furiousinks

I'm going to try it.

First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.

What we’re talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, “thought” words are included. But so are “heard, saw, looked, tasted, smelled” etc.—most words having to do with the senses.

This isn’t black and white advice; sometimes you’ll use these words and that’s okay. They’re not WRONG. They’re just weaker. And they’re weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*

If you want your reader to feel like they’re experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.

*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes they’re seeing through and thoughts they’re privy to. So you don’t need to tell them “I saw X.” Or “I heard X.” Or “I thought Y.” You can just jump into the action/observation as it’s happening.

This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.

you want to pay attention

to verbs of being.

i don’t really think it helps anyone! to be so constantly self deprecating all the time, because the nature of art is that it’s never going to quite look like it does in your head because the human imagination is a fickle thing, and this constant ‘aaah its not Good’ instict is going to halt your progress, because you’re never going to get to that stage where it looks perfectly as how you imagine it.

accepting your art as it is and understanding that just because it’s not like your imagination doesn’t mean it’s bad, and appreciating the way it looks and that You Made That is absolutely vital. and i think being proud of yourself, being proud of the stuff you make and your improvement is hugely important because that powers you forward… i love thinking about, ‘oh, this will look so cool when i’m done’ and more often than not i finish and i’m like yeah, damn, this DOES look so cool! and trusting that what you make is good will help you explore more, branch out, etc.

Neil — whose legs are across Andrew’s lap — is going to be so mad when Andrew fails his sociology paper and gets kicked off the team because their captain couldn’t locate his own mattress.

Whatever. Neil’s head is on his shoulder, so Andrew amuses himself by wrapping a particularly ringlet-y curl of Neil’s around his finger and stretching it, letting it spring back into place again and again. Neil’s arm is draped loosely over Andrew’s middle, so Andrew keeps two fingers pressed to his wrist, lulled into patience by the steady beat of Neil’s pulse.

Suddenly, Neil twitches. A short, startled whine punches out of parted lips, muffled against Andrew’s collarbone.

“Neil,” Andrew says firmly, and Neil curls in toward the sound of his voice, fingers gripping at the fabric of Andrew’s shirt.

“Baby gator bit my ankle,” Neil mumbles.

Andrew, who had been steeling himself for the resurgence of a gory memory or a dream-induced panic attack, finds himself huffing in amusement.

“No, it didn’t,” Andrew says.

The tension bleeds out of Neil immediately.

“Oh,” he says, and then his breathing evens out once again.

I'm equally thrilled and haunted by “as soon as Baz is unhappy, I can’t think of anything else,” which Simon shares in awtwb alongside something like "I want to make it better. The mere idea is very thrilling to me." I don't doubt Simon would've been obsessed with Baz regardless because is Baz, but this stands out in hindsight, because Baz was in a constant state of sadness... And Simon thought about him all the time. Again, he was obsessed either way... but Baz’s sadness must have driven him crazy (it’s another thing where they match, as Simon carries profound sadness too) (Watford and being a hero brings happiness for Simon, but he’s desperately holding on to roles and expectations that do make him miserable. Heteronormativity fucks him up.)

Can't help but wonder about Simon's "Baz has only 3 expressions and they're all variations of disgust towards me" ... because we know he's bullshitting. At this point, he has been "observing Baz's soul" (which he uses as an argument as Baz "being alive" later in CO) meaning that he knows very well Baz has much more depth. That he feels much more deeply. He has seen it in the catacombs. He has heard it in his music, he has seen it in the ways he plays, in the passion with which he studies, etc etc. It must’ve been one of his greatest desires, inaccessible and impossible to decode to the Simon he was back then, for the alluring, competent little jerk he was rooming with to look at him with anything other than a practiced mask of "disdain." For him to let Simon in (Simon not listening to Baz basically confessing he's a vampire because Baz is pushing him away vs being all ears when he's letting him in) instead of having Simon follow him everywhere (when Simon thinks he's enchanted by him and would follow him anywhere in WS, it hits, because he has been that all along, hasn't he.) For him to not be so pained all the time (Simon notes, when Baz plays his violin after they have sex, that he didn't even know it could make happy sounds, that it always sounded sad in Watford).

"Look at me."

Even in isolation, this packs so much. Because of the way it’s written, you can fill in the blanks pretty easily. “With Agatha, it (wasn’t like this)” 

In this part, Simon is telling us he’s too turned on to think, he’s so in love (“I love him, I love him” – the repetition is both emphasis and his thoughts being derailed because of sexual desire… he doesn’t have the mental capacity to be poetic here, he simply repeats it). “But I also want to do this” is not calling back to “I wanted to, until I didn’t,” or something, which he uses to express how he tried (but failed) to have sex with Baz before, otherwise Agatha would not be brought up at all. If it was about “failed attempts” at intimacy with Baz, it would have been about how he can do this, rather than he wants to do this, because wanting it isn’t new when it’s with Baz (Simon has thought and said he wants sex with Baz plenty of times, highlighting that lack of wanting was not at all the problem). “I’m so turned on I can’t even think, I’m so in love, I also want to do this” is redundant. “Romantic love” + “lust” = “desire for sex” is obvious enough you don’t need to spell it out. No need for a “but” there. 

“But I also want to do this,” with emphasis on do does indicate that there was a time he didn’t want to do this… Follow that with “With Agatha” and there’s your answer. It’s only when the comparison it’s done with Agatha that “I want to do this” is a new thing that needs to be highlighted in italics. “With Agatha, it (wasn’t like this) (I didn’t want to do it) (it didn’t work)” … you keep going back that paragraph in order, and you even have “(I wasn’t in love) (I wasn’t turned on at all)”

This is about sex, and we get Simon expressing how he actually felt about having it with Agatha without outright saying it, including the fact that he interrupts the thought with “no, never mind, that doesn’t matter” … because he doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to think or process that, he doesn’t treasure the memory, he doesn’t want it in his head, and he doesn’t want to give it any importance. He dismisses it, he wants to leave it behind. That scene in Fangirl where Baz goes “have you ever done this before?” and Simon goes “not when I actually wanted it,” which the author has shared as informing Simon’s sexuality and experiences are encapsulated in this. In “But I actually want to do this.” 

The way they are each others positive motivations. They were always the happiest together. For a moment, Sasuke probably forgot about Itachi, Naruto wasn't thinking about being the kyuubi, they were both just training with a friend.

Sasuke worried about Naruto 😭:

Oh dear.

Okay, you get an answer, because at least you took the effort to write your ask out properly, even if you are hiding behind the grey, sunglassed circle.

Do I, or any fanfic author for that matter, have any legal claims to our work? No, not really, no. (Although if someone took a fic, filed off the serial number--deleted the fandom specific elements--, and then had it published for financial gain, yeah, that would be a case.)

BUT

Fandoms are built on a social contract that says we respect each others work, the effort people put into their art. We don't steal or disrespect the work of our peers. By feeding people's fanworks to AI you both steal and disprect it, and we need to make people realize that before it's too late--before fandom falls apart, because there will be no more real, actual fanworks.

Disrepectfully,

Orlissa

oh. i’ve read the classics.