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i know that a lot of people already know this, and that this may come across as condescending to those who do, but it has become increasingly clear to me that many people, particularly younger people, don't understand this but—
purity culture is more then just thinking sex is bad and evil and gross
purity culture is the belief that you can be corrupted, that there is an level of purity that can be tarnished by thinking or doing something deemed sinful or icky and that once you lose that purity, you are lesser then those who have not been "tainted". it's the belief that seeing, thinking, or doing something inherently nonharmful to others will fundamental change you in a negative way
purity culture is watching gory horror movies and being told that you are disgusting for finding it interesting to watch
purity culture is being told that violence in books, movies, games, etcetera will make you violent
purity culture is being told that wanting to hurt someone makes you bad, darkens your heart, whatever, even if they hurt you first, even if you have no plans to ever act on that desire
purity culture is being told to forgive your abuser, rapist, or even just people who have slighted and hurt you or else you will never fully heal, or that it makes you in someway bad too, or even just as bad as them
purity culture is being told that hating someone is equally to killing them, or wanting to kill them
purity culture is when people have intrusive thoughts that scare and harm them that make you uncomfortable, possibly even triggered, and telling them that they secretly want to do, have, etcetera, those things or else they wouldn't be thinking about it
purity culture is being told not to curse because it makes your mouth filthy, makes your heart filthy, makes you mean and bad and unpleasant
purity culture is being told that jealousy, anger, rage, disgust, and other stigmatized emotions are "bad" or "unhealthy" emotions
purity culture is refusing to let youths or even teenagers read or watch potential upsetting books, shows, movies, games, comics, etcetera out of fear they will act them out, become violent, possessed, unruly, etcetera
purity culture is being told that writing, drawing, or just in general making something dark and uncomfortable makes you gross and evil
purity culture is telling you that you have to portray bad things as bad or else people won't under that it's still bad, that it will normalize this bad thing, that people can be corrupted by it because they can't think for themselves whether this bad thing you portrayed as good is not actually good
purity culture is thinking bad things done for good reasons is just as bad as bad things done for bad reasons, like a mother stealing baby formula to keep her child alive versus someone stealing your pet because they wanted it are equally wrong
purity culture is being told that drinking, smoking, being addicted to drugs, unemployed, homeless, makes you lesser and filthy and corrupts you
purity culture is believing that someone wanting to do something bad, but choosing not to do it because they know it's bad, still makes them bad because they still want to do it
purity culture is thinking people getting tattoos, dying their hair, piercing, wearing make up, getting cosmetic surgeries secretly hate themselves and are disrespecting themselves
purity culture is so much more then just sex. it expands so much further then just christian/religious people and communities
purity culture is doing something bad, and when you try to seek atonement or correct the mistake, that it is unforgivable and will alway be a blight on you, even if others can "learn to look past it"
if you think that someone thinking or do something that does not cause any inherent harm makes them lesser, makes them bad, makes them gross, corrupts them or can lead them to corrupting others, you are pushing purity culture
this is coming from a women raised in an extremely sex negative christian household who spent years hating herself and her body due to sex based purity culture being pushed onto her from the age of six due to early puberty by the way, so don't try to gate keep purity culture on this post as only a religious and or sexual thing
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Drew a long tailed tit based on one of my own photos!
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I made the art challenge Marchirp! Make art based on the prompt of the day, use tag #marchirp, and at me @elliottnotyet. You can do paintings, drawings, sculptures, digital art, poetry, photography, or switch it up throughout the month. Just have fun!
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[Image ID: schedule for a bird themed March art challenge, Marchirp. The words are dark blue on a light blue background. There are bird silhouettes around the title. A list of the daily prompts is below the cut. End ID]
1. Chickens, turkeys, quail
2. Falconiformes
3. Ducks/geese
4. Corvids
5. Penguins
6. Flightless birds
7. Hawks
8. Pidgeons/doves
9. Shorebirds
10. Owls
11. Wetlands birds
12. Brood parasites
13. Eagles
14. Hummingbirds
15. Vultures
16. Free day
17. Extinct birds
18. Feathers
19. Pelecaniformes
20. Bird from you region
21. Nest
22. Migration
23. Dancers
24. Desert birds
25. City birds
26. Rainforest birds
27. Bird hybrid
28. Songbirds
29. Parrots
30. Finches
31. Your favorite
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common kestrel, always a delight to see when they're hunting!
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As promised! I wrote about the illegal fanbinding that's led to writers deleting their works recently, how that connects to the current pull-to-publish wave, and what happens when the rapidly expanding sphere of fic readers starts to get disconnected from *fandom*:
The ever-increasing reach of fanfiction has inched the practice away from text-written-in-community to a more traditional author-reader relationship—and the context collapse that’s come with viral works being treated like any other romance novel has spurred clashes between different types of readers with different sets of expectations. In the past few years, fic authors across all corners of fandom have increasingly complained about shifting attitudes from readers who treat them like any other content creator, demanding the next chapter as you might demand your favorite influencer’s next video. But unlike on creative platforms like TikTok and YouTube, the fic writer doesn’t get revenue from their new installment.
We'll also talk about this in some capacity on the next episode of @fansplaining! (In contrast with today's episode, on the non-monetized, gift-economy practices of many fanbinders, whose hobby is also imperiled by the people selling and buying fic.)
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Yosemite comes to life at sunrise
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Get To Know Me!
Stolen from @heywriters
• Do you play an instrument?
I do not, no
• Favourite book characters?
Sabriel from Garth Nix's Sabriel. It was the first YA book I ever read (back in the days when YA was good and not a love triangle passive female protagonist fest it is now post Twilight) and I loved her. She's witty, clever, strong but not overpowered, and is woefully held back by her ignorance about the Old Kingdom.
She doesn't have much of an arc for sure but there's yet to be another book character that's gripped me so.
• Favourite colour schemes?
Not really thought about this, I guess cooler ones with blues/ purples as opposed to warmer ones?
• Naps or long sleep?
Long sleep, I am an actual sloth who needs 10 hours minimum.
• What languages do you speak?
Just English. I studied French and Latin before but am not fluent in either (I mean no one speaks Latin but you know what I mean haha).
• Dreams/aspirations?
I want to become a best selling author, I have three books out and hopefully many more to come!
• Long hair or Short Hair?
Looooong...it takes a bit to maintain but I love having long hair (it goes to my waist)
• Tea or coffee?
I'm British of course it's Tea for me!
• Bring a book character to life or go into a fictional world?
Probably go into a fictional world, I'd love to visit Azaria, the fictional world I created for my Sorceror Saga books. It's steampunk and one of the regions is based off India and it'd be incredibly fun to explore!
Literally anyone who wants to do this, you are officially tagged by me.
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A Word of Advice About Critique Groups, Beta Readers, and Other Peer-Based Feedback on Your Writing
In my time as a professional editor, I've have many writers come to me with stories they've been trying to improve based on suggestions from critique groups, beta readers, or other non-professional feedback sources (friends, family, etc.). The writers are often frustrated because they don't agree with the feedback, they can't make sense of the comments they've gotten, or they've tried their best to implement the suggestions but now they've made a big mess of things and don't know where to go from here.
If this happens to you, you're not alone. Here's the deal.
Readers and beginning writers are great at sniffing out problems, but they can be terrible at recommending solutions. For that reason, critique groups can be a disastrous place for beginning writers to get advice.
Here's a good metaphor. Imagine you don’t know the first thing about cars. Someone tells you, “There’s oil leaking onto the driveway. You should cover the car with a giant garbage bag.” Alarmed, you oblige, only to be told the next day that “now the car smells like burning plastic and I can’t see out the windows.”
A mechanic would’ve listened to the critic’s complaint and come up with their own solution to the leaking oil, ignoring the amateur’s ridiculous idea, because they know how to fix cars and can use their skills to investigate symptoms and find the correct solution.
Critique groups actually aren’t bad places for experienced writers, because they can listen to the criticism, interpret it, and come up with their own remedies to the problems readers are complaining about. Beginning writers, on the other hand, can end up digging themselves into a deeper hole.
There's a great Neil Gaiman quote about this very conundrum:
Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
So what to do?
First, try to investigate the reader's complaint and come up with your own solution, instead of taking their solution to the problem. Sometimes, in the end, the reader's solution was exactly right, which is lovely, but don't count on it. Do your own detective work.
Second, take everything you hear with a huge grain of salt, and run the numbers. Are 9 out of 10 readers complaining about your rushed ending? It's probably worth investigating. Does nobody have an issue with your abrasive antagonist except your cozy mystery-loving uncle? Then you might not need to worry about it.
Third, give everything you hear a gut check. Does the criticism, while painful, ring true? Or does it seem really off-base to you? Let the feedback sit for a week or so while you chill out. You might find you're less sensitive and open to what's been said after a little more time has passed.
Lastly, consider getting professional feedback on your writing. Part of my job as an editor is to listen to previous feedback the writer has gotten, figure out whether the readers were tracking the scent of legitimate problems, and offer the writer more coherent solutions. Of course, some professional editors aren't very good at this, just like some non-professional readers are amazing at it, so hiring someone isn't a guarantee. But editors usually have more experience taking a look under the hood and giving writers sound mechanical advice about their work, rather than spouting ideas off the top of their head that only add to the writer's confusion.
Hope this helps!
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Awww shit yall know what it is
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Q&A: Fanfic
Why do fanfic have a bad reputation when some of it is actually good or better than than the source material? Is writing as a guest for TV shows or writing a reimagined fairytale not fanfiction?
The key word here is, “reputation.” There’s a lot of really bad fanfiction out there. That reputation is earned. It’s not new. While particular “luminaries” of Harry Potter or Twilight fanfiction may immediately come to mind, we get things like the term Mary Sue from a Star Trek fanfic originally published in the 70s. This has been around for a long time.
The other side is: yes, some fanfiction writing is excellent. As with writing in general, this is the extreme minority. I’d argue that quality writing in fanfiction is rarer than most forms, because the author is likely to “graduate” from fanfiction into something else.
Writing for a TV show is not like writing fanfiction. A fanfic author can do, nearly, anything they want. They have their interpretation of the setting they enjoy, and complete freedom to explore it. If you’re signing on to write an episode of a TV series, you’re already constrained in a number of ways.
First: attaching to an existing property means you’re also going to have to contend with the style guides and setting bibles. In some cases, being attached to a tie-in novel means you’ll be fed your entire plot outline, handed documentation, and told, “write this.”
Second: as a writer in Hollywood you have the least influence on the final product. The director will take your script and then, kinda, do what they want with it. Along the way, the producers, the network, and actors may all influence it as well. Some of your ideas will end up on screen, but it’s not your work anymore. It’s a team effort. (Depending on your exact relationship with the director, your experiences may vary.)
The fantasy is that you will have freedom with the characters that you love, and your material will become entrenched in the canon. The reality is that you won’t have that kind of creative freedom.
Now, if it sounds like I’m being too harsh here; that’s what you give up. Many fanfic authors have broken into the industry because they were okay with giving up some creative freedom to professionally work on the properties they loved. There’s nothing wrong with someone doing this, but in the process they’ll be departing from fanfiction and moving into a professional writing gig.
Re-imagining a fairy tale, legend, or myth event can be fanfiction, even in commercial releases. You’re not wrong about this one.
Remember, I said the fanfiction reputation is earned. There’s a lot of bad fanfiction out there. However, that’s not the criticism it sounds like. In the range of statistics completely unmoored from empirical study; I suspect the vast majority of fiction writers begin with fanfiction. Even if I’m wrong about that, many do.
It’s important to understand that writing is like any other skill. You get better with practice. New writers make mistakes. Good writers learn from their mistakes, and grow.
Fanfiction becomes a safe environment for a new writer. It lets them experiment without having to take on the heavy lifting of things like world building, or creating an entire cast of characters from the start.
For many writers, fanfiction is a temporary home. You’ll outgrow it. Some choose to stay, it’s hobby, not a career, but they’re the minority. Most who try it will either move on to creating their own work, or decide this isn’t for them.
The result is fanfiction sees all the mistakes of new writers, and very little of experienced writers. Mocking someone for having been a fanfiction writer is a bit like mocking someone for having attended high school. It probably happened, wasn’t their finest hour, and doesn’t reflect on who they are now.
The thing about re-imagining a fairy tale is, while you’re not wrong, we all do that. The truth about fanfiction is none of us exist in a vacuum. We all read, we all watch things, we all draw inspiration from things we encounter. The media we consume shapes the media we create. In that sense, fanfiction is just the first step to making something of your own.
Don’t be content with who you are, when you can be more.
-Starke
This blog is supported through Patreon. If you enjoy our content, please consider becoming a Patron. Every contribution helps keep us online, and writing. If you already are a Patron, thank you.
Q&A: Fanfic was originally published on How to Fight Write.
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fanfic where they both turn into coniferous trees. mutual pining
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“happy endings” this “sad endings” that– you can debate the relative merits of each till your mouth goes dry and it’s still not a meaningful binary. Is the ending coherent and emotionally appropriate for the story? Cool.
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There she is. The Duchess.
Please consider subscribing to Crow Time!
Check out my Patreon, it's rad.
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Q&A: The Lie in Biology
How can i make my female character win a fight without forgetting about biology?? I don’t want her to be a sue/overpowered
Without exception, people who say, “women cannot fight” or “cannot win a fight,” because of biology do not know what they’re talking about. It’s an easy way to instantly recognize that the person speaking or writing is pretending to be an expert on the subject.
I’m going to be slightly hyperbolic here, but the two most important things in hand to hand combat are, stability and force generation. Now, if this was a different discussion, I’d probably step back and include some other factors, but for this discussion, those are the two things we need to look at.
Stability is exactly what it says; how well you can remain standing based on what happens to you, and what you do. More stability makes it easier to generate force, and makes you more resistant to being knocked down, or thrown. The lower your center of gravity, the more stable you will be. This why you will see martial artists go into low stances. You spread and bend the legs, while keeping your feet flat on the floor to lower your center of gravity. In hand-to-hand, there a huge advantage in having the lower center of gravity.
This leads right into one of the “biology,” fallacies. Women tend to be shorter than men. That is biology, but it’s not a combat disadvantage. Additionally, even at the same height, women have a lower center of gravity than men. For a woman with hand-to-hand training, that’s a significant advantage. She will be significantly more stable than a much larger, male foe.
The second major factor we’re looking at right now is force generation. This is your ability to put power behind your punches and kicks. It’s also another case where, “biology,” misleads you. If you’re untrained, it’s easy to believe that you’re generating the force in your arms. This leads to the idea that someone like Schwarzenegger will have a very powerful punch. As a result, it’s easy to say, “women have a disadvantage because it’s harder for them to build upper body bulk.” Thing is, that argument is irrelevant because power does not come from the arm, it comes from full body rotation, starting in the hips. You keep the entire core in line, without twisting the spine. This has a result of putting your entire body weight into the strike. Properly executed, this will deliver far more force than you need, regardless of your gender.
If you’re wondering, this is also true of kicks; generation starts in the hips, you’re putting your weight into it, and when you connect, you’ll do so with far more force than you need. A trained female martial artist can easily apply more than enough force to shatter the heaviest bones in a much larger foe. For example, a properly applied Muay Thai shin kick or sidekick into the side of the knee will destroy it.
The role of momentum, or force generation, is where we connect to the powerful spinning and jumping attacks in martial arts. The greater the moment you generate, the harder you hit. Add running to the equation and it’s even worse. You might’ve been hit by someone running at you, now imagine getting hit by someone who knows what they’re doing and can weaponize a flying leap. That’s skill, not gender.
There’s also a related detail that exists agnostic of gender: You don’t want to, “just,” punch someone. Your hand, whether you’re a man or woman, consists of twenty-seven small, delicate bones. The same structure that allows for human manual dexterity also makes using the hand as a blunt instrument, “less than optimal.” This means, understanding where to put your hands, and how to hold them are far more important than simply applying unlimited force and reducing your foe into chunky salsa, simultaneously obliterating your ability to ever operate an ink pen again.
Again, this is mostly true for the feet as well. There’s only twenty-six bones, and you’re probably not using them to hold a pen, but you do rely on them to walk. The heel is a bit more sturdy than the palm, but you can still wreck it with a bad impact. Most neophytes have no idea how to protect their toes, and you can break those toes on impact. You can’t just hurl your foot at someone and hope for the best. You need to know how to maximize your impact, turn your hips over, and balance on a single leg while delivering enough force to shatter bones.
Combat is about what you know; what you have internalized and what you’re willing to do to another human being. If you are not willing to harm another person, that is debilitating in a fight, but it is not biological, it’s social.
Society harshly punishes acts of violence, and this can result in a real aversion to following through. Additionally, many martial artists do not practice with the intention of ever using what they’re learning on another person.
If you know what you’re doing; if you have the muscle memory; the hardest part is the mindset. Being willing to set aside the social norms, and decide to end someone’s life.
That’s the one thing about this that’s almost true. In western civilization women have been conditioned against engaging in violence. This starts in childhood. Girls are frequently given domestic focused toys, while boys are given martial ones. The games they’re encouraged to engage in follow similar patterns. Media produced also follows this. Action films are aimed at a male demographic, while romcoms are aimed at women. In a real sense, men are sold violence, women are sold love. The important thing to understand is: there is nothing real about this dichotomy.
Society tells you, “you should like this,” but, you have the freedom to choose what you do and what you like. The success of female led action films in the last few years solidly illustrates that there is huge untapped market among women for more aggressive representation. Climb into any MMO, and while you will find women in “traditional,” support roles, and RP communities, you’ll also find them the endgame raiding communities, and in aggressive combat roles. There are plenty of girls out there who eschewed, “traditional,” feminine toys, in favor of the same thing the boys were playing with. This is society, not biology.
If you think, for one second, that this doesn’t carry over into the real world, remember that there are women in police, military, and intelligence roles. Some nations are far happier to put women in combat roles, while others still find the idea socially unpalatable. However, these women exist.
Society tells you, “you should be like this,” but, you have the freedom to choose who you are. Social norms would prefer you to be domestic, passive, and waiting for rescue, but peer pressure only goes so far. Especially among women who simply migrate to peer groups more accepting of who they are.
Okay, having said all of that, let’s loop back and talk about the Mary Sue for a moment. The term itself is not, inherently, misogynistic, but it is frequently applied that way.
There’s nothing, inherently, wrong with an overpowered character. However, they are harder to work with. Especially if the character is so powerful that they could easily resolve the central conflict. This doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Just that more powerful characters can easily become the focal point of the story, so plan ahead.
Second, extreme combat proficiency does not, inherently, make a character overpowered. Being superhumanly skilled at combat will help you deal with a very specific, and somewhat rare, set of circumstances. It won’t help you interact with characters in any way that doesn’t involve the application of violence. So, the character is incredibly dangerous, but, only in one field.
A Mary Sue is not “a powerful character.” They are a character unconstrained by any limits. They are, “the best,” at everything. Any challenge placed in front of them can be solved trivially, in the optimal way. It’s not that they’re good at violence, but are in over their head when the conversation turns to politics. In short, a Mary Sue never faces adversity of any kind. The result is that a Mary Sue weakens the story they appear in. They’re blatant power fantasies, who only exist as an ego trip for the author.
The term is sometimes gendered, Mary Sue/Marty Stu, though the effect is the same. This has nothing to do with the character’s gender, beyond which label you prefer. (Male characters can also be referred to as Sues.)
However, the term is also, sometimes, applied to any powerful female character as a pejorative. In this context, it is a reactionary insult by someone who is offended or threatened by the idea that a woman could possess any power to influence their world. You can probably guess that my opinion of this particular “critique” is low.
If your character faces adversity. If they grow as a person. If they experience pain and loss. If they face challenges they cannot overcome, and must find other solutions, they’re not a Sue.
Your characters can be powerful. Women can be powerful. That’s not a sign that they are flawed. If someone is threatened by that idea, it tells you more about how insecure they are.
-Starke
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Q&A: The Lie in Biology was originally published on How to Fight Write.
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Art Help
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I redid this list because broken links 💀
General Tips
Stretch your fingers and hands
Art is for fun
Never too late to start/improve
Tumblr radar! Submit your work!?
Using a tablet
Editing software: pictures & video
Moodboard resources
Comic pacing
Storyboarding techniques
Watercolor
Coloring
Color Theory (not children's hospital)
Resources: coloring things a different color
Gold
Dark Skin undertones
Dark Skin in pastel art
POC Blush tones
Eyes colors
Cohesive Color Palette
Lights and Colors
Human Anatomy
POSE REFERENCES
Eyes: pupil shape, direction
Wizard Battle poses
Romance poses
Shoulders
Tips for practicing anatomy
Proportional Limbs
Skeletons
Hair Directions
Afro, 4C hair
Cane use
Dingle dongles: male reproductive
Clothing
Long skirts
Traditional Chinese Hanfu (clothing reference)
Cultural clothes
CLOTHING REFERENCE
Medieval armor
Sewing information
Animals
Horse -> Dragon
Snouts: dogs, cats, wolves, fox
Foot, paw, hoof
Plants
Blossoms: cherry, plum, apricot, etc
Plants/flowers: North America, Hawaii, Patagonia
More
Drawing references sources
Art tutorial Masterlist
Another art tutorial Masterlist
Inspiration: father recreates son's art
Inspiration: Lights
ART BOOKS
Art Cheats
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