#but it reads like someone trying to do a subversion of a genre they don't read

[toskarin]

Are there any big VN red flagstaff to look for before purchasing a VN, or is it reviews & intuition?

it's mostly the latter, but there's a few things I personally watch for, based on taste

I don't read anything that's obviously supposed to be parody in a way that shows a clear disregard for the scene's history and I don't read anything that opens its pitch by saying it's not like other vns (rare exceptions for cases where it's someone clearly established in the genre trying to do a deliberate subversion)

"dating sim" in the advertising is also a red flag, especially if it's very clearly not part of the dating sim genre

also the protagonist decides a lot for me. if people are exclusively talking about non-protagonist characters, I'm gonna wonder why. if they're only talking about the protagonist and I kinda hate his vibe (rance) I will carry the irrational grudge to my grave

[mdhwrites]

Luz wanted to live that harem isekai fantasy. Just saying, it's pretty obvious.

Also that's the most cringe genre of animes out there and the only thing stopping toh from being just as cringe is that it's kid oriented, in ratings at least. Agree to disagree if it's not but I doubt it.

I don't think harem isekai was on her mind but I'd be surprised if Luz wouldn't be super okay with that if that was how things turned out. She's not exactly adverse to attention after all. I do want to say that I don't think I personally want to call Harem Isekai the most cringe category of anime out there but that's a personal belief thing. Harem anime is pretty trashy oftentimes, I'm not going to argue otherwise but there's also plenty of them that follow the Tenchi Muyo style where sure, it's a harem anime, but the main guy does have some agency, it's exploring some fun concepts and the like and the harem aspect is frankly just a part of the appeal rather than the whole appeal. It's simply another part of how they're exploring dynamics, relationships, etc. Admittedly, this shouldn't be surprising as I'm a polyamory writer which a lot of people would claim even two main love interests is enough to make something a harem anime. I think there is a lot untapped potential in those sorts of relationships though.

What's generally kind of a shame about them is a problem in the romance genre as a whole: They're only allowed to get together at the end and only with ONE. So something like Negima obviously has a main girl who will be the final one but spend the entire series trying to convince you that one of the other dozen girls is a viable candidate when they're clearly not.

On the other hand... I will never condemn something for having fun as much as I will for it being mean spirited and cruel. I am not against wish fulfilment. At all. I don't think me as a writer am the best for it but something that just makes you feel good and gives you pleasant characters to spend time with will always appeal more to me than torture porn that's just gratuitously cruel and violent for no reason. Then you get anime mixing the two like the infamous first episode of Goblin Slayer which is... WOW. I actually could do a whole blog on why the basic premise of Goblin Slayer is reductively 'subversive' much like a lot of TOH's subversions. Though admittedly, I have never watched the show so it would be secondhand knowledge I gained when the show first aired.

That's kind of why I go hard on TOH being so... not fun. If you're going to be wish fulfillment, because that's what it is even if it's not a harem anime, then make it an experience someone actually wants to have. Not that it has to be all sunshine and roses but make the adventures compelling. The magic interesting. The world be a place where you want to be.

I just don't get it with TOH. The magic is boring and bad, the adventures are mostly blue collar crime with a very light twist and the world is just our world. Why would you want the escapism and wish fulfillment of TOH besides just wanting to be Luz? The weirdo that everyone loves without any effort and will never question your worst actions?

That's of course the most negative reading but it's not like it's a new as far as people who are critical of the show go. It's hard to say what is still appealing about the show by the end besides wanting to be Luz and Luz is just not a great character in the end. Or really a great person. Even kinder takes aren't going to say she's some sort of paragon.

It all makes it so that rather than feeling like you escape into a magical world, you instead are sent into a portal at the bottom of the Uncanny Valley where what you're supposed to be getting out this wish being fulfilled is pretty questionable. And it's just not fun.

[kissabledyke]

when i read smut i love when the girl with a dick is a tgirl who loves herself, sometimes i like it when there is some doubt and introspection and the story ends with her being happy.

but sometimes i also love the subversion when someone is really evil and is/isn't punished by the end, like when a futa impregnates a bunch of people and then shows up to do it again a year later.

i love smut narratives like that, which is why i read smut fics instead of watching porn, porn just doesnt go at a pace i can comprehend, or it goes too slow.

also im asexual and amab but i just... dont feel gender? i hate my body hair but it doesnt cause me any dysphoria, i hate my face-hair and sometimes i wish my penis could just stop existing. but at the same time i dont want to be a girl, i just love it when girls are girls.

i just want to renounce all of these manhood things, i hate it when my dad or uncle says something about my body is 'manly', when i try to articulate what i want they get confused because i practically want nothing, i dont want to twirl skirts (though id like to try) or do makeup or be referred to in any hyper-feminine manner.

also i think im masturbating wrong? im constantly hurting my penis to the point of bleeding, am i supposed to use lube? i never learned how to use lube and i dont know how to learn now tho i am very (privately) proud of my ability to do it in the work bathroom, its satisfying to know that im being paid for time i spend jorking it to gay smut

ok this is kind of a lot. i'm going to respond to all of this as kindly as i can but you should know that this is like. A Lot to send anonymously to a stranger. like i know that i reblogged this post but this is a bit beyond the scope of the implied social contract

anyway, again, responding to all of this point-by-point in the best of faith:

yessss i love gender affirmation and a happy ending. i listen to audio porn a lot and my favorite genre is "mushy romance (and sex 😳) for trans woman listeners"

please don't use the word futa around me, and also i would caution you against using it in general. it's a gross derogatory term born from particularly dehumanizing pornographic caricatures of trans women. that said though i do like an evil woman. that particular scenario is darker than i'm generally into but i see the appeal

i totally agree, your typical mass market video porn is intensely uninteresting. yawn

i don't mean to speak over you but "i hate my face-hair and sometimes i wish my penis could just stop existing" sounds a LOT like dysphoria to me. "binary trans woman" is not the only other option you have available to you, and in fact i would argue that "binary trans woman" is an oxymoron. enjoy women (god knows i do) and explore who you are and who you could be. i too had to suffer through years and years of being reassured that i'm so manly and tough and boyish but as much as that sucks you can't let that stop you from being the person you wanna be. also spinning in a skirt is absolutely worth giving a shot at least once, go for it

yes you are masturbating extremely wrong, please please please stop doing whatever it is you're doing. go to the grocery store and buy some ky jelly or something and when you get home squeeze a generous amount on your favorite hand before trying again. for the love of god just do anything other than your current technique

lmao nice #quietquitting

[not-quitenormal]

hypothetically, let's say that someone was trying to figure out how to pitch a fic before sharing it with the world (well, a discord server), how would you recommend they hypothetically get the confidence to share it?

(thank you in advance)

What we as writers have to remember is that while we do create for praise, critique, and community, we ultimately have to write for ourselves. If we keep everything tailored to how we think we will be perceived, it only limits us and our capabilities. It may even be what holds back others who want to push boundaries as well.

For example: The first person who posted an Omegaverse fic, in my personal opinion, was a groundbreaker. Whether they cared about criticism or not doesn't matter at this point - they broke the mold and created a whole genre of fanfiction for others to engage in. The genre gets a lot of hate - and some of it is legit imo - but it has also produced some of the best stories I have ever read.

In addition to Omegaverse, lets talk about content. (Not the work itself as "content" but the stuff within the fic. The concept as the work as "content" needs to die.) I get that there is hesitation to touch on "problematic" tropes or elements. The musical is geared towards 10 year olds at minimum. But if Wicked the novel was written as a subversion (maybe even perversion) of The Wizard of Oz and contains bestiality in at least two books, why should anything else be off-limits? Fiction can be used for therapy or to explore concepts that can't be restricted by reality. Good or bad. Or maybe both? Kinda like the themes of the book and the musical?

Of course, I am old, high, and literally have been training myself not to care what strangers online think about my work for the past year. It takes a lot of pep talk to rip the band-aid off sometimes - and even then, running it under the water a bit doesn't hurt. (Please don't run your fic underwater, my metaphor is losing me.) Tag your fic generously (and add "dead dove do not eat" for good measure, if applicable), but otherwise have fun! <3

[frogspawned]

i hate it when a story can’t commit to the bit. nothing makes me drop a book faster than a writer reneging on their own rules. like, you made it up! you can change the rules, no matter how outlandish, to serve the plot you want. and then you just do... that. it’s weak

[utilitycaster]

I'm in the mood to rant and between the fix-it-fic post I made and the "you should, perhaps, be familiar with the source material post" I reblogged (and the horrendous comments on said post) and the scathing goodreads reviews I'm going to talk about why so many of these fics are terrible.

Here is the thing. Some writing is bad. Some writing is good. There's room for opinion; there's styles that are grating to some, and there's a reason why someone who loves Nabokov may loathe Hemingway or vice versa; but those two still have coherent styles and the ability to craft a good sentence. It's just a matter of whether the sentence is five words or fifty.

However, writing is more than just pretty words put together in some kind of coherent order. You write to communicate. Even when you are trying to be deliberately oblique it is deliberate. There's intent. There's something you are trying to convey or elicit through being oblique. Even when you write things down for yourself to straighten out your thoughts you're writing them down for an audience, for a purpose.

Conventions exist because of this. There are ways to ensure you convey something to the intended audience, because they've seen the pattern before and understand what it means. There is a reason why we can read Shakespeare's 400-odd year old plays and enjoy them, and it's because the way things unfold, with hints and beats and foreshadowing and dramatic irony, are fairly universal in how people process information and the world around them. Because this is a blog that's largely about D&D and actual play: this is why we "see" death flags and foreshadowing in an improvised medium: we know the conventions so well that we interpret chance and happenstance as fitting within them. We put the intent in even if it wasn't there.

So for fix-it-fics: If the work met the bare minimum of "adequately executed" and was successfully finished without interruption, that intent is woven throughout the story. There's foreshadowing there; there are character choices and themes and consequences. There's a lot of work that was done to lead to that ending, whether or not you liked the ending. The ending is part of the story and the rest leads there. Fix-it-fics are therefore nearly always poorly grafted on to a story that doesn't support the new "fixed" ending. The threads don't match up, the patterns clash, and it looks terrible.

This is most notable in my opinion with tragedies. A lot of people don't like tragedies. I think those people are weak and boring but they're allowed to hold that opinion; the problem is that tragedy is a genre and a good tragedy - one that's good enough to get the people who say they don't like tragedies to watch it - knows it. People die in tragedies and the story says it will happen, it promises it will happen, and subversion of that isn't interesting; it's a disappointment. Subversion and playing with genre are a bit like tightrope walking: if someone has put immense practice into it and knows what they're doing, it looks incredible. Most people don't and they'll be lucky if all they do is fall on their ass.

Now there are works that are poorly executed but had an interesting premise (these often fall into the category of "something external happened and cut the story off or forced an unintended change" - abruptly canceled TV shows, for example) but it takes a decent amount of skill to recognize that and distinguish it from a work that is simply bad through and through, and it takes even more skill to match the good parts of that premise.

Another thing worth noting is that fanfiction specifically is usually character-centric. That's what the tags are about and what people are searching on; that's usually why people want something fixed. The thing is, those characters are part of that weave of the story. If you try to make them go in a different direction, you often lose the character in the process. It is painfully obvious when someone doesn't like a character or doesn't understand how to write them.

I will defend fanfiction to people who get snobby about it in general because I think it's one of the best ways to learn voice and tone in writing, through trying to match an existing character - but you have to actually put in the work to do so. Otherwise it begs the question "why didn't you just write a new story that isn't beholden to all these restrictions?" and usually the answer is "because I want the audience, so I made these vaguely character-shaped OCs", or else "because I wanted my favorite character to do something that they didn't and which tbh probably wouldn't have made sense for them to do." And to be clear: you can do this, because you can write for an audience of you and people who already agree with you. But when other people say the story is sloppy and the writing is bad - not on your specific badly and sloppily written story but just in general - they're probably right.

Again: you can write and read fluffy self-indulgent nonsense. That's fine. No one is stopping you. I have my own comfort reading and it's not Nabokov nor Hemingway, let me tell you. But - and this is important - if you can't tell the difference between "I have an emotional attachment to this" and "this is objectively well-written" you are going to be a terrible writer. To do that, you need to understand the difference between "did the story achieve what it was intending to do" and "did the story do what I wanted it to do." And that in turn requires understanding what the story was intending to do, and plenty of people don't make it that far.

[mrdarcysdadbod]

Do you dislike Charlotte Bronte as a person, or her writing style (or both)? ik Jane Eyre is The Worst but is there any other reason?

Ohhh thank u for this opportunity to be a hater

(under a cut bc i know i have followers who ARE into the other two Brontes and i respect u i just don't agree w u)

The answer is simply yes! I dislike her as a person, i dislike Jane Eyre, and I don't dislike her writing style necessarily (bc unfortunately when it comes to literature written before 1980 or so it's just inaccessible enough to me that I can't really discern minutiae of style, in the way it's usually meant to mean) but i do dislike a lot of her writing choices.

(the only criticism I think I've ever coherently made of Charlotte's "style" is when I used to say that she and Emily never really left their house or interacted with other people and it showed. Having since read books with characterizations much sillier, both good (the Monk) and bad (Pamela), I kind of retract that, but I also kind of stand by it bc the Brontes are falling into a very different stylistic era than Samuel Richardson or Matthew Lewis, so it's a different vibe yk?)

Jane Eyre blends genres in a way that REALLY doesn't work for me, especially the appearance of the gothic, bc it keeps waffling between whether it wants to be, like, a mediocre virtue novel or a straight Gothic or a subversion of the Gothic and it's all very muddled in terms of like the stylistic and thematic choices. I'm willing to concede that it was experimental or like adventurous but I just... Don't like the result.

I also fundamentally cannot get over the injustice of Bertha Mason's entire treatment. I try not to have firm opinions on Charlotte's writing since i know I'm biased, but the one firm opinion I WILL hold is that JE shouldn't be considered a proto-feminist novel in this day and age. I don't really like the label "proto-feminist" in general outside of applying it to, like, Mary Wollstonecroft bc she WAS the proto-feminist, but the objectification of Bertha Mason is by itself enough to disqualify JE in my mind, without getting into the ways that Jane herself is doomed to the role of caregiver to a deeply abusive man and it's like... fine. Like we're just gonna fully ignore everything about Rochester lying, and presume that he must obviously be telling the truth abt Bertha just naturally being mad by herself with no other factors, bc he certainly hasn't lied and certainly wouldn't lie about abusing his wife when she's clearly not in a position to say otherwise! He’s an honest and trustworthy person for sure :) Bertha Mason is central to my dislike of JE, she is the site of such incredible narrative violence against women, against people of color, against colonized people, against vulnerable people, like it's just. I can't move on from her, sorry.

And I do also DEEPLY dislike, even hate, Charlotte Bronte as an individual as well! She holds my Most Hated Opinion on Jane Austen ("it would be better if there was kissing/it's lacking in passion"), she lied abt using Emma as source material when writing JE (I think I've talked abt that in another post? basically someone was like “oh haha like in emma” and Charlotte was like “what’s emma i’ve never heard of emma (lie)” and then she was like “hm well i read this ‘emma’ business and it was dumb and bad and mine is better so stop comparing them”). Also enough people have linked “liking Jane Austen” and “liking the two Bronte sisters that aren’t Anne” enough after I decided I didn’t like the non-Anne Brontes that it just got on my nerves and i disliked them more out of spite. I’m like, why would I like Charlotte Bronte? Her book is dumb and she thinks Jane Austen is dumb which makes her extra dumb >:C I’m very mature.

And finally, this is the one that is actually repugnant and not just a personal bias issue, she is the reason nobody knows who Anne Bronte is. She stopped Anne's work from being reprinted after her death, bc she felt it was ~too controversial~. Wildfell Hall was crazy successful when it came out! And it's an important book! Literally imagine the world we would be living in if her depiction of the realities of domestic violence in Wildfell was read half as often as the weird half-gothic goofiness of Jane Eyre. It's still fucking relevant today! And almost nobody knows about it, because Charlotte Bronte decided that her sister's work didn't matter.