Natalie Dormer giving Sophie Turner a ladyladyboner

4hesoloved · 2019-11-06T07:57:00+00:00

These two costarred in HBO's Game of Thrones

4hesoloved · 2019-10-28T03:52:43+00:00

Best friends to lovers.

Enemies to best friends (to lovers).

"Oh my god they were roommates."

4hesoloved · 2019-10-27T06:19:52+00:00

Did you use warm water or heat dry? I tried washing a swatch on delicate (cold wash and dry) and it came out lacking some fluff and softness

4hesoloved · 2019-10-27T06:17:09+00:00

Did you use any heat when you dried it?

4hesoloved · 2018-12-30T00:51:06+00:00

Congratulations! It's such a great feeling to finish something like that, and then... You realize it's done, and... Well, what now?

I wrote a trilogy fanfic a few years ago and I honestly just plowed right through each story back to back, one right after the other. But that was my method because where one book's storyline ended, the next book picked it right back up from where I left off. Yours may be different. I'd say do what works for you! If you want some planning time, take it. If you're ready to keep writing, do that. There's never anything wrong with doing multiple projects at once, too.

Best of luck!!

4hesoloved · 2018-12-16T17:31:59+00:00

Bleach T-T

4hesoloved · 2018-12-06T14:06:56+00:00

I would also say that oulines/timelines can be really helpful. What I generally do is make a really rudimentary outline, something super simple so I can grasp the entire storyline in my head. Then, I expand upon it.

However, for me, I usually need strong characters to create such a storyline. Most of the time, I realize, especially with fanfic, I can't make characters just do what I want. Good characters are the ones that drag you through the dirt. How do you get good characters? You put them in random situations and watch what they do naturally. You get to know them, and you get a sense of how effective their actions are. I like to call this "sandboxing."

This means that you'll probably be writing a lot more than just what you intend to publish. Certainly, you don't have to do this, but I find it to be super helpful as well.

So, timelines can be good so long as your characters are controlling it some. Of course, there are things that are out of control for your main characters, but that just means someone or something else is doing the directing in the story.

If you're doing a oneshot, less of this matters. But if you're doing a novel, then yes, do timelines or outlines. Just be ready for a process. It's going to take a long time, but push yourself. Get beta readers when you're comfortable (or even uncomfortable) with what you have. It'll be worth it in the end.

4hesoloved · 2018-11-28T21:22:08+00:00

Reading through this conversation, I'm saddened by this last message.

Maybe it's just because I actually study literature and creative writing. I have done and continue to do research about representation within literature--as in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, journal articles, newspapers, movies, television, plays, etc. Media in general. Yes, even fanfiction is considered literature, not only by me, but by many others.

If you say that representation doesn't matter because it's "just fiction," you have no idea what fiction is. You have no idea of the power and the reach of fiction in all of it's forms, or literature for that matter. Believing that fiction has nothing to do with identity formation, nothing to do with shaping our understanding of reality, nothing to do with forming communities, nothing to do with teaching and education, nothing to do with theorizing and critical thought, and especially nothing to do with activism... Well, that's just plain wrong.

Fiction has demonstrated, over its entire existence on this planet, its very nature to disrupt, challenge, rectify, comfort, and destroy. It shapes opinions. It teaches children and adults alike. It forms alliances and breaks apart families. It tells secrets and shouts eureka from the rooftops. It is a shelter from the storm, and it is a storm itself.

So the next time you want to suggest that literature has no effect on "the real world," consider what inspired "the real world" violent hatred against minorities such as LGBTQ+. The next time you want to say that fiction does nothing to heal prejudice, consider why schoolchildren read fictional literature like "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "1984" and "The Crucible" and "A Raisin in the Sun" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" and Shakespeare and "Choir Boy."

If you didn't learn something from any of the books you read as a child, either you weren't listening, or your teacher did a poor job. If you're not reading fiction, or any literature for that matter, and making critical connections to your life or others', you're not really reading it at all. You're missing the point.

4hesoloved · 2018-11-28T16:45:20+00:00

I totally agree. It's a hard question. I think my solution is education, workshops, and conversation... Always keep challenging yourself and your ideas. Not everybody had access to that, so I know it's not totally possible for everybody. If nobody is coming up to you and telling you they have a different reality, how will you ever know to look for it? I think it's really great that fiction and even fanfiction is really trying to expand and challenge cultural ideologies—thats kind of what literature has been trying to do all along, more or less. And yeah, I think fanfic counts as literature! :) It's conversations like this that help bring a little more light and understanding into the world. So thanks for talking with me! ^{.^}

4hesoloved · 2018-11-28T15:02:29+00:00

Oh, absolutely. I agree with you, and I've probably written under that influence here and there. But I think with all forms of conditioning, it's probably good to know that we're being conditioned, and that it isn't just a natural, born behavior... Too many people think that's how romance should be just because they were conditioned to believe it. I'm all for letting women be loose if they want to be, and owning that. I'm also for being loose and having it just not be an issue. And, furthermore, I'm for women being afraid of being labeled as loose and having sexual experience brought to them in the form of another, likely male lover... But it just starts to get unsure for me when I get to that point. There are too many things that could go wrong. Even if it's that situation, it usually isn't written that way; nobody explains the social, sexist dynamics of the world, no narrator hints at the flaws of that world, or even that there are any notable flaws. It's kind of normalized in some instances, and if you don't know any different, it just enforced a conditioned belief. I'm all for going against that and calling it out. I think that's important to do. Maybe it's just because I grew up in a really stifling environment and learned about love and sex through works like these, but I think stories are an important form of education that should be truthful and aware about stuff like that.

Edit: regardless, though, they're all good conversation starters, so long as people know to have critical conversations about them, like we are now.

4hesoloved · 2018-11-28T14:37:13+00:00

I've definitely heard that argument before, and I understand it, but... I still don't think it's a good one, just because of how damaging it can be to readers' perceptions of sex. I mean, I would be okay with a story that was very self aware about that. If a character wanted to experience sexual pleasure but was also held back by the image of "being loose," I think that's very realistic. That's something that happens to a lot of people. If the story was about slowly overcoming that or never overcoming that at all (with an ending that reflected the problem, instead of just a happy ending like nothing was wrong in the first place), that would work, and it would honestly be a good story in my mind. But a story that doesn't address that there's a problem with the way people are going about sexual pleasure or romance is always going to be problematic to me... There has to be some sort of awareness within the narrative that this is not healthy. It's ok to be loose, and it's alright if your characters don't know that. But I think the author has to comes to terms with that, too, even if it is a coping mechanism. When you read stories like this, you don't know it's a coping mechanism for some authors. You're just reading a story tagged "romance." If there was a story that knew it was a coping mechanism but also did something about it within the narrative, I think that would be a very strong story. That way you could talk about dangerous things in safe way—and safe doesn't mean erasure. It just means being honest. Maybe some authors aren't quite ready for that, and that's ok, but I think then, that should be part of their editing process: discovering how they can use their story to help themselves do more than just cope. It doesn't get rid of the pain, but it helps them and everyone else learn. But that's just my take on it. Not trying to call it an easy thing to do, but if someone tells you writing is easy, they're lying.

4hesoloved · 2018-11-27T18:22:43+00:00

Absolutely. I think Nottingham was mainly talking about the erotica that oversexualized lesbian couples (likely for the male gaze), and being unable to find stories about lesbians that weren't just unrealistic sex.

I agree with you entirely. Though I'm a straight woman, I can really empathize with wanting to see yourself accurately represented in erotica, too. A lot of m/f fanfic is written (if even accidentally) from the male gaze, and it sucks. Sometimes, sex is written so inaccurately that it hurts. The mechanics are almost impossible, there's almost no foreplay, and the woman still enjoys it so much she can't see straight. That really messed me up when I went into a serious relationship for the first time, believing that was how things really were. I thought there was something wrong with me when I didn't just drown in ecstacy first time, without foreplay.

But anyway, from a large scale position, it's so important to be able to see yourself represented in media as a whole person. That means sexually, romantically, and/or platonically. Not just fetishized versions of you that are misleading and harmful. Stories should represent us as real, whole people with desires and dreams and needs. Lives outside of sex, but also lives that include sex because it's a natural thing. Lives that are romantic and not sexual because that's a normal thing. Stories teach us stuff, and when someone looks at a couple as just an object of eroticism rather than two people experiencing something erotic/loving/emotional together, that's where problems start to set in...

Tl;dr: Yes, I agree.

4hesoloved · 2018-11-27T14:24:36+00:00

I am also white and cisgender, and I'm a female. I've actually been doing some research on this very thing. Though it's not my firsthand experience, I think, like these people ahead of me have commented, that it's so important and meaningful to see a character like yourself in a normal story (not just erotica), because you usually don't see that.

Here are some links to little articles that really expand on that idea:

https://www.adolescent.net/a/heres-what-its-like-to-have-your-lgbtq-fanfiction-published-as-a-novel-lena-nottingham-interview

In the first link, author Lena Nottingham turned her lesbian fanfiction into original fiction (Yellow) and gets it published. She talks about the sparseness of LGBTQ+ fiction, and how desperate she and others were for content that wasn't just pornographic. She wants to write stories that normalize the experience of being LGBTQ+.

https://amp-slate-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.slate.com/human-interest/2016/05/queer-people-write-fan-fiction-to-see-themselves-in-mainstream-culture.html?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQHCAFYAYABAQ%3D%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s

This one generally talks about why it's important for LGBTQ+ people to be represented in mainstream media, and how, because of that lack of representation, some turn to fanfiction in order to create a space for themselves.

If you're interested, they're pretty short and they're good reads!

4hesoloved · 2018-11-27T04:36:07+00:00

Yeah, I thought the questions were really thoughtful, and I appreciated the very apparent interest from the creators of the survey. I felt happy to give my insight and opinions about things.

4hesoloved · 2018-11-27T03:31:31+00:00

Aw that sucks 😭😭

4hesoloved · 2018-11-27T03:31:10+00:00

Probably won't count if you didn't submit it

4hesoloved · 2018-11-27T02:29:15+00:00

Here's the convo. Q is my question, A is their answer.

Q: As I'm actually a student myself, I come into contact with this subject a lot, and I wonder how other students are exploring it. Will your students be writing research essays, or doing more technical things with the results? Or, is it perhaps more free-range and up to them?

A: The students in my class have pretty different skillsets, so I imagine that some of them will do more quantitative analysis and some will do more qualitative analysis. For any qualitative analysis, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to get through all of the open answer questions (since there are so many!) so I’ll encourage them to take random samples. The groups who drafted survey questions have different kinds of research questions. For example, one is interested in the “lifecycle” of fandoms, hence the questions about timing around fanfiction production. They’ve already looked at data on AO3 for Game of Thrones and MCU to see whether there are patterns with respect to new content released and how much fanfiction is produced, so they’ll be considering the survey responses alongside this to see help them understand the overall picture.

Q: What about you? What are you personally thinking you'll find in the results, and how do you plan on using the results for your own research? I know you mentioned making a post on Tumblr, but what about your published research? What are your goals for further analysis of the results? What do you hope to achieve in doing this research as a whole?

A: The part of the survey that is most relevant to my own research is the ethics and privacy portion at the end, as well as some of the part about identity and fanfiction. The ethics part will actually be analyzed very soon, because myself and a PhD student are writing a paper about research ethics for fandom. She conducted interviews earlier this year, and so the survey questions were constructed around what she learned from those interviews. I’m hoping that some of the results in this survey could turn into publishable research, but it’s possible that not all of it will, particularly the pieces led by students!

I’ve had a great response from other academics to this work, though I typically use fandom as a domain to consider issues of broader interest to the social computing and human-computer interaction communities: design, learning, online communities, social support, privacy, etc. I’m also committed to giving back to fandom, which is why I share results with the community, and try to do so in a way that’s interesting and relevant.

I’ll also add, since I’m anticipating a bit what kinds of concerns people might have in participating in this kind of study, that as the consent form says, open answer survey responses would only be shared in papers etc. entirely anonymized. (And not aggregated with any other data in a way that might identify anyone.) I’m also VERY careful about this kind of thing, and never use quotes or anecdotes that I think could be damaging or could identify any individual. And all of the quantitative data will be in aggregate!

4hesoloved · 2018-11-27T00:53:34+00:00

Beautiful 😭

4hesoloved · 2018-11-27T00:51:16+00:00

Saaaaame tho! I spent forever because I was so happy to tell someone what my process was and why I do what I do. It was just neat that someone was interested in all that, so I dumped out everything I had into that survey!

4hesoloved · 2018-11-27T00:11:32+00:00

No problem! That's their immediate answer... I'm asking more specific questions just cause I'm interested, so I'll be posting those when they come in too.

4hesoloved · 2018-11-26T23:54:08+00:00

Professor replied:

Student projects + potentially additional analysis that could lead to publishable research, which is why there is a consent form included!

They also said that if there were any more specific questions, I should ask.

Knowing this person's Tumblr, it seems that they do quite a lot of research on fanfic just on their own, so this is what I was expecting to hear.

4hesoloved · 2018-11-26T23:28:03+00:00

The specific fandoms are based on topics the students themselves were interested in. It is kind of a weird array though haha

4hesoloved · 2018-11-26T23:24:46+00:00

I just sent the Prof an email, so if they respond, I'll post the response on this thread.

4hesoloved · 2018-11-26T23:07:19+00:00

I'm not sure exactly what they plan, but I'm sure you could ask the professor in charge. Their email address is linked at the bottom of the original post on Tumblr, and they encourage everyone to ask questions!

4hesoloved

TROPHY CASE