively few notes compared to some of my others: source
But I see that last part fairly often because people lifted it out, and attributed it to “anon”, and then hilariously on one occasion, someone tried to correct them like “actually it’s from Dune”, when in actual facts it’s from little old me rambling into the void, trying to make sense of my own anxieties in a terrifying world.
I see it being used in pastel colored mood boards on Pinterest, and I’ve had to file a couple of take downs when people have tried to sell it as inspirational merch, which hMMMM. Not okay.
I’m happy to collaborate with people, but if you’re going to make a profit from my words (like I consented for @deadgodjess to use my “I hope your god will forgive you because we will not” quote) then at least ask my permission first. And for goodness sakes if you like something I say and want to make it a tumblr quote, please feel free to do so—just make sure you attach my name to it.
I know “anonymous” maybe has a more romantic connotation to it, and makes it sound like wise old words, but please don’t take the words of a disabled queer writer and eradicate their existence. The world is already trying hard enough to do that as it is.
Hey just a heads-up, at least three of the four fics posted by Steter722772 that just came through this blog are plagiarized works.
Stiles Bond love is from Neil4God’s Stiles Isn’t Allowed To Be Awesome
Mated Dragons is from astudyinfic’s Dragon’s Heart
Neighbor is from Triangulum’s Love Thy Neighbor…He’s Hot
All three are basically copy/paste versions of the originals, with only a title change and some of the names in the fics swapped out to try and make them Steter. I’ve deleted the automated posts from this feed, and I believe they’ve already been reported over on ao3, but if they post any more fics and you see them here, odds are good they’re also plagiarized so please don’t reblog them if I don’t see and delete them right away.
On Unsolicited Concrit on Fanfics, an editor’s perspective
So I’ve been watching this conversation play out for a few days, a few months now really, and struggling with how to throw my two cents in. I’m not going to get flowery with metaphors or long winded with anecdotes, y’all. I’m just gonna come right out and say that when you comment with unsolicited constructive criticism on a piece of any creative writing, that criticism is no longer constructive and is inherently wrong. And as an editor, I can tell you explicitly why.
An author is an author. An editor is an editor. There is a hierarchy in that. An editor for an authored work of creative writing performs a different function than an editor for say, a piece of journalistic writing or…I dunno, academic, whatever other kind of professional writing you can think of. If a journalist handed me a piece of work and I was to edit it, I would be beholden to a certain stylebook and would also probably have jurisdiction to make true edits, ie cuts or changes to the text.
But an editor cannot author a piece of creative writing that they are editing. The author, at the end of the day, is the one in charge. The author, at the end of the day, is the one to in fact direct the editing. The author directs the editor, “Please proofread for spelling and grammar,” the term “proof” here denoting a finished manuscript that will not change structurally but may still be in need of fresh eyes to catch errors in grammar, punctuation, or spelling. Or the author requests, “Please read for characterization and/or continuity.” Or even, “Please read for continuity, but I would not like any notes on characterization.” The author can even appear to be giving free rein to an editor and say, “Please send me any revision notes to be discussed.” But over the course of that discussion, it is still the author saying, “With this note, you describe a reaction to a scene that I did not want. How do I make that scene illicit this other reaction that I want from the reader?” And then the editor works to achieve the author’s intended purpose with that creative work, full stop, even if the editor liked the original reaction to the scene in question and thinks it weakens the piece or the character or the statement to change it to something else. It is the author’s work, the author’s purpose, and even in this era of death of the author, at the stage where criticism is helpful, the author has the final say.
As an editor, I can go to an author and say, “I believe the piece would be stronger if we changed x, y, and z, in such-and-such a way,” and the author, as my employer and the one actually authoring the work, can disregard every word I have to say. Realistically speaking, an author can even decide to ignore proofreading line edits and seek a publisher that will ignore its own stylebook to publish something experimental and counter to traditional grammatical correctness. The author is in charge.
Readers and commenters, authors of fan fiction are not your ghost writers. They are in charge of their creative works. And if they have not directed your edits, if they have not come to you and said, “This is what I would like you to look out for while you read this piece for me,” your criticisms can. Not. be. Constructive. Since you. Are not. Constructing. The piece. The author. Is working towards.
Do not give concrit unless something explicitly states, “Concrit welcome.” That is an author asking for help constructing the piece they are working towards, or maybe developing their style, or maybe scoping out their audience so they can think of what to work on next. They can paw through and use or discard criticism at will. But if it is unasked for, it is more than likely unwelcome and by definition unhelpful and unconstructive. That is all.
A note on critics: a critic fulfills a further function and that is to observe a finalized piece of whatever medium and then speak on it in technical terms, they analyze the techniques utilized by the maker and whether they were executed correctly in theory, since you can’t exactly judge “art.” Y’know that episode of whatever cooking show where the man who spoke English as a second language made a savory meat instead of whatever dessert they had assigned for the challenge because he misheard them, but the judges critiqued him on the dish he made so they could grade him on his technical performance? That’s a critic. Critics don’t step in until something is done. A critic cannot author a piece they are critiquing, nor can they edit it, because their job is to analyze it once it is complete, and furthermore a critic not educated and well-versed in the technical wisdom of the medium they are critiquing is worth about as much as an umbrella under water.
As for the audience, guys, I know we’re trying to build a community. I know it’s fandom, I know it’s free, I know it’s supposed to be fun. But even in the case of making things more accessible, don’t hit the author up in public. Shit, if a beta is listed? Hit the beta up! That’s their job anyway, if something’s misspelled or there’s a typo, that’s their job performance lacking, not the author’s. Or if the author has listed another method of contact, do it in private. Do it the way that fosters community, not the way that discourages people from creating. And if there’s no private method of contact, as much as it may suck to hear this, just don’t read that author anymore. There’s a bunch of us working hard towards accessibility. Find us. Prompt us. Or, write what you’d like to see yourself and bring it to us so we can help you make it exactly how you want it to be. After all, we’re editors. And that’s our job: to help you make things Exactly How You Want Them To Be.
if [fanfiction authors] have not come to you and said, “This is what I would like you to look out for while you read this piece for me,”
your criticisms can. Not. be. Constructive. Since you. Are not. Constructing. The piece.
Louder for the people in the back
Also a super good point:
don’t hit the author up in public. Shit, if a beta is listed? Hit the beta up! That’s their job anyway, if something’s misspelled or there’s a typo, that’s their job performance lacking, not the author’s. Or if the author has listed another method of contact, do it in private. Do it the way that fosters community
smokescreens-n-otherillusions:
In case anyone wants some perspective on how utterly random triggers can be. I haven’t lived in a house with a garage door in four-ish years. Right now at this moment, I honestly can’t recall what they sound like, except something metallic moving and rather clanky.
There was one on tv. I wasn’t even paying attention to it, I had my headphones on and was actively trying to tune the show out. My ears picked up on the sound of the garage door, and a jolt of adrenaline shot through my body as I grabbed my laptop and moved to get out of my seat and run to my room.
I realized what happened after about two seconds.
The sound is gone from my ears, but my heart is still racing and I’m waiting for the door to the house to open, to hear the jingling of my mother’s keys and her footsteps moving through the house. My muscles are still tense and I’m fighting the urge to run to my room and stick a board in front of the door.
For years, the sound of a garage door was my warning to pack up what I was doing quickly and retreat to my room if I was out of it.
I can’t remember the sound of the garage door right now, but I can’t tell my brain to stop trying to react to it.
This can be reblogged, if anyone was wondering. I wrote up this post with the intention that hopefully people who read it and didn’t really get triggers would understand a bit.
So, a thing that’s particularly important here: The trigger here is not the bad experience itself.
after my super funtime medical adventure, i had to change all my bath products, because my brain had associated the scent of them with being terrified and in extreme pain.
these were products i had chosen myself because i liked the smell. and they got connected to the medical phobia because i was using them to wash off the hospital reek and the fear sweat and so forth. i don’t know why they became a trigger. maybe because washing off the hospital smell didn’t make me not in pain. maybe because their ‘fresh pine ocean breeze bluegreen spicy stuff’ smell didn’t really replace the hospital stench, just mingled with it.
but for whatever reason, smelling these objectively nice soaps made me do flashbacks and get all hopeless and wobbly. so they had to go.
triggers are random. they’re often something that was simply present during a trauma, and you can’t guess what they’ll be. no one who hasn’t heard me explain this would ever associate suave naturals ocean breeze body wash with unbearable abdominal pain. so i guess the takeaways here are twofold:
– if you have triggers, remember other people can’t predict them, and don’t expect to be protected from them all the time. that’s up to you.
– if you don’t have triggers, don’t assume you can judge what a ‘real’ trigger is, and if someone asks you to accomodate them, don’t be a dick about it. even if you don’t want to make that accomodation, decline politely and apologize, don’t disparage their request.
Triggers are a case of classical conditioning, where association between a stimulus (In these cases, forms of trauma) and a neutral stimuli (such as the garage door or scent of bath products) becomes so interlinked that you associate them as one. This happens a lot to those going through chemotherapy, where the nausea they feel from chemo medication becomes linked with everything they interact with while feeling nauseous (it doesn’t help that this sort of conditioning is super strong when linked with nausea) so even after all chemo treatment is done, they can’t stand to eat what they ate at the time, can’t look at the doctor, or a white room, or smell cleaning products without feeling extreme nausea.
Triggers are subconscious, and we haven’t really got control of them. Even if you go through therapy for them, because they’ve now become learnt, they will still be there and mess with people. Don’t make assumptions about triggers, and try to be accommodating.
For those who are interested, EMDR has been shown to be able to lessen the effects of triggers.
“Obviously ‘bihet’ offends a lot of bisexuals, so we need to come up with a better term for bisexuals in m/f relationships.”
How about… and hear me out… this may sound crazy…. but you… continue to call us bisexual… because (and I realize this gets confusing for you people so read this next part slowly) it turns out we continue to be bisexual regardless of who we’re dating.
Okay, this shit gets me all heated up. I’m just a cisgay dude up in here, but I have Some Opinions about this nonsense.
Bisexual people in relationships with folks of the other gender are not only themselves still bisexual (I’m really ashamed of a bunch of all that this shit even needs to be said, like c’mon), but their relationships are queer.
Yes, I just said that straight people can be involved in queer relationships without they themselves being queer.
The reason for this is simple: folks who are in relationships with queer people will always have to deal with their partner’s marginalization impacting their relationship. Always. Even if their bisexual partner chooses to be entirely stealth about their queerness (and that’s their right, by gods, fight me about it), their relationship is still impacted by that very choice existing. It’s a facet heterosexual relationships never have to negotiate.
Frankly, bisexual folks have to deal with active marginalization from multiple angles: heterocentrist and homocentrist. And in case I actually have to say this aloud? We should not be fucking marginalizing our own, y’all. That makes you a bad person, and you should feel bad.
To sum up: Bisexual folks are queer as hell. Straight folks can be in queer relationships without themselves ever being queer. And FFS please stop harassing bi- and pan-folks already, man. It’s 2018. Find hobbies that are not shitty.
Toxic Fandom: When Criticism and Entitlement Go Too Far – GeekDad
I am not normally one to discourse, but I felt this was an excellent article about the anti movement in our fandom written with an objective and non biased perspective.
This article is so good – it lays out things in clear terms and knocks down every single hypocritical or false argument used by antis in a number of fandoms.
PSA:
Fanfic is a gift written in an author’s spare time. Don’t like it? Then it’s not a gift for you. Put it back and move on.
A message a lot of people on Tumblr clearly don’t understand.
if a teenager is at your door and they are wearing a costume!! please give them candy!! they are still in it for the halloween spirit and it honestly no different from a little kid in a costume. they are just as excited and happy as all the other lil tykes and dont you dare tell them they are “too old for trick-or-treating” because that will literally break their hearts and that’s not cool.
Its getting close to Halloween again so I just thought I’d reblog this again
And if “don’t be rude to teenagers over a stupid jawbreaker” isn’t enough for you, consider
- You can’t tell how old a kid is just by looking. I’ve known multiple 5th graders who were taller than I am, and I’m 25 years old. With their faces hidden by masks, you won’t be able to tell they’re elementary schoolers, but they still are.
- Lots of older siblings are expected to take their younger siblings trick-or-treating, and they only get paid in candy.
- You don’t know if that teenager is developmentally disabled.
- You don’t know if that teenager spent most of their childhood in a hospital or sick and has never had the traditional trick-or-treat experience before.
- You don’t know if this is that teenager’s first Halloween in America, and they just want to experience a piece of American culture.
- You don’t know if that teenager ever gets candy any other day of the year.
- You don’t know if that teenager has eaten anything at all today.
And those are just things I can think of off the top of my head.
and even if it is just a bored 16/17 year old out trying to see what free shit they can get. is it really gonna kill you to give them a fun sized milky way from the multipack you bought at poundland? That thing didn’t even cost you 5p, just give the kid the sugar, say “nice costume”, and let it go.
Queer Fiction Writer 