To the person who recommended Cœur de pirate's Place de la République in the poll:

Not an ask but I just wanted to thank you for sharing the song (loved the music video as well) It really reminded me of visiting an ex in Paris for a couple of days while I was doing my master's in the UK.

It was late November and colder than Paris has any right to be and I have this distinct memory of walking down the Seine at night, shivering (as usual) and wondering if maybe letting her go without more of a fight was the worst decision I ever made in my life, and whether it was too late to do something rash (also on-brand).

Spoiler-alert, after those couple of days I went back to the UK feeling like I'd gotten a glimpse of what life would've been like if we'd stayed together, and although it was sweet and tender and everything I'd imagined it to be, it would never be reality. So I went back and finished the 5,000-word essay that I had left to the very last moment, and let the week together fade slowly into memory like a good dream.

So, yup, if your intention was to remind me of those times, you succeeded congrats, you won the game. (Extracted the lyrics that really hit me—Google-translated, I'm so sorry it probably only sounds 20% as good as the original—below the cut.)

P.S. That ex is 50% of Nat in the Merry Crisis universe. Also, probably the reason why there's a French exchange student who leaves MC at the end of the year in CT:OS. Aight, now y'all know more about me than you ever asked to hahaha.

And I don't know if you're worth it anymore It's rather hard to be sure

Et je ne sais plus si tu en vaux la peine C'est plutôt dur d'en être certaine

And as you can see it's the end I must cross the ocean tomorrow morning From your arms I will slide out ever so gently And it's reality that awaits me I know your heart is already inhabited by one or more girls that have marked you

Et comme tu vois c'est bien la fin Je dois traverser l'océan demain matin De tes bras, je m'arracherai tout doucement Et c'est la réalité qui m'attend Je sais ton cœur est habité Par une ou d'autre fille qui t'ont marquées

I truly do think one of the largest pitfalls among the "media consumption is my passion" crowd is the tendency to treat characters as human beings with agency rather than narrative tools manipulated by the author

it's not always going to make sense, and it's going to be hard, and the way that you feel her push through your ribs will make the rest of you ravenous. you will be standing in your tiny kitchen looking down at your feet and the loneliness will spray in buckshot over your whole life until you are a crimescene and you will still have to remember to get groceries. you will think about her hair, the wheat, how she has stained your life in yellow, and how before her you were almost-happy but now somehow you are starving. you will think of her weight in your hands and over your skin and her impossible grin. you will want to force your entire fist into your hand and bite down, but you won't, because you're an adult, and you only cry at funerals. so much of her reminds you of fire; the shock of her hair and the swordblade of her laughter - so you sigh and drink water instead. you have emails to send around the shape of her. you have chores to do that avoid remembering the last time she held you. you have to take the trash out and avoid the sensation that she is hanging in the air, all that desire in the back of your throat. you will have to apologize to your dog. i promise. i'm trying. the way you want her is almost reverent, an amber crescent. she has annexed the whole apartment, has made her way under your fingernails. and yet you still have to pay rent. you still have to pay bills.

every time something from Neil Gaiman's tumblr crosses my dash I'm so concerned about the people writing and to him like. why have you outsourced your imagination to this man? asking shit like 'what does Morpheus sound like in this scene' or 'what does this dialogue mean' or 'what's the backstory to this moment' like BABES. THIS IS WHAT BARTHES WAS TALKING ABOUT. YOU'RE MEANT TO MAKE THESE DECISIONS YOURSELVES THAT'S WHAT MAKES ALL ART A COLLABORATIVE CREATION OF MEANING. if the author wanted something to be explicit in the text they can make it explicit in the text and if it's not explicit in the text YOU CAN MAKE IT UP.

what really gets me is I 100% prommy these kids regularly use 'death of the author' to mean 'i can enjoy works by problematic creators' which 1) yes I agree you can and should (using some discretion re who it profits and what's replicated in the work) but 2) THAT'S NOT WHAT IT MEANS LITERALLY WHAT IT MEANS IS. NEIL GAIMAN'S POST HOC OPINION ON SANDMAN OR GOOD OMENS IS A NO MORE LEGITIMATE FACT ABOUT THE TEXT THAN ANYONE ELSE'S INTERPRETATION. the text has left his control it belongs to the reader now, you get to decide and debate what it means.

Atsushi's back in the game!!! ۶( ˆ o ˆ )

in a completely unpredictable turn of events, the crackfic-within-a-crackseries lucky jumbo 7 has developed a plot that involves important series lore

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I ended up reading The Price of the Phoenix and while it didn't make me want to bleach my eyes like Killing Time, I still didn't like it as much as I hoped I would. Don't get me wrong, the homoeroticism was intriguing to me, but the actual writing and storyline itself left me with a headache. I think I get my hopes up with these books, given all of the possibilities that the written word has for Trek, and it inevitably sets me up for disappointment lol

I think the people who take time out of their days to make posts about how x reader fanfics are not ~relatable~ to them personally should just write their own

ok i actually kind of liked the wild dog story which is something i never thought id get to say again. he was a little wordier than id like but not too funny, kind of meh action sequences though compared to the original but after like 400 wet farts in a row this is Good

Any advice on writing when you get no feedback?

I assume you mean posting some writing and then not getting any interaction? The cliche and true answer is to write for yourself, which you should be doing always.

But that's lame and abstract and, while true, not actually helpful.

First of all, it sucks. There is no way around it, it straight up sucks to not get any interaction on something you spent lots of time on and is very personal and takes guts to share. Let's all put an F in the chat for those snips and fics that just didn't go anywhere after posting. We remember them, at least.

Second, after poo-pooing the advice "write for yourself", I am going to seriously repeat it but expand on it so I'm not an asshole for doing so. I'm going to be honest, getting (positive) feedback on writing is like, the best drug I know. It feels incredible. It motivates like nothing else. It feels terrible to not get any after getting a taste of it on a previous project and it makes it hard to want to write (hear that, readers? tell your favorite authors you love them and their writing if you want more writing!). It's really hard to have a healthy relationship with comments and interactions because of that validation and dopamine rush they give. But you have to figure it out if you want to make writing/sharing writing a long term hobby (of which sharing is an optional part).

Forget, for a second, about readers. Are you excited about what you're writing? Do you think about it and can't wait for a chance to write those ideas down? Do you like reading it? The answer to all of those should be yes. That's not always achievable - I know many authors can't read their own work because they are their own worst critics. But you should at least be a little obsessed with your idea and thinking about it and the process of getting it down onto paper (er, screen). If you are writing something you don't care about but think readers will like, you've already lost. You are going to have 100x more fun writing some bullshit no one but you cares about than a plot you think is more boring than khaki but is all the rage in your fandom right now. Practice thinking about writing as a fun hobby for you rather than content creation for internet validation. If you can't, it might be a good idea to step back and take some space for a bit - it's fine, it will all still be there for you when you're ready to come back. I had to do that a bit ago. There's no shame in it.

Next bit is, if you can, find an enabler. Just one person you can throw snips and stories at and they want to read them and want to talk about your ideas (I hope it doesn't need to be said but you should reciprocate and chat about their ideas, too). If you have this outlet, rejection from the masses is a million times easier. You have someone to share all your thoughts with, someone you can go "look! I made this!" to, you don't have to bottle it up by yourself. I'm lucky, I have a few great enablers. I found them through mutuals and discord servers. Find your little private pocket of support.

Last bit is putting the feedback you do get into perspective. Set your expectations correctly - most people aren't going to be that Big Fic that everyone in the fandom has read and kudo'd and commented on. If you end up there - how lucky! But 99% of us are not that person. Set your expectations to the size of the fandom - is it huge or are there like 8 of you. Remember that every like or kudo or comment you get is a real, live person on the other side of it, who came and read your writing and took the time to signal to you that they liked it.

Picture it like you're in a bookshop, doing a book reading of your fic. Got six likes? Those are six real people who sat through the whole thing and clapped at the end. Got a comment? That's an actual person who came up at the end to tell you, to your face, that they liked it, which is much harder than just clapping (kudo/like). And that's not counting for the other people loitering in the shop, not committing to sitting down to listen but still listening and enjoying your tale while they browse. Can't forget our lurkers even if we wish they'd just take a goddamn seat and clap!

What I'm getting at is that the interactions you do get can't just be numbers, because they're not. The internet right now is so focused on quantifying interactions and follower count and numbers numbers numbers - it's easy to forget that there are real human beings on the other side of those numbers. The value isn't in the quantity, the value is in the individual you touched in that brief moment while they read what you wrote. For me, at least, that makes it easier to appreciate the interactions I do get.

Secret actual last thing I'm going to say on it? Fuck 'em. You wrote some good shit, it's their own problem people are sleeping on it. Fandom is fickle, you're not going to please everyone, might as well please yourself. Keep going out of spite, keep putting your shit out there until it finds the right people who will appreciate it or the others get their heads out of their asses.

TLDR: Write for yourself, enjoy what you're writing, find an enabler, remember every number is a real person, and - at the end of the day - fuck 'em.

listen. asagiri writing mafia dazai did what camus did writing the guy from the stranger but this time i actually cared about it

i think the losers calling Close (2022) torture porn ought to look inwardly, see why they can only stomach disney-ified assimilationist queer narratives, and kill themselves LoL

my main problem with foucaults pendulum is that the flaws of its characters that it critiques are sometimes also the flaws of the narrative/novel as a whole…i feel this particularly with amparo and the whole part of the book set in brazil…like one of the primary flaws of casaubon/belbo/diotallevi is that they start to see the complexity of history and culture as mere symbols reflecting something secret and universal, but also therefore flat, as casaubon articulates in the end: “the moment a secret is revealed, it seems little. There is only an empty secret.” Right? but for eco too i think the brief brush with the long history and culture of brazil exists only to be part of that bigger secret…there is literally zero interest in examining it for what it is the way there is with the italian history of fascism/resistance or with the templars. like the moment of triumph for belbo that casaubon identifies is his holding the note of the trumpet precisely because it doesn't signify anything else. but the mix of cultures that exist in brazil is used in the novel only as a way of signifying something else--where the templars are originally discussed as a nuanced and varied group of men and are reduced to genius masters of the global plot as the protagonists lose themselves, brazil, the agogos, etc, are never anything but symbols.

I think this is most obvious in amparo's reaction to becoming "possessed"--she reveals this really deep internalized racism and hatred for her roots, calling herself a "dirty black girl," that the novel doesnt care to explore the way it does with belbo's feelings towards his moments of cowardice/bravery in the face of fascism and war--his italian roots. i think it's really revealing and honestly embarrassing for eco--it's treated like a neutral or even obvious thing for her to say and i think eco himself doesn't realize the extent to which it implies a rich and tortured inner life for amparo. the novel treats it as essentially the same feeling that casaubon has about his descent into conspiratorial thinking, but it's so obviously not--to be a white italian obsessed with the mysticism of european history is not the same thing as being a mixed-race brazilian woman embarrassed to find herself unable to be as intellectually detached from this aspect of her culture as her white boyfriend, as diotallevi says, you can't do whatever you want with the text. human history is not reducible to a struggle for control over telluric currents.

that's what makes it so frustrating for me--eco's racism, imperialism, and misogyny prevent him from seeing what could have been a really compelling avenue for furthering the themes of the text. but of course doing so would have involved actually giving a nonwhite female character a role in the text outside of furthering a white guy's character development

i just feel like i haven’t seen my friends in a billion years how is everybody????