SteeleHoltingOn

-cool witch feather trim for a “I’m totally prepared to curse your family for seven generations over minor slights” aesthetic.

- shimmering effects reminiscent of the cold and uncaring stars that won’t help that asshole now.

-corseted middle for my back pain, voluminous skirt because knowing if I actually have legs is a privilege

-FUCKING POCKETS HOLY SHIT, for carrying knives and small animal bones.

Thibaud Poirier Photography

like if you are marginalized it is in your own self-interest to interrogate and deconstruct the cultural narratives that position you as subnormal. this is what starts a lot of queer people on wanting to reform the world into something more compassionate and egalitarian.

Misogyny is not just prejudice experienced by a woman. It is not simply something that happens TO a woman. It has nothing to do with the woman. It’s about the misogynist.

Bigotry is not determined or defined by the target of that bigotry. The bigotry is stored in the bigot.

Misogynists will be misogynistic towards any person they associate with femininity, including cisgender men.

When a misogynist cis man tears another man down for liking something he thinks is girly, he is still being misogynistic.

A cis male coach telling his cis male student he runs like a girl is being misogynistic.

A cis woman punishing her son for wanting a “girl” toy or policing her boyfriend’s hygiene habits and interests for anything she considers emasculating, is being misogynistic!

When a woman gets in a car accident and is injured more severely because the safety testing on that car was only done using crash test dummies and models based on men, she’s experiencing misogyny.

When the medication she takes for her injuries doesn’t work right or has unexpected side effects because it was only tested on men, she’s experiencing misogyny.

When the tools she uses at work that are the wrong shape for her hands, and the jumpsuit that’s part of her uniform which she has to take off completely to use the bathroom, and all the spaces she moves through and everything within them are designed with the assumption that an average male body is the only body that matters— she is experiencing misogyny.

Misogyny is the belief that women are inherently inferior, and the systems and institutions built around that belief. It can be experienced by anyone, and anyone is capable of having misogynistic beliefs and doing misogynistic things.

Bigotry is not about the target. It’s about the bigot, and what the bigot believes, and the way those bigoted beliefs have shaped our world.

I don’t care what race gender or sexuality you are, you were raised with racist, sexist, homophobic beliefs. Because it’s literally impossible not to be.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who are not punished by the narrative by the end of the story.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who win.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who make evil look fun and cool.

😈 You are allowed to make your fun, cool evil character the protagonist.

😈 You are allowed to glorify, romanticize and eroticize evil characters and villainous acts.

and sometimes they come back when you least expect it, years later, even, and there's this sudden rush of relief like there you are, there you are, even though you barely knew each other.

there's a strange kind of love to it. i don't know you and i want to hold your hand across miles and time zones and oceans. i can still see the imprint of you in this community you left. you don't think anyone will notice or care when you're gone, but we notice and we care and we wish you well.

Okay… this is my third fandom. I got most of my Mary Sue stories and PWP out of my system with Remington Steele.  In that fandom, I had two AWESOME betas. One was a retired copy editor out of New Jersey who took zero shit and my documents were COVERED in red ink.  I still drop commas and leave words out when I go too fast.  I have a new beta who is good at catching those things and I’m getting back on track.  My second beta was a librarian who only edited a few stories for me, but she was amazing at helping me tighten the prose. My story “Regency Steele” on my steeleholtingon website is still one of my two favorite stories and was the last one I wrote in that fandom. I took all of season five, broke out all the dialogue, and then rewrote a story from the dialogue alone. It was a ton of fun. 

As for my ideas … my muse, my dearest friend robot-rainstorm, lets me bean ideas off her at all hours. She’s amazing at motivation and characterization. She’s fantastic at not letting me get away with crap or cliches. When I write, I keep her in mind so that I stay true to my characters. 

Most of my stories start with a dream–I do a lot of lucid dreaming, which is awesome for storytelling and sucks for actual rest. But the dream will usually be only the tipping point.  Everything else springs from playing the “what if” game. 

In the case of Ice and Fire, I wondered–given the idea that Steve and Bucky had a decade-long loving relationship–what would happen if Bucky came back, and Steve was in a solid, loving relationship with Darcy?  The first scene in my head was the one where Steve was listening to Bucky rescue Darcy in the tunnels.  

As far as length, I think it’s about telling the story.  I’ve written plenty of short stories – my last one was 300 words or so.  Ice and Fire has such a huge cast of characters, and there is a whole family involved, so it goes beyond just our trio.  All that has to be addressed if I’m going to do it justice.  

Two best pieces of advice, one I received years ago and one from this past week:

1) Show, don’t tell.  It ALWAYS takes longer to write out the scene, tags, and dialogue than it does to do an info dump about how the character did this, this, and this.  I don’t need to tell you how a character feels, because she’s showing you in her actions and words. 

-cool witch feather trim for a “I’m totally prepared to curse your family for seven generations over minor slights” aesthetic.

- shimmering effects reminiscent of the cold and uncaring stars that won’t help that asshole now.

-corseted middle for my back pain, voluminous skirt because knowing if I actually have legs is a privilege

-FUCKING POCKETS HOLY SHIT, for carrying knives and small animal bones.