theowritercal

[theowritercal]

I wish it wasn’t a hot take that a story in which two characters of any gender prioritize their purely platonic relationship over any other romantic or sexual interests they might have is a textually queer story

[theowritercal]

tumblr is Doing Things again

[theowritercal]

A smarter person could word this better, but different forms of long-form writing has differing expectations of quality. Though anyone can write anything they want, people are going to judge the same quality of writing differently based on whether it's fanfic, original fic, indie published, trad published, etc.

Fanfiction probably has the lowest expectation of quality. Readers are familiar with the the source material it's connected to, so that does some of the heavy lifting. This isn't to say that all fanfiction is low quality. I know there's fanfiction on par with classic literary fiction in terms of technical skill, and ultimately, fanfiction is free and done for fun, so it shouldn't be held to a specific standard anyway.

There was this oneshot fanfic that explored how the main cast reacted after a certain death. Everyone was written perfectly in character. Overall, it was a really touching piece about the ways grief can manifest and how it changes over time, even if it never goes away. It also had a lot of run-on sentences, which sometimes made it difficult to tell what was going on. I loved it anyway.

Had it been original, I might not have finished it.

Freely available original fiction is pretty close to fanfiction in terms of expectation with one big difference: The author is solely responsible for making the reader care. Character establishment, worldbuilding, setup & payoff, etc., these are all things the author has to provide on their own, and they have to do it well enough to make a reader stick around. So long as it's free, readers are willing to give some leeway, even if more work needs to be put in than fanfiction.

Once money is involved, standards get harsher. I've seen writers and readers alike sneer at the thought of indie published books under the assumption that they're not good enough to become traditionally published. It's a shame, because as I understand it, trad publishing picks up works based on whether they'd be popular, not necessarily good. Some real gems are independently published. That being said, the lower barrier of entry allows for more flaws to get through.

The next step up in terms of expectations is traditionally published genre fiction. Obviously, expectations are going to vary depending on the genre, and these expectations tend to fall in line with tropes. Genres require certain tropes. You can't have a romance novel without a couple, and you can't set historical fiction in the future. Science fiction and fantasy are harder to pin down, but if one of those stories are indistinguishable from a contemporary novel, it's probably going to disappoint readers. Stories of any genre can still find their own ways to be subversive within these tropes, but each genre has subgenres, and the smaller the niche, the more tropes it'll have to adhere to. Ultimately, the success of genre fiction stories depends on whether the readers find it entertaining.

Finally, there's literary fiction, which is hard to define but most people think of it as the written equivalent of high art. It's artsy and has capital-T Themes that it's expected to deliver on. It may not be as popular as genre fiction, but it's expected to be written by those with high technical skill and have something interesting to say.

I don't really have a conclusion to this. It's just something I thought about after hearing about a book that has the looks and acclaim of literary fiction but is written with tropes and a plot structure that rarely shows up outside of fanfiction. I haven't actually read the book, so I can't really comment on it. I just think it's interesting how these expectations can affect how a story is judged.

[theowritercal]

Wow!

Wow! I just looked over and saw 40+ notifications in my activity, which never happens to me. I feel like a bug under a rock that @/fuckyeahasexual just happened to lift up. I'm happy people enjoy my post?

Tumblr is a magical place.

[theowritercal]

Wow! I just looked over and saw 40+ notifications in my activity, which never happens to me. I feel like a bug under a rock that @/fuckyeahasexual just happened to lift up. I'm happy people enjoy my post?

Tumblr is a magical place.

[theowritercal]

I'm thinking about two of my characters' relationship to certain adulthood markers.

Both are sex-repulsed asexuals. One is probably some flavor of aromantic. They character wouldn't mind being in a romantic relationship, but they're so sex-repulsed that the mere thought of having to have a discussion about sex with a partner makes them uncomfortable, especially when they feel like they'd be rejected for wanting no part in it. They don't mind being single, though. The other is alloromantic and hopes to be in a romantic relationship someday.

Neither drinks alcohol. The aroace isn't interested, and the alloace has an adverse reaction to drinking it.

On top of this, both characters are whimsical, naive, timid, and come off as childlike. The aroace is fine with being seen this way. Adulthood is something they felt was forced upon them, and though they come to accept the responsibilities it brings, they feel fully comfortable never meeting markers of adulthood that don't align with their preferred lifestyle. The alloace, on the other hand, resents this. They associate childhood with a lack of agency and potential for manipulation. Because of that, they want to be taken seriously as an adult and feel insecure about their inability to engage in adulthood markers like alcohol or sex.

I don't have a neat way to wrap this up. I just think they're neat.

[theowritercal]

Having some thoughts about compulsory sexuality, especially how posts about sex positivity vs censorship have an unfortunate tendency to cast people who are less willing to engage with sex as the cause and the symptom of puritanism when puritanical people are usually pretty pro-sex (within very narrow parameters that they weaponize against everyone else).

Tl;dr: Ending stigma around sex = Good. Implying less sexual people are losers / bad queers / oppressors = No thanks.

[theowritercal]

Bringing a sort of "what these two have going on is undeniably queer even if they don't end up together romantically or sexually" vibe to the story that I'm not sure how anyone is going to react to to be honest.

[theowritercal]

everyone's all about queer subtext until it's aromantic or asexual

[theowritercal]

I'm not interested in every alloromantic character being paired up at the end of each story I make, but as the creator, I'd like to know what the rest of their lives might look like. I like making characters happy, and my alloromantic characters tend to swing monogamous and are eager to find spouses.

They also tend to have chemistry with characters they wouldn't work out with. Example: Two characters who would be perfect together, except one wants kids and the other doesn't. There's no changing that in a way that doesn't fundamentally alter their characters to me.

"You can make new characters for them to get married to," you might say. The problem is that I'm not compelled by a character who only exists to be part of a couple. There's one character I have who is surrounded by non-partnering aromantics. That character wants a spouse, but if I created one, I would be less interested in developing that relationship than the weirdly intense situation they have going on with one of the aromantics. Changing this character's (or the aromantic's) orientation would make it easier to get their much-deserved happily ever after, but again, they wouldn't feel like the same character(s) to me.

I feel like a shonen writer trying to pair up straight couples in an epilogue. There's the need to give characters their post-time-skip spouses, but deep down, everyone knows they're less compelling than their relationships with the people they don't end up with.

[theowritercal]

I use the term "found family" when describing my work, but to be honest, I kind of dislike it now. At this point, it feels like a buzzword to signify that there is a friend group in a story.

There's a lot I don't like about how novels are marketed online. If it works, it works, I guess.

[theowritercal]

I put off looking into the experiences of aplatonic and loveless people mostly because it doesn't really line up with my own, but doing so has gotten me to reconsider friendship as this universal thing people aspire to.

Funnily enough, I think it led me to understanding one of my own characters more. I always had the idea that this character doesn't perform friendship the way people expect it, leaving for long periods of time without feeling the need to keep contact, and the person closest to them is understanding of that. They show care towards people, but I don't know if I could see this character ever saying that they "love" anyone, even platonically.

Found family and friendship is probably going to feature heavily in the story they're in regardless, but I think I'm going to try to be more careful about how I talk about those things.

[theowritercal]

Been a while since I used this blog. I don't know if I necessarily agree with all the stuff I said when it was still active, but there's some posts I come back to now and then.

Anyway, I just watched a video on whether or not (romantic) love is a social construct. I'm not really interested in the answer, but one minor nitpick I had throughout the video is how "love" was used interchangeably with "romantic love."

A lot of commenters missed the point because they decided to use love to refer to things like family, friends, objects, etc. when the video was specifically about romance. Missing the point was going to happen regardless, but this felt avoidable.

[theowritercal]

I mentioned some months back that there’s this writing site I joined that’s great overall except the community is not too receptive LGBT+ related stuff. I don’t have that many readers, so it’s never directly impacted me, but people are incredibly weird about the topic when it comes up in the forums. 

Whenever there’s a thread of someone asking how the site’s userbase would respond to a story with LGBT+ characters, most responses fall into one of two categories:

1) People who are honest and direct about the userbase being adverse to LGBT+ stories.

2) People who do backflips that would make an Olympic gymnast blush trying to justify why they or the userbase are adverse to LGBT+ stories, but aren’t homophobic.

Now, the site’s userbase generally doesn’t care for heavy emphasis on romance or sex, regardless of characters’ orientations, and neither do I. I won’t begrudge any reader for passing up on a story LGBT+ or otherwise if the story heavily involves those things and it doesn’t interest them. 

I raise my eyebrow a little at the implication that LGBT+ stories inherently involve more sex/romance, but sometimes I see that implication from within the community, so whatever. However, I can not wrap my mind around the insistence that the site’s userbase is “generally not homophobic” while also advising that anyone who writes a story with LGBT+ characters should “warn people” first. This is including the site’s gold standard ideal of an LGBT+ story, where there’s little to no romance/sex and it’s not as important to the characters’ lives. I don’t believe I’ve seen the same insistence to warn people about straight characters.

Are authors supposed to open up stories with the characters saying, “Hello, I’m gay!”, “Hello, I’m trans!” when that is the very type of writing some of these same users claim as the reason they avoid LGBT+ stories? Should the authors tack it on at the end of a blurb like, “Here’s the synopsis of my story. By the way, the main character is bisexual!” It seems like such an awkward way to do things for the comfort of the so-called tolerant users. 

It’s annoying enough that the bias against LGBT+ stories exists on this site, but that’s to be expected. It’s even more annoying when users admit this is the case “but not because we’re homophobic.”

Please have some self-awareness.

[theowritercal]

I feel a little bit insecure about my writing. In general, I enjoy looking at things I’ve written. The problem is, I want to share it with more people, but I’m not sure how well I could handle criticism. There’s probably things I need to change, things I could tighten up, but I don’t want to hear about it from someone else, and I’m too proud of what I have to change it myself. That’s a me problem, I guess.

[theowritercal]

I wish there was something like AO3 but for original works. Or at least something with a decent tagging system.

[theowritercal]

The past few days, I’ve been shopping around for different writing sites to post on. 

I’ve been on Wattpad for a while, but with the forums being down and the site being the way it’s set up, it’s impossible to get any views. I’m not exaggerating either. I have not gotten one (1) view that wasn’t my own since the forums were taken down. I’ll still post there, but at times it can feel like hanging up signs in the middle of a desert.

I also dusted off my old FictionPress account, but I’m not sure anyone uses the site anymore, or even when I first signed up. I can still easily find works posted in the mid-2000s. The UI is a little cumbersome to me, and I’m not sure if the forums are forums the way I’d think of them. They seem to be a bunch of roleplaying threads.

There’s two other sites I looked at, one I joined and one I didn’t. I won’t name either.

The one I joined, I really like its layout. Its easier to get recognition there. There are other people using it regularly, although the community isn’t as bustling as the Wattpad Forums were. The one thing I’m leery of is the community itself. People seem nice enough there, but I get the feeling works with LGBT+ elements might put people off.

The site I didn’t join seemed to have a community that was way more accepting of that kind of thing, but there were certain things about how the site handled writing and author ownership that kept me away.