Playful Panda

But I opened the door.

And what fell out and crashed to the ground was not me. They weren’t my dishes.

They were other people’s dishes.

Put inside we without my permission, when I was too young to know that I could not hold them all.

I opened the door, and I’m still here.

First, I write down very roughly what needs to happen in this scene.

For example, take an early scene from my wip. The main character’s mentor has just died in the previous scene. And what’s worse, he’s killed by the magical Library she loves so much. What needs to happen in this next scene?

She brings the terrible news of the mentor’s death and the Library’s betrayal to the mentor’s widow (who gives her a key to the Library, minor detail).

She brings the news to the major, who is responsible of anything concerning the Library and who is indirectly the reason the mentor went into the Library in the first place.

At the end of this scene, the second main character is briefly introduced.

Then I start asking myself as many questions as I can.

What does the Main Girl Character (MGC) feel after her mentor’s death?

What does the MGC do with the key she gets from the widow?

How and when does the widow give her the key?

What is the first thing the MGC does when the mentor dies?

What does the widow do when she sees the MGC and the mentor?

How does the widow react? What does she feel? Did she expect it to happen someday? Does she stay icy calm or does she scream? (pieta)

What does the widow look like?

What is the widow like, as a person?

How does the MGC know she has to go to the major? Is there some kind of police, or is he the mentor’s boss or something?

Does the MGC trust the major?

Can she trust the major?

What is the major like, as a person? Nice? Belittling?

What does the MGC tell the major? What does he want to know?

What kind of new information does the MGC get out of this conversation?

What does the office of the major look like? Where is it?

What kind of a person is the Main Boy Character (MBC)?

What is the MBC wearing?

What does the MBC say to the MGC?

What was his reaction when he heard the news? How did he feel?

How does the major react? How does he feel?

How far is it from the major to the MGC’s home? How much time does the MGC have to inform the MBC and how much time does the MBC have to react and to comfort the MGC? I just realise the MBC already knows (probably from her parents?) because otherwise he wouldn’t be waiting for her at the major’s office.

How did the MGC’s parents tell the MBC? Why would they tell him? Maybe he called her house or he came by because he knew she went to see the Library but he doesn’t know yet that it killed the mentor?

See, I’m already filling my page so that it doesn’t look that intimidatingly empty.

Next, it’s answers time. I go through all the questions and make up a satisfying answer. Sometimes I get it right straight away, sometimes I have to brainstorm for four pages before hitting the suitable solution. 

Since this is still preparation, I don’t have to worry about the quality of my writing style - I’m just thinking on paper. Often, this paradoxally means I write relaxed and I end up using whole bits of my preparation in my first draft.

After I have answered all the questions I want (often some become obsolete by answering other questions), I write out the scene again, in bullets or telegraph style, but with the detail and richness I have found in my answers. That usually takes me one page.

And only THEN I start writing my first draft. I see everything perfectly clear in my head and I even have bits of text I can use from my prep, so writing the first draft is way more chill than just writing it cold.

I do this before every scene, but you can also use this technique only when you get stuck or when you have to write a scene you’re dreading. You would think it’s inefficient and it takes too much time, but this technique keeps my thoughts focussed on my story (I’m a daydreamer) and it keeps the imposter syndrome at bay.

On average, my prep is 1,5 times the length of my written scene, but this process makes my writing so much richer. Not everything I make up in the Q&A phase ends up in my scene, especially questions like “what does the place look like”, “what is the character wearing” or “how long does it take them to walk from A to B”, but I find I can write the scene better if I know the answer, even if the reader doesn’t need to know.

Anyway, this is how I do it. Thanks for listening to my TED talk!

I’m gonna tag a few people who I admire, who I hope are interested. Feel free to ignore me if you aren’t.

Pop culture dogs! Been suuper busy with life things these last few months - was great to get some time to work on a big multi-character picture again! Was a whole lot of fun deciding what dogs to include. How many do you recognise? :D

Those dates you go on with your partner? They’re in public. Unmasked. Your server smiles at you. Everyone feels safe.

You can hug your friends.

You can see a movie. The people in the movie are gay people of color and they kiss and live happily ever after.

[image description: a tweet by user @indigenousAI saying

but!

if you’ve been a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, you can enroll into the address confidentiality program (free of cost!) and be registered to vote as an absentee voter and your name and address will not be made available for the public

it is super easy to get enrolled - the application takes like 5 minutes, but it has to be with someone who is certified to do it (most likely an advocate! try going to a family justice center in your area or calling the Attorney Generals office in your area!!!!)

ALSO : 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_confidentiality_program

I’m sure I’m going to get yelled at or tone-policed for this post, so let’s start here: spare your fucking breath.

But if you feel you must rant back at me, read the whole fucking post first.

A few years ago, Black Harry Potter fans pointed out the lack of Black characters in the books. If memory serves me, there are two–Kingsley Shacklebolt and Blaise Zabini. One is a Death Eater. The other one is literally a man named after a kind of prison chain. And fans went “well Jo supports Black Hermione headcanons and she was played onstage by a Black girl!”

A few years ago, Black readers expressed concern over how Rowling portrayed S.P.E.W., and the concept of house elves being slaves. People dismissed this as being because the house elves are based on the folkloric brownies–and while this is true, there was absolutely no attempt to show why Hermione was wrong beyond “lol silly girl, wanting to free the house elves,” nor was any attempt made to show why the treatment of Dobby and Winky was wrong beyond “well their masters were Slytherins what can you expect.” Black readers’ concerns were dismissed.

And a few years ago–around the release of Cursed Child was the first time I encountered it–Black fans pointed out that Lavender Brown was Black in the movies … until she became Ron’s love interest and was recast as a while girl. People got kind of mad and then forgot about it.

Over a decade ago, Jews pointed out that the goblins were antisemitic stereotypes. They were largely ignored. More recently, these pointings-out have been gaslit, ahistorically waved away, or the critics have been threatened.

About four years ago, I wrote a piece about why Snape is an antisemitic stereotype, and why, while he’s fascinating as a character, his narrative is extremely concerning within the context of being framed as Jewish-coded. I was largely ignored, except by Jews. I was still a gentile at the time and even so I was told by other gentiles that I was imagining things–or that I was the one stereotyping Jews by recognizing the negative stereotypes in the work, so maybe I was the bigot, huh, how about that.

A couple of years ago, someone actually took Rowling to task on Twitter about there being no Jews in the books. Her reply was “there are plenty! Anthony Goldstein is Jewish!” Anthony has no spoken lines–his biggest interaction with any of the main cast is shooting Harry a dirty look–and his Jewishness is not mentioned or shown anywhere.

I can’t be sure when I started seeing this, but as a onetime Harry Potter fan myself, I can say for sure it was within a year of Deathly Hallows the book coming out: criticism of the fact that the only gay character in the books turned out to be a master manipulator who was in love with a Hitler parallel, was in charge of children, and was actively grooming a young boy. (Later criticisms have been angry that Dumbledore was never mentioned as gay in the books. On that one, I have to give Rowling a very begrudging pass–even if she’d found a way to bring it up, in 2007 it would have been censored right back out.) And yet other than the occasional stray comment, that criticism has largely been ignored.

LGBT activists and gay men have been outraged since 1999 because Rowling stated that lycanthropy was supposed to be a corollary for AIDS. Ah, yes: because AIDS makes its victims turn into deadly, feral beasts once a month but causes absolutely zero other health problems, and it’s most commonly spread by ill actors who know they’re poz and deliberately infect others. Yep. Sounds accurate to me … not.

Twenty years ago, Chinese-American readers and Chinese-British readers pointed out the racism inherent in the name “Cho Chang,” which sounds quite close to the racial slur “ching-chong” (and also is not a real Chinese name). They were ignored. At best, their legitimate grievance was trotted out as a “tsk tsk” addendum when the focus on Rowling’s anti-trans views started coming to light.

When the background lore for Fantastic Beasts came out, Native American readers were horrified by what Rowling did with their culture. I don’t think I can even list all of their complaints here because they were so many, so myriad, and it’s literally easier and more to the point to just say “she was lazy and clearly did not do a single line of research, ever, at all, and did not get anything right, at all, and in fact got a lot of things very offensively wrong.”  People got mad for about five minutes and then forgot all about it when the movie dropped.

Readers with ties to the African continent were also horrified, by the way, because supposedly there’s one magical school for the tiny little islands of the UK and also one magical school for the biggest continent on earth. The many cultures, languages, and the basic geographic impossibility of this were all ignored by Rowling and her publishers–and fans, who got mad for five minutes and then forgot about it when the movie dropped.

When it came out that Nagini was some kind of snake woman, being played by a Korean actress, some fandomers pointed out that it was really fucking gross to have a Korean woman trapped by a man who then “impregnates” her with part of himself. Among other things, it’s at best an unfortunate parallel with the Korean “comfort women” of WWII. (translation: Korean women who were raped and tortured by Japanese soldiers.) People got mad for about five minutes and then forgot about it.

At some point–again, Potter has been in my direct or periphery for such a long time that years start blending together–Rowling made a statement about how the reason there are no disabled people at Hogwarts is because they’re “fixed” by magic. There was basically no outcry at all.

And now that Rowling’s rabid anti-trans views have come to light, you want to pretend you never knew she was a terrible bigot.

You’re showing up for trans women. As you should. Good job, have a gold star.

But do not forget, and do not give yourself a pass, that you never fucking showed up for the rest of us. You were passive and dismissive and justifying.

She is racist, ableist, queerphobic, and antisemitic. You have had a way to know this for twenty years. Even if you missed some of the early criticisms–I did, I was twelve years old and I fully recognize that many Potter readers aren’t even as old as the series itself, I don’t expect a five-year-old to have noticed this stuff–the evidence has piled up and piled up and piled up.

And only when it became a cause that’s politically convenient did outrage begin.

Speak out for the trans women who have been and will be harmed by Rowling’s recent drive off the cliff. Please do. I mean that genuinely. This is not okay.

But speak out for the rest of us too. Call her to task for EVERYTHING. Otherwise it’s empty performative posturing.

Even if you missed some of the early criticisms–I did, I was twelve years old and I fully recognize that many Potter readers aren’t even as old as the series itself, I don’t expect a five-year-old to have noticed this stuff–the evidence has piled up and piled up and piled up.

Like, it’s a bunch of actors at the table read, and the main story would be the “movie footage” of those actors in the remade film, but the film would periodically cut back to those actors during the table read, who are skeptical of certain points, or fangirling over moments in the movie, or wondering how they could ever live up to the original version. Everyone has different opinions about the movie and the characters and the other actors and it’s about seven different levels of chaotic meta and character dynamics. For extra fun,these different opinions about the movie and the characters are reflected in the “movie footage”. Like, say, Buttercup’s actress objects to the fact that she’s less than useless during the fire swamp scene, so they play the scene with Buttercup walloping ROUSes with previously unseen martial arts skills. But then someone else objects to how stupid that is, and the next scene has her going back to exaggerated uselessness. Or one actor thinks Humperdinck should be played with mustache-twirling villainy, and another one thinks he should have complex layers of emotional turmoil, so the “footage” pingpongs randomly between those two interpretations.

And then you could add to the meta by having some of the original cast among the remake cast’s actors–like, they were brought in for nostalgia cameos, but then they have opinions about how the story is supposed to go and start coaching the remake actors. Which leads to things like, suddenly Cary Elwes is in black and “playing the part” of Westley for a scene or two in the “movie footage” with no acknowledgement of the change.

Not to mention that literally almost all of the major leaders of the Black Panthers were imprisoned for bullshit like conspiring against the government/spying/treason/terrorism/etc. That’s literally what happened. They had a voice and the government wanted to take it away. So they made them criminals so they could no longer have a voice (both literally and metaphorically).

Another super fucking fun fact is that Angela Davis and Martin Luther King were on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. So yeah. Fuck felony disenfranchisement. It’s literal corruption and violation of basic human rights.

I am not telling anyone not to vote. But like anything else, electoral politics has its limits, and can only go so far. Grassroots organizing, sit ins, direct action, protests, and yes riots, are also necessary components of implementing social justice and change.

A Screenshot of a public Facebook-Textpost by “Sandy and Richard Riccardi”.

People are intrinsically valuable regardless of their wealth or work. That means you're entitled to a home, healthcare, food, water, etc. simply because you're alive.