every writing community should be standing in solidarity — if not actively protesting — with the wga right now.

and it’s honestly sickening to see people saying a.i. and other formats could create good work to replace what these beautiful humans create.

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

What a wonderful occassion to remember this happened and is canon af:

I love how the big bad is one of the most confused people in this whole ordeal is the big bad.

Major villains who have complete control over everything and mastermind literally the whole plot are out, and major villains who are absolutely flabbergasted by the heroes and just out of the depths in how fucked everything is going for them are in.

temple to a god of hedonism that gradually changes those inside to best live lives of pleasure and feasting

if you visit once, and stay for only a few minutes, you might get out with only a little extra softness on your frame, easy enough to work off. if you stay for much longer, well...

theres a growing hunger in your stomach, despite not eating that long ago. but it's a temple to a god of parties and feasting - there's plenty of food available. the dishes only seem to grow more aromatic the longer you stand near them and, when you cave and try a mouthful, it's unbelievably delicious.

you're so taken with the taste, you don't notice what's happening to your body. your stomach bloats from your gorging, and then softens into a wobbling belly that tests the durability of your clothes, hanging lower and lower towards your thick thighs. leaning over the table for another plate, your ass sticks out behind you, round and cellulite-ridden. your figure is soft, swelling, a picture of indulgence.

and it's not long before the servants of this god come and show you another kind of pleasure. warm hands make contact with sensitive skin and you moan through mouthfuls of rich food. they guide you to a soft chair, lean you back, make sure your every want in this moment is fulfilled. one continues to feed you all manner of decadent desserts. several more attend to your body, removing the remains of the constricting clothes you entered in and then kissing, massaging, rubbing every growing, jiggling inch of you. your chest is squeezed, nipples toyed with. your gut is oiled and played with. once they're done teasing you, one hefts the blubbery mass up while another finally reaches between your legs.

the next day, you wake up in one of their luxurious beds, the most well rested you've ever been. you're free to leave, of course. but as the heavenly smell of breakfast finds your nose, you also notice the new set of temple robes at the end of your bed, inviting you to join their ranks

I've been waiting for an excuse to tell you why Croissant is called Croissant for SO LONG

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This isn't twitter, the posts actually get long here. Keep that in mind if you're joining writeblr. Long posts ahead, ye be warned.

That feeling when he can't stand to see you that way, no matter what you do, no matter what you say😩😭💔

do y’all ever write a poem about someone and then wonder if anyone has ever written one about you

— just a thought.

the excessive amount of hate writers have been getting lately is actually terrible?? it blows my mind that people can be so bold and mean on anon but if that anon button was not available they’d NEVER think to send that hate. it’s actually crazy to think that people believe writers owe them anything, yes we’re thankful that you support and read our stories but we are also human, we have feelings and lives too!! please remember that and remember to be kind to your favorite writers (all writers at that) because they work hard to provide you with amazing stories and writings everyday!!

i think mostly we as a culture need to stop pretending media is for us and instead recognize that it's for the people making it. "the show didn't do the thing I wanted it to" is so not the point. did it do what the people making it wanted it to do? did it tell the story they were trying to tell? than it was successful. if that doesn't align with what you wanted to happen, don't get up in arms about it. don't badmouth the creators and throw a tantrum. that's what fan works are for. the text is the text, and it told the story it was telling. you wouldn't be like "ugh shakespeare is insane for act v btw like there was no reason for juliet to kill herself she should've just waited and then her and romeo could have been together wtf this ruined the whole play" like no!!! the themes were there the set-up was there the foreshadowing was there shakespeare did what he intended to. just because it wasn't a happy ending and just because you thought it should've went differently doesn't mean it was bad. read a fic where juliet lives and move on.

I need people to understand how S&P (standards and practices) works in television and how much influence they have over what gets to stay IN an episode of a show and how the big time network execs are the ones holding the purse strings and making final decisions on a show's content, not the writers / showrunners / creatives involved.

So many creators have shared S&P notes over the years of the wild and nonsensical things networks wanted them to omit / change / forbid. Most famously on tumblr, I've seen it so many times, is the notes from Gravity Falls. But here's a post compiling a bunch of particularly bad ones from various networks too. Do you see the things they're asking to be changed / cut ?

Now imagine, anything you want to get into your show and actually air has to get through S&P and the network execs. A lot of creators have had to resort to underhanded methods. A lot of creators have had to relegate things to subtext and innuendo and scenes that are "open to interpretation" instead of explicit in meaning. Things have had to be coded and symbolized. And they're relying on their audience to be good readers, good at media literacy, to notice and get it. This stuff isn't the ramblings of conspiracy theorists, it's the true practices creatives have had to use to be able to tell diverse stories for ages. The Hays Code is pretty well known, it exists because of censorship. It was a way to symbolize certain things and get past censors.

Queercoding, in particular, has been used for ages in both visual media and literature do signal to queer audiences that yes, this character is one of us, but no, we can't be explicit about it because TPTB won't allow it. It's a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to those in the know. It's the deliberate use of certain queer imagery / clothing / mannerisms / phrases / references to other queer media / subtle glances and lingering touches. Things that offer plausible deniability and can be explained away or go unnoticed by straight audiences to get past those network censors. But that queer viewers WILL (hopefully) pick up on.

Because, unfortunately, still to this day, a lot of antiquated network execs don't think queer narratives are profitable. They don't think they'll appeal to general audiences, because that's what matters, whatever appeals to most of the audience demographic so they can keep watching and keep making the network more money. The networks don't care about telling good stories! Most of them are old white cishet business men, not creatives. They don't care about character arcs and what will make fans happy. They don't care about storytelling. What they care about is profit and they're basing their ideas of what's profitable on what they believe is the predominate target demographic, usually white cis heterosexual audiences.

So, imagine a show that started airing in the early 2000s. Imagine a show where the two main characters are based on two characters from a famous Beat Generation novel, where one of the characters is queer! based on a real like bisexual man! The creator is aware of this, most definitely. And sure, it's 2005, there's no way they were thinking of making that explicit about Dean in the text because it just wouldn't fly back then to have a main character be queer. But! it's made subtext. And there are nods to that queerness placed in the text. Things that are open to interpretation. Things that are drenched in metaphor (looking at you 1x06 Skin "I know I'm a freak" "maybe this thing was born human but was different...hated. Until he learned to become someone else.") Things that are blink-and-you-miss-it and left to plausible deniability (things like seemingly spending an hour in the men's bathroom, or always reacting a little vulnerable and awkward when you're clocked instead of laughing it off and making a homophobic joke abt it)

And then, years later there's a ship! It's popular and at first the writers aren't really seriously thinking about it but they'll throw the fans a bone here and there. Then, some writers do get on the destiel train and start actively writing scenes for them that are suggestive. And only a fraction of what they write actually makes it into the text. So many lines left on the cutting room floor: i love past you. i forgive you i love you. i lost cas and it damn near broke me. spread cas's ashes alone. of course i wanted you to stay. if cas were here. -- etc. Everything cut was not cut by the writers! Why would a writer write something to then sabotage their own story and cut it? No, these are things that didn't make it past the network. Somewhere a note was made maybe "too gay" or "don't feed the shippers" or simply "no destiel."

So, "no destiel." That's pretty clearly the message we got from the CW for years. "No destiel. Destiel will alienate our general audience. Two of our main characters being queer? And in a relationship? No way." So what can the pro-destiel creatives involved do, if the network is saying no? What can the writers do if most of their explicit destiel (or queer dean) lines / moments are getting cut? Relegate things to subtext. Make jokes that straight people can wave off but queer people can read into. Make costuming and set design choices that the hardcore fans who are already looking will notice while the general audience and the out-of-touch network execs won't blink and eye at (I'm looking at you Jerry and your lamps and disappearing second nightstands and your gay flamingo bar!)

And then, when the audience asks, "is destiel real? is this proof of destiel?" what can the creatives do but deny? Yes, it hurts, to be told "No no I don't know what you're talking about. There's no destiel in supernatural" a la "there is no war in Ba Sing Se" but! if the network said "no destiel!" and you and your creative team have been working to keep putting destiel in the subtext of the narrative in a way that will get past censors, you can't just go "Yes, actually, all that subtext and symbolism you're picking up, yea it's because destiel is actually in the narrative."

But, there's a BIG difference between actively putting queer themes and subtext into the narrative and then saying it's not there (but it is! and the audience sees it!) versus NOT putting any queer content into the text but SAYING it is there to entice queer fans to continue watching. The latter, is textbook queerbaiting. The former? Is not. The former is the tactics so many creatives have had to use for years, decades, centuries, to get past censorship and signal to those in the know that yea, characters like you are here, they exist in this story.

Were the spn writers perfect? No, absolutely not. And I don't think every instance of queer content was a secret signal. Some stuff, depending on the writer, might've been a period-typical gay joke. These writers are flawed. But it's no secret that there were pro-destiel writers in the writing room throughout the years, and that efforts were made to make it explicitly canon (the market research!)

So no, the writers weren't ever perfect or a homogeneous entity. But they definitely were fighting an uphill battle constantly for 15 yrs against S&P and network execs with antiquated ideas of what's profitable / appealing.

Spn even called out the networks before, on the show, using a silly example of complaints abt the lighting of the show and how dark the early seasons were. Brightening the later seasons wasn't a creative choice, but a network choice. And if the networks can complain abt and change something as trivial as the lighting of a show, they definitely are having a hand in influencing the content of the show, especially queer content.

Even in s15, (seasons fifteen!!!) Misha has said he worried Castiel's confession would not air. In 2020!!! And Jensen recorded that scene on his personal phone! Why? Sure, for the memories. But also, I do not doubt for a second that part of it was for insurance, should the scene mysteriously disappear completely. We've seen the finale script. We've seen the omitted omitted omitted scenes. We all saw how they hacked the confession scene to bits. The weird cuts and close-ups. That's not the writers doing. That's likely not even the editors (willingly). That's orders from on high. All of the fuckery we saw in s15 reeks of network interference. Writers are not trying to sabotage their own stories, believe me.

Anyways, TLDR: Networks have a lot more power than many think and they get final say in what makes it to air. And for years creative teams have had to find ways to get past network censorship if they want "banned" or "unapproved" "unprofitable" "unwanted" content to make it into the show. That means relying on techniques like symbolism, subtext, and queercoding, and then shutting up about it. Denying its there, saying it's all "open to interpretation" all while they continue to put that open to interpretation content into the show. And that's not queerbaiting, as frustrating as it might be for queer audiences to be told that what they're seeing isn't there, it's still not queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is a marketing technique to draw in queer fans by baiting them with the promise of queer content and then having no queer content in said media. But if you are picking up on queer themes / subtext / symbolism / coding that is in front of your face IN the text, that's not queerbaiting. It's there, covertly, for you, because someone higher up didn't want it to be there explicitly or at all.

The oldest jonsa fic on ao3 is from 2009, from even before the show was conceived, from even before adwd was released

I will not say anything except for

am i still normal

call me crazy... but i think hockey belongs in the desert idk

Cosmic Love prompt:

Danny and Damian have been engaged since they were babies. The Fentons wanted access to Lazarus water, and they made a deal with the league of assassins to get it. Danny is trans. Danny and Damian haven't seen each other since Damian was 10 (I imagine Danny is anywhere from a few months to a year younger, so Danny was either 9 or 10 at the time). They had been seeing each other twice a year the last time they saw each other. They used to have more time scheduled to spend together before Damian started training to be an assassin. They weren't getting along when they last saw each other. Danny was upset/angry that his life had been planned out for him and that he was going to be in an arranged marriage. Damian was kind of a jerk at the time (because of trauma but he was still a jerk), and he thought Danny was being a jerk too because having his whole life planned for him was all Damian knew and it didn't make sense to him to get upset about it because that's his reality that he just had to accept. Damian does care about Danny, and cares about what he wants too. But they were kids. They were upset about their situation and frustrated and angry with each other and their families. They haven't had contact with each other at all since Damian came to Gotham.

Skip forward a few years and Damian has fallen in love with his best friend, Jon. He tells his family and Jon about the arranged marriage even though it's likely not going to be a thing anymore since he has cut ties with the league.

Damian and Jon start dating.

Danny is 16 and on the run from his parents and the GIW. He only managed to escape after he had already been captured and vivisected. He goes to Gotham because it'll be harder for his parents and the GIW to find him there. He runs into Damian and Jon at a park while he's at a point in his life where he's got nothing left an he's just sad, scared, angry, lonely, and he'd just about sell what's left of his life for a hug.