Latest Posts by the-writing-marksman - Page 5

“I loved her to the point of invention.”

coming to terms with having a crush. happy she-ra anniversary!!

Going to be reblogging a lot of art

My blog has been really empty for most of my time here, born out of the fear that it would somehow be found by my abusive parents and I would be punished for my interests that conflicted with their views. Tired of being someone I’m not, so there is going to be A LOT from all the fandoms I’ve followed. Just as a heads up

It’s the Arcane brainrot I think.

I'm seeing a big uptick in people calling Blake 'the responsible one' and Yang 'the impulsive one' as a ship archetype and i have to wonder how long it's been since you watched the show because you are not correct at all when Yang is historically the least impulsive member of the team and Blake has historically had the hardest time taking care of herself and others, and Yang is literally the team mom who is always worried about everyone else and Blake regularly goes into the fray on impulse, especially in the earlier volumes

Don’t like AO3′s content policies or the AO3 team’s decisions?

Go support eFiction. It’s an open-source community that has been working since 2003 to let fans create and run their own fanfiction archives, where they can set their own policies and create their own experiences.

AO3 is open source, but its architecture is so elaborate and intense that running even a small version of it would be pretty difficult and expensive for a hobbyist. It’s not realistic to say, “Just take the AO3 code and make your own!”

But you can say that about eFiction. When I was a teenager with a $5/mo webhosting plan, I could install and run my own eFiction archive to use with my friends. If a really dedicated fan, or a handful of fans, wanted to create their own website that they could moderate how they wanted, they could read up on coding, pool money for webhosting, and get their own eFiction site underway.

As a project, eFiction needs volunteers to help update the code (it started in 2003, remember; the internet has moved on) and to provide support to people who want to create and run their own archives. If you’re willing to show up and learn some new skills, you could make a difference.

I feel like I need to say this, as I've seen some concerning fandom purity bullshit crossing my dash.

This blog is unapologetically pro AO3.

I support them and all they do, may they continue to do it for decades to come.

Reflects my thoughts on the current discourse perfectly, and explains what I couldn't put into words. Great post!

For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:

1. Is the author dead? x

2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x

What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.

In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.

Why is that important?

Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”

You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.

Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.

Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?

Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?

Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?

All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.

If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:

Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment

Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences

People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up

Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??

So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?

If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?

Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?

Is your author dead?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?

Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”

The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.

There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King’s It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.

Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?

Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?

Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?

Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a transman? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the transmen who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?

How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?

Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?

Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?

Have you killed your author?

Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?

I should have done this a long time ago. Just to make sure there are no misunderstandings about where I stand, and have stood for the past 4 years

Sokka got some serious game.

Did you see the moon is wet?? I think that's why people aren't handling things well

i found out like this

This dog conveys more emotion than half of the actors in the MCU.

“Louis was used to getting up for his morning walk at 10. Schedule changed and morning walk time is now 6am. He was not emotionally prepared for this.”

(via)

Why is Blake in this image?

not going to rest until i  find out why master shake is in this image 

What about Lionheart? The token straight character they killed off? Get with it CRWBY

let’s start some discourse. there’s something we as a fandom have refused to acknowledge for far too long and it’s that rwby is inherently heterophobic. think of how many gay characters there are (yang, blake, weiss, ruby, sun, neptune, pyrrha, qrow, jaune’s sister, ilia, coco, velvet, etc) in comparison to the straight ones? this is classic reverse homophobia. discuss

Same here, except my parents said that it was just the devil trying to lead me from God.

A problematic male character that they can project their fragile egos on, and no LGBT characters. That’s too unrealistic for their tastes. 

I dont understand how people can describe RWBY as "dissapointing" like what were you expecting from it that it didnt give you?

Rwby has

Cool fight scenes ✅

Awesome music ✅

Cool and relatable characters ✅

Comedy ✅

Fun scenes ✅

Interesting and engaging plot ✅

Fantastic and unique character designs ✅

Well developed relationships ✅

Constantly improving animation ✅

What exactly are people expecting that isnt here?

Ascension Update

Figured this update was long overdue from my post a couple weeks ago regarding Ascension’s status currently. I have gone back through and updated up until chapter twenty three for continuity fixes as well as canon updates to the story. Chapter twenty eight is in the works, and I’ve been writing a bit more than I have been. My current situation is...complicated bc of everything going on at the moment, so I have no idea if I can continue to be consistent in any way, shape, or form. Here’s to hoping though!

This post spoke to me, and if that doesn’t explain a few things.

gifted kid burnout things that no one seems to talk about:

the raw panic of hearing about your potential, positive or negative

a weird brand of imposter syndrome where you genuinely think you’ve fluked your way through every success and you’re gonna be Exposed as a Fraud

never having learned how to study and having no idea where to start now that you need to

reading college level books as a kid but being basically illiterate now

dismissing your struggles as irrelevant because other people have it harder and i should be smart enough to handle this

feeling like you’ve lost all control over your life (maybe manifesting into depression, anxiety and disordered eating in a grasp for control over something)

being unable to decide on a career path because you could have had everything, only to watch those opportunities disappear as you fail to commit

This feels like such an odd time for me bc on one hand Atla is back on my dash,  the other is seeing Catradora art or gifs and having my heart go through the ceiling.

I’m sure everyone knows which one...

She-ra Season 5 Lockscreens LQ (Part 3) Part 1 (HQ) Part 2 (LQ) ☾reblog if you saved | send your request☽

Love the art and setting it as my phone background for the foreseeable future! The ending I never thought I would ever see from a series I love from the bottom of my heart.

Don’t you get it? I love you

You’re such an idiot; I love you too

All k9 dogs are abused hands down if you post any pro k9 stuff on my dash you’re unfollowed I don’t care if we’ve been mutuals for years, you can claim to be anti-cop or a leftist or whatever but if you post k9 dogs with like “a good doggo! A good boy!” fuck off, if I lose followers over this then good riddance

I didn’t realize I forgot to post this. Commissioned @dlartistanon to draw my OC Sierra Grey. I’m super happy with how it turned out, and will be sharing an update on my story Ascension in a couple days(since I’m out of work for a while it seems).

11/12 not bad

sitting here thinking about how stupid americans are at geography yup

RWBY has its flaws, but everything does.

Reblog if you still unironicly enjoy RWBY.

This is the kind of RWBY analysis I live for! 

Can we talk about Bumbleby and destiny?

Because I noticed something recently. But let’s start at the beginning, with the incoming class at Beacon:

So here we have at least 100 students (that we can see). It’s a pretty big class, a lot to handle at once, especially when you need to intimately test their unique abilities. Now here’s the wide cut of launch pad for that first test:

Which has only 16 slots. So Ozpin is definitely not launching the whole class here, not all at once anyway. Meaning he’s doing this excercise in batches, specifically sized to make 4 teams per batch. This seems like an ideal way to set up partners in the way he wants, so good move on his part. Put 2 compatable students side by side (bonus if one will look for the other), then space them out with somebody they’d want to avoid, and hope for the best. So he’s got Ruby looking for Yang, Nora looking for Ren (and vise versa), and Weiss looking for Pyrrha, with Jaune, Cardin, Russel, and shadow people to encourage them to find each other. Solid choices- a sister to guide your young SEW, 2 already basically partners, and your predicted top students.

Now, this of course doesn’t go to plan. Pyrrha immediately seeks out and partners with Jaune. Ruby runs into Weiss before she can find Yang. Tenors work out, but I feel like that would have happened no matter what Oz did. Of course, Blake is notoriously missing from this batch. Meaning Ozpin did not intend for her to pair up with any of our mains. That too, obviously, did not turn out as he intended...

Blake finds and follows Yang, but she wasn’t in the same batch, she was already out there. So not only did Blake seek out Yang in the emerald forest, she actively avoided at least one other batch of students and waited for Yang to be launched for quite a while after landing. Sure, this could have been an oversight, but I think that it was written this way purposefully.

See, destiny is a major theme in the RWBYverse. The allusions you’re Blake and Yang being destined for each other are everywhere- from the color scheme, to BatB references, to the ring in the DC comics. But the theme pops up again and again elsewhere, and has motivated many of the biggest moments in the story- from simple things like Pyrrha’s sacrifice to huge arcs like Salem and Oz’s eternal struggle. Some seek to manipulate the destiny of others to serve their own goals. Salem’s entire plan seems to evolve around manipulating destinies, and much of what Oz has done up to this point has been the same, including the partner system. But despite their efforts, they cannot foresee or control people’s choices.

Oz could not predict the series of events that led Blake and Yang to meet at the sleepover. He could not control Blake’s interest in the friendly stranger that awkwardly complimented her bow. He could not have expected her to avoid her objectives until she found the partner she wanted. Blake’s choices shaped her destiny, despite the plans of those attempting to orchestrate it. Her destiny is ultimately her own.

Blake and Yang continually choose to make each other part of their destinies. Yang chooses to try and befriend Blake. Blake chooses to partner with Yang. Yang chooses to open up to Blake to help her. Blake chooses to believe Yang about Mercury. Yang chooses to find and defend Blake at the fall of Beacon. Blake chooses to run to protect Yang, and later to return to her side again. Despite all the world throws at them, they choose each other, again and again and again.

It’s a theme that came up in Ruby’s latest comic as well- the active choice to let in the people you love, to make them part of your life, your destiny. That agency of choice is one of the biggest themes in the story, and one I think will be crucial in its conclusion. In RWBY, anyone who seeks to control people’s destinies is doomed to fail. People’s ability to choose will always undermine any plan who’s foundation relies on their lack of agency. That is Salem’s greatest error, and has been Oz’s as well. But I think, I hope, that our team’s steadfast determination to choose their own destinies will finally teach him that he can’t win through control. And maybe, just maybe, that understanding will save all of Remnant.

While I was not correct, I wish I wasn’t even close.

I’ve already lost this precious cinnamon roll once, I don’t want these two taking her away again.

I’m thinking Dr. Watts should be your main concern... Ruby vs Hacked Penny anyone?

I’ve already lost this precious cinnamon roll once, I don’t want these two taking her away again.

Time for a bunch of Winnie the Pooh TikToks.

TikTok has banned LGBT content

I think some people might not know, so I’m spreading this, but TikTok has banned LGBT content.

For that reason, I’m not going to be reblogging TikTok videos anymore, and I encourage you to do the same.

I know it’s hard. TikTok felt like getting Vine back, but they’re scummy homophobic poo-poos and I feel like we should take a stand against that.

When this short is better than a film that cost 260 million dollars

Where Magic Gets Real

Then there’s Dracula in the background. 

knhdgjkfjhjkdfjkdgdkjldkfjghs??????

She got them for when they meet Weiss’ dad...

Ok, so I've seen loads to talk about new hairstyles, the belts and such.

BUT.

Why is nobody talking about the fact Ruby has steel toecaps?!