Disgust has absolutely no ethical weight. If you are basing your ethical positions on the emotion of disgust you should stop, it is entirely unjustified and leads to a huge amount of harm.

Talk to Me About the WIP I’m Currently Writing

I really wanted an ask game that was going to motivate me towards completing my current chapter and thought I would share.😊 

Do it!!!

"humans were meant to-" "we were put on this earth to-" no we were not, the telos is a trap, find a less obnoxious way to phrase whatever point you want to make i am begging you

#humans were put on this earth to make dubious statements and employ the naturalistic fallacy

Basic Story Structure

Basic story structure looks like this:

Setup/Exposition - we meet the protagonist in their every day life, possibly meet a few other important characters, and learn important basics about the setting. We also learn about the protagonist’s internal conflict.

Rising Action - The inciting incident turns the character’s life upside down, the character responds by forming a goal. The protagonist pursues this goal while the antagonist/antagonistic force throws obstacles into their path, which they must overcome. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail and have to try again or find a way around it. This struggle builds the conflict and increases the tension as the story races toward the climax.

Climax - this is the “big showdown,” where the protagonist faces the antagonist/antagonistic force head-on, and usually (but not always) succeeds.

Falling Action - this is the aftermath of the big showdown, where the dust settles and all the final pieces come to rest. Most of the story’s loose ends will be tied up here if they weren’t tied up already.

Resolution/Denouement - this is where the story is wrapped up once and for all. We see the protagonist (and other characters) settled back in their old life or getting used to a new normal. If there is a moral to the story, it is revealed here. If the story is leading into a second book, a little bit of set-up for the new story will occur here.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

…If only if in practice it was actually this simple. :)

That said: we all have to start somewhere. Build castles in the sand long enough, and eventually you’ll wind up doing actual castles… if you’ve got any persistence.

That was more than a little rude.

That is an easy to understand breakdown of plot progression that’s self labeled as “basic”

It’s clear, it’s easy, and can be applied to most narratives. Which makes it a useful analysis and also writing tool.

Comparing it to building sand castles as opposed to “real writing” as building “actual castles” is not at all encouraging or helpful. Especially combined with how you used the trailing elipses to go into the comment about persistence.

There’s a saying I grew up with that seems relevant here. Sometimes if you have nothing nice to say, it’s best to say nothing.

So, first of all—pleased to meet you; and to have an opportunity to dig into this issue a little further.

To begin with: by rights the statement “It’s not that simple” ought to be reassuring rather than otherwise.

While I was storyediting, back when dinosaurs walked the Earth, some of the writers I invited in to pitch would bring me surprisingly good ideas with a near-hopeless air that was frankly heartbreaking. “This is all I’ve got,” they would say, expecting me to chuck them out the door. And it was so often my pleasure to say “No, sit tight, this story has good bones: let’s see if we can rearrange how the flesh goes on them.” Then we’d get to work, and those were some of the strongest scripts of our sixty-five.

And routinely, when the work was done and we were all communicating in a more relaxed way, I’d find that—animation being an area where a lot of newbie writers cut their teeth before going on to live action—a lot of my newer writers had run into a diagram like that. Some of those diagrams were better than others. But the flatly reductive ones that simplified story arc in the manner of the one above, and did not make it plain for the beginners beyond any possible misunderstanding that this is only one paradigm in which you can proceed, were the source of the worst trouble.

The often unseen (and I’m sure unintended) result of such diagrams, therefore, can be to keep good stories from being told because their potential tellers can’t see how to make them fit into what’s been set out for them as the way things have to go. And if people think that the realization that “there have to be other ways to tell a story” would be obvious to everybody, my lived experience has proven that assumption tragically incorrect. I was storyediting some very smart people, and they didn’t get it until it was forcibly pointed out to them that there were many other acceptable ways available to construct the story that underlies a screenplay (or any other).

(The above chart is also, unfortunately, very Western-centric. Styles and paradigms of dramatic structure vary wildly worldwide. Some of the best writing being done right now in both prose and film is by people working outside that structure, purposefully subverting it, or importing elements of other structural paradigms into the Western one with an eye to gradually transforming it from the inside out. So to omit an acknowledgement of the local nature of such a diagram is, at best, kind of careless.)

Something else that bears mentioning here is the ungodly mess that followed Joseph Campbell’s media-borne discussions with George Lucas on the “Hero’s Journey” concept from Hero with a Thousand Faces. The Journey got seized on with terrifying enthusiasm by Hollywood (and other screenwriting/storytelling regions worldwide) as the Hot New Thing. (Not least, I suspect, because “Hey, look how it worked for George…!”)

As a result, new novelists started discovering that it was hard to get a book sold unless it conformed to the Journey. (Fortunately this problem seems to have largely died off: but while still in effect, it was damaging.) And for a good long while you could not get a screenplay over the transom anywhere in the US film market unless it could somehow be made to fit into that paradigm. The slavish slapdash employment of it as a sort of panacea or Guaranteed Highway To Success was something to behold, as scripts that did not fit the Journey “correctly” were brutally reworked, with all the bits of them that didn’t fit lopped off in genuinely Procrustean fashion. Writers unwilling to submit their ideas to this process—and there were a lot of them—didn’t get their stories told. And until the fad subsided, a lot of newbie and seasoned writers’ stories that “didn’t fit” were strangled in the cradle by uncritically accepted versions of the Journey diagram. More recently I’ve been willing to joke about the subject now and then… but there’s always a shadow lying in the background of the joke.

So, the tl:dr on structure-of-drama diagrams in general: I think they can be helpful if thoughtfully and explicitly annotated (for the sake of the new kids) that what they’re looking at is a broad generalization with many exceptions, and not to be taken as The Rules.

Now, moving on: sandcastles. If you read that phrase as somehow derogatory, that’s your construction, not mine. Sand castles as a metaphor for the “germ matter” of vision are way older than I am. I built a whole lot of those sandcastles myself, thousands of them, in my head and on paper, for many years before it ever occurred to me that I might ever get anything published. And I’m still building them now, every single day.

They’re also, however incidentally, a sideways metaphor for persistence in imaginative work. The waves (of circumstance, or changing-your-mind, or just plain realizing your story’s not working) roll in over your castle and destroy it? Fine. The sand’s still there. You build another. And another, and another, until, as you go along, you find a way to do it that’s more resistant to the sea of Story. A lot of useful (storytelling-)structural work can get handled during that process, as you learn and learn by trial and error what works and what doesn’t: what holds up, as you test it in your imagination, and what collapses.

All the good things ever made have started with that imaginative process, and its (inevitably) repeated failure under test, and the persistence of all the imaginers who just kept coming back to a given plot or invention or other idea until it worked. And that’s the persistence I had in mind. Without it, nothing good happens. It’s essential. The sandcastles, and the skill of building that you learn from them, and the stubborn insistence on (as soon as you’re ready) building another better one to replace the last one that the waves took away, are at the very core of it all.

Meanwhile: Everybody walks their own creative road. All of them are valid. Whatever shape it takes, I wish you success and satisfaction on yours.

(PS: I’m sorry about the ellipsis. It’s a tic, and I’ve honestly been trying to cut down.)

(covered in blood and viscera) finished a book guys

I’m sorry friends, but “just google it” is no longer viable advice. What are we even telling people to do anymore, go try to google useful info and the first three pages are just ads for products that might be the exact opposite of what the person is trying to find but The Algorithm thinks the words are related enough? And if it’s not ads it’s just sponsored websites filled with listicles, just pages and pages of “TOP FIFTEEN [thing you googled] IMAGINED AS DISNEY PRINCESSES” like… what are we even doing anymore, google? I can no longer use you as shorthand for people doing real and actual helpful research on their own.

you think i’m virtue signaling but i’m actually vice signaling. vices are virtues to me and vice versa. in practice i have a strong moral compass but am still of course evil

there is never too much art. there is never "everyone depicts this scene/character so if I depict it, it won't add anything" yes it will. no two people will do the exact same piece of art even with the same prompt. so paint or draw or sketch or write your favorite character or scene from your favorite movie or TV show. there will always be someone who wants more of your art and more of what you have made and there is never too much art

I think the reason Tumblr is accepting of users coming in from Reddit is that in my experience, the median Reddit user is a helpful nerd who wants to explain in great detail and with great precision about a thing you thought nobody had an opinion on, and your median Tumblr user is going "I love this energy and Iove that you have sources, now go with me on this: we make it anthropomorphic and it falls in love"

Comparing seeing leather daddies and puppies in hoods at Pride to Folsom Street Fair, which IS age restricted and DOES have sucking and fucking in public, is a long held homophobe tactic to protest pride happening at all. I've seen it used as a weapon for longer than I've known what Folsom actually *is*.

No one gets into Folsom without actively wanting to get into Folsom. And you will not die seeing a woman with a bunch of belts holding a whip or a man in a horse costume, I promise.

I am a fairly sex repulsed ace.

STOP USING ME AS A WEAPON TO BEAT UP OTHER QUEERS. If I go to pride events then I am in charge of making sure my mental health needs are met. NOT OTHER QUEERS.

Pride is a riot and everybody is invited, but that means that we each have to bring our own riot gear too.

I'll be sticking to smaller prides because that's the space I need for my brain, but even if I went to a bigger one I would be up to me to ensure that I have safe escapes in case of anything triggering.

My sexuality is NOT your blunt instrument to hurt my siblings with.

seen a lot of these with your favorites, but reblog with the CURRENT book you are reading, show you are streaming, the last movie you watched, and any game/puzzle/crafts you’re working on 

There can also be value in archiving such bigotries for analysis and dissection.

Let me give an example from Real Life, not from AO3.

There was a incredibly antisemitic romance novel written back in 2014, called "For Such A Time", which was literally a Nazi Romance, that featured an antisemitic slur in the cover blurb. It was written as part of the Christian Romance genre, and it won awards. As a novel, it literally romanticizes the Holocaust, blames the Jews for the genocide (as punishment for not accepting Jesus), and the Jewish lead (I won't call her a "protagonist") converts to Christianity at the end of the story.

Now, why would I be advocating for the inclusion of such a hateful, bigoted book in an archive?

Because it gives insight into the culture that produced it and that enjoy it.

It's not a coincidence that less than two years after the book was published, 7 out of 8 American Evangelicals voted for a fascist and supported him for years, and are growing ever more fascistic as time goes on. Seeing a book like this, and others that they write, tells a lot about their viewpoints and outlooks, and having access to it--and other bigoted works--can be valuable to get an insight into the minds of the people who write them.

(Also, speaking from personal experience, bigots hate it when you take their works like this and treat them with academic dispassion for analysis. They have no response other than bluster and volume to being taken apart in such a manner)

My high school had copies of Mein Kampf and The Turner Diaries in the library, for students in AP history. I read both in my freshman year. Not being in AP history yet, I had to talk to the vice principal about my reasons. My reasons being I was Jewish and morbidly fascinated by what motivated that level of murderous bigotry. Reading propeganda will not automatically brainwash you, and keeping these kinds of texts around for analysis and discussion absolutely gives you insight into how people who hold the ideas espoused in the text in question, think.

There is a genuine problem with the way a lot of people think about propaganda, or even just any art with noxious ideology embedded in it, in that they think that it is inherently corrupting. More than anything else, this way of thinking reminds me of Christian parents who were terrified to let their children read the Harry Potter books, because it would lure them into witchcraft and Satanism. Sure, that particular manifestation of this belief always feels very laughable, but there were Christians of a similar persuasion, and of course still are who create an entire alternate pop culture, with Christian music, Christian novels, Christian television, and their children are not allowed any exposure to secular culture, because this they feel will protect their children from the corrupting influence of outside ideas.

What this actually does is create Christian children whose Christianity is extremely brittle, because they have never had to deal with any ideas outside the Christian bubble, and so have no idea how to handle other people's ideas, so when they grow up and go out into the world and eventually encounter other ideas, as you do, they can't cope with it. And this has a lot to do with why a lot of these kids grow up and leave Christianity far moreso than might otherwise.

I use this as an illustration, of what happens when people become afraid of exposing themselves to other ideas, including other really terrible and noxious ideas that we disagree with profoundly, and start treating anything containing those ideas, as inherently corrupting. It leads to ideological brittleness. And more than that, a fear of the enemy's ideas and avoiding those ideas, leads to a lack of knowledge of what those ideas actually are, and an inability to recognize them when they come in other guises.

imitingSo yeah, absolutely, we need to keep examples of things like The Turner Diaries, and Mein Kampf, and For Such a Time, and Atlas Shrugged, and Gone With The Wind, and Birth of a Nation. We need to be able to read/watch such things, and pick a part the ideas in them, and what makes them so terrible, and also what makes them appeal, and to whom, and where that appeal can lead. We need to be able to do this because it helps us recognize when we see these ideas, usually in milder guises, in ourselves and others. And there is no reason to exempt fanfic from this. It is no more supernaturally corrupting than any other kind of art, and it can be equally as capable of giving us insight into the way people take on and respond to terrible ideologies.

Limiting free speech, in the name of eliminating hateful ideologies doesn't work, and all it does is leave us vulnerable, without the insight that actually encountering and coming to understand the ideas at play, gives us.

Why is everyone in the world except me unable to figure out the optimal way to load a dishwasher, this is such a burden. I don’t want to be a dishtator but I can’t allow a variety of opinions when it just makes SENSE for wine glasses to be over here where the tray is deeper. You put a small leg-less glass there you’re going to run into problems later can’t you see that?? no long-term vision. No sense of greater strategy, but you can’t live in the moment while loading dishes. You know when fairytale princesses don’t want to marry and give would-be suitors impossible trials, well that would be a good one. I shall plight my troth to the first person who can load an entire dishwasher without doing anything preposterous

The thing I find most funny about us Efficient Dishwasher Loaders is that literally none of us agree what the correct way is.

Twenty-odd years ago, I asked my aunt if I could help her by loading the dishwasher, and she said to me, “I think everyone knows how to load their own dishwashers best.”  And I have found that to be enduringly true. 

i would kill for the confidence of novelists who write genius-poet characters and then actually write samples of the “genius” poetry in the book. if i were a novelist writing a genius-poet i’d just be like “trust me, the poetry’s real good.”

[Image description: A screenshot of a tweet from aschewholesin (@ aschewholesin that reads, “The idea that vengeance against evil makes you just as bad as the evil you’re taking up arms against feels very much like something the bad guys would make up and spread across popular culture to make sure we don’t shove their head in a guillotine, just saying.”  End image description.]

I think that conversation in fiction - usually a few lines exchanged between the hero and the villain, just before either the villain’s demise or a quick cut to the villain’s being led away by the authorities - is shorthand for a much longer conversation.  And I think it serves us well to make it longer again.  

I remember it from superhero stuff when I was a kid.  Sometimes the hero has a chance to kill the villain.  Sometimes it’s just a chance to, through inaction, let the villain die, like they’re hanging off a cliff, or something.  And the villain points out, “If you do this, you’re no better than me.”

What this means, in the context of eighties (mostly American) superheroes and villains is, “I am a very powerful person who has caused a great deal of harm and possibly death for reasons that I think are justified.  You are a very powerful person who has built an identity around saving people.  If you kill me, or through inaction allow me to die because of who I am, you will be giving me the death penalty for my crimes, something that I have had no qualms about doing to others myself, but which I know you believe to be the rightful role of the state.  If you take retributive justice into your own hands, then you are saying by your actions that you trust your own power and judgement more than those of the state, just as I do; and you are willing to use your powers - or not, as the case may be - to support your own moral vision of the world, untroubled by the checks and balances provided by state power, just as I do.  We’re in the heat of the moment and you are VERY angry, but you have built an identity around being better than me, and because I like my life, I am reminding you of the inconsistency in your moral reasoning.”  Except this is a mouthful when you’re dangling off a cliff. 

This kind of reasoning has been a fixture in pop culture since at least The Oresteia in ancient Greece, and for good reason; it moves the redress of harm from private revenge to public justice.  I have a lot of problems with the justice system in the Western world as we have it, but I think that generally this was a good idea. 

But a few things have happened in the past decades. One was 9/11, and the proliferation of the idea that investigating the motives of the people who do harm is itself a kind of moral weakness at best, or complicity at worst, and some villains just need to be punished.  Another was growing awareness that most of the Western justice system is profoundly broken, and more effective as a tool of oppression than an instrument of actual justice.  Yet another was growing awareness that the people who do the worst harm do so in part through the instrument of the state, and that what they do is not even a crime. Another was the rise of the kind of toxic positivity that asks people to leap straight to kneejerk forgiveness for harm without doing any of the processing.  And another was a polarized culture that rewards every party in a dispute for framing itself as the persecuted but steadfast underdog facing Big [Insert Perceived Hegemon Here], whether it’s actually true or not.

So it makes sense that "If you do this, you’ll be no better than me” hits differently now, even in stories set in worlds that are demonstrably not ours.  What, you’re gonna hand them over to a bunch of honest and virtuous officers of the law, to be dealt with by the fair machinery of the state, confident that justice will be done?  Most of the time, it’s just far more likely that the powers that be want the villain to return for the sequel.

However...

While I’ve seen my share of conservative commentators arguing for all sorts of equivalences between real-life institutionalized harm and protests against that harm (which I hasten to add are different from vengeance), I have never yet run into a narrative context where the person who says that line is facing anything less than death. 

And to be clear, while I have a huge problem with the death penalty, and the whole system of carceral justice, and believe they are both cruel and ineffective, I don’t have a big problem with narratives where someone kills the villain and calls it justice.  They’re satisfying.  Sometimes they’re screamingly funny.  They’re just stories.

BUT I also understand why storytellers try to find other ways of handling justice, too, and it’s not necessarily so that the powerful can avoid accountability, or to reinforce the machinery of the state.  It’s because people genuinely want to imagine a different way of doing things.  It depends on the story’s moral scheme, and the values the author wants to convey.  If you tell a story, for example, in which life is precious and everything is connected, and justice takes the form of the hero killing the villain, then you haven’t told a story in which all life is precious and everything is connected; you’ve told a story in which the preciousness of life and the connectedness of all things are conditional on good behaviour. 

And maybe that’s indeed the story you want to tell.  That’s cool. Maybe you think some people are truly too evil to be allowed to live, and like, I disagree, but I will still partake of your stories.  Maybe you’re working out some stuff.  Maybe telling this story with its bloody end is the only kind of justice you can ever expect for the things done to you, and I support your telling it.  Maybe you are telling the story of a villain so awful that despite your gentle nature you cannot imagine them being allowed to continue existing in a just world.  Maybe the exact scenario you’ve worked out is hilarious.  I get it.  I will still watch/read it, and probably get a visceral thrill at the death blow, if you’ve done your job right. 

But the stories I want, the stories that give me hope for a different kind of world, and tools to make it happen, are the stories where characters find other ways to manage justice, and hold people accountable for the harm they do, and build systems that have room for everyone.  And the answer to “Does everyone get to be part of this?  Even this person?  Even this person?” is always, “Yes, even them, and them, and them.  Even you.” It’s not capitulating to the forces of oppression; it’s trying to find something outside of them. 

SAG-AFTRA, Teamsters, IATSE, Writers Guild Issue Joint Statement in Solidarity with Directors Guild of America

May 31, 2023

Los Angeles, CA — As the Directors Guild of America’s negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) enter their final scheduled week, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the Teamsters, Hollywood Basic Crafts (Teamsters Local 399, IBEW Local 40, LiUNA! Local 724, OPCMIA Local 755 and UA Local 78), the Writers Guild of America East (WGAE), the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW), and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) stand alongside our sisters, brothers, and kin in the DGA in their pursuit of a fair contract.

We believe in a Hollywood where every worker is valued and their contributions recognized, whether their labor is on or off screen. A fair contract for directors does not benefit just a select few; it uplifts every worker in the film and television industry and acknowledges the interconnected nature of our work. We call on the AMPTP to immediately negotiate a fair agreement that addresses the Directors Guild of America’s unique priorities in good faith.

As eyes around the world again turn towards the negotiation table, we send a clear message to the AMPTP: Our solidarity is not to be underestimated. The Hollywood guilds and unions stand united, and we stand strong.

In solidarity,

Matthew D. Loeb International President, IATSE

Lindsay Dougherty Motion Picture Division Director & Western Region Vice President, Teamsters Hollywood Basic Crafts, Chairperson

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator, SAG-AFTRA

Michael Winship President, Writers Guild of America, East

Meredith Stiehm President, Writers Guild of America West

then gandalf the gay and gandalf the bi and monty python and the holy grails trans pride

A thought that's been living rent-free in my head for years:

From the NaNoWriMo forum boards, sometime before 2014

Whether a story is "happy" or "sad" depends entirely on when you choose to begin and where you choose to end.

A story is like a line segment in mathematics. Theoretically, every true line stretches off to infinity in either direction. And that's why math textbooks always talk about "Line Segments;" what you draw on your paper is only an approximation of a small part of the truly unknowable, infinite thing.

Stories are like that.

Start with a courtship, and end with a wedding? Happy. Start with the wedding, and end with a funeral? Sad. Start with a funeral, and end with finding new friends through the Grief Support Group? Happy. Start with childhood, and end with graduating school and going on a Road Trip? Ambiguous.

And so on. You can stretch that Happy/Sad/Ambiguous line infinitely far in either direction into the past and future (or into alternate universes). The stories we tell are only "Segments."

And I think it can sometimes be helpful to think of our own life stories that way, too.

red

[Image description: an illustration of a red dragon perched atop a stony outcropping in a river of lava, its tail wound around the rock, its wings half-spread, its red eyes glowing, its expression alert, and twin streams of smoke rising from each nostril.]