Ugh, was having a great time mocking my recently imprisoned rival when I noticed the camera positioning makes it so that I appear behind the bars, thus framing me as trapped in a metaphorical prison of the narrative, now my whole day is ruined. Fuck.

I get it, man. The other day, I survived a shootout, only to realize that a stray bullet went through a mirror in such a way as to look from the camera's perspective like I got shot in the head through the mirror, so now I have to acknowledge that something that could be reasonably referred to as "me" really did die that day, and it's just like "jfc, gimme a BREAK"

ugh dont even get me started on how the other day i tried to sit on the throne of my conquered foe and light a cigar to celebrate my victory but the lighter wouldnt work and it had to be lighted by the vizier who used to work for my enemy but that i enlisted to work as a double agent and help me in my coup. that jerk afterwards said with a devilish smile "ill always be at your service my liege" and i just KNOW that he said that exact same thing to the previous ruler. signifying that my victory was phyrric since i am still caught in an endless cycle of violence and betrayal. that really spoiled the whole mood

This is like that one time when I was interrogating someone and at the start, I was much taller than them to signify my control of the situation but as the interrogation went on, I slowly became more desperate for answers and by the end the camera angle made it seem like they were bigger than me, showing the change in power :(

"I miss when movies weren't political-"

ALIEN is about a megacorporation coercing some salvagers into transporting a dangerous creature without telling them what it is, all because the creature could be a great bioweapon for them. When a survivor of this failed transport mission wants reparations, they screw her over to avoid a scandal.

ROBOCOP is about another mega-corporation experimenting with a cop's body and declaring him their property, trying to reduce him to an obedient killing machine who can maintain the status quo for them.

JURASSIC PARK is about a rich billionaire going all out to make a dinosaur-themed amusement park, not caring about the real-world implications of resurrecting giant lizards. He also underpays ONE guy to maintain the entire park's security systems so predictably, that one guy betrays him at a crucial moment.

The best movies weave their politics with plot & character, so you can enjoy them as entertainment but can also notice the themes. Movies without themes wind up being all spectacle and no substance, just noise and color like Michael Bay's Transformers franchise. Yeah, they make money, but they'll be forgotten in 2 generations.

All of this, but also all art is inherently political, even Bay's Transformers franchise. It's fair to say that the Bay films don't have a very well written political message, because their overall writing is in fact rather poor, but to say that they're nothing but spectacle with no political substance would be incorrect. As not only is it impossible to create art without some sort of political message beneath it, but the Bayverse movies also contain a rather strong pro-military political message.

The spectacle in the Bay Transformers films is done up to make US military look really freakin' cool so that the people watching the movies will be more likely to join the military themselves. These movies have the Autobots (the good guys) attack human operated bases in the Middle East to "keep the peace" as well as focus on the destruction of US cities, which is of course done at the hands of hostile aliens (The Decepticons) and then promptly rescued through the power of the US military (and military sanctioned Autobots). Not exactly a well written narrative interwoven throughout a finely crafted story, but that's far more than just noise and color. These movies are one of the many franchises that have been touched by the military-entertainment complex, and have no doubt been purposely created in this way in response to 9/11.

Movies can in fact be bad/poorly written/seem to be nothing but noise and spectacle and still have a political message they're trying to push, intentionally or otherwise, and in the case of Bay's Transformers films it is undoubtedly intentional, even if the movies themselves aren't all that well written so the message is far from subtle or deep.

It's important to remember that just because a movie may contain a message that you don't personally like or believe in, it doesn't mean that said message is no longer there, and/or can't affect other people and their personal beliefs. A poorly written political message is still very much a political message, whether it's one you like or not

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

My cartoon for this weekend’s @guardian books

Putting this as its own post because it deserves to be its own post.

If you want to be good at any kind of art you have to take the part of your brain that tells you “everything must be a wholly original idea formed in a perfect clean room environment” and you have to rip that synapse out of your skull, put it through a shredder, stomp on it, light it on fire, then pour it into acid, because it’s a liar and will never ever help you.

Putting this as its

own post because it deserves

to be its own post.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

hi i'd also like to suggest, as a troubleshooting thing, that one reason you might be blocked on writing is that you've gotten into a punishment loop. you're scared to write, not for trivial or pathetic reasons, but because any time you approach writing, some guy starts screaming at you that you're a worthless piece of shit and that you could die without accomplishing anything meaningful. this guy continues screaming at you the entire time you're approaching this activity, and continues screaming at you for running away from it, too, until you find something else to do that's distracting enough that you can ignore him again. if you ever turn back around and approach writing again, there this guy is, screaming at you.

like, fuck, man, if i could only eat ice cream while some sadistic drill sergeant motherfucker gave me an existential crisis, i don't think it would take very many days before i was too scared to even open the fridge. after another week i probably wouldn't go into the kitchen. if he followed me around berating me for my piss-poor ice cream eating skills and told me all my teachers died ashamed of my pathetic inability to eat an ice cream, a skill even babies master, i would probably slip out my bedroom window in the night and move to the sahara desert.

so like, whether or not you ever write another word, you need to get rid of that drill sergeant in your head before he squeezes you out the window of your own skull. you're a valuable human being with worth and dignity, and you still would be even if you were the most illiterate motherfucker in the world. writing is not confirmation that you matter, that your education meant anything, that you finally have value to the world, that you're validating other people's investment in you. teachers taught you because they love to teach. your parents raised you because they loved their kid. you don't have to spend your whole life trying to pay back the debt of being born, being raised, being taught. you weren't a waste of anyone's time and effort in the first place.

and your gifts--whatever they were--were gifts, not debts you signed up for at birth and are now honor-bound to repay. a gift is something YOU get, for FREE, and it's for YOU. or else it's not a gift.

your gift for writing was so that you could enjoy this thing that came to you easily and enjoyably. you don't owe the world anything more than loving what it gave you--and you don't owe yourself anything less.

tell that miserable, sadistic, joy-killing drill sergeant in your head to get fucked. once he's gone, check the freezer and see what's in there for you.

PSA: Don't use Open Office

I keep seeing people recommending Open Office as an alternative to Word, and uh... look, it is, technically, an open source alternative to Word. And it can do a lot of what Word can, genuinely! But it is also an abandoned project that hasn't been updated in nine years, and there's an active fork of it which is still receiving updates, and that fork is called LibreOffice, and it's fantastic.

Seriously, if you think that your choices are either "grit your teeth and pay Microsoft for a subscription" or "support free software but have a kind of subpar office suite experience", I guarantee that it's because you're working with outdated information, or outdated software. Most people I know who have used the latest version of LibreOffice prefer it to Word. I even know a handful of people who prefer it to Scrivener.

Open Office was the original project, and so it has the most name recognition, and as far as I can tell, that's really the only reason people are still recommending it. It's kind of like if people were saying "hey, the iPhone 14 isn't your only smart phone option!" but then were only ever recommending the Samsung Galaxy S5 as an alternative. LibreOffice is literally a version of the same exact program as Open Office that's just newer and better – please don't get locked into using a worse tool just because the updated version of the program has a different name!

I use LibreOffice. It's wonderful.

I bought a book with extremely modern and relatable translations of Sanskrit poetry from 2,000 years ago

The Four Sacred Artistic Motives:

-what if this bad thing was good instead

-how about Make-Believe Land can have whatever I want

-would that be fucked up or what

-I think that shit's hot

So, there's a dirty little secret in indie publishing a lot of people won't tell you, and if you aren't aware of it, self-publishing feels even scarier than it actually is.

There's a subset of self-published indie authors who write a ludicrous number of books a year, we're talking double digit releases of full novels, and these folks make a lot of money telling you how you can do the same thing. A lot of them feature in breathless puff pieces about how "competitive" self-publishing is as an industry now.

A lot of these authors aren't being completely honest with you, though. They'll give you secrets for time management and plotting and outlining and marketing and what have you. But the way they're able to write, edit, and publish 10+ books a year, by and large, is that they're hiring ghostwriters.

They're using upwork or fiverr to find people to outline, draft, edit, and market their books. Most of them, presumably, do write some of their own stuff! But many "prolific" indie writers are absolutely using ghostwriters to speed up their process, get higher Amazon best-seller ratings, and, bluntly, make more money faster.

When you see some godawful puff piece floating around about how some indie writer is thinking about having to start using AI to "stay competitive in self-publishing", the part the journalist isn't telling you is that the 'indie writer' in question is planning to use AI instead of paying some guy on Upwork to do the drafting.

If you are writing your books the old fashioned way and are trying to build a readerbase who cares about your work, you don't need to use AI to 'stay competitive', because you're not competing with these people. You're playing an entirely different game.

My latest Guardian Books cartoon.

the worst is wanting to create and create and create but being trapped in a body that is so so so so tired

The “oh I could definitely write this fanfic in under 5000 words and it really wouldn’t take me that long” voice in your head is actually the devil speaking

(prev tags:)

#On Writing#Im in this picture and I dont like it

Here's the r/Wattpad master thread.

And a thread on r/FanFiction.

I haven't had time to dig into them yet.

Someone's moving to AO3 guide. I'll be interested to see what they say.