Level 40: Daydreaming about your finished project and not writing your story
Level 23445342532556: Daydreaming not only about the story but all the fandom and discourse it will spawn. Daydreaming about fanfiction and fanart for your story instead of actually writing your story.
kinda funny when english teachers say stuff like “i can tell if you didnt read the book” or “i can tell when people bs their paper”
no you cant. you can tell when people are bad at bs-ing their paper. i didnt even read the sparknotes and i barely skimmed the wikipedia and you gave me an A. you kneel before my throne unaware that it was born of lies
sometimes you want hurt/comfort fic for that good secondhand warmth of pain being tended to with love and sometimes honestly you just want to hit your favorite character with a car and then request a sequel where that car gets thrown in reverse
me, pointing at a particularly choice character: hurt them. make their friends watch helpless and forced to pretend they don’t care
God and his angels: why
me, lounging in bed monching on a popsicle as the author describes a character undergoing trauma that we just don’t have the word count to adequately heal: the theory of catharsis and also I love them. stab them a twelfth time, please
– The fic starts out great, nice style, language, captivating summary. It’s unfinished and has been abandoned since 2013.
– The fic is complete, nice style, language, tons of kudos speak for themselves. It’s about your NOTP.
– The fic is about your OTP, it’s complete, it’s kinky as hell. The plot is absolutely dumbass.
– The plot sounds great, it’s about your OTP, it’s complete. The characters are horribly OOC.
– Everything is perfect in this fic, starting from the first letter and ending with the last full stop. It’s exactly 800 words long.
– The fic’s word count is a six-figure number, it’s about your OTP, characters are compliant with your head-canon. It’s dull and boring as seven hells.
– The beginning is enthralling, everything’s great, the plot, the style, it’s long and it’s even about your OTP. It features something that makes you close the tab as soon as you open it, like father/daughter incest or mpreg or some other squicky thing.
– Everything is perfect in this fic, the length, the characters, the language, the style, you forget you’re reading fanfic, thinking it’s a masterpiece of true literature, you cry tears of joy and write a huge review full of gushing love and then rush to the author’s profile to read every other thing they’ve written. It’s their only work.
non-autistic authors write autistic characters all the time. they just don’t realize it. they’d rather not admit it most of the time, either.
the thing is, non-autistic people have met autistic people more than enough times. however, due to their stereotypes about autism, they often can’t identify it as autism. they see something is up, but they can’t put their finger on just what is up.
so they see people like us and they know the ‘archetype’ which is autistic people. they write us all the time: airheaded professors, awkward nerds, pent up geniuses, etc.
when autistic people point out how strikingly obvious it is that this character is autistic, they usually deny it, or at best, they say the character is ‘if anything, extremely high functioning’, which is more of a kick in the gut than a confirmation. we hardly get those, either.
so, here’s the thing: there are some characters that are very obviously autistic to actual autistic people. pearl from steven universe and papyrus from undertale are two of the most agreed upon examples that i’ve seen. nearly ever autistic fan of steven universe i met says, “yeah, she’s autistic”, and the same goes for papyrus.
when we, as a community, bring this up, however, we are shot down. “oh, he’s not autistic.” i once was told that – ironic as it was – my headcanoning papyrus as autistic offended autistic people or hurt autistic people. but i’m autistic and they weren’t.
two autistic people were both agreeing – damn, this character is blatantly autistic – but non-autistic people felt the need to but in and say how horrible it was to “project” onto characters with such a horrible thing.
listen, if you aren’t autistic and you’re reading this –
if an autistic person says a character is autistic, can you just shut up about it?
because if you’ve watched any amount of tv, read any amount of books, whatever – if you’ve consumed stories, there are tons of autistic characters in them.
just because neither you nor the media’s creators knows shit about autism doesn’t mean that the character can’t be autistic.
either way, it’s none of your business.
we have little to none confirmed representation that isn’t terrible and inconsiderately offensively written.
find something better to do with your time.
NT Author: *Writes lovingly nuanced character who is quirky, shy, physically sensitive, socially awkward, clumsy, brilliant at a few special topics and has the capacity to grow and learn friendship and love in a nontraditional way*
NT Author: They can’t possibly be autistic!
NT Author: I’m gonna write an autistic character!
NT Author: “Doesn’t talk, rocks back and forth, loves trains”
Gonna say this as an author:
It is 100% okay to use the phrase “well, they are now.”
If a ton of people approach you with a character you didn’t realize you coded autistic, and they’re like “fuck yeah, autistic character!”
You can 100% say “I didn’t even realize that’s what I was doing, but you know what? Sure. With the number of people who see it, I’m not gonna say no. They’re autistic now.”
Nobody worth having around is going to be offended by that.
It’s okay if you change your mind about participating in NaNo.
It’s okay if a week into November, you get an idea and decide you want to participate after saying you weren’t going to do it.
It’s okay if you realize that NaNo is stressing you out too much and you want to stop halfway through the month.
It’s okay if you want to join or quit for any reason, at any time.
NaNo is meant to be a fun and productive event, not a measure of your worth as a writer. It’s fine whether you do or don’t want to participate. It’s fine whether you do or don’t want to participate after the event has already started. Do what works for you!
I have to laugh when I see folks going “well, what if the artist didn’t intend for there to be any deep symbolism?” The Death of the Author entirely aside, any artist can tell you that the fact that you didn’t intend for there to be any deep symbolism doesn’t mean you didn’t put some there anyway. I personally know multiple fanfic writers who’ve put together what they thought was just an interesting bit of fluff, then they went back and re-read their own story a month later and they were all: “oh, god dammit – this is about my relationship with my mother, isn’t it?”
I came out to have a good time and honestly I’m feeling so attacked right now.
artherra 