Wolf of the Woods

Curious minds inquire.

I've heard these exact arguments all my life about anti-depressants, a treatment that doesn't work for everybody but has definitely saved my life.

The truth is, the vast majority of us will never be independent. If picking up HRT from the pharmacy makes you a "slave" to the medical industry (a comparison that feels disrespectful to say the least) picking up milk and eggs makes you equally a "slave" to the grocery store.

Disability theorists have talked about how existing while disabled can destroy people's perception of being independent creatures who can survive without the collective. Despite how our food, water, sanitation, shelter, and education have always depended upon cooperative living, the reality that everyone is interdependent is invisibilized in a way that disablement breaks.

& like obviously I understand the counterargument here is that, like, keyword is hobbyist, nobody is claiming to be on par with the professionals or the greats (though, tbf, sometimes they are, read: "The Divine Comedy was fanfic"), but again this is less even a read about quality or me trying to be judgmental or critical about what these people are actually making, though I do think a lot of the "normalized" practices in hobbyist writing spaces are wildly detrimental to developing your skills as an artist, and more about the fact that these people themselves will just nakedly admit, over and over and over, that they don't really enjoy doing it? There are tens of thousands of "relatable" #writeblr posts on here that amount to "tfw you hate writing and it sucks and you don't do it." And it's like well. Idk man. I'm having fun. I'm writing because I enjoy writing, you know.

The post I saw about this suggested (and I believe they are correct) that part of the issue is that a lot of hobbyist writers are actually like, "story tellers," vaguely. They like a mix of various types of stories, movies and tv series and webcomics and video games and books, etc, and want to make their own characters and tell their own stories. As I've gotten more serious about writing novels to completion even the overwhelming monopoly that the OC industrial complex has on internet writing circles feels increasingly foreign to me because I'm so much more interested in crafting characters befitting of my stories than the other way around; a lot of people seem more interested in just developing characters, vague world-building concepts, story beats and tropes that appeal to them, than really wanting to write a story. This isn't me being mean, these posts will very often admit to it! There is a massive plethora of posts that are like "when you wanna read about your OCxOC ship but you're the only one that can write it 💔" and things of the like. But writing is probably objectively the creative medium that has the lowest barrier for entry. Everyone on tumblr to make these posts will have access to a word processor or pencil and paper. There's a much larger amount of resources and a way higher skill level necessary to, say, make your own movie, or video game, or even webcomic. But they don't really seem to enjoy it on its own at all. Tbh their time probably really would probably be better spent, like, learning to draw comics, or learning to code in Python to start making their own VN, or learning to model in Blender or animate in Flash, I think it's just a much more daunting undertaking than putting words on a page.