So freaking interesting and detailed and all-around useful and informative!
The title made me Nervous As Fuck, but it’s actually a very interesting read.
Here are the main parts:
In the author’s experience, the 1-2-3 fingers ‘preparation’ thing that we all know and love (and happens in 99% of fics) isn’t done by gay men. It’s important to be relaxed and go slow, then take a minute to adjust – but the idea of ‘stretching’ with fingers isn’t recognised. (According to the author. There’s some fighting in the comments. He adds that written fingering is hot – it shouldn’t be wiped from fanfiction by any means – but it should instead be embraced as a pleasurable sex act of its own, rather than a mandatory stage of all anal sex ever.)
Anal sex without preparation and lube isn’t actually going to cripple you. It’s commonly done, especially by long term partners, and frankly it can be part of the appeal.
I’m so guilty of this. I’m sorry, End Game Myc, I didn’t know. Continuing sex after the bottom has come is generally very unpleasant and uncomfortable. It’s also seen as bad etiquette and very selfish.
Cock rings don’t stop you coming. They prolong an erection, sometimes even after coming.
The prostate isn’t a ‘press for pleasure’ button. It doesn’t produce an immediate shower of stars. Like all sexual pleasure, it builds gradually and needs sustained stimulation.
Coming after two or three tugs of the cock shouldn’t be written as ‘standard’, even if the character has been on the edge for a while. It generally takes longer. Ten seconds is given as a ‘minimum’.
Male orgasm isn’t really heat – it’s pressure – and it’s located more in the groin than in the belly.
The slit at the end of a man’s cock isn’t that sensitive. The frenulum (underneath the head) is the sensitive bit. There’s also no large vein on the underside of a penis, and it certainly doesn’t swell up.
Apparently we can make more of a thing out of pre-come. It’s normal for there to be loads of it. (Hurray?)
There’s more discussion, personal experiences and arguing in the comments.
I’d love to pioneer the “fingering isn’t necessary” campaign – but I know that the first fic I post without dutiful fingering will get at least twenty comments explaining to me how anuses work (i.e., they’re elastic and need to be stretched.)
I’m a cis woman, but I’ve had my share of anal sex and I’ve been campaigning that fingering isn’t necessary for years. Lube up, start slow, relax, and you can insert a penis without any prior prep.
Anuses don’t so much “stretch” as “dilate.” And if you’re experienced, you have some control over the muscle. I’ve even had anal sex without lube, and while I wouldn’t necessarily recommended that, it was not particularly painful and I certainly didn’t bleed or anything. There’s such a thing as rectal mucous. It’s not at all like vaginal lubrication, but a rectum isn’t totally dry. It definitely helped that my partner was uncircumcised (which will be true of most UK/European characters) and we weren’t using condoms. Foreskins reduce friction and condoms add it, so, I wouldn’t recommend unlubricated anal sex except in those circumstances.
The “one finger, two finger, three finger fuck” trope annoys me and I never write it. My characters usually just get down to the anal intercourse if that’s what’s on the menu. Or, if I do write prep, it usually involves butt plugs or rimming, since I like those things and I dislike fingering. I’ve never had anyone lecture me in the comments about how anuses work (and if they did I’d tell them where to stick it, literally).
you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!
Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.
He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.
The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”
It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.
He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died. He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.
Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough.
You’re not Terry Pratchett.
You are you.
And Terry would love that.
I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line. I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern. “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.
“Yes,” I said. “But I like seeing how authors grow.”
He brightened and reached for his pen. “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.
This is not a story about me. It is a story about a time Terry Pratchett held a reading for Snuff I happened to be at. People asked all the usual sorts of questions they do when a famous, beloved author is there for a reading and a signing. He was hilarious and gracious about each one.
But the standout was when a kid, easily under 13, asked him a question about how to get good at writing. Sir Terry told him one thing that we could all hear, mostly standard stuff about writing a lot and only letting people see the good stuff, and the event moved on. He spent a good 10 minutes alone with that kid after the Q&A before signings telling him something else that only that kid will ever be privy to. Because Sir Terry wanted that kid to know a secret, straight from the goddess Narativia. Bless that man.
You give up on the idea that you can know everything; you close the research tabs and put away the books, and you sit down, and you start. If the story is ready, it will begin, and then you can do the additional research as you go.
I know this isn’t the most helpful answer, but I’m also not a creative writing teacher: I am someone who sits down, and starts. If what I say doesn’t help you, ask someone else, until you find the person whose reply tells you how to kick the damn door down.
These horrific, sexist, racist paragraphs – screenshotted and shared for posterity by James Smythe, to whom we are all indebted – are the work of one Liam O’Flynn, a writer and English teacher. Evidently, they come from his book Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English, and are intended as examples of good writing.
UM.
Dear white male writers: DO NOT DO THIS SHIT. IT IS SUPER GROSS AND FETISHISTIC AND ALSO TERRIBLE WRITING. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.
Like I just. “Her virility-brown eyes -” WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? How can you have an “Amazonian figure”ON a “wafer-thin body” when “figure” is a word that describe’s a body’s shape, and Amazonian means pretty much the DIRECT FUCKING OPPOSITE of “wafer-thin” in the first place?
What the shitting fuck does ANY of this mean, apart from “I am only nebulously familiar with the concept of women and completely at a loss if I can’t compare their various bodyparts to jewels, animals and footstuffs”?
STOP
GO TO WRITING JAIL
GO DIRECTLY TO WRITING JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200
tag yourself i’m the two beryl-green jewels in the snow
if her ears frame her nose do they like, grow directly beside her nose? how does she see from them?
*facepalm*
“
Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English
“
lovers of english
oh my goddddddd
i can’t get over this fucking post
“I loved her nebulous, eden-green eyes which were a-sparkle with the ‘joie de vivre’. They were like two beryl-green jewels melted onto snow.”
1. what the fuck is joie de vivre
2. melted jewels?
3. beryl green
eden green:
WHICH ONE IS ITTTTTTTTT
@laughlikesomethingbroken “Joie de vivre” is a French phrase that literally translates to “joy of living”, while it IS one of those phrases that gets used in English in this context it is SO EXTRA AND UNNECESSARY OH MY GOD. Don’t use French to make yourself sound sophisticated when you’re NOT
I don’t know where to even START. Curvilinear waist? Sugar candy-sweet? What the FUCK are seraph’s ears? Voguish clothes? What the everloving fuck is “constellation blue” supposed to mean??? Like forget the objectification, this writing is horrifying enough before we even get to the embedded sexism
seraph’s ears are ears that you can’t see bc they’re hidden behind her 6 wings
Oyster white teeth?
holy purple prose batman
Female writers do this too. Have you read a Mills and Boon novel? Have you read high school girls’ yaoi fanfics?
Uh oh, we were focusing too much on how a grown man is selling this shit and not enough shitting on teenage girls. Egalitarians here to put an end to that shit.
Guess what? I’ve read A LOT of Harlequin novels and a LOT of fanfic and I have never ever seen anything this horrible at description.
Also, none of those stories were trying to hold themselves up as high examples of the craft
You guys here is the description of the book on Amazon.
If this is the description I cannot think how bad the inside is.
I never ever want to hear anyone make fun of fanfic writers again
NEVER EVER
Lord god almighty. I’ve been feeling really down about my writing lately, but this is a confidence boost. 8I
As well as the sexism, racism, purple prose, and general nonsense… “The moons delicate light”? At least learn to use apostrophes correctly before setting yourself up as a writing expert, good lord.
“You will find that this book will transform the way you think about descriptive writing.”
As I wrote, here, for Ace Pride Day, one reason it took me so long to realize I was ace is that I fully imagined myself having a relationship like my parents’, someday… not knowing that they were both (probably) on different parts of the Ace Spectrum, themselves.
So here’s a list of different kinds of intimacy that I saw modeled in their 29-year marriage (of which I was around for 27 years), beyond (or besides) sexual intimacy:
1. Task / Project
The ability to work together on a large project, complimenting each other’s skills, without getting in each other’s way, whether that’s hosting a Halloween party for me and my friends, or growing a vegetable garden and raising chickens together.
2. Emotional
The ability to trust one another with difficult emotions, and to allow each other to be emotionally vulnerable without (too much) fear of getting hurt.
3. Intellectual
Showing an interest in each other’s intellectual pursuits, and enjoying discussing them in detail, without being patronizing toward each other.
4. Creative / Aesthetic
Appreciating and supporting each other’s tastes in music and art, and supporting each other’s creative expression.
5. (Non-Sexual) Physical Intimacy
Trusting each other with their physical safety, especially when vulnerable or sick (as I noted in that earlier post, my mother commented that the best part of being married is having someone to check you for ticks after a hike in the woods).
A key part of recognizing my own asexual orientation was when I realized that I felt no emotion one way or the other over the idea of never having a sexual partner,* but the idea of living my life without any of the kinds of intimacy listed above leaves me with a chilling dread. And, growing up, I’d always imagined myself in a heterosexual relationship, because that’s what I had seen modeled by my parents [or at least, they modeled a M/F relationship.– the culture at large modeled the “sexual” part, and I just filled in the blanks]
But thinking through it now, I’m realizing that the gender of any hypothetical partner doesn’t really matter, if the partnership itself provides the kinds of intimacy I value.
*And when I try to seriously imagine actually having sex, all I can think of is how pokey elbows are, and how scratchy toenails are, and it just seems more bother than it’s worth.
(Also, I offer this up for writing advice, if you want to write different sorts of intimacies between characters, even if you don’t headcanon .them as Ace, and/or they’re shipped with other characters in your story)
PSA to all you fantasy writers because I have just had a truly frustrating twenty minutes talking to someone about this: it’s okay to put mobility aids in your novel and have them just be ordinary.
Like. Super okay.
I don’t give a shit if it’s high fantasy, low fantasy or somewhere between the lovechild of Tolkein meets My Immortal. It’s okay to use mobility devices in your narrative. It’s okay to use the word “wheelchair”. You don’t have to remake the fucking wheel. It’s already been done for you.
And no, it doesn’t detract from the “realism” of your fictional universe in which you get to set the standard for realism. Please don’t try to use that as a reason for not using these things.
There is no reason to lock the disabled people in your narrative into towers because “that’s the way it was”, least of all in your novel about dragons and mermaids and other made up creatures. There is no historical realism here. You are in charge. You get to decide what that means.
Also:
“Depiction of Chinese philosopher Confucius in a wheelchair, dating to ca. 1680. The artist may have been thinking of methods of transport common in his own day.”
“The earliest records of wheeled furniture are an inscription found on a stone slate in China and a child’s bed depicted in a frieze on a Greek vase, both dating between the 6th and 5th century BCE.[2][3][4][5]The first records of wheeled seats being used for transporting disabled people date to three centuries later in China; the Chinese used early wheelbarrows to move people as well as heavy objects. A distinction between the two functions was not made for another several hundred years, around 525 CE, when images of wheeled chairs made specifically to carry people begin to occur in Chinese art.[5]”
“In 1655,Stephan Farffler, a 22 year old paraplegic watchmaker, built the world’s first self-propelling chair on a three-wheel chassis using a system of cranks and cogwheels.[6][3] However, the device had an appearance of a hand bike more than a wheelchair since the design included hand cranks mounted at the front wheel.[2]
The invalid carriage or Bath chair brought the technology into more common use from around 1760.[7]
In 1887, wheelchairs (“rolling chairs”) were introduced to Atlantic City so invalid tourists could rent them to enjoy the Boardwalk. Soon, many healthy tourists also rented the decorated “rolling chairs” and servants to push them as a show of decadence and treatment they could never experience at home.[8]
In 1933 Harry C. Jennings, Sr. and his disabled friend Herbert Everest, both mechanical engineers, invented the first lightweight, steel, folding, portable wheelchair.[9] Everest had previously broken his back in a mining accident. Everest and Jennings saw the business potential of the invention and went on to become the first mass-market manufacturers of wheelchairs. Their “X-brace” design is still in common use, albeit with updated materials and other improvements. The X-brace idea came to Harry from the men’s folding “camp chairs / stools”, rotated 90 degrees, that Harry and Herbert used in the outdoors and at the mines.[citation needed]
“But Joy, how do I describe this contraption in a fantasy setting that wont make it seem out of place?”
“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince FancyPants McElferson propelled forwards using his arms to direct the motion of the chair.”
“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince EvenFancierPants McElferson used to get about, pushed along by one of his companions or one of his many attending servants.”
“But it’s a high realm magical fantas—”
“It was a floating chair, the hum of magical energy keeping it off the ground casting a faint glow against the cobblestones as {CHARACTER} guided it round with expert ease, gliding back and forth.”
“But it’s a stempunk nov—”
“Unlike other wheelchairs he’d seen before, this one appeared to be self propelling, powered by the gasket of steam at the back, and directed by the use of a rudder like toggle in the front.”
Give. Disabled. Characters. In. Fantasy. Novels. Mobility. Aids.
If you can spend 60 pages telling me the history of your world in innate detail down to the formation of how magical rocks were formed, you can god damn write three lines in passing about a wheelchair.
Signed, your editor who doesn’t have time for this ableist fantasy realm shit.
If your fantasy setting is having trouble with things like “What other cultures exist in this universe and how do they get on?” or “How do diabled people live?” or “How’s gender work here?” without sounding like Your Conservative Aunt Edna That You Really Wish You Didn’t Have To Be Nice To At Thanksgiving, it’s a good sign that you need to go back, not to the drawing board, but to yourself and your real world, and think real hard about how you’re handling those things in real life.
It’ll do you and your writing a literal world of good.
Okay but like
Do we have to limit ourselves to wheelchairs?
Or could we have like, different kinds of mobility aids? Like we don’t have to remake the fucking wheel, but what if we want to? Like a world with cool magic should have tons of magical ways to help people get around. Same thing with technology. Like sure wheelchairs are cool but so is a guy with like, a fully controllable robot leg suit, or a paraplegic wizard who just flies around sitting on a magic cloud they’ve made solid with their spells.
Absolutely not! I used the example of wheelchairs because the person I was talking to decided to tell me that mobility aids were historically inaccurate and therefore had no place in their historical fantasy novel setting. So I went the entire hell out of my way to drag them behind historically accurate wheelchairs. I actually have another post circulating at the moment that talks about the use of other aids and how magic and other things could work as a mobility aid. I just switched to mobile so I can’t link, but if you scroll my blog you’ll find it.
This is all I’ve been talking about today because it’s all anyone will let me talk about lol.
Do you think it’s ok to say “rolling chair” or “wheeled chair” to sound slightly more old-timey and avoid the tiffany problem
Yep. Another old timey accurate term was “bath chair”. If that helps.
I mean, even fricking Star Wars has Yoda using a hover-chair sometimes. Presumably being 870-some years old means that joints hurt.
Okay, so a few people commented on the main post with this so I want to address it separately without seeming like I’m dragging individual people over hot coals for a public flogging, but no, an ideal world for me is not one without disabled people in it.
“But that’s not what I said!”
Isn’t it?
“Well why on earth would you want to stay broken?”
I don’t, not really, but also thanks for using language that reminds me you think me and people like me are worthless and deserve to be on the scrap heap of life. Also, not all disabled people consider themselves to be broken, so please don’t say that as a sweeping universal ever the fuck again. I get to make jokes about my broken immune system. But you don’t get to call me that. Okay?
“But that’s not what I’m saying! You’re twisting my words! Stop making me look like a bad person!”
No, that’s not what you’re saying directly, and maybe you don’t mean it or realize where you’re coming from, but the sentiment that the ideal world is one where I don’t exist is not a pleasant one for me. And you can argue with me all you like that I’d still exist I’d just be better, but that doesn’t really help me in this life where such a thing is likely never going to be possible.
So you know what my ideal utopia actually is? The one where I’m included in the narrative.
Inclusiveness is important on so many levels. For one thing it can help normalize the things going on now in our reality, and help change the ill conceived notions that somehow my life is worth less than yours simply because it is different or considered to be more difficult.
Finding a way to specifically write me and people like me out of the narrative because you’ve created an “ideal” world, does not include me, and is inherently ableist by default.
But Joy, in this world there is technology to fix these things, how do I make it more inclusive?
Consider, that all technology has limits. It is always advancing, but it also falls short of being god-mode because it is designed by humans, and humans aren’t God. Contrary to some peoples sense of ego. It is also not always available to everyone who needs it.
Unless your utopia is one where everyone and I do mean Everyone, has the means to access such miraculous technology, it’s not a utopia. It is in fact like our current reality where health care technology is limited by what we currently know about the human body, but also, by who is able to afford it.
There’s people out there with my issues leading an easier life because they have access to the latest treatment and the best doctors. I do not resent them this. But I do resent the system that makes it so that I cannot access these things with ease because of a little thing like money.
So if you have poverty in your fancy sci-fi, that’s an inclusive issue. In fact if you have any sort of power struggle, and of course you do, it’s a sci-fi so there’s going to be some form of societal discourse, then you have opportunities to create wider inclusion in your narrative.
But how do I portray it without sounding like a forced mouthpiece?
Idk fam, it’s your narrative, I can’t do all the thinking for you, but a brief example of how to do this could be:
“Her limbs were older ones, earlier models of the prosthetic implants that had come on the market several eons ago but were still widely in distribution due to their nigh on indestructible nature. But they were heavy, clunky things by modern standards, and even things designed to last would eventually start to wear down. He could see the evidence of where patch jobs has been performed recently, where newer tech had been spliced on to make things a little easier. It was ugly and amateurish, but it worked.”
*
“He looked up at them with his mismatched eyes, the slightly milky blue sheen around the pupils betraying them as clone grown.
“One day they’ll be able to fix that,” he said, smiling ruefully as he guessed the reason for their blatant staring, causing Ash to blush furiously at being caught. They’d thought they’d been more subtle than that. “But till then, it works just fine. Now, what can I do for you?”
My world is a magical one where magic like “cure disease” is a thing, how can I make that more inclusive?
In this instance the same principles apply. Magic will typically be the source of your societal advancements, meaning that magic must also have its limits.
Whether it’s making spells and potions that only work to a certain degree i.e. only recent injuries may be cured/mended instantaneously/fully, or, you can do something else like limit it to the skill of the spell caster.
It may also be restricted on your ability to pay for such skills.
In the case of long term disabilities or issues like auto-immune diseases, you could limit the effectiveness of such potent magical cures, to offering only temporary relief.
There are medications out there that make me, someone with auto-immune issues, feel great for a few days, before the effectiveness wears down. They can also become resistive over time as my body adapts to the use of them. There’s no reason your magical realism can’t include something similar.
So how do I write this without making it look shoehorned in for inclusiveness?
If your main concern is feeling like you’re having to shoehorn in people that actually exist in our very real reality, vs being able to write endlessly about dragons, then I’m going to suggest you need to reevaluate your way of thinking, both on a personal level as well as an authorial one. Because it sounds like you have some issues and biases you need to address when it comes to this. This alone doesn’t make you a terrible person. It makes you ignorant. And ignorance can be remedied by opening up to new ways of thinking and listening to the experiences of others. What makes me question your statement that you’re a “good person” is not your well meaning ignorance, but your continual statement that you’re “not ableist but” and then giving me some paltry reason not to be inclusive in your narrative because it essentially boils down to “your existence ruins my story and actually thinking about this as more than a passing thought is irking. Why are you making this into a thing? No one cares. You got your representation in Game of Thrones that one time, why do I have to think about this. I only want to feel like a nice person, why are you making me uncomfortable, it’s my story, I should be able to do what I want and if you don’t exist that’s my choice”.
Which you’re right. It is your choice and it’s also mine to call your work sub par and mediocre and never buy any of it ever again and give my hard earned money to a better writer who does give a shit.
But as for an example of how to show and not tell with your narrative that doesn’t involve you immediately reevaluating your life and who you are as a person:
“She raised the potion to her lips. It tasted bitter, like sour berries picked before they were ripe. It burned as the magical effects pooled through her body. Anything designed to cure diseases always did at first. There was only so much magic could do for someone like her, but least she could be certain the goblin bite wouldn’t fester into anything worse. She didn’t need rock joint on top of everything else.”
*
“The healer looked down at him from behind their blue silk veil.
“This will hurt,” they said by way of both warning and apology, voice light and soothing, though he couldn’t determine much else about them beyond that as they set their hands on his broken leg.
“And I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for the missing foot…”
“That’s all right,” Finn said, gritting his teeth as the magic seared through him, burning white-hot until it cooled to a pleasant tingle, like dipping his non-existent toes into clear blue waters. He could almost feel them wriggling as the magic sought to replace something that wasn’t there. “I’ve got an insert for that.”
The healer nodded, looking towards his boots.
“Perhaps we can do something about making you a better one,” they said, continuing to move their hands up the length of his thigh until the glow of magic around their hands dimmed and they gave him a reassuring pat on the leg before reaching for his boot and the weighted insert inside the toe.
“These soles have seen better days. I dare say that’s the reason you slipped in the first place.”
*
“The magical limb glowed faintly in the darkness. Which would have been fine, were they not a thief.
Mal paused before moving any further through the darkened house, pulling out a thick dark glove from their doublet and pulling it on. The magical was still somewhat visible undearneath, but at least it no longer looked like a disembodied magical hand floating through the darkness.
They could, of course, have extinguished the magic. But it was never worth the trouble of finding a mage to ignite it again. And besides, two hands could carry more than one.”
So you see, it’s not impossible to include disability and disability aids into your fantastical narratives. It is also entirely possible to make it witty, funny and poignant, as well as something you only ever mention in casual passing to remind the reader hey, Character McNoLegs uses a floating wheelchair, so they’re going to stay behind in this instance and be the getaway driver, because scaling the tower that doesn’t have a ramp isn’t exactly in their wheelhouse of strengths right now. This does not however make them redundant to the narrative, nor does it make them a burden.
It just requires a little creative thought on your part, which happily should be in your wheelhouse of strengths as an author.
Supposedly.
And if this seems snarkier than my usual replies, I’d apologize, but I literally, figuratively and spiritually do not give a fuck. The giveafuck well has run dry, you’ve caused a drought of fucks in my general vicinity. Fucks are rationed until such a time people stop crawling out the woodwork to tell me they’re not ableist but, and then saying something horifically ableist.
Here’s a thought, all that time and energy you’re putting into giving me reasons before 9am as to why, in an ideal world, I wouldn’t exist, and bending arse over backwards to justify your reasoning reasoning when you could just as easily put that same energy into not being a) ableist and b) a lackluster mediocre hack spending their time reminding me you wish I didn’t exist, but hey, you do you.
I’ll be right over here. Far the fuck away from you and enjoying the use of the block button.
Now if you’ll excuse me. I’m going back to fucking bed.
I once had a fairly popular (and very skilled and thoughtful) writer tell me that the absence of people like me – people with mental illness – as well as other forms of disability was because such “problems” had been solved a long time ago. High-tech medicine made possible what the social model of disability alone could not eliminate, so either disabilities were no longer really disabling because the people were adequately accommodated (good!) or they had simply been … bred out (not good! AT ALL!),
They didn’t seem to understand why I found a world literally without people like me in it sinister in a very visceral way. They saw the loss of people like me as a net good, as part of what it would take to make a truly healthy society.
Do I want people to have to go through what I went through? No! But does leaving people like me out of narratives actually help that to happen? No! It allows us to be slotted neatly into a “problem” that was “solved”. Really, it was a narrative “problem” the author chose to “solve” by eliminating folks like me instead of envisioning ways in which the literal inevitability of the existence of mental illness could be addressed in ways that were not terrifically ableist.
I pointed out that such a world would have required a sweeping act of eugenics to achieve, and that whether it was accomplished “humanely” (by selecting only “defect-free” embryos) or not, readers like me aren’t going to be charmed by your fantasy world if it involves the fantasy of us not being there. They responded by saying their alien culture did have morally gray underpinnings, that to get where they were things weren’t nice for a while, and you know, I would have bought it if it had ever been interrogated within the material itself, but it never was. The vividly-realized culture was almost exclusively depicted as one where people lived in harmony and with purpose, the needs of all fulfilled by all. It was very utopian and attractive and I was on board with it right up until a clearly mentally ill character was forcibly removed for correction. Not treatment, not really, but correction. It was specifically framed in that way. As if it was an act of willful noncompliance to be mentally ill. And I swear I had a full-body nope reaction to it. The author wasn’t interested in having the problems with this explained to them. It was a non-issue to them, completely.
While I do think their work is incredibly imaginative and brilliant in a lot of ways, I took down my positive reviews and unsubscribed from everything. If you can’t be brilliant enough to envision ways to help people like me instead of eliminating them, I don’t need you. If you give me no other way to see myself in your narrative besides “suboptimal, deselected for breeding, flaw eliminated” and then decide not to address the moral ramifications of that, like, ever, I’m not going to keep paying you. I do not want to read about a world you paint as better than ours in almost every single imaginable way, a world I would actually really really enjoy living in, where people like me were deleted.
You don’t get to paint people like me as problems to be solved just because your vision of a perfect world doesn’t include us, and then tell us that it was all for the best, really, because people in your ideal world wouldn’t have to suffer like I have.
Write for the disabled audience you have, or you are writing for the people who want us gone.
These horrific, sexist, racist paragraphs – screenshotted and shared for posterity by James Smythe, to whom we are all indebted – are the work of one Liam O’Flynn, a writer and English teacher. Evidently, they come from his book Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English, and are intended as examples of good writing.
UM.
Dear white male writers: DO NOT DO THIS SHIT. IT IS SUPER GROSS AND FETISHISTIC AND ALSO TERRIBLE WRITING. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.
Like I just. “Her virility-brown eyes -” WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? How can you have an “Amazonian figure”ON a “wafer-thin body” when “figure” is a word that describe’s a body’s shape, and Amazonian means pretty much the DIRECT FUCKING OPPOSITE of “wafer-thin” in the first place?
What the shitting fuck does ANY of this mean, apart from “I am only nebulously familiar with the concept of women and completely at a loss if I can’t compare their various bodyparts to jewels, animals and footstuffs”?
STOP
GO TO WRITING JAIL
GO DIRECTLY TO WRITING JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200
tag yourself i’m the two beryl-green jewels in the snow
if her ears frame her nose do they like, grow directly beside her nose? how does she see from them?
*facepalm*
“
Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English
“
lovers of english
oh my goddddddd
i can’t get over this fucking post
“I loved her nebulous, eden-green eyes which were a-sparkle with the ‘joie de vivre’. They were like two beryl-green jewels melted onto snow.”
1. what the fuck is joie de vivre
2. melted jewels?
3. beryl green
eden green:
WHICH ONE IS ITTTTTTTTT
@laughlikesomethingbroken “Joie de vivre” is a French phrase that literally translates to “joy of living”, while it IS one of those phrases that gets used in English in this context it is SO EXTRA AND UNNECESSARY OH MY GOD. Don’t use French to make yourself sound sophisticated when you’re NOT
I don’t know where to even START. Curvilinear waist? Sugar candy-sweet? What the FUCK are seraph’s ears? Voguish clothes? What the everloving fuck is “constellation blue” supposed to mean??? Like forget the objectification, this writing is horrifying enough before we even get to the embedded sexism
seraph’s ears are ears that you can’t see bc they’re hidden behind her 6 wings
Oyster white teeth?
holy purple prose batman
Female writers do this too. Have you read a Mills and Boon novel? Have you read high school girls’ yaoi fanfics?
Uh oh, we were focusing too much on how a grown man is selling this shit and not enough shitting on teenage girls. Egalitarians here to put an end to that shit.
Guess what? I’ve read A LOT of Harlequin novels and a LOT of fanfic and I have never ever seen anything this horrible at description.
Also, none of those stories were trying to hold themselves up as high examples of the craft
You guys here is the description of the book on Amazon.
If this is the description I cannot think how bad the inside is.
I never ever want to hear anyone make fun of fanfic writers again
NEVER EVER
Lord god almighty. I’ve been feeling really down about my writing lately, but this is a confidence boost. 8I
As well as the sexism, racism, purple prose, and general nonsense… “The moons delicate light”? At least learn to use apostrophes correctly before setting yourself up as a writing expert, good lord.
“You will find that this book will transform the way you think about descriptive writing.”
These horrific, sexist, racist paragraphs – screenshotted and shared for posterity by James Smythe, to whom we are all indebted – are the work of one Liam O’Flynn, a writer and English teacher. Evidently, they come from his book Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English, and are intended as examples of good writing.
UM.
Dear white male writers: DO NOT DO THIS SHIT. IT IS SUPER GROSS AND FETISHISTIC AND ALSO TERRIBLE WRITING. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.
Like I just. “Her virility-brown eyes -” WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? How can you have an “Amazonian figure”ON a “wafer-thin body” when “figure” is a word that describe’s a body’s shape, and Amazonian means pretty much the DIRECT FUCKING OPPOSITE of “wafer-thin” in the first place?
What the shitting fuck does ANY of this mean, apart from “I am only nebulously familiar with the concept of women and completely at a loss if I can’t compare their various bodyparts to jewels, animals and footstuffs”?
STOP
GO TO WRITING JAIL
GO DIRECTLY TO WRITING JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200
tag yourself i’m the two beryl-green jewels in the snow
if her ears frame her nose do they like, grow directly beside her nose? how does she see from them?
*facepalm*
“
Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English
“
lovers of english
oh my goddddddd
i can’t get over this fucking post
“I loved her nebulous, eden-green eyes which were a-sparkle with the ‘joie de vivre’. They were like two beryl-green jewels melted onto snow.”
1. what the fuck is joie de vivre
2. melted jewels?
3. beryl green
eden green:
WHICH ONE IS ITTTTTTTTT
@laughlikesomethingbroken “Joie de vivre” is a French phrase that literally translates to “joy of living”, while it IS one of those phrases that gets used in English in this context it is SO EXTRA AND UNNECESSARY OH MY GOD. Don’t use French to make yourself sound sophisticated when you’re NOT
I don’t know where to even START. Curvilinear waist? Sugar candy-sweet? What the FUCK are seraph’s ears? Voguish clothes? What the everloving fuck is “constellation blue” supposed to mean??? Like forget the objectification, this writing is horrifying enough before we even get to the embedded sexism
seraph’s ears are ears that you can’t see bc they’re hidden behind her 6 wings
Oyster white teeth?
holy purple prose batman
Female writers do this too. Have you read a Mills and Boon novel? Have you read high school girls’ yaoi fanfics?
Uh oh, we were focusing too much on how a grown man is selling this shit and not enough shitting on teenage girls. Egalitarians here to put an end to that shit.
Guess what? I’ve read A LOT of Harlequin novels and a LOT of fanfic and I have never ever seen anything this horrible at description.
Also, none of those stories were trying to hold themselves up as high examples of the craft
You guys here is the description of the book on Amazon.
If this is the description I cannot think how bad the inside is.
I never ever want to hear anyone make fun of fanfic writers again
NEVER EVER
Lord god almighty. I’ve been feeling really down about my writing lately, but this is a confidence boost. 8I
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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