Writing and Complaining about my Writing

not to be a joyless hag but I've started seeing genderbent "yuri" shipping Markiplier and Ryan Gosling and I can't help but think of someone I recently I unfollowed for posting that they have an easier time caring about genderbent versions of boy characters than regular fictional women

and I'm also building some connections to that post I made about reading books by Black women (you know the one) and the people who would respond by saying something akin to "joke's on you, I only read fanfic 😜" as if that were some kind of clever loophole and not a demonstration of the exact thing I was talking about

like yes fandom is about fun or whatever but idk man at what point has your desire for no thoughts head empty uncritical consumption left you splashing around in something that's been blended down to an indistinguishable goo for the sake of avoiding anything remotely challenging. with the thing that's "challenging" here being. you know. giving a shit about women and Black people and like frankly anyone but your shippable white men (and honorary Markiplier).

Something nobody prepares you for is that the better you get at writing the harder it becomes. beginners write freely because they don't know enough to know what's wrong. then you learn. and suddenly you can see every single flaw in real time as you're making it and you have to write anyway while your own brain is in the corner going "that's a weak verb. that transition is lazy. you've used that word three times." getting good at this is mostly just getting better at ignoring yourself.

forever thinking of catra from the 2018 she-ra series. what if you were deeply in love with your best friend. what if you chose long ago to abandon your morals to stay by her side. what if, at the very first chance, she was faced with the same decision and chose her morals over you. what if your grief over that choice was so immense that it fueled five seasons of television and almost ended the world. what if, at the end of it all, the end of the very world she fought so hard to save, you asked her to stay and she finally, finally did

*the normal amount of horny* I need to lay my rival low

Write that one-shot. Those 3 chapters will be the best 10 chapters you ever wrote