you can love somebody without using your hands

one of the things we've gotta start talking about when we talk about the death of media literacy is the concept of the artistic process and how so many people do not understand that a work can be deeply personal to the person writing it without being a diaristic, 1:1 representation of something they have personally gone through; that part of the artistic process involves transmuting some of your emotional experiences into a different setting or narrative, and that "writing what you know" is about emotions, not literal things that happened to you three days ago. sometimes it means combining multiple experiences or people into one, or putting those parts of your life and emotions into a character who doesn't look anything like you or share your identity. sometimes it means those parts of yourself will show up in the villain (on purpose) or the things you've thought and believed will be borne out by the narrative to not be correct. sometimes it means creating situations you've never personally experienced as a means of digesting emotions that you have. sometimes you won't even realize what you're digesting and working through until it comes out on the page and you look at it with the privilege of distance. none of this makes an artist "a liar," none of it means those themes and emotional truths aren't still extremely personal to them, and none of it means that they're inhabiting a role or a voice they're not qualified to write from just because it's not 100% autofiction being presented as such. as a writer myself, i feel like none of this should need to be spelled out, but in just the past couple days i have seen this fundamental misunderstanding of the artistic process applied to artists as diverse as paul thomas anderson, william shakespeare, and taylor swift, and i just want to say: you guys are not as smart as you think you are, and "this can't be about that because THAT never happened to THEM" is not the checkmate you think it is. someday i will find the person who made that "the curtains are blue" comic and they will die a bloody death by my hands.

i also think the fandomification of book publishing over the past decades and the bad faith co-opting of "own voices," which was a concept that originally had good intentions but which quickly turned into "no one is allowed to write from an identity perspective other than their own or about an experience that has not personally happened to them or else they will be canceled on YA twitter for being hitler goebbels mcriefenstahl by other bitter YA writers who don't even really believe this about them, but who are mad that they haven't gotten a book deal yet," has a big part to play in this phenomenon. people by and large don't read anymore, and when they do read, it's first-person narratives from the POV of characters who look, think, and sound exactly like the author, who are relating experiences that the author has to be able to prove they have personally gone through (or have POTENTIAL to go through), lest they have their reputations permanently smeared and ruined for the crime of literally just writing fiction... or else they're reading first-person narratives that are just sexual fantasies projected onto a blank-slate main character. the concept that a work can be personal without being representational is kicking a lot of people's asses because the state of publishing over the last decade has basically done away with books that aren't just the author's personal trauma repackaged, because that's what sells these days. and it fucking sucks. it fucking sucks so bad. it's horrible for the concept of free expression, it's horrible for talented young artists and writers who want the freedom to explore stories and themes that aren't intrinsic to their own personal life circumstances, it's horrible for readers' brains and imaginations and sows a real environment of disrespect for the concept of WRITING. FICTION. it's just miserable altogether. anyway yes this was all brought on by seeing someone on threads smugly assert that hamlet couldn't possibly have had anything to do with shakespeare processing the death of his son because it was written a few years later and besides, it's about the death of a FATHER, not a SON, so CHECKMATE. to which i can only say, quoth remy ma: are you dumb????

oh and ONE MORE THING i say as i return to this post 3 hours later -- ONE MORE THING is that so often, as a writer, directly committing to paper something you have personally gone through is either too painful, too revealing, too dangerous, or just not something you want to do for artistic reasons. sometimes it's about not getting sued. sometimes it's about not wanting everyone in the world to know your business. sometimes it's just about wanting to tell an emotional truth that is bursting to get out of you without having to confront the literal truth just yet. sometimes you don't even realize that's what you're writing about until you're finished and reading it back and realizing why your subconscious was leading you in a specific direction. the reason people talk about the creative process in this mystical, unknowable way is because often the act of creating involves gaining access to a mystical and unknowable place and power inside yourself that can only be tapped in certain ways. demanding paint-by-numbers Good Own Voices Representation or identity-based autofiction for the sake of not stepping on anyone's toes doesn't just make that process almost impossible to tap into, it means that if we had always applied this standard some really great art never would've been made because the people making it would've been told they had no right to do so. and i don't want to live in a world where authorial identity determines what stories get to be told - not only because it cheapens and stifles the entire artistic process by demanding that no one seek entry into worlds other than their own, but because the act of creation can feel so divine, and by placing yourself in the shoes of another, you can tap into a well of empathy inside yourself that i think we all frankly benefit from having access to.

my fav insult ive ever received online was the time someone in ig comments told me, with sincere hate and sandwiched beside a slur, “go drink some fuckin liquid” after they saw on my profile i was on a medical liquid diet

Well. I don't think she would say all that.

The funniest part about this is that I do completely understand that the device being used here is that it's supposed to feel inconsistent and jarring and make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about the story but by total coincidence I actually rewatched all of season one literally yesterday and so I'm in a very well-read position to say that nothing new has been revealed about season 1 except perhaps that whoever wrote that speech hasn't watched it recently

In season 1 the point of the "massa" lines is that she's calling Lestat an enslaver

mike, it's actually more interesting for audiences that margaret is an abusive religious fundie (and also a victim of marital rape) who tries to literally beat the idea of sin into her daughter, it is actually TIMELY to adapt that correctly at this particular american moment. WHY is he so scared of every piece of source material that has ever been handed to him? i MUST know

Amazing how I am doing so well all the time and then every July like clockwork. The recollections

my feelings about my past extend on a very complicated spectrum, on an axis from “I wish I’d had a threesome instead of that relationship” vs. “every day I thank god I did not have a threesome instead of that relationship”

unlocking ​a secret third option called gratitude for both the relationship and the threesome

i miss wyll baldursgate3

I'm here today to make my concession speech to the Lestat woobifiers who said she was lying about the train. You won but we all lost.