What in the world

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

And this is fine. Move on past it and edit what you wrote.

Then write some more crap.

My cousin in Thoth, this is how it goes. This is how it will always go. Even when you become a career writer—thirty, forty, fifty novels along—it will still be crap when it first comes out.

AND THIS IS OKAY. The essential imperfection of the Universe makes it impossible for your initial emission to be perfect either.

(And if you think it is... wait till your betas or your copyeditor get at it.) :)

Hey y'all! So I know I haven't posted much lately BUT college has been crazy. And related to that, for one of my classes I'm doing a study on the relationship between time within the greater fandom community and understanding of fanfiction-related jargon. Below I have the link to the survey which will just have three multiple choice questions relating to your relationship to fandom and then a list of 15 terms to define if you know them. 

Please reblog this or otherwise share the survey link with anyone you think might be interested so I can have as large of a sample size as possible for this. The form will be open until April 24th. 

Thank you all so much! 

(and yes, I will post the data when I get it all collected for all you fellow nerds)

A/N - Author's Note

Anti (as in "antishipper") - one who is against proshippers/the "ship and let ship" mentality [for anyone who took the survey, I'm being very broad with this definition and as long as it has the gist I'll count it as correct, don't worry]

AU - Alternate Universe

Beta (as used in "No Beta We Die Like [character]"/"Yes Beta We Live Like [character]") - Beta reader

Citrus Scale (orange, lime, lemon, grapefruit) - Scale used for noting the explicitness of smut in a given work

DD:DNE - Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

Fanon - Fan canon

OC - Original character

OOC - Out of Character

OTP - One True Pairing

PWP - Porn Without Plot/Plot? What Plot?

RPF - Real Person Fiction

Slashfic - Gay fanfiction

WIP - Work In Progress

Y/N - Your Name

If you got ramble-y in the definitions, that's okay, as long as I can tell you know what it means.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE (info)!

Given the success of this, like I've said a few times I plan to do a larger version over the summer with more terms and being more polished. But in case it wasn't obvious by the survey being a college project (and me going a bit too young with the age ranges), I am a bit of a youngin' so to make suggestions more easy, below you will find another survey where you can-

Give up to 10 fanfiction jargon terms that you think should be added

Suggest the removal of any of the 15 above terms (with an explanation of why)

Provide any other critiques of the original survey you think should be addressed for a longer version

This one will be open for an indeterminate amount of time but since it's not for a college project I won't have time constraints so that's good lmao.

ALSO: From now on any info for this stuff will be kept on my new sideblog @fandom-data-enjoyer

Thank you again to anyone who participated in the survey, thanks in advance to anyone who participates in this, and I hope that y'all will enjoy the eventual longer version!

This is really exciting, linguistically speaking.

Because it’s not true that Tumblr never uses punctuation. But it is true that lack of punctuation has become, itself, a form of punctuation. On Tumblr the lack of punctuation in multisentence-long posts creates the function of rhetorical speech, or speech that is not intended to have an answer, usually in the form of a question. Consider the following two potential posts. Each individual line should be taken as a post:

ugh is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use like god put that back we have to pay for that stuff

Ugh. Is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use? Like god, put that back. We have to pay for that stuff.

In your head, those two potential posts sound totally different. In the first one I’m ranting about work, and this requires no answer. The second may actually engage you to give an answer about hoarding sauce packets. And if you answer the first post, you will likely do so in the same style. 

Here’s what makes this exciting: the English language has no actual punctuation for rhetorical speech–that is, there are no special marks that specifically indicate “this speech is in the abstract, and requires no answer.” Not only that, it never has. The first written record of English (actually proto-English, predating even Old English) dates to the 400s CE, so we’re talking about 1600 years of having absolutely no marker whatsoever for rhetorical speech.

A group of teens and young adults on a blogging website literally reshaped a deficit a millennium and a half old in our language to fit their language needs. More! This group has agreed on a more or less universal standard for these new rules, which fits the definition of “language.” Which is to say Tumblr English is its own actual, real, separate dialect of the English language, and because it is spoken by people worldwide who have introduced concepts from their own languages into it, it may qualify as a written form of pidgin. 

The word "unicorne" was first reanalyzed as "une icorne"

The definite article was then added, making it "l'icorne"

A fun one in Arabic is the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Quite understandably, Arabic speakers heard the initial "Al" and thought "ah yes, the ubiquitous definite article" and Alexandria became al-’Iskandariyya.

In the opposite direction, Spanish adopted hundreds of Arabic words during the Middle Ages due to Andalusian/Islamic influence, and there are very few Spanish words that start with al- that aren't of Arabic origin (and in fact, many words that start with A without being followed by an L, as in about half of cases in Arabic the L in "al-" is elided).

Reanalysis occurs in many other places besides article-noun combos, of course, but it's an extremely common case.

So, you may or may not know that x-rays were discovered by a guy called Röntgen (or Roentgen, though the ö is the proper spelling). Because of that, they're called "Röntgen rays" in German. Now, the thing is that in the German, the infinitive of a verb is always formed with an -en at the, so, for example, "to run" is "rennen" or "to sleep" is "schlafen." And because of that, it just so happened that the verb for performing x-rays became... "röntgen."

we uuuuh are also usually left alone on social media because so few people know portuguese outside of brazil (compared to, say, english or spanish). so we just. say shit thinking none one will see. like this one time someone tweeted to lil nas x "lil nas x break into my house and eat the asshole of my entire family".

"I must hold this man."

The expression he gave me (horror) (concern) (revulsion) made me realize this sort of thing is maybe not normal to say to real people and so I quickly laughed and said haha you know, he's just so cute, I hope I get the chance to meet him soon.

Not only has he never let me meet his son, he began gradually talking to me less and less. if I asked about his son he said something bland like you know haha it's a lot of work, and then changes the subject.

Before this, he had seemed amenable to letting me meet his wife and son and perhaps eventually having me help out, maybe babysit now and then. But the fear and concern on his face whenever the subject comes up now (which is rare, because he almost never speaks to me anymore, and not just because he's too busy - he still talks to his other friends) makes me suspect that my tumblr accent has convinced my friend that I have an inappropriate, possibly even sexual, interest in his toddler. (Note: I most certainly do not. I just thought the little dude was cute and wanted to help. And I said it in a tumblr way and apparently ruined my friend's entire perception of me forever.)

"how dare you say we piss on the poor" in response to someone misinterpreting your post

"_ isnt gonna fuck you" for suck up behavior

"woah. should we tell everyone? should we throw a party?" for who the fuck cares

"and what if the world was made of pudding" for when would this ever matter.

"and sharks are smooth both ways" for a group of people heatedly arguing with 1 guy who is fucking with them all

“30-50 wild hogs” for someone making ABSURD excuses for violence.

“what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament” for how do you know that without being a part of it.

“anyone in this thread smoke weed” for the shit you people are saying is so off topic this might as well be a general discussion forum

“dogs are boys and cats are girls” for ooh ur mindset did not grow past 4th grade, huh

“color theory in a childrens hospital” for bending over backwards to not agree that YEA, that thing Came Off Weird

“you are a tar pit” for someone finding any reason to respond with outrage.

“is the __ in the room with us right now?” for I Don’t Think That’s Real.

“bean soup? im allergic to beans!” for ik this doesn’t work for you, but that’s not a flaw. not everything can be for you.

“The fact that he can’t do this consistently is a sign of an underlying problem or disability.”

This is a big one. And once they get what I’m saying, it makes their brains light up. Ahhh!, they think, they can’t do it all the time and that’s how I know something is wrong with them!! (Ugh.)

“If she can do this in some situations but not others, there is something about the situation that is impeding her.”

In other words, they can blame the problem on something else. If a kid I represent can do this task at school, then I insinuate that the parents are perhaps not giving the child the environment they need (or if I really like the parents, that school is draining the kid’s energy to zero.) if they can do it at home but not school, blame it on bullies, ignorant teachers, or (if feeling generous) the poor underpaid staff who’s just trying their best under a mountain of work.

“He only manages this when (well rested, medicated, fed, hasn’t gone to school yet, isn’t emotionally distressed, etc). It sounds like ensuring consistency in (rest, medication, etc) is what we’re really trying to do.”

Again, shifting the narrative from Those Lazy Kids to Someone Else’s Fault, this time with overtones of Untreated Medical Problem. Perhaps add in a touch of “the more he picks up these foundational skills, the easier it will get” to make them feel like progress is being made.

“Look how hard she worked to get this done (one time)!”

Related: “He’s made so much progress!”

Able-bodied people love shifting goalposts. But this also reframes the problem centering effort and not success, which is tbh the way it should be judged.

Overall, they can be trained… you just have to remind them in subtle ways that their own skills are also context-dependent and support-dependent. People who run marathons can’t run a marathon every day. Once able bodied people shift into that mindset, the dividends start paying off.

Side note but I also do want to say: the attitude in OP’s post always seems to come along with the idea that people can’t learn big new skills. Like, doing something is proof that you could do it all along, not that something was Learned.

I found this when I do hard work at improving something like painting, when I do a lot of practice and show people they’re like “wow I had no idea you could do that!” lol I couldn’t. Girl this is new. “No way!!!” Yes way and you can learn it too.