aschilcher

[aschilcher]

Very thoughtful commentary about artists, Neil Gaiman in particular, and parasocial relationships more generally. Excerpt:

1. Stop Idolizing Creative People. Creative people are easy to idolize because they create the art you love, and that gives you permission to feel things, and to see yourself and your desires reflected in that art. That is a powerful thing, and from the outside, it can feel like magic, and that the people who do it are tapped into something otherworldly and admirable. Plus, they often get to have cool lives and get to know other cool creative people. They do things that are removed from the day-to-day aspect of a “normal” life, and they’ll even post about them on social media where you can see them. Sometimes, independent of their art directly, they’ll speak about their life, or life in general, and they’ll seem wise and considered and kind. I mean, what’s not to like?

But please consider that this is all an extremely mediated experience of this person. The art is the edited and massaged result of hours and days and weeks and months of work, into which the work of many others is also added. My novels originate from me, but it’s not just me in there, nor is the final form of the novel an accurate statement of who I am as a person, not least of all for the simple reason that I am not trying to tell my story in my novels. I’m creating fictional characters, and the world in which they make sense, for the purpose of the story.

Despite how it might look from the outside, this is not sorcery. It’s years of experience at a craft. It’s not magic, just work. A completed novel (or any other piece of art) won’t tell you much about the specific, day-to-day life and inclinations of the individual who made it, other than a general nod toward their competence, and the competence of their collaborators. Likewise what you see of their lives, even from the illusorily close vantage of social media, is deeply mediated. Lives always look admirable at a distance, when you can only see the lofty peaks and not the rubble at the base — especially when your attention by design is pointed at those lofty peaks. There’s much you don’t see and that you’re not meant to see. The vast majority of what you’re not meant to see isn’t nefarious. It’s just not your business.

Now, before I was a professional creative person, I was an entertainment journalist who spent years interviewing writers, directors, movie stars, musicians, authors and other creative folks. Since I’ve been on the other side of the rope, I’ve likewise met a huge range of creative people from all walks of life. Please believe me when I assure you that creative people are just people. Richer and/or more famous? Sometimes (less often than you might think, though). Prettier and/or more charismatic? Especially if they’re actors or pop stars, often yes! But at the end of the day they are just folks, and they run the whole range of how people are. By and large, the day-to-day experience of getting through their life is the same as yours. Outside of their own specific field of work, they don’t know any more about life, have no more facility for dealing with the world, and have just as few clues about what’s going on in their own head, as anyone else.

They’re just people. Whose work is making the stuff you like! And that’s great, but that’s not a substantive basis for idolizing them. It makes no more sense to idolize them than to idolize a baker who makes cookies you like, or the guy who comes and trims your hedges the way you want them to be trimmed, or the plumber who fixes your clogged drain. You can appreciate what they do, and even admire the skill they have. But holding them up as a life model might be a bit much. Which is the point! If you’re not willing to idolize a plumber, then you shouldn’t idolize a creative person.

(“But a plumber doesn’t make me feel like a creative person does,” you say, to which I say, are you sure about that? Because I will tell you what, when my sump pump stopped working and the plumber got in there, replaced the pump and started draining out my basement which had an inch of standing water in it, that man was the focus of all my emotions and was my goddamned hero that day. My plumber that day did more for me than easily 90% of the great art I’ve ever experienced.)

Enjoy the art creative people do. Enjoy the experience of them in the mediated version of them you get online and elsewhere, if such is your joy. But remember that the art is from the artist, not the artist themselves, and the version of their life you see is usually just the version they choose to show. There is so much you don’t see, and so much you’re not meant to see. At the end of the day, you don’t have all the information about who they are that you would need to make them your idol, or someone you might choose to, in some significant way, pattern some fraction of your life on. And anyway creative people aren’t any better at life than anyone else.

Which brings up the next point:

2. Fuck idols anyway! People are complicated and contradictory and you don’t know everything about them! You don’t know everything even about your parents or siblings or best friends or your partner! People are hypocrites and liars and fail to live up to their own standards for themselves, much less yours! Your version of them in your head will always be different than the version that actually exists in the world! Because you’re not them! Stop pretending people won’t be fuck ups! They will! Always!

This sounds more pessimistic about humans than perhaps it should be. When I say, for example, that people are hypocrites and liars, I don’t mean that people take every single opportunity to be hypocrites and liars. Most people are decent in the moment. But none of us — not one! — has always lived up to our own standard of behavior, and all of us have had the moment where, when confronted with a situation that would become an immense pain in the ass if we stuck to our guns, or demanded the inconvenient truth, decided to just bail instead, because the situation wasn’t worth the drama, or we had somewhere else to be, or whatever. We all choose battles and we all make the call in the moment, and sometimes the call is, fuck this, I’m out.

Every person you’ve ever admired has fucked up, sometimes really badly. Everyone you’ve ever looked up to has secrets, and it’s possible some of those secrets would materially change how you think about them, not always for the better. Everyone you’ve ever known has things about them you don’t know, many of which aren’t even secrets, they’re just things you don’t engage with in your day-to-day experience of them. Nevertheless it’s possible if you were aware of them, it would change how you feel about them, for better or for worse. And now let’s flip that around! You have things about you that even your best friends don’t know, and might be surprised to learn! You have secrets you don’t wish to share with the class! You have fucked up, and lied, and have been a hypocrite too!

You are, in short, a human, as is everyone you know and every one you will know (pets and gregarious wild animals excepted). And all humans are, charitably, a mess. This doesn’t mean there aren’t good people or even exemplary people out there, since there are, along with the ones that are, charitably, a real shit show. What I am saying is that even the good or exemplary people out there are a mess, have been morally compromised at some point in their lives, and have not lived up to their own standards for themselves, independent of anyone else’s standard for them.

[aschilcher]

Ask ahead, y'all!

Reblog if you are a fanfiction author and would like your readers to put one of your fic titles in your ask + questions about it

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

2: What scene did you first put down?

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

5: What part was hardest to write?

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

7: Where did the title come from?

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?

11: What do you like best about this fic?

12: What do you like least about this fic?

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

[aschilcher]

Didn't even have to double-up on fandoms.

Name ten female characters you like, you get zapped if it's jsut a male character you call a babygirl or other feminine nicknames because I can't see people calling Lestat coquette again

[aschilcher]

Fenia/Chaf'eni'alor. I don't think it means anything out of universe. I just thought "Fenia" sounded pretty and worked back from there to make it a Chiss name. In universe, it just means that she's of the Chaf family, with "eni" and "alor" being personal labels.

What does your OC’s name mean? Was your OC given their name because of its meaning?

[aschilcher]

Fun fact to those in the know: Fenia was originally supposed to be another side character until I've thought of more and more of her backstory and she grew on me.

WHOA!!!!! i love my friends' ocs

[aschilcher]

No, I actually hate all cultural aspects that tell people to harm children without their consent. And that's basically every single culture anyway.

Circumcising your kid should be illegal. There is literally no good reason to cut off a perfectly healthy part of a baby's penis. Religion is not a justification to surgically maim children. Your aesthetic preferences are not a justification to surgically maim children. "Everyone does it" is not a justification to surgically maim children. And it's not even more sanitary. I have mine, it's not difficult to just clean under it when you shower. Why are we so afraid to teach kids to bathe properly that we cut off pieces of their body so they don't have to clean it.

[aschilcher]

“protect children” <- reactionary drivel basically every time

“be kind to children” <-radical thinking that causes way more arguments than you would ever imagine

[aschilcher]

a woman choosing not to knowingly create a disabled person is not eugenics you people are simply indistinguishable from the average hand-wringing sniveling male crying what if mommy would have aborted me if she'd had the choice

[aschilcher]

[aschilcher]

"Yucky stuff" is the first line of defense for human rights against those who only tell you they want to get rid of the "yucky stuff".

You have to help people, even if their aesthetics or lifestyles give you "the ick" because their treatment is the bare minimum. Whatever you let happen to them will happen to you when they're gone.

Helping people who are being overlooked or targeted is just the right thing to do, but if you need a reason that directly impacts you, you need to know you will one day be "the yucky stuff" if you let the ones currently in that spot keep being hunted and excluded.

People, especially politicians, who want to "just get rid of the bad stuff" do not plan to stop at the bad stuff. They just know you won't support them if they admit gays and trans and intersex people are part of the "bad stuff" they want to remove.

Stop stigma,

Overcome ick.

[aschilcher]

Art I commissioned from @thrawns-backrest for my fanfic.

Yes, it's a crossover between Doctor Who and the Thrawn Ascendancy novels. It's set directly after Thrawn's exile for the Ascendancy, and it is an AU to the Third Doctor getting banished to the Ascendancy instead of Earth. I've written it in such a way that, even if you're familiar with only one of the two fandoms, you can still read it. I'd love it if you did and wrote me feedback, either here or in ao3 comments.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61983652/chapters/158502661

So, to my friends, repost pretty pls, I'm very interested in what people will think about it.

[aschilcher]

If you had a child by choice, you:

signed up for an autistic child

signed up for a trans child

signed up for a lgbq+ child

signed up for a mentally ill child

signed up for a disabled child

signed up for a child with "conditions"

signed up for a rebellious child

signed up for a kid. in any way, shape, or form of being, it's your child, and you signed up for it.

And you are not:

the victim in any of these fucking situations for gods sake

[aschilcher]

Uk peeps!! Let’s get this going! 🏳️‍⚧️🇬🇧

[aschilcher]

[aschilcher]

You want to call your House rep now and tell them Trump needs to be impeached immediately for defying a Supreme Court order (re: Kilmar Abrego Garcia), which functionally voids our constitution and means no one in America has rights anymore.

I am not exaggerating.

As of now, anybody can be disappeared, no due process, no recourse. Trump is openly disregarding a Supreme Court order and says he’ll send US citizens to El Salvador.

This is not a drill.

Call your House rep and tell them they must impeach. Tell them if they cannot bring themselves to impeach, they must resign. A more open and shut case to impeach is not possible. Trump and his administration are saying openly, in public, that anybody can be kidnapped by ICE, even in error, and disappeared permanently.

Call your senators, too, and tell them to support impeachment (it goes to them once it passes a majority House vote).

[aschilcher]

Commissions are open! Please DM/email me (yarpellart@gmail.com) with the type of art you’d like to commission!

NSFT commissions are open in the same variants and prices!

✨Now also available on vgen!✨

For additional information about the commission process as well as ToS please head to my carrd.

[aschilcher]

“they” (1 word) is shorter than “he or she” (3 words)

“they” is more inclusive than “he/she”

“themself” flows more naturally than “him or herself”

“they” is less clunky than “(s)he”

it’s time to replace the awkward “she or he”