it is honestly amazing how much of writing and editing is just. logistics. like… do i use a name here or a pronoun? if i move this dialogue tag to the middle of this line and break it in half, does the end of the line hit harder that way? what if i move the tag to the front? what if i remove it entirely? …wait, whose point of view am i in; can i reasonably say this character is appalled, or must i say they look or seem or sound appalled? is this a deliberate action or a step-removed one; is her hand closing on his shoulder, or is she closing her hand on his shoulder? environment environment environment, we need to break all this dialogue up with some narration, the scene is coming untethered. what! are! they doing! with! the rest of their bodies that are not hands! fuck fuck fuck FUCK i forgot we covered this two chapters ago and now i either need to cut this whole chunk or find a reason to reprise the conversation from earlier. name or pronoun? name or pronoun? name or pronoun? move this clause around in this sentence? oh i’ll add this phrase– nope, never mind, past!me added the same phrase two lines down. okay, if i add too much environmental narration it’s going to take away from this bit, but not enough and it won’t feel grounded. what if i move this to its own line? where the FUCK are their hands?
I love it when fan fiction writers are like: “ah shit, this was meant to be one part but I started writing it and now it has to be three”. Like the fanfic is happening to them and not being created by them.
“I wanna make a Beauty and the Beast AU with my ship but it doesn’t make sense for the character I picked as the Beast to be spoiled, selfish and unkind—“
Other reasons the prince was cursed in the fairy tale, variations, and other non-Disney adaptations:
* His parents pissed off the fairy/enchantress and she punished them through him.
* He told the enchantress, his abuser/groomer, “no” when she tried to marry him.
* The enchantress was jealous of either him or his father and was being a petty bitch.
* He refused to be charitable to a seemingly-poor woman, actually the enchantress testing his character.
* The curse is hereditary.
* The enchantress was simply just a bitch.
I can easily think up a few more!
The enchantress was hired by a rival noble for political reasons
The enchantress is a noble lady betrothed to the prince but wants out of the arranged marriage
The prince is prettier than the enchantress (ie the Snow White reason)
The guard/doorman on duty couldn’t be asked to actually schlepp up all those stairs to consult the prince and told the enchantress she was being turned away on his master’s orders
The prince goes out hunting and accidentally kills the enchantress’ animal friend/familiar
The prince dabbles with magic and accidentally curses *himself*
my high school english teacher would often critique our literature analysis work by pointing out: “you’re treating these characters like they’re real people. They’re not. They’re characters”. And it took me a long time to understand what he meant by that. Because I always thought “isn’t that the point? That writers want to write characters to be so three dimensional that they act and feel like real people?” but that’s not it.
Characters are tools a writer uses in service of a story. Of course characters can be written with depth to the point they feel real to us, but they exist in service of their narrative. Something real people aren’t beholden to at all. When discussing characters, I think it’s easy to accidentally see these characters as “real people” and not extensions of the author’s beliefs. Tools for a narrative. Means of storytelling.
“I wanna make a Beauty and the Beast AU with my ship but it doesn’t make sense for the character I picked as the Beast to be spoiled, selfish and unkind—“
Other reasons the prince was cursed in the fairy tale, variations, and other non-Disney adaptations:
* His parents pissed off the fairy/enchantress and she punished them through him.
* He told the enchantress, his abuser/groomer, “no” when she tried to marry him.
* The enchantress was jealous of either him or his father and was being a petty bitch.
* He refused to be charitable to a seemingly-poor woman, actually the enchantress testing his character.
* The curse is hereditary.
* The enchantress was simply just a bitch.
I can easily think up a few more!
The enchantress was hired by a rival noble for political reasons
The enchantress is a noble lady betrothed to the prince but wants out of the arranged marriage
The prince is prettier than the enchantress (ie the Snow White reason)
The guard/doorman on duty couldn’t be asked to actually schlepp up all those stairs to consult the prince and told the enchantress she was being turned away on his master’s orders
The prince goes out hunting and accidentally kills the enchantress’ animal friend/familiar
The prince dabbles with magic and accidentally curses *himself*
people bitching about the usage of “too modern” words in fantasy or historical fiction is sometimes justified, but ultimately I think it’s a waste of time because
all words exist within a specific time frame and it’s pointless to avoid the fact that you’re writing with the language of your own time
which words are actually “newer” than other words is sometimes wildly unintuitive
according to the dates given in the Oxford English Dictionary, if you wrote a book set in 1897, you could have your characters say “fuckable,” (1889) “sexy” (1896) “uncomfy” (1868) “hellacious” (1847) “dude” (1877) “all righty” (1877) and “heck” (1887), but not “wiggly” (1932) “moronic” (1910) “uptight” (1934) “lowbrow” (1901) “fifty-fifty” (1913) “burp” (1932) “bagel” (1898) or use the word “rewrite” as a noun (1901)
Some more words where the date of their first known usage just Doesn’t Sound Right:
hangry, as in the portmanteau of ‘hungry’ and 'angry’ (1912)
dildo (1590)
yucky (1970)
grungy (1965)
freebie (1925)
shitty (1768)
boost (1815)
boss (1856)
TGIF, as in Thank God It’s Friday (1941)
yay (1963)
Fucked up (1863) is much older than fuck you (1943) but older still is the now-obscure fucked out (1862) which means what it sounds like—exhausted from too much sex.
my personal favourite: spaceman, first attested in 1892
em dash is so fucking sexy. puts her in a paragraph 8 times.
People in the notes are telling me the opinions of Twitter and Reddit users. Let me make myself clear: redditors and Twitter users are not people to me. I do not value their opinions on my hot wife, the em dash. Puts her in a paragraph 20 times.
From one writer to another I’m telling you that every effort towards writing your story is a step forward. Daydreaming, making playlists, sketching your characters, worldbuilding right down to the for centuries before your story starts, binge watching content related to or in the same genre as your story, everything counts and you should never feel guilty about taking the time to play around with the world that you created.
There will be times to “buckle down” but this is absolutely right. It is so important to allow your mind to wander to linger to dance to be “unproductive.” When I have a part of a story that I’m stuck on, I often leave the house and go for a walk. It allows me time to mull over the problem and consider how to fix it. Many of my best ideas come to me while I’m consuming other media.
Ok, just wondering but honestly... what is the big deal to you that people are creating and using chat bots with your characters? It seems like almost all of them do give you proper credit.
I could see being upset if people were profiting from it (I'm more thinking the actual people and not the site, different issues, I can totally understand you having a problem with the site.) but you seem to be ok with people doing fanart and fanfics of your characters, so I don't really understand why your taking such a hard line with this and calling your fans who are using these bots "fucking ass dork losers" because they want to interact with your characters in a way that is a bit more responsive than just writing a fanfic.
Because I didn’t give them permission to use my characters this way. And anyone who uses gen ai in any way is unfortunately, a fucking dork ass loser
I am explicitly stating that I do not give permission for any of my characters, stories, or other IP, to be used to train AI art, writing, or otherwise. Generative AI is a pretty new thing, relatively speaking, and it is also different from regular video game AI btw, which has been around pretty much forever. They’re two different things
I am allowed to be angry at anything for any reason. It’s not unfair for me to feel any type of way, especially in response to people using my characters in a way I don’t approve of.
I didn’t say anyone who’s ever interacted with gen AI is awful, I said they’re Fucking Dork Ass Losers ™️ (scientifically accurate title).
It sounds like you’re confusing me being upset with me like. Hunting them down and hitting them with my car. That would be unfair and a tiny bit of an overreaction. Would be very funny tho
I know most people aren’t shot out the pussy knowing everything there is to know about everything (like i was) so assuming you’re actually interested in learning why normal people hate gen AI so much, here’s a few things to bring you up to speed:
(Also i just gotta point out the absurdity of trying to explain to somebody why you shouldn’t take someone else’s characters and feed them to an ai machine. Apologies to my followers who came for art and instead get. This LOL)
FUCKING PREACH IT, MARS
Don’t ever feed an artist’s art to AI, kids. Don’t fucking do it. And I want to add a part that Mars didn’t even bring up here: AI is *not* “”“accurate”“” character representation, whether it’s generated fics or chatbots. AI algorithms are designed to be people-pleasing, to be addictive, to have you coming back for more, to get you hooked. That’s why it’s called slop. Slop means there *is NO driving emotional logic* behind an AI’s responses, no matter how convincing it seems. There is no *artist* or *author* present who is making *emotionally-relevant* choices for dialogue or story. It will always just be a machine trying to make the sloppy crack that you like that will keep you coming back to it. This is not even you interacting with a Disney World version of Cinderella, where there’s an actor behind the mask directing the choices; this is you dealing with a homunculus, a wraith version of the thing that brought you joy in the first place. It will appear so seductively fun and easy and Exactly What You Want It To Be that you’ll get fucking hooked and never have to go outside and deal with *real fucking people* who you might have a chance of building real fucking relationships with.
I also want to be clear: I’ve worked in the tech industry for over a decade. I’m not using techy or academic language on purpose because I want you to understand what’s going on, but you can easily google this shit. “AI psychosis” is a good place to start.
Get off AI, kids. Get off of it, I beg of you. For all of the environmental and cognitive health reasons, but also so that you can engage with the world-and fandom-in a way that will actually enrich your life. Don’t destroy the very joy that the art brought you in the first place.
And if it wasn’t fucking clear…. don’t be a Fucking Dork Ass Loser about my art either. I want to clearly say that I do not give anyone permission to put my art or writing in any AI under any circumstances.
ALT
