There’s something I do, and it’s a little silly, but it works for me…
I think about what I want people to say about my art.
Like. In my head. I imagine the praise I want to hear, all the different cool things people could say. I go full-on fantasy, Castiel and Luke Skywalker in the Louvre.
And then I say those things to myself.
It will feel wrong at first—you’ll be reluctant to imagine potential praise. You’ll be skeptical. But that’s the point; if you can’t believe you saying it, you’ll always need others to say it. That’s why so many people give up art before they get anywhere. You need to believe yourself first, and that takes practice, but you have to practice it as much as you practice any other skill. 💛
manpain is a META concept that exists to discuss FICTIONAL SEXISM. in real life, if you laughed about “someone’s manpain”, you would be a disgusting piece of shit for a human being no matter what your gender was. if you were laughing that someone’s life was destroyed by the death of their mom or their fiancee you would be a fucking shitheel not worth my time, and i would not watch a fucking tv series about you.
Oh god yes. Are there people who don’t realize this?
The significant difference between fiction and real life is that in real life things just happen, whereas in fiction things only happen because of choices made by the writer/s.
When fancritics talk about manpain, we’re not mocking Bruce Wayne or Dean Winchester for their suffering; we’re mocking the writers for thinking that hurting them is the best way to tell the story, and that killing (usually female) characters they love is the best way to hurt them.
And perhaps more importantly: Killing off female characters is a good way to “hurt” them that won’t actually hurt them or slow them down, it’ll just make them mad.
“Manpain” is not the same thing as “pain felt by men”.
Also, male characters get to wallow in their pain and it’s used to justify any amount of bad decisions or antisocial behavior, whereas female characters are supposed to dust themselves off and stop whining, or they’re not “likable.”
Manpain is the prioritization metric that says the lose of one person by a male character in a story must be tended and treated as more significant than any lose faced by a female character.
Manpain is the Pain-but-also-not-emotional response of Stoic McGrimFace who expresses his loss through extremely unhealthy coping behaviours like serial killing, mass murder sprees, combat cosplay, and alcoholism.
Like, the hardboiled detective novel – a woman walks into the detective’s office to get an investigation into the recent death of her husband last week, and she is supposed to be immediately sexually available to the detective, with no emotional resonance from her husband’s death, whilst Unshaved Broodman of the Clan BroodingManPain is still drinking himself off the force because he lost his buddy back in ‘67 and it’s 1980
That shit is manpain. Like ManPain™: ask for it by double on the rocks!
Lot of good commentary’s been added to this post since I last saw it.
first law: write the fic you wish to see in the world aka goddammit do I have to do everything myself around here
second law: it’s going to be longer than you think. much longer. hahaha so long. why are you crying
third law: the time spent writing is inversely proportional to the amount of smut present, dammit
fourth law: flesh out your secondary characters. make them real people. have them take over. oh god. put them back. somebody please help
fifth law: the time spent researching canon is directly proportional to the amount of time you’ll spend altering your plot. that one person on the internet
sixth law: the time spent researching in general will eclipse the time you spend writing. the nsa agent monitoring your internet search history is curled up in a corner. his boss wants to know if you’re a threat. “I don’t know,” the agent sobs. “I just really don’t know.”
seventh law: at some point, someone will ask what your favorite hobby is. you will feign a heart attack to get away
what you said was very sweet and means a lot to me but i am incapable of properly responding in any way besides “thank you so much aaaah” because i do not know how to accurately express the exact level of my gratitude to where you completely understand how much what you said meant to me without me getting even more emotional and looking like a fucking nerd: an autobiography
Can a picture inspire a thousand words? NaNoWriMo investigates the power of images in our writing lives. Author Massiel Valenzuela-Castaneda writes in with tips on how to use a writing mood board.
Are you feeling lost? Like your story has changed? Should you be using a writing board?
“A writing board is a mood board (or inspiration board) is a physical or digital collage of ideas that’s commonly used in fields like interior design, fashion, and graphic design. It can include just about anything — photography, designs or illustrations, color palettes, textures, descriptive words — anything that helps you define the direction of your project.” Canva.com
Here are a few ways the writing mood board can help.
IDK IF YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS WEBSITE YET, BUT I DON’T EVEN CARE IF YOU DO.
CHARAHUBBASICALLY ALLOWS YOU TO MAKE A DIRECTORY OF ALL YOUR OCS.
LIKE SO
AND SO (they let you get super detailed)
It lets you store 100 characters (you gain 2 extra slots whenever someone uses your referral code) and 10 images per character. You can even make GROUPS to organize them a little more— per RP or something. Image files can’t be too big either.
BUT if you want more file size, more character slots, and more other stuff, you can get a subscription! Don’t worry, subscriptions are super cheap (take notes, deviantART)!
discussion taking place under the protective veil of ‘Word of God’/’Death of the Author’.
“He’s not human; stop holding him to human/earthly standards.”
“He was born into a slave-owning society; that’s not his fault.”
“When he said [x-y-z], he didn’t mean [x-y-z], he meant [a-b-ampersand]; stop taking things so literally.”
He didn’t do anything. He wasn’t born anywhere. He isn’t real.
He isn’t an actual person functioning under the circumstances of his upbringing, or reacting to outside stimuli based on the chemical impulses in his brain, because he doesn’t have one.
He’s a fictional character, whose actions, speech, history, and traits are written for him, by actual, living, breathing, thinking human beings, who sit down in a room and consciously decide who he’ll be, where he’ll come from, what he’ll say, and how he’ll react.
So when he does something on-screen, it’s reflective of the Supergirl writers who decided he would do it.
He is not real, but the people who control him sure-as-hell are.
So when we criticize the racism of replacing James – a successful black
man with a good heart and a deep, continued respect for Kara – with Mon
El – an irresponsible, entitled white prince, who owed slaves and has
openly mocked, criticized, and degraded Kara (in public) on multiple occasions that
span the entirety of the season – we’re criticizing the writers, who
purposefully decided to make these things happen.
When we criticize Mon El’s abusive behaviors – the disrespect, the mean-spirited hyper-criticism, the lying, the possessiveness, the ignoring and defying Kara’s wishes, etc. –
we’re criticizing the writers, who purposefully decide to continue this behavior, episode after episode.
When we criticize the huge amount of screen-time dedicated to Mon El at the detriment of the other characters who play more relevant roles in the greater plot of the series, we’re criticizing the writers, who have purposefully decided to write him into more and more of the script in increasingly more irrelevant ways, while purposefully deciding to leave out the veteran characters to give him a spot (like James).
None of your arguments are actually relevant to the discussion that’s clearly going right over your head.
You’re angry that we’re attacking your ship and your character, so you jump on the defense like you think we’re grasping for unfounded arguments in a jealousy-driven ship-war, instead of acknowledging the problematic aspects of it and joining the conversation to rally the fandom against the writers who continue to disrespect and portray the character you love, and relationship you adore in a way that undermines the reasons you love it, and the potential you see in it.
The writers didn’t have to break Kara up with her black love-interest in order to be with a character who didn’t haveto be a white slave-owner.
The writers wantedto break Kara up with her black love interest, and they wanted her new white love-interest to own slaves.
They weren’t obligated to make him this way.
Someone chose to give this white man the title of slave-owner, when only 151 years prior to that decision, white people literally owned enslaved black people. That means there are absolutely middle-aged people watching this show whose parents and/or grandparents either were slaves, or owned slaves.
This is not an irrelevant issue, and you cannot argue that the writers didn’t make a harmful, racist choice to include it.
They did that, they chose that, and they will continue to make this same kinds of choices regarding your favorite character if you don’t start getting angry at the writers who keep giving you a shit character to work with.
tl;dr – Mon El didn’t have to be a such terrible person; how are you not angry at the writers who continuously choose to degrade him as a character
I haven’t seen season two yet (delaying because of hearing about all this on tumblr ha) but I really appreciate this. It’s something good to keep in mind looking at all media–you can debate something in the context of a particular universe all day but it really comes down to the story the writers are choosing to tell. What kind of values does that story inherently have? What does it say? It’s a choice someone has made.
Question of Smoke 