Writing What You Don't Know: The Assistants

I think they're a bit tied up with the immediate effects on their own countries, so yeah, point.

 

Okay, this is a question about appropriation/boundaries on subject matter, and also an art and not a writing question, so feel free to move it if there’s a better place.
1) Is anyone here from a religious tradition that uses the tall devotional candles with pictures of saints wrapped around the outside of the glass?
2) If so, would you say it’s inappropriate/disrespectful (for me, a white agnostic) to design a sincere but nonreligious wrap design for said candles? It’s not meant in a spirit of mockery, but the figure in question IS a baby hippo which feels a little inherently silly.

I’m not sure because I feel like ... fairly unworried most of the time about appropriating imagery from white Catholicism, I’m GENERALLY fine with being mildly sacrilegious, but it seems like this tradition is more common in Latin America/communities with ties there and I don’t want to be shitty along a race axis lmao.

 

Question, how shitty can I make a dystopia before it completely falls apart?

 

That's going to depend entirely on the ways in which it's shitty, but at a bare minimum enough people have to be far enough this side of not dying to continue to make all the stuff it needs to function. If you can't feed the Legions of Doom, you can't have Legions of Doom for very long before it turns into a different sort of dystopia.

 

@blue You may want to ask in the religion thread about that.

 

Good point.

 

My story idea's getting wildly out of hand and I think it needs splitting into parts. So far it's got one small-scale plot and tying that up leads into a bigger plot; would I be better to put an extra bit in and turn it into a trilogy, or leave it as two? I know published books do better in threes.

 

i mean if you're writing fanfic or an online serial (and a homestuck AU is...that...) it doesn't really matter how many parts there are? Like, Worm has a staggering like, 1.6mil words? so like. God wild.

 

Speaking of, an issue I'm having with my origfic idea; the plot kind of happens to the character rather than revolving around her decisions, which isn't a good way to do things. I'm not really sure how to fix that.

 

My current problem plot beats are 1) she's framed for a murder and forced to flee her hometown, which isn't really a decision she made, and 2) she falls in with a group of street kids who end up getting taken into the children's home, which again isn't a thing she decided to do.

 

So far the only goal I really know of for her is staying alive - she has to flee the town before she's hanged, so she has no chance to investigate. Her dad's the one who does that. Not much of a goal, which I think is my problem.

 

im co-writing a fun gay vampire romance but our protagonist is a young man from small-town, backwoods west virginia, which is a completely different background than mine. an ongoing point of this story is that he's a complete redneck and proud of it, so i want it to come off as authentic and not just 'whole bunch of inaccurate stereotypes shoved into the shape of a dude'. i know most readers would just see a guy who says 'tarnation!' and go 'yeah seems legit' but i'd definitely prefer for people who ARE from the area to be like 'oh hey this guy's actually written accurately and respectfully'.

are there any appalachians here who could give the fic a readthrough once we're done with it and let me know if i got the language or experiences wrong?

 

I'm native to the deep south and a redneck myself with a lot of family from Appalachia, so if nobody else pops up I'd be willing to do a looksee.

 

Question: anyone know where i might find 1600s seating etiquette and table manners for a nobles household in wallachia?

 

So in this fic I'm writing, one of the main characters is a trans dude who ended up getting pregnant twice, both accidental - once as a teen, once after being kidnapped and brainwashed by creepy future people to be used against his team; they were gross and cissexist and tried to reset his body to what they considered correct - and I'm not really sure where to start with dealing with this. The first one was actually his decision to go through with, but the second they took away his daughter, dumped her on the other parent, and wiped his memories, because they don't believe in abortion but they also don't want their tool compromised. He finds out much later when he meets his kid as an adult. So there's all sorts of gross violation and so on to go with the whole brainwashing angst (at least he got to kill a whole bunch of them) and also getting to know each other stuff and I don't know how he's going to handle that either.

He's grumpy, straightforward, very committed and loyal but untrusting, hates talking about or dealing with feelings but is committed enough to being a good father to do so with his kids, quite smart but prefers acting to thinking. He's got anxiety and bipolar disorders that he mostly had under control until his husband died, at which point he started to struggle with alcoholism.

 

I guess I got all wrapped up in describing things and forgot to actually ask. Oops.

I want to depict this whole mess in a way that rings true, I guess. I'm not trans, I've never been pregnant, I'm not parentally inclined, I haven't gone through anything like the kind of trauma he has. (Of course the whole brainwashing thing is also huge and can really only be approximated in the real world, what with our lack of fancy machines to stick people in...)

So I guess the question is: how do the people who have better perspectives on this than me think he would be coping?