@panismightier / panismightier.tumblr.com
some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.
Shout out to fanfic writers who write their favourite characters into incredibly specific niches like complex academic studies or horse taming or the intricacies of the fashion industry or historical politics just because they love it. I do in fact want to learn about your niche interests disguised as a slash fic, thank you
relationship stuff I want to see in fiction
the fact that almost every single fantasy writer thinks they need misogyny is a sign of a lack of creativity, but i also think that if they want to have it, it’s a creative travesty to have it work in ways that 100% conform to the context of earthly, human misogyny on earth. like prejudice and stereotype is fine in fantasy worlds because it exists irl but let’s have, like, an orc society where orc women suffer limitation and discrimination because they’re thought to be too ferocious and deadly to be in polite society. like women in the real world are sometimes considered too flighty or emotional so there’s a little bit of a real world connection but it’s different because it’s NOT the real world
I mean, ask “why is my fantasy culture misogynistic” but also “why does my fantasy culture think women are less intelligent, associate women with duties inside the home, think menstruation is unclean, think women are supposed to submit to their husband’s authority, stereotype women as shallow and obsessed with beauty, or even have the concept of a slut?”
like your fantasy world doesn’t have the story of Eve and the apple and eve’s temptation so every misogynistic idea people have ever derived from that story just isn’t there. maybe your world has a creator goddess and women are associated with the powers of creation and everyone thinks they’re supposed to be protected and have children/compose poems/grow plants/otherwise follow occupations that involve creating and growing things but women without creative or nurturing instincts are shunned. like, this has enough real world similarity to be relatable and comment on the real world somewhat, but it’s not an exact uninnovative copy of real world misogyny informed by western and/or European thought and belief and Christian tradition and so on.
Also, you have to take into account the effects that culture and mythology and differences in biology and so on are actually going to have on how misogyny works in your world.
I read a book one time where the dominant religion was based around goddesses and the world had been ruled by queens for a long time but the author still had the protagonist be presumed as unfit and discriminated against due to her gender. This was a major plot point and she had to disguise as a boy to follow her goals. The world-building the author established didn’t actually make it to having an effect on a character and plot level. She introduced misogyny into the plot with basically no world-building basis, cultural or mythological or historical or otherwise, for it.
Even something subtle like having a female rather than male deity in the dominant religion will have a huge effect on the small, everyday details that affect your female characters’ lives. Having your entire society be matriarchal is going to shape everything from the bottom up.
if your fantasy society by default has people be free to have as many sexual partners as they want and to switch sexual partners when they want, they’re not going to even HAVE slurs or insults relating to someone’s sexual activity. Swears probably won’t even be related to sex, since sex isn’t as transgressive a subject. Having reliable birth control through magical means is going to change society a lot, since having sex just won’t necessarily involve risking pregnancy, even in societies that are not bery advanced, so inheriting titles and property isn’t made messy by people having multiple sex partners. If charms or potions or spells for birth control are pretty easy to make and work reliably, it’s worth thinking about how cultures will develop differently just based on that. If your fantasy world is populated by creatures who reproduce differently than humans, or have differing degrees of sexual dimorphism, their attitudes about women (if they have women) and sex and sexual autonomy and homosexuality are likely to be somewhat different than what people immediately think is Realistic. For example, if people can produce biological children through magical means, what could that mean for society? Could a child have biological same-sex parents or more than two parents? If so, then that’s sufficient basis for seemingly fundamental aspects of society like marriage and gender to be radically different. If the gender of the parents doesn’t matter when making a child, would there even be a distinction between “gay” and “straight?” What would gender look like? What would family look like? What would the connection between family and sex be? Would people get married?
What if you decide elves aren’t a sexually dimorphic species at all? Would your Elvish have gendered pronouns then; would people publicly identify themselves as “man” or “woman?” Conceivably, in a society like that asking someone’s gender could be a very rude and personal question, since the only way to interpret it is “can you become pregnant or not” and no one is just going to share that with a stranger they just met!
(It perplexes me that people think exploring this stuff is “pandering” instead of being absolutely fascinating.)
But overall the challenge of writing fantasy is that you, yourself, are writing from your own cultural context, and apparently that can be very hard to step out of.
Great post. I think I’m guilty of this in my first attempt at a novel. It’s such an easy mindset to fall into if you don’t take the time to really think about it (which I didn’t), but it’s something I’m going to actively work to remedy in further drafts and future stories.
It’s really hard to think about! Because at the end of the day, it all comes out of your imagination, and you’re a person within your own culture and cultural context, and you literally can’t escape that. But it’s still worth thinking about!
Honestly if you think misogyny exists entirely because of Christianity you could do to read up on some other cultures. But apart from that, yes. Read some anthropology, break yourself out of the idea that the way your society does things is the one true natural way. Then think about your world-building again, when you're not bringing quite so much unconscious baggage to it
*stifles a sob* oh my god. This spoke to me in a way nothing else has.
@appears I fucking love your writing. ♥️
Utterly accurate.
reblogging again because when the neilman says it too it feels extra supportive
me: writes dialogue in a casual tone
google docs:
nothing like realizing if your oc universe was a proper media one of ur characters would get poor little meow meowed
i honestly think that worldbuilding as a concept was done a great disservice by the kind of overly literal "criticism" that demands to know where blue dye comes from if it's mentioned at all - the Clothing-Dyers' Guild and its supply chain issues can be a fun thing to explore but unless you want to and it contributes to the main goals (plot, feel of world, theme) of your book, you can just say that they had blue dye.
That can be is really important for me - I love fantasy financial drama. I'm planning on writing some fantasy financial drama. It's very fun for me to go into all the gory details of running a realm. But if that's not a big part of the book, that's fine.
[thread]
I think it’s worth looking at why bad endings ruin stories. This will be a big rambling thread I’m gonna chip away at so feel free to mute if it’s not your cup of tea #storytalk
I was inspired to write this after @MagnoliaPearl posted something about the ending of Parks & Rec. Which was abysmal. To the point where when I rewatched the series, I stopped before the last season. It’s an ending that felt like a betrayal even though it was a “happy” one
You can’t just toss in good things happening to characters that they haven’t earned. Everyone can’t win the lottery in the last episode. That’s not a happy ending, it’s Deus ex machina that betrays all the things the characters actually struggled for
If you were to draw a story curve, in general a happy ending is one where the characters end up better than where they started but really not too much better. It really depends heavily on how wildly the rest of your graph swings during the rest of your book
Here’s an entertaining clip of Kurt Vonnegut explaining a little tongue in cheek bit about graphing stories that’s actually pretty helpful for explaining what I’m getting at
If you look at P&R that way, it’d probably look a little something like this. It’s easy enough to see where reality breaks
It’s a bit of an exaggeration but not much. The point is, you probably shouldn’t swing too far up from whatever was your highest point during the story. If your previous high was “couple gets married,” then “couple has baby” is a realistic ending. “Couple win lottery” maybe not
Actually, never have anyone win the lottery after the first act. Unless it’s an inciting incident that forms the foundation of the entire story…no lottery. That’s a good rule
But the thing that really got me thinking was why does it matter? The show is over, right? It’s not like I’m then forced to then watch a show about Leslie Knope being President. I think it matters for a few reasons and bear with me here cuz I’m making this up as I go…
One is what I’ll call the Evergreen Ending principle. Which is that even though the story has ended, you need to be able to imagine the characters are continuing to have similar adventures forever. That’s part of what makes an ending feel good, especially for serialized media
Obviously, things will be different because the Real Story already happened. But it needs to be easy to imagine how these characters go on doing essentially the same stuff forever. The only thing worse than the ending P&R gave us would be one where Leslie retires, for example
This is also why I hate epilogues. Like the ending of Harry Potter where they all old and have kids. Let the audience imagine what happens next. That part isn’t for the creator to say. Back off and let your audience take over
If you change too much, even for the better, you’ve also ruined any possibility of the Evergreen Ending. You’ve essentially created a whole new series where everything is different, which only works if you’re then planning to tell that new story
Bad endings can never be fixed. Every other story problem can potentially be resolved. Which I think is why those moments tend to pull back the curtain on a writer’s failings. It’s why writing endings is so stressful
But here’s what I think works. And this is obviously just my opinion and who the hell am I? But I think that when you reach the real end of your story, your plot should be on autopilot. If you’ve done your job, the story will just fly home itself
Don’t try to solve any more problems with plot. Unless you have a twist ending, accept that it’ll be a somewhat predictable finish and that’s okay. The only thing you need to tend to is the audience’s emotional needs. And have those needs reflect themselves in the characters
A real happy ending is knowing the characters are going to be okay. That they’ve finally found a little bit of balance and ended up better than they started. That who they are is good enough and always has been. And that they can handle whatever comes next.
Can this be a mandatory read for all show-runner before they write their final season? It is incredible how many shows fail in this regard. And not just SPN!
do you ever just write a single, beautiful line and feel really proud of yourself. then you look five paragraphs down, and there’s a sentence like, “I walked and my legs were walking” and wonder what in the goddamn heck happened
Item: this jacket; advantage on Charisma checks because I mean look at it
Proposed detectives and settings for cozy-adjacent science fiction mysteries, a genre I am hereby inventing by sheer power of will:
The Maine Coon, to clarify, only solves cat murders. (This series is pitched as Warrior Cats meets The Maltese Falcon, in space.)
I’m not even joking- has anyone ever done lovecraftian eldritch abominations that, like, go out of their way to avoid bothering humans?
Because if you want to run with the “we’re like ants to them” metaphor, most people who aren’t total assholes are making, like, an active choice not to stomp on anthills or squash random bugs. They step over or around. And it’s not the bog-standard indifference of the genre, there’s an active thought process of “You’re not bothering me so I won’t bother you.” I want a story about people exploring an eldritch horror-city like Ryleh, and eventually it turns out that all the bizarre psychological torture and warping environs and all that are an elder god’s equivalent of trying to shoo out a fly or a spider without killing it. I want a story about how the empathy of an elder god is just as dangerous as it’s wrath.
oooooooooh
Seriously, it’s the sinew passages. I just spent about an hour tweaking the set up for a crucial council: how we move into it, where people are sitting, folks who’ve been off doing other things returning… etc., etc., etc.
That’s sinew. It’s that “stuff” the encloses the meat of scenes. Crucial, but like “and time passes” scenes, can eat up an ungodly amount of time to get right.
You likely read right over it, barely note it–and that’s as it should be. That’s WHY it’s such a beast. You throw out the first draft, realize it’s shit and confusing and you need to consolidate and move this bit there, and that bit over here… It takes time to make it concise and smooth and brief.
But yeah. I just spent an hour on … five paragraphs. :-)
It’s one of those “unnoticeable when done right, really noticeable when done wrong” things, unfortunately.
After having been in the works since roughly 2015, EDGE OF THE WOODS is now almost in the world.
It's, uh, not the most mainstream take on werewolves and vampires, so my queer, disabled ass would appreciate anyone who feels like giving this little indie "contemporary fantasy with strong romantic elements" some love.
Here's the parts of the book that I, the author, love the most and am most excited about:
-- Main and major characters who are bisexual, gay, trans, and asexual. (Although the ace part admittedly isn't on-page in this book, it will come up in later books.)
-- A young woman who is a werewolf alpha, who starts out afraid of her power and ends up going absolutely fucking feral on some assholes.
-- A ridiculously self-indulgent sexy-ass vampire lord that I didn't have a fancast for until I watched the "Montero" music video
-- I managed to pull off a book-long running joke tribute to a single damn line in What We Do in the Shadows (but now I'm committed to it for two more books, so...)
-- Two characters who are Not Skinny and Not Ripped but who are EXTREMELY into each other's bodies, and extremely into enthusiastic consent.
Anyway, if any of this sounds interesting to you, consider adding this to your GoodReads list, or pre-ordering on Amazon (or waiting until May 18 and buying it from https://cityowlpress.com), or at least reblogging this post.
GoodReads: https://t.co/S8GojjREt3?amp=1 Amazon: https://t.co/QfrzaIB8g8?amp=1
Find content advisories and other stories (including free short fiction) on my website: http://julesrobinkelley.com
