I think another problem with the mindset of kudos/comments on AO3 is part of the “stalking” culture on instagram. If you like a picture that is months old on instagram, its “insta-stalking” because you had to scroll through that person’s profile in order to find those months-old pictures.
That is NOT how AO3 works. It’s not cringe or embarrassing to find a fic that was posted in 2012 and like it. It is there to read.
Same for works on AO3. Sure, maybe some of us have some old works that aren’t up to our current standards of writing. But I, personally, am never going to look at a kudos email and think “ew omg I can’t believe someone found this fic from 2016 why are they liking it”. In fact, I am entirely going to go “nice! people are still reading some of my older works too, I’m glad they enjoyed it”. It’s an archive, it is meant to be a collection of transformative works, old and new, and you are meant to find them.
In fact, if you find a work that is from five years ago and you really liked it? I bet the author would love a comment even then.
Stories are written to be read.
Show some appreciation.
Writers write to be read!
Older stories need love just as new ones. Please don’t let stories and chapters die of neglect after one fucking week!
I got a comment a couple of months ago for a nearly-10-years-old crackfic and I was thrilled!
Part of why there’s sortable searches at AO3 is to let you find fics for a now-dormant fandom, fics that are no longer canon-compliant after the new episodes, fics that work with fanon tropes that are no longer popular, fics from authors who are no longer actively writing… and just fics that weren’t written recently.
Comments on old fics are great! Often, they bring back a rush of memories for the author - oh wow, I remember when I was obsessing about this fandom, how much I loved this pairing, the fics I read that inspired this fic!
Getting kudos/comments on old fics is always a cause for celebration! And also never be embarrassed to leave kudos/comments if you work your way through an author’s catalog of fic. I know that personally, when I open the daily kudos email every morning, if I start seeing the same name repeated, it makes me want to jump for joy. Especially if the person reads a variety of fandoms, because that either means we love the same things (yay!) or they like my writing enough to try out new things (double yay!).
Fics are labors of love, and getting to find that people still love the months, years or even a decade later? Is awesome. (And showing appreciation for fic in the form of kudos or comments is an excellent way to inspire more fic! It’s a win-win.)
Last year i got a comment from someone who’d read my work TWENTY YEARS AGO and sent me a note about it. It made my year
I mean, if you find a pro author you like and go buy/borrow all their older books and leave reviews or something on Goodreads nobody thinks that’s stalking, do they? It means “Oh I just found your work and I’m getting caught up and enjoying it immensely!”
Or you just encountered a band for the first time and go listen to all their previous albums?
It’s totally cool to read a fic writer’s back catalog and leave kudos or comments, is my point.
I’m always tickled when something I wrote a while ago gets a kudo.
Comments - all comments, even on super old fics - make me happy.
Start with a clear idea of the kinds of things that will be intrusive to the character and what triggers them, even if the character doesn’t know these things. If you start with a clear idea of both of those points then you’ll produce something much more consistent.
Which will also probably be clearer for the reader. Depending on how you approach it it could mean the readers know the character’s triggers before the character does.
Remember that intrusive memories, no matter how intense/detailed, are not more accurate.
Remember that intrusive memories are an extreme version of a natural part of our memory. So you do have something you experience that is similar and you can use that to help you figure this out.
You know that thing your brain does when you’re sudden, intensely, reminded of something embarrassing you did or said? That’s essentially the same mechanism as an intrusive memory.
Obviously it’s really different when it’s the worst thing you’ve ever experienced that keeps coming up. The emotions dragged up are worse, more intense and more likely to completely ruin someone’s day. But the point here is that you have a seed of the same thing. We all do. And you can use that experience as a basis to build up this aspect of your character.
For intrusive memories I like to have a clear idea of the actual event. Because I know that the character’s memory may not be exact and it’s helpful for me to keep a clear idea of both, the memory and the ‘real’ event. That’s especially important if you’re playing around with an unreliable narrator.
Intrusive memories don’t necessarily have to be a ‘full’ memory. In the sense that they don’t need to be a full run down of what the character remembers of that event. It could be the feeling resurfacing. It could be a particular detail or aspect of the event, that just sticks in their mind and won’t shift.
I haven’t used intrusive memories that often in my stories. Mostly it hasn’t been a good fit for the stories I was telling so far. Similarly I haven’t set out to write PTSD very often.
I sometimes feel like those particular symptoms are over represented in fiction. That doesn’t make them a bad fit for any story per say, I think it says more about how I approach writing more then anything else. I like trying to pull off the unexpected. Not in the sense of breaking an unspoken contract with the reader, like turning something billed as a romantic comedy into a tragedy, but in the sense of approaching a topic/genre in a different way.
So often the way I’ve handled torture survivors in my stories has been looking at symptom patterns we don’t see in fiction so often, or expressions of symptoms that we don’t often see. One of my characters, who is knowledgable on quite a few topics, has difficulty learning and remembering things in a way that impacts their ability to… do basic things like handle their budget. It effects their life a lot, makes them reliant on other people quite often. But it’s subtle, it’s not an obvious disadvantage/condition.
Recently I have started writing a character with intrusive memories. For him they’ve mostly been the feeling he had in that traumatic situation resurfacing. He smells beer and he feels sick, he feels afraid and he doesn’t understand why.
For intrusive thoughts- Honestly I think having them has made me disinclined to write them.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t though.
For me they’re an… odd sort of distressing. They won’t shift. They effect my mood. But I can mostly just carry on with the motions and act ‘normal’ most of the time. They have sometimes left me feeling guilty or ‘tainted’ for having them, as if the thought is as bad as the action itself. I get the impression that’s quite common.
I also get the impression it’s common to worry that people can somehow ‘tell’ you’re having an intrusive thought, even though that rarely seems to be true.
Writing wise I think it’s probably best to keep intrusive thoughts simple. Something that can be communicated in a short sentence. Then think of it as though that sentence/thought is just- repeating. Like having one line of a song stuck in your head on repeat.
I probably haven’t covered everything, the question is really broad, but those are the main things that come to mind.
Powerful statements like these, that juxtapose the condemnation of such a simple and pure thing as love with the honour and worship of violence and death, always hit me hard and stay with me for days
This is the tombstone of Technical Sergeant Leonard Philip Matlovich, the first gay service member to intentionally out himself in order to fight the ban on gay people in the military. He hadn’t only served for Vietnam, he was a career Air Force member in good standing who would have liked to continue his career even though he knew coming out would most likely make that impossible.
He’d also been an elder in the LDS church but was excommunicated
He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1975 which was the first time an openly gay person appeared on the cover of a U.S. magazine and had their name printed in that magazine
He was an advocate for AIDs/HIV patients from the start of the outbreak in the 70s. He contracted the virus in 1986 and died 2 years later
His name doesn’t appear on his tombstone because he wanted it to be a memorial for all gay veterans
here’s the King himself
and here’s his grave in its full glory, with the pink triangles and everything! the words over the dates of his birth and death are referencing the extermination of lgbt people during the holocaust and the HIV crisis, respectively.
1. All-or-nothing thinking: Looking at things in black-or-white categories, with no middle ground (“If I fall short of perfection, I’m a total failure.”)
2. Overgeneralization: Generalizing from a single negative experience, expecting it to hold true forever (“I didn’t get hired for the job. I’ll never get any job.”)
3. The mental filter: Focusing on the negatives while filtering out all the positives. Noticing the one thing that went wrong, rather than all the things that went right.
4. Diminishing the positive: Coming up with reasons why positive events don’t count (“I did well on the presentation, but that was just dumb luck.”)
5. Jumping to conclusions: Making negative interpretations without actual evidence. You act like a mind reader (“I can tell she secretly hates me.”) or a fortune teller (“I just know something terrible is going to happen.”)
6. Catastrophizing: Expecting the worst-case scenario to happen (“The pilot said we’re in for some turbulence. The plane’s going to crash!”)
7. Emotional reasoning: Believing that the way you feel reflects reality (“I feel frightened right now. That must mean I’m in real physical danger.”)
8. ‘Shoulds’ and ‘should-nots’: Holding yourself to a strict list of what you should and shouldn’t do and beating yourself up if you break any of the rule
9. Labeling: Labeling yourself based on mistakes and perceived shortcomings (“I’m a failure; an idiot; a loser.”)
10. Personalization: Assuming responsibility for things that are outside your control (“It’s my fault my son got in an accident. I should have warned him to drive carefully in the rain.”)
I’ve been getting some requests to make a tutorial on how to draw fabric. It’s really not that complicated when you break it down, but it’s still something people get stuck on and over complicate. Here’s my “bare bones” simple explanation as to how to draw fabric!
Cecil. She/her. During the day I sit in libraries staring at books. During the night I write queer fanfiction with a historical slant.
Some not-so-random facts: Gay space lizards are the best lizards. Star Trek is my life. I have too many DS9 ships. Classic Who and the Eighth Doctor Adventures make me grin stupidly. Kelas Parmak is the best. I will defend historically accurate portrayals of Alan Turing to the last drop of blood. Likes and asks end up in the name of @apolesens-otheraccount, because Tumblr doesn't have a way of changing which blog is your primary one. Nothing happens over there - this is the one to follow.
