#media writing

[highfantasy-soul]

Looking at how media has progressed, specifically TV shows, it's so funny how quickly the 'new model' takes over everything and people just...idk, freak out? heavily criticize? get a false sense of superiority over? any show that steps foot outside their newly expected box.

Memories are short, we know this. But it really wasn't long ago that TV shows put out pilots that were filmed entirely separate from the rest of the season and that pilot had to do really well in order for the show to be picked up at all. This led to pilot episodes being suuuuuper blunt about the concept, characters, world, and plot (and many times some stuff retconned in the subsequent episodes). Because those TV shows that survived have become well known and well loved, those first episodes/seasons have been rewritten in people's minds to the point where they genuinely don't remember how hamfisted writing was at the beginning of the show - because that's how they got people to be interested in watching.

It wasn't part of the model to 'show not tell' and stretch basic character beats out for the entire season. Due to the format, they front loaded exposition to let the watcher get a feel for the characters/world and THEN slowed down and settled in. Once we moved to a show structure where things were connected (part of a franchise), shows stopped front loading so much though it was still there- after all, they were still airing week-to-week on cable. But they trusted the 'built in' audience because the show was based on an already popular thing.

Then Netflix started dropping shows in one huge chunk. Now, you didn't have to worry about hooking a viewer immediately and shoving the whole world building exposition into the first episode, you just needed to give them the basics (especially if it was fantasy) and then provide a cliffhanger at the end of each episode that would support the 'binge' model of viewing.

Now, we've started to shift back to a weekly format for many shows, though they all seem to be still part of franchises, so that audience is already built in. But we do get '2 episode' or '3 episode' premiers to let the set-up take it's time while still giving viewers enough to ground them in the world and look forward to more.

So the point here is that none of these writing formats is 'wrong' and none of them are 'right'. They shift to accommodate how the show is going to be viewed. When people criticize 'wonky pacing', I just can't help but roll my eyes. Maybe you personally don't like the pace, but the pace isn't 'wrong'. Hell, I love high fantasy and people freak out all the time about the slow pace of that. People see shows dropping at an unconventional rate and declare that it's because the studio has no faith in the project and it's bad, actually (see Echo, which was really, really, good actually).

When people criticize 'heavy exposition' in first episodes, I roll my eyes again. That's what you do when you're introducing people to a world (especially a fantasy one) and the story isn't centered around figuring out how the world works. Sure, if you like slowly figuring out how the world works, then a show that doesn't explore that might not be your cup of tea, but recognize that and know that that's personal taste, not objective writing truth. First episodes can be REALLY GOOD and also have heavy exposition.

I like being able to look at all the different ways storytelling is done - the different paces, focus on different things, etc etc. Classics are written VERY differently from modern stuff, stories from different cultures are extremely different from ones you've always grown up with, thrillers are going to be told differently from cozy fantasy. None of these are 'wrong' or 'bad writing' because it's not the other. They're just different.

I guess what I'm saying is get out of your little 'media critique' bubble and understand there's no one correct way to write a story. Your obsession with 'spotting bad writing' is actually defeating your ability to critically examine media outside your extremely narrow world view. Look back to the past and realize things were done so differently then, but understand that it wasn't 'bad'. Look to other cultures/genres and understand one isn't 'better' than the other and should be the 'standard'.

It's ok to prefer one way over the other, but be careful tossing out the blanket, nearly meaningless now, 'bad writing' criticism as if you actually know what that means.

(Why does all my annoyance at 'media criticism' feel like it always circles back to Cinema Sins and the irreparable damage they did to people's brains?)

[prokopetz]

They say you should make art for yourself, but the folks writing long-form fic on AO3 where the last reader comment was thirty-five chapters ago and they're still updating every week like clockwork are putting that into practice in ways I can only dream of.

[beepboopappreciation]

Is this anything

[ukrainian-groove-metal]

I love the "came back wrong" trope but from the opposite side.

Imagine you are dead. And then you are RIPPED from the embrace of decay into the world of the living again. Your memories are hazy and you don't recognize any of these people, but they act like they're close to you? Like they love you? So you try to get your memories back, to act like you belong here, but everybody tries to forget you died. And you can't. It is omnipresent. And just trying to grapple with that fact pushes the people who "love" you away, and they're incapable of understanding, and they're so confused, what's wrong N̶̄̀O̶͛͗T̷̉́ ̷͋͝Y̴̎̌Ȍ̴̈U̸̓R NÄM̴̃͑E̵̾̇? And you just need them to understand, you aren't that person! You aren't! You don't know who that person is! You don't know why any of this is happening, but they're unwilling to bend, they keep insisting you are that person, your memories will come back, everything will be normal again, and you want to scream and cry and claw yourself open to show them you're different. Your existence as a being wholly separate from whoever you "used to be" is a sin unto itself. All you can do is scrabble for life and to them, you're killing whoever they loved to do it.

just. lots of fun in that concept, you know?

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[so-you-read-the-usernames]

Female characters who are the sole voice of reason <<<<<<< Female characters who think of themselves as the sole voice of reason but who are actually just as insane as those around them

[cy-cyborg]

Free Manual Wheelchair Reference Models

ID: A banner with grey 3D models of 5 kinds of manual wheelchairs in a line in front of the disability pride flag and text that reads "Manual Wheelchair References" /End ID

For disability pride month, I decided to release a pack of 3D manual wheelchair models.

The pack includes 5 wheelchairs:

2 Active urban-style chairs (one of which includes a smart drive)

1 off-road active chair

1 children's wheelchair

and 1 standard "hospital" wheelchair).

All the wheelchairs are based off either wheelchairs I or friends of mine have used

Downloadable here!

or on the Clip Studio Paint Asset Store (ID 2097442) (there's been an issue with the CSP version, but the models in the download folder can be imported into clip studio paint until I can fix it)

More info about the download contents below:

The first download link includes the original .Blend file with all 5 chairs, as well as individual .obj or .fbx files the chairs (All but 1 have an .obj file, as they're only meshes. The chair with the smart drive is rigged, which is why it has an .Fbx file instead so it will retain that information) as well as a "read me" file that explains in more depth what kind of disability/character/lifestyle each chair is made for (These are just what I had in mind when I designed them, they are usable by other characters who don't fit the suggestions for the most part!) I wanted to include the Read Me contents in the CSP Asset Store listing, but CS said it was too long lol.

Also, as the title says, these files are free to use! While it's not mandatory, I would appreciate credit if you use them (or even just a tag so I can see the cool art you make with them!!)

I actually made these ages ago, the original plan was to use them in a series of posts then release the pack, but I never got around to making the series and so they've just been sitting here. I took a day off from art fight attacks to clean them all up and get them ready to post. If you experience any issues, let me know and I'll try to fix it up.

I had a couple more that were supposed to be in the pack including a sports (basketball/Tennis) wheelchair and some different styles of wheelchair, but I think the files corrupted so once I fix (or remake) them, I'll probably make a second pack.

If you have any issues, please let me know!

[polyhedric-dimension]

Who are you when you're not performing?

[descendant-of-truth]

Shipping is fun and all but I swear every single time someone makes a comment, whether as a joke or in a legitimate analysis, about there being "no other explanation" for a pair's interactions, I lose just a bit more of my sanity

Like, no, you guys don't get it. Romance is not about the Amount of devotion, it's about the COLOR. the FLAVOR of it all. a character can be just as devoted to their platonic friend as they are to their romantic partner, and they don't love either of them more, just differently.

But because the majority of people still have it stuck in their minds that romance exists on the highest tier of love, I'm stuck seeing endless takes that boil down to "these two care about each other too much for it to NOT be romantic" as if that's the core determining factor to how literally any of this works

In conclusion: stop telling me that I don't understand the story if I don't interpret the leads as romantic, I am TIRED

[nekhcore]

HEY YOU!

Yeah, you! Are you trans? Do you like reading books? Or watching movies?

Do you like media about trans men/transmasculine characters but don't know where to find it?

That's sooo crazy because I have this little spreadsheet I'm working on where I'm trying to document all media with protagonists/major characters who are FTM or transmasculine.

The spreadsheet currently has 300+ entries spread across the following categories:

Books

Manga

Memoirs and non-fiction

Movies

TV Shows

Graphic novels / Comics

Webcomics

Audio dramas

Books and movies are also sorted by:

Which character is trans (MC, love interest, antagonist, etc)

If the trans character is POC

The trans character's sexuality (Because I saw lots of transhet guys sad about only being able to find gay romances)

If the author/actor is also trans (if we know for sure)

It's free to use, and free to add to as well! Editing permissions are on, and I check on the spreadsheet every now and then to make sure everything is in order and to clean up.

If you know something that isn't on the list, please add it! You don't have to fill in every single column, but fill it to the best of your abilities.

If you don't want to use the big ass long link below, you can also use: bit.ly/FTM-protags

I made this because I want it to be a community resource. So even if you're not a trans guy or transmasculine person, please reblog!

[emeryleewho]

I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got paid to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.

Update: This is literally just a thought exercise to help you be more intentional with how you critique media. I'm not enforcing this as some divine rule that must be followed any time you have an opinion on fiction, and I'm definitely not saying that you have to structure every single sentence in a review to contain zero negative phrases. I'm just saying that I repurposed a rule we had at that specific reviewer to be a helpful tool to check myself when writing critiques now. If you don't want to use the tool, literally no one (especially not me) can or wants to force you to use it. As with all advice, it is a totally reasonable and normal thing to not have use for every piece of it that exists from random strangers on the internet. Use it to whatever extent it helps you or not at all.

[prokopetz]

Blackout poetry exists on a dual axis from "banal" to "insightful" on the input side and "kind of deep" to "incredibly fucking dumb" on the output side, and while taking something banal and producing something kind of deep is well and fine, for my money taking something insightful and rendering it incredibly fucking dumb is where the real art is.

[writerofstuff]

Dead Boy Detectives was surprising.

It surprised me when, instead of Crystal dropping in and fracturing Charles and Edwin's thirty years of friendship, they went with Crystal sinking into the fold of Charles and Edwin's friendship and becoming an important and unique addition to the group.

It surprised me when, instead of Gay Boy Pining Over Straight Best Friend, they went with Gay Boy Realises Feelings For Straight Best Friend And Confesses Almost Immediately with a bonus of Straight Boy Accepts Confession With Surprising Grace And Nothing Changes, Not Really.

It surprised me when, instead of making the female characters repetitive and semi-rational and ultimately less powerful, they went with characters who are smart and selfish and kind and cruel and strong and flawed and oh, they happen to be female too.

It surprised me when Charles liking Crystal did not affect one bit of how much he loved Edwin.

It surprised me when Jenny talked about spinsters with cats and Niko did not bat an eye.

It surprised me with Edwin and Niko. It surprised me with, we have forever to figure the rest out. It surprised me with Crystal's kindness, Jenny's empathy, the casual and absolute, the good you do will come back around.

Dead Boy Detectives was surprising. One day, I hope I can sit back and watch another show and none of this has to be surprising anymore.

[ear-motif]

fanfic is so good bc the premise of some genres of fic are just inherently funny. I want these two grizzled crime drama protagonists to have some fucking fun for once, so they go to a water park. I dont care how i have to logic my way into them going there i dont care who has to drag them Theyre Going

[secretidentie]

Since Bruce is a celebrity everyone assumes his PR team runs his socials but since he's a cluster of paranoia he refuses to let anyone else do it. That means when he randomly tweets something out of pocket he has the perfect excuse.

------

BRUCE WAYNE TWEETS : "Had a meeting with share holders today and I finally understand why red hood had a bag of severed heads" AND FOLLOWS IT UP WITH "I'd like to apologize on behalf of my social media manager for my last tweet" BUT STILL DOESN'T TAKE IT DOWN.

-----

Clark, trying to be nonchalant : hey I wanted to ask about your post from yesterday.

[a picture of Alfred's cooking posted on IG with the caption "dinner almost looks as delicious as @thesupermanofsteel 🤤"]

Bruce *sweating bullets under the cowl and pretending to work *: oh I haven't seen what my team posted yet.

Clark *immediately burning the bouquet he brought to confess his feelings before Bruce sees* : oh, okay

-----

At a gala

Lex Luther: so I saw your last tiktok

[video of the Waynes on vacation captioned "with the wind in my hair and my kids by my side, @lexluther can't relate"]

Bruce in full Brucie mode : you know how it is with media managers, lexy. I mean yours just posted a whole Twitter rant saying I had work done and then deleted it an hour later HAha, can you believe it!

Lex who can definitely believe it because he wrote that rant himself at 2am :........ Umh...... I'll have to see who's responsible for that.

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

I am incredibly serious right now when I beg you all, please, and if you have Twitter or Tiktok or whatever to please spread the word: click on an author's profile on Ao3.

You want to know if an author has written more? Want to know if they're still writing? Want to see more from them? Want to know if they've written a trope or kink or sex scenario you enjoy?

Click on their name. And look at their profile.

I cannot tell you how many times in the last six months someone has read a new or newer fic of mine and said they (a new reader who has read nothing else I've done) "can't wait to see what you do next!" I've written 50+ fics and over a million words already.

"I don't know if you're still writing..." click on my profile. I am. I literally wrote a 128k+ fic for that ship last month.

"Would you ever do X?" "Please do Y!" I already did. Click on my name and look at my works.

Archive of our Own is a library. It's an archive. Not social media. It is your responsibility to fight back against the laziness that corporate algorithms have trained into you.

Click my author name. Just click it. Just click it.

Before you demand more, or ask if a writer will do XYZ, or wonder if the author still writing, or anything - click on their profile. Click on the author's profile.

I'm not trying to be mean or condescending or anything like that. I'm just exhausted. It's disheartening and frustrating to repeat myself ad nauseam, because someone couldn't take thirty seconds to do the tiniest bit of work to see if I've written lately, if I've written more for their ship, or scan my works to see if I've written what they're asking for. Please. Please. I'm begging.

Click the author's name, and explore before you ask.