things that always make me happy: serial commenters. there are three types
1) reading a longfic chapter by chapter, leaving an increasingly emotional comment on every chapter, descends into keysmashes near the end: outstanding
2) read one fic by accident, clicked the author name, now working steadily through the backlog and commenting on everything, I wake up to an AO3 inbox full of enthusiasm: precious beyond words
3) the longterm serial commenter whose comment begins with I don’t even know this fandom but because they have followed me from somewhere else: stunning. humbling. magical.
these are all *chef’s kiss* and I want to add one more: 4) left a comment a while ago, comes back and leaves another comment on the same fic, telling you that they’re coming back to reread the fic: angels. blessings. lifesavers.
i wanted to share this not to come off as corrective but because i actually think it really adds to the text to know that not only is it not from a poem, but that there’s a fuller version of this quote that is just as good. and it’s actually really good advice on how to a write emotion without becoming sentimental. james hall, the interviewer, is himself a poet worth looking into if you’re unfamiliar.
James Hall: I love that you risk sentimentality in the poems. Can you talk about how you construct a poem’s emotion without letting that emotion subsume the poem? What tools are available to a poet to mitigate emotion successfully?
Richard Siken: I didn’t see it as risking anything, and I suppose the tool for mitigating emotion is undercutting, but I’ll try to answer the question sideways: Even if you don’t believe in God, you have to believe in narrative. Things happen, one after another, world without end. Just because you’re self-aware doesn’t mean you can change what’s happening. Eventually someone is going to break your heart. Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking “I am falling to the floor crying” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it—you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well and when you’re having sex with your next lover on this very floor they will also notice that you didn’t paint it very well and they will think less of you for it. And then you think “Is that sentence too long?” And then you have to hold the contradictions of sobbing uncontrollably and wondering about grammar in your head at the same time. I think if you are true to the entire experience, not just the sad part, you don’t risk sentimentality because you’re not overloading the experience with fake, melodramatic feeling. I also hear that whispering helps.
super simple low-effort ao3 summary methods that are 1000% better and 1000% less annoying than just saying you suck at summaries:
copypaste the first few lines of the fic. u already wrote ‘em. let ‘em be their own damn hook
if ur feeling fancy & don’t mind showing ur hand a bit, copypaste the first few lines of the fic that u feel are esp. Important or Interesting - the ones where u first start getting into the real meat of things
state the main tropes! theyre probably already in ur tags - just say them again - maybe as a full sentence if ur feelin fancy. or with a joke if ur feelin Extra fancy
ask a question. pose a hypothetical. eg what happens if u take [character] and put them in [situation]?
make an equation. [character] + [thing] = [outcome]
just write like a one-sentence summary of what the fuck is going down. just one (1) sentence. doesnt matter if it doesn’t cover every important aspect. or if it sounds bland. any summary sentence is gonna be miles better than “idk i suck at summaries”
just…explain the fic like u would to a friend? it doesnt have to be a polished back of the book blurb. it can just be “[pairing] coffee shop au, but like, still with murder, and also i made everyone trans. enjoy”
just stick a meme in there
honestly who cares
just put literally anything but a self deprecating comment in there & ur golden
I love when people get mad at explanations of why people do bad things, as if any explanation other than “they’re evil and they want to” is endorsing that behavior. I’m sorry, was the idea of ontologically evil people load-bearing to your Neo-Calvinist worldview? Fuck off! Exploring the reasons behind a behavior is the ONLY first step in getting people to stop. Anything else is just virtue signaling.
“Rich kids should go to public schools. The mayor should ride the subway to work. When wealthy people get sick, they should be sent to public hospitals. Business executives should have to stand in the same airport security lines as everyone else. The very fact that people want to buy their way out of all of these experiences points to the reason why they shouldn’t be able to. Private schools and private limos and private doctors and private security are all pressure release valves that eliminate the friction that would cause powerful people to call for all of these bad things to get better. The degree to which we allow the rich to insulate themselves from the unpleasant reality that others are forced to experience is directly related to how long that reality is allowed to stay unpleasant. When they are left with no other option, rich people will force improvement in public systems. Their public spirit will be infinitely less urgent when they are contemplating these things from afar than when they are sitting in a hot ER waiting room for six hours themselves.”
