A List Of Things Steve Rogers Would Historically Be Unfamiliar with:

I miss RPing. I had so many OCs and now I keep trying to slot them into other things to keep writing about them. Thankfully I did more than just hair and eye color (and using random pics for their "portraits"), but it's hard taking them out of the original setting, even if I know how they'd react to a given situation.

OC RANT!

In my earlier years, we’re talking about 2012/2013 years era, of RPING (RolePlaying) , writing, and making INSANE AMOUNTS OF OCS (I gave up trying to downsize), it seems that all I did was hair color, eye color, and outfits.

I wish more people would critique books this way. I'm tired of blurbs being "a tour de force" and "next great American novel". I want to know if it's worth reading for *me*, not some vague audience. I'm glad authors can get praise like that and they deserve it (if it's real), but it tells me nothing as a potential reader.

I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got paid to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.

Update: This is literally just a thought exercise to help you be more intentional with how you critique media. I'm not enforcing this as some divine rule that must be followed any time you have an opinion on fiction, and I'm definitely not saying that you have to structure every single sentence in a review to contain zero negative phrases. I'm just saying that I repurposed a rule we had at that specific reviewer to be a helpful tool to check myself when writing critiques now. If you don't want to use the tool, literally no one (especially not me) can or wants to force you to use it. As with all advice, it is a totally reasonable and normal thing to not have use for every piece of it that exists from random strangers on the internet. Use it to whatever extent it helps you or not at all.

I don't know what to do. I was going through old files on my computer and I found a bunch of stories from when I was still roleplaying. I've got documents that are 35K words or more, but I don't know what to do with them. There's a lot of context missing because I made a whole culture to go along with the characters and I'm not sure anyone else will find it interesting. But I just spent two hours today engrossed in a story I wrote over ten years ago and I kinda wish I could rewrite it.

About once a year I revisit Event Horizon. I love this movie, but each time is for a different reason. Sometimes because it's a ridiculous horror. Sometimes because it's a great horror. Because I love the actors in it. Because the Lewis and Clark's bridge set was NOT designed with the approach to the Event Horizon in mind.

This last time when I watched it I noticed the cinematography. This movie was definitely written and budgeted to be a crappy summer film, yet there was a beautifully effective dolly zoom when Weir was in the tunnels. It helped demarcate the line between "this ship is old and malfunctioning" and "this ship is haunted". It set the tone for the rest of the visions the crew experienced. I've tried for years to recapture the terror in that scene.

I've tried not to internalize these formulas, but I find that it's simply too exhausting to try to market my work afterward. Perhaps I should just self-publish and be happy if someone stumbles across my work and buys it.

I write because I like writing. Because I think these stories should be told. These characters are real people to me.

But is it wrong to want to make a living from your work?

When Did Books Become So... Formulaic? Part 1

When did books start feeling like they had to follow a set formula to be considered “good”? When did writing become less about creative expression and more about ticking off boxes—engaging opening, structured setting, the “right” pacing? Everywhere you turn, someone is telling you how to write a book, how to make it “marketable,” how to fit it into a mold that guarantees an audience. And I get it. I’ve internalized it too.

But what even is writing? Shouldn’t it be art? Shouldn’t it be free? Shouldn’t a book be a canvas where words don’t have to march neatly in line but can sprawl, dance, or drip like paint? Who says the text has to be left-aligned? What if a story unfolded in a spiral, or if every chapter was a shape, a rhythm, a feeling? What if the structure itself was part of the message, not just a vessel to deliver a pre-approved plot?

And the thing is—people are doing this. There are writers experimenting, bending form, breaking rules, making books that are more than just books. But where are they? Why aren’t they the ones being given the biggest platforms? Why do the same kinds of books, the same kinds of authors, the same familiar beats keep getting pushed forward while boundary-pushing works are dismissed as “niche” or “too risky”?

Traditional publishing doesn’t seem to make space for them. If they want to be seen, they have to carve their own path, fund themselves, market themselves, do everything alone. And that can be exhausting. It can drain the passion out of something that was once pure expression. It can force people to conform just to survive.

So I guess my question is—why? Why do we act like writing is a machine instead of an art form? Why do we reward the safe and familiar while sidelining the bold and visionary? And what would books look like if we truly let them be free?

Let's discuss this...

I've been thinking about this and I got a lot of rambling posts on this topic.

Cuz it hit me like powe

It me.

Me to myself: no, you can't write something new, you're supposed to be working on WIP! *gestures to sad WIP in the corner*

Also me: okay, fine, I won't write something new. *starts scrolling on social media* Happy?

This is so endearing that I'd write him some Scotty smut if he were still alive.

In case anyone wanted; James Doohan knew about all the Spirk porn, and in fact wanted a copy for himself. He also seemed rather bored by the fact he was only ever drawn with women. Someone draw him some Scotty yaoi asap!

I was looking at D&D spells today and I realized how much of a menace I'd be if I get isekai'd and returned. Fireball has limited uses in the Real World. Otto's Irresistible Dance? The possibilities are endless.

I should start a blog called "How to Do Things Wrong". People can watch I do as much research as my attention span will let me do that day and then witness my anxiety foil all my preparations.

(Sponsored by the fact that it took me an hour to fill out a form that asked me to describe me and my work.)

I used to feel bad about writing paragraphs on completely different pages and trying to show where they are supposed to go, but I will never feel bad about the legibility of my drafts ever again!

you don't need to have cute handwriting girl, Dostoevsky's manuscript drafts looked like this

left- draft of Demons. right- draft of The Brothers Karamazov