“what that mouth do” gnaw on bone and chew through ligaments

I know I’m not the first person to say this but fandom’s seeming need to shove any character dynamic into some kind of familial role (siblings, father-son, mother-daughter etc) increasingly feels just as stifling and dismissive of platonic love as making every relationship romantic does.

I dunno man do you view all of your close friends as siblings cause I sure don’t. and I definitely don’t think of them as parents

like "found family" is called that because it is a group of people that you love as fiercely and unconditionally as society dictates you should love your family. not because everyone can literally fit neatly into the role of mother-father-children.

if I were to be really cynical l'd say an underlying reason behind this is just to make sure no one ships a ship that you dislike. if you can be loud enough about them being "siblings" for it to become fanon, then shipping them romantically becomes icky and weird and "basically pseudo incest" even if there's nothing in the source material to back those feelings up

the thing about d/s is that for virtually any ship i can be sold on either character in either role. arguments about whether a given character could or would dom are virtually always deeply silly and tend, when they lean into the idea that a given character could never dom because they're just too weak-willed, incompetent, naive, or helpless, to be the product of unexamined biases percolating up.

would this character dom (or sub) is almost never an interesting question. how would this character dom (or sub) is much more interesting. what do they get out of it? how do they feel about it? how experienced are they? are they confident or awkward? what kinks do they enjoy? what are their limits and how do they communicate them? what is the dynamic with their partner like? does it shift in the bedroom, or does it stay the same? et cetera. the same as any good erotica, it's got to be about these specific people, not faceless automatons filling the prescribed roles, or it's boring

guy who posts abt his ocs like they are a very popular character that everyone has common knowledge about

every time people make a character go through severe life-altering physical injuries and then decide that they’re still able-bodied and look and act completely unaffected after the fact i want to throw tomatoes at my screen

writing advice for characters with a missing eye: dear God does losing an eyes function fuck up your neck. Ever since mine crapped out I've been slowly and unconsciously shifting towards holding my head at an angle to put the good eye closer to the center. and human necks. are not meant to accommodate that sorta thing.

other things I'm bitching about but which could still be useful as writing advice for 1 eyed characters:

2. they're going to favor their sighted side, obviously, but it doesn't always manifest in the way you think. when I walk down a hall I walk much closer to the wall on my sighted side than on my blind side. which is the opposite of how it might seem logical to do that bc it means the world at large is on your bad side, but the reason is I can't fucking See the wall if it's right next to me in the blind side and I end up knocking into it.

3. door frames and poles are my enemy. If your character is smart this will not be a problem but for me it is. I am King of walking into shit I could absolutely see but couldn't tell how far away from me it was. on this note, their blind side hand is getting bashed into every jutting out thing in a 5 mile radius.

4. having 0 depth perception is less of a big deal than you'd think it is. Especially with driving. I've become a Much safer and more wary driver because I can't tell how far the other cars are from me. however I fucking suck at parking now. because I can't tell how far the lines are from me either.

5. you know how people who lose limbs get phantom pains? that happens with eyes too but like. phantom sights. for me it's like. a lot of bugs. like every so often my brain will just put something suddenly skittering beside me there. hate that.

6. it is completely possible to "get stuck" somewhere because your ability to tell how wide a space is is just Gone. shopping isles especially where bumping something or Someone is matter of embarrassment or potentially breaking something. it can be legitimately paralyzing and also irritate everyone around you because they can tell there is Plenty of space for you to get your cart through even if you can't.

7. if the eye is still in their skull it can still be the normal kind of painful. Glares off of shiny surfaces causing weird sharp pains you can't figure out the cause of are genuinely one of gods greatest tests of my patience.

I too am missing my eye and have advice. But first:

OP I've been missing my eye for 18 years and because of you I'm just now noticing that my neck does in fact list left. Now I will live with that knowledge forever.

1) depth perception issues are more severe if you lose the eye on the same side as your dominant hand. I lost my left eye and am right handed, and only have problems with close-up things. Like pouring water or threading a needle. Sometimes putting the pump in for gas. Walking down stairs is a huge problem I have (walking up is fine), but unlike OP I don't have issues with doorways. Depth perception is different for everyone

2) I've completely lost my eye and need to wear eye patches, no fake eye here. People like me do still rub their "eyes." We also usually say "eyes" and "contacts." Except for comedic effect

3) the people that are in your life with regularity just... forget you have only one eye. Even if, like me, you wear obvious eye patches. This means they get confused when people asked what happened. They'll walk on your blind side and get snippy when you run into them. When my sister learned how to cross her eyes she ask me if I could do it, and it took so much coaching for her understand why my answer was no, and that I would not be "just trying." So don't write everyone around them constantly noticing. Most people don't

Also in the blind/missing an eye club for the past 5 years. I was cross dominant, as in right handed but my left eye was my main looking eye, and i lost that one.

Little experiences 1) In my daily life I've gotten so used to wearing an eyepatch (its part of my glasses) that when people ask what happened it trips me up because I forgor that it's a thing until it causes issues 2) Cashiers who try to hand me the items I bought/the receipt is the bane of my life, pleaaaaase just put them on a surface and not embarrass me because I can't tell where in 3d space your hand is and I miss grabbing stuff 3) If I'm walking with someone and they end up on my blind side, and don't get why I want them on the side I can see them on?? 4) BUSHES AND TREES when I'm walking and at last second I realise I'm walking into a plant and flinch hard when I finally see there's a thing in my face 4.5) Also poles and doorframes suck 5) I've gotten really bad at judging the width of spaces, which because anxiety I go on the side of caution, and asking people to move so I can get past, when to them they can tell there's enough space, is really embarrassing. 6) I think my night vision is a lot worse? Having only one eye so you get half the light, so walking in the dark is really tricky. But maybe I had bad night vision before and didn't notice. 7) Trying to play any game where you need to catch something, I just get hit in the face. but I'm still very good at throwing somehow. 8) When I'm cycling and need to check stuff on my blind side/behind me on that side, it's really hard to turn my head that much whilst balancing the bike im riding, and have crashed at least twice because of this.

“this character should kill their abuser” i agree. unfortunately they wouldn’t do that.

like it feels like “some people can have complex feelings about or even love their abusers” is tough for a lot of people to grasp because they’d rather have some kind of easy karmic retribution toward a character at the hands of their victims. which i sympathize with. but sometimes they just wouldn’t do that, you know?

Metamorphosis

i might elaborate later but fanfic replies literally develop writer’s metacognition and make them better writers

so, Metacognition is the practice of thinking about thinking or identifying one’s cognitive process . in essence, metacognition is understanding how you prepare for academic challenges, exams, or tasks, and then being able to reflect on whether you did well, you prepared adequately, and what was most effective. in a writing setting, this type of self-awareness helps you transfer skills in writing, say, fanfiction into writing academically, competitively and professionally. 

here’s an article from brown university on the subject i’ll discuss further. there are 3 parts of practicing metacognition identified in this article: planning, monitoring, and evaluation. how might this look like for a fanfic writer? 

planning: asking oneself ‘what is my goal?’ ‘what strategies should i use to meet that goal?’ ‘how much time/length do i need to meet my goal?’. so maybe my goal is to write a meet cute where two characters kiss. i’ll need to use a perspective, an upbeat tone, and forward characterization to do this. it’ll probably take 5000 words and two days to write. 

monitoring: asking oneself: is my story making sense? am i reaching my goal, or do i need to summarize more succinctly to keep it to 5k? maybe you started with a lot of exposition and now you’re 6k in and the characters haven’t met yet. what went wrong/changed? is it ok that it changed or did you not realize it got away from you? what now? 

evaluation: asking oneself: did i reach my goal? was it effective? what would i change next time? 

this is where comments come in

it is incredibly difficult to evaluate yourself. comments like “i love this!” actually do begin to touch on the evaluation step of metacognition. it means, in general, the writer is on the right track. comments like “i loved the dialogue between x and y” or “the emotions of this section really hit me” begin to answer the questions of was it effective, did i reach my goal and conversely answer what would i change next time (by adding more of whatever was specified as working well). HYPER SPECIFIC comments, like analyzing the story between the lines or pasting in a line that you really liked and explaining why, is like jet fuel for the metacognition process and i’m not exaggerating. specifically pointing out what was effective and why is incredibly useful 

i can straight up credit my writing style to all of my friends and readers who have given incredibly detailed comments. when i found a community who gave feedback like that, my writing improved a thousand times faster than before. so! i guess what i’m saying is give feedback! it goes so much further than you realize!

This is exactly the post I was thinking about when I wrote that recent post about how fanfic authors develop as authors by adapting to what they perceive as successful with their audience -- based on positive feedback.

Feedback absolutely does not need to be "critical" to help an author improve, and anyone who insists that fanfic authors need negative feedback or they'll never grow is. Well. To start with, incorrect.

youre never alone. bacteria