Inter-Mission Episode 13 by Inter-Mission • A podcast on Anchor
Try this one. I said I was tired -_-
Inter-Mission Episode 12 by Inter-Mission • A podcast on Anchor
Finally remembered I should get this out there lol
Inter-Mission Episode 6 by Inter-Mission • A podcast on Anchor
Out now! Episode Six of Inter-Mission
If you missed an episode, never fear - you can binge my archive over here.
![Remember this? [Link to Original Post] Well, now it has a Google Docs file for all the ideas I’m pouring into this novel/series.
I’m calling it Murder Dollhouse. And it may go on for some time.
The first novel will be less about the cold case and...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/26f81cd5c672aa81779a71b84f61da6c/tumblr_p6xo6hZ1Hf1r4ndfvo1_500.png)
Remember this? [Link to Original Post] Well, now it has a Google Docs file for all the ideas I’m pouring into this novel/series.
I’m calling it Murder Dollhouse. And it may go on for some time.
The first novel will be less about the cold case and more about the alleged hero’s journey towards treating the neurodiverse like actual people. Others? I don’t even know yet. As I say in the document, it all depends on interest from you, my dear readers.
Fuck, I haven’t even named anyone yet.
A concept that has wormed its way into my writing queue:
He’s a cocksure up-and-coming detective who’s been sent to a specific department to find out what has THAT area’s cold-case squad solving old crimes at a higher rate than anyone else.
She’s a POC on the ASD spectrum who builds incredibly detailed models of ancient crime scenes that no longer exist in the real world. [See the works of Francis Glessner Lee to know what I’m talking about]
They fight crime.
But first… HE has to learn that ASD is not like the TV typical white asshole-guy-who-gets-away-with-it-because-genius, and learn how to work WITH her instead of forcing her to do things the nypical way.
I just want an ASD heroine who doesn’t fit the bog-standard TV mould of what ASD is, and a nypical work partner [THERE WILL NEVER BE SEXUAL TENSION!] who has a learning curve about the world in which she lives. So I’m going to write it. Eventually.
Thoughts? Wants? Desires? I’m listening.
I got a WRITE UP!
#howdareyouassumemygender ;) But I’ll let it pass. It’s been quite a while since my AboutMe post on Steemit. And it might be the dreaded “gender neutral he” which I am told might be a thing.
Click the pic to read the whole thing. Of course. Because mutual back-patting is what encourages people to do more of the thing.
I vow to do more sharing of my stuff later on. It’s a busy weekend, this time. I may have to shift my self-shilling to weekdays. Le Gasp.
If you like ANYTHING I write, please reblog it. Tweet about it. Share it on Facebook. Any way you have social media. Share the thing. Tell people I exist.
It’s the only way I can make money and have nice things.
The amount of posts I’ve seen in the last few months about how people need to reblog fic and leave comments and kudos and just show appreciation for fic makes me so fucking sad.
It’s like fandom is realizing that they’ve let the Tumblr platform and the fandom trends thereof to devalue and minimize fic so much, and now that folks have noticed, they are scrambling to undo the damage done.
But most folks still don’t leave comments and don’t reblog fic.
If fandom’s still using Tumblr as its primary platform in three years time, I assume the number of fic producing fan folk is going to plummet. There is no incentive to work on this skill and share it when you get nothing in return. The fandom economy doesn’t stop at “share this content with fellow fans;” the reciprocity of “and receive feedback and enthusiasm” is necessary. If the second half of that equation doesn’t happen, the fic will stop happening too.
“I don’t know what to say!”
Your fic author has spent hours to weeks to (speaking from personal experience) months crafting something for you to consume and enjoy. To share something intensely personal with fandom. And you want to tell me you can’t work up the length of a small comment in reciprocal recognition? Anything from “I loved this part because X” to “I wonder what’ll happen with Y” to even “Wow I loved this”?
Then, at the risk of sounding callous, don’t expect fanfic to be a prevalent fannish artform in another three years.
I feel guilty even reblogging stuff like this anymore because I’ve gotten crap for it. Still valid, though. And I’ve been getting so discouraged at how devalued writing is getting EVERYWHERE – like, say, the layoffs I’ve had and struggles finding work because no one wants to pay writers or editors anymore and just wants to “curate” (God, I hate that word now) bloggers who are supposed to be sooooo happy writing for exposure…
It’s getting harder and harder to do the thing I’ve always loved, and I don’t know how to fix it.
Raising hand to agree with all points. I have avoided posting these calls for comments on fics for a while because I feel like most people think that fic-writers are just whining.
I don’t know why writing is getting so devalued lately, why everybody seems to think it’s so easy that it needs no praise or payment.Everyone is free to have that kind of opinion of course and I’m in no way suggesting that creators of fanart don’t have a difficult time to find praise for their art either. But as donotchoosesidesyet has said up there, there will be fewer fics for readers to enjoy. Speaking from personal experience here, the one reason why I even continued to write that silly one shot that turned into a 47 chapter story was the encouragement I received.
The current cold culture on tumblr and AO3 is hurting fic writers and in return it will hurt readers.
I’ve read thousands of tags relating to my post about valuing fan writers and it’s absolutely heartbreaking how many people have given up writing because they feel like no one cares. “No one ever comments”, “I don’t see the point because no one cares”, “I gave up because I figured people hated my work”.
And it’s horrible and fandom has done it to itself! If you can’t take two seconds to click the kudos button on something you finished reading then you shouldn’t be allowed to read fan fiction. And if you enjoyed something so much that you need to reblog it/bookmark it then for gods sake take some time and write a comment! Otherwise all those writers you like and fics you enjoy will disappear and you will only have yourselves to blame.
If you didn’t enjoy a fic - fine. Move on. But giving just a little something in return - a simple “thank you” - which doesn’t actually cost you anything, is just basic etiquette when someone has given you something.
And if you do regularly leave comments and reblog authors’ works then you have my unquestionable respect and gratitude. You’re a good one.
Yeah, as pagerunner-j has pointed out, this isn’t just a fandom problem. This is a problem for all writers. My work is devalued as a writer, and people expect to receive entire manuscripts, entire first novels, for free because “exposure”.
Writing is not looked at as an art. People look at stories and media as something that they are owed, something that they deserve to have without having to pay because “anyone has a novel in them” or “anyone can write a fanfiction”, which simply isn’t true.
Let’s be honest about writing – writing is hard. Knowing what good writing is requires study, and it requires practice, and not everyone who spits out a fic or a novel is writing good content, but because the market is flooded, and because there’s such a great volume of work available for consumption, the work of people who know our craft well is really devalued.
Nobody (read: most people) treats beginner artists or people who can’t draw very well like they’re an anomaly, and though beginner visual artists should be and often are encouraged, nobody treats them like their art is perfect or coddles them off the bat. Furthermore, people often joke about being bad at visual art, and it’s something that everyone recognizes not everyone can do.
But writing isn’t given the same respect. It’s considered terrible to actually give people constructive criticism because it might be seen as mean-spirited. Beginner writers are coddled, and people who just can’t write throw a fit when people tell them that if they want to write well they should actually bother to learn the craft instead of just thinking they can throw some words onto a page and be good.
Writing is work.
I work every single day at writing, and I can still improve more, and I’ve been writing for years. I’m also naturally talented and have a really good instinct when it comes to what sounds good, flows well, and makes narrative sense.
In order to fix the way fanfiction is seen, we need to fix the way writing in general is seen. People need to stop feeling like they’re owed writing, and they need to recognize the sheer amount of work that goes into it. They also need to recognize that, much like visual art, it is a skill, one that someone can have a natural proclivity for, but something that one can build up and that one has to practice and study to increase their skill in.
Writing needs to be put on the same tier as visual art. It needs to be treated like an art form, a craft, some people’s liviehood and passion – and most importantly, people need to recognize that it is not something everyone can do. Not everyone has a novel in them. Not everyone can be a poet. One’s writing skills can improve, but just like not everyone can draw, not everyone can write, either.
And that’s okay.
That way, writing will be seen as valuable and special again – as it should be.
I wrote my first indy story in 1990. I was eighteen, and I thought I had myself some genius. It’s probably somewhere in my piles of debris, but I can tell you honestly - it’s atrocious.
But it’s still a landmark because it’s the first time I sat down to do something that wasn’t an assignment. I sat down every morning for an entire year and scribbled a coherent story into a notebook. That takes willpower. And a certain amount of determination.
Many people will never do that. They never get much past an idea and the barest outline of a plot.
I started my first real fanfiction the next year. Palm-sized notebooks are my crack and I wrote a multitude of shitty stories in those tiny pages [One such story is up on my AO3 account]. In tiny, cramped, spider-scrawl. In bus stops. On busses. In-between classes and, very likely, when I was supposed to be doing assignments.
Many people tell me they would love to write something, but they never have the time. They lie. If they really love to write, they will squeeze seconds out of their precious time. They will wedge words onto paper in the moments when waiting idly is expected of allegedly normal people.
To me, at least, it doesn’t really matter if my writing in fanfiction is visibly loved. I write because I can’t NOT write. A thousand ideas gnaw holes in my skull and the only way to get rid of them is to pour them onto the world through a keyboard. Comments are a bonus. I write to give my demons a playground. To set an idea down in a nice pasture. To explore the things I could do.
But I’m a bit strange. I can, have, and will chose words because of how they taste inside my head.
Admiration is coin for writers. It is a bright spot of light in an otherwise dull existence. It is a reason to keep on when depression bites (and it bites often, trust me) it is the difference between giving up halfway and continuing on to an end you just can’t quite figure out how to reach.
Hell, _interaction_ is coin for writers. I remember the days of FFN before it went to crap, reading through the comments people had left before I posted yet another chapter. People used to rave at fanfic, in those days. They would yell at the characters. They would sometimes yell at the authors. But they would _interact_.
And when you think you’re alone and throwing parts of your soul out into an uncaring void… a response -any response- is enough to replenish your spirits.
Yes. I did mean to say ‘parts of your soul’. Writing is work. Writing can be hard. Writing can be… naked. And not in a sense of writing while nude. It’s opening up parts of yourself and bleeding experiences onto the page. Transforming them, sometimes, into something wonderful.
Writers deserve to know that their hard work is appreciated. Next time you want to click a heart and run away… share your thoughts instead. It will mean the world.
(Source: callmearcturus, via guernica322)
Challenge #00857-B126: Wake up and Smell the Progress
‘We had a perfectly good slow rolling apocalypse going on before you decided to get involved, you know.’ they said, after a long pause.
‘Now you have a fast apocalypse. Rejoice; progress has come to you.’
She didn’t struggle very hard when they dragged her down into the catacombs. And she really shouldn’t have been surprised that all the members of the Secret Cabal were all chairmembers of various Big Corporate Entities.
“Lord Monsando. Does this belong to you?”
“Whatever are you Insinuating, Lord Dau? That’s not one of mine.”
All eyes turned towards Bee Pi. Who said, “Who? Me?”
“Explain yourself,” menaced Lord Disley.
“I knew I wouldn’t get your attention by trying to stop you,” said Agness. She let the cold fires of fury keep her calm. She was exactly where she wanted to be. “Everyone’s already doing that. So I decided to help.”
“Your ‘help’ was unnecessary,” iced Lord Eckson. “We had a lovely Frog Soup Apocalypse going on. Very profitable.”
“And now it’s headed away in the handbasket so much faster,” Agness grinned, and activated the little device on her belt. On its own, it wouldn’t attract the notice of any of the goons who checked her for weapons. But now that it was active? It turned her entire, significant body mass into a fission bomb. “And now the entire world will be able to stop it because they will notice.”
They stared at her as the machine warmed up. “How are you going to make money off of that?”
“Who said I wanted to make money?” said Agness. She had just enough time to savour the looks on their piggy faces before the entire Cabal died in white fire.
[Muse food remaining: 15. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Well, shit.
A whole day’s worth of writing down the tubes. The existing one is officially SPRPGAU…AU. If I ever get around to finishing it.
The opening’s too good to waste, though. Most of it, anyway.
Retooling an entire damn fic in 5… 4… 3…
