You may have noticed how Alice and Betty never did get together before the comic ended and how Alice is kind of COMPLETELY in love with an actual ship instead.

I think audiences become accustomed to the idea that if they identify with a certain character, and that character spends enough time trying to romantically win over another character, they will be rewarded with that character’s love. This is such a pervasive thing in so much of our media, it’s rare to see a character we like end up alone at the end of a story.

Which to me is 1: boring as hell and 2: plays into real life ideas that real life people are entitled to real life other people just because they like them and are nice to them.  We’re all the heroes of our own stories, and being told over and over that the hero “gets the girl” so to speak, it’s no wonder people get downright angry when their affections are not returned. I know it’s not caused by media alone, and is more of an entire cultural system that’s been going for centuries and the media is merely a feedback loop/ method of perpetuation.

I know one small webcomic doesn’t really change that. But it just didn’t feel right to me to play into it without subverting it. As I was writing it, while I originally intended it to be a lot of comedic teasing before they eventually got together, the idea became less and less appealing to me. Alice was headed towards becoming a Nice Guy TM. Pining for this girl she’d put on a pedestal, never actually making a move, getting upset when Betty dated other women. And Betty just wasn’t interested in Alice, even though it “made sense” for them to get together. Betty might not have had good luck with the other girls she fell for, but that’s who she was attracted to. It didn’t really go completely over into Nice Guy territory, but I felt kind of weird when I realized that’s where things were headed, to where the audience is expecting it because we’ve all been taught that being nice to someone means you’re entitled to them.

When I decided not to have them get together, I wondered what then was the point of all the back and forth teasing that it would happen. I’m part of this culture, too, that says X + Y = Z, so if I don’t do Z, what was the point of mentioning X + Y at all? So many writerly advice essays I’ve read talk about not including a subplot if it doesn’t go anywhere. But I also like science, and if a theory says X + Y = Z, and you find a way in which X + Y = Q, you absolutely need to mention it. And writing advice is never set in stone.

It’s no secret that I’m not personally a fan of shipping. To me, I feel like a Nice Guy thinking that my own ideas of who belongs together are more important than the characters’ desires, or at least more important than the writers’. I know that’s not why everyone ships, but that’s what it makes me feel like when I think about shipping. I like characters to feel autonomous, I like characters with agency. I can wonder what it would be like if two characters got together, but demanding that they do, getting upset that they don’t, ignoring all the parts where the characters express who they do and don’t like because I think I know better than them makes me feel personally icky, makes me feel like I’m taking away their agency.

This is in no way meant to say that anyone who wanted Alice and Betty to get together was in any way bad. Of course you aren’t. I know it’s how many others choose to enjoy a story, and I did tease it rather heavily. But I think we take so much for granted in our stories, and I wanted to examine a piece of it.

~~~personal opinions on a story I wrote~~~

sisterwolf:

Knife thrower’s assistant

Lately I’ve been working again on my story about the circus fortune teller and her ghost knife-throwing sister and this is so perfect for helping me visualize things. Yay! (Almost 20,000 words into this novel, holy cow!)

jetpackexhaust:

I’m writing down writing tips down because obviously that’s what you’d do with those. And in the hope that I’ll remember them instead of going through the whole process every 72 hours. 

1. I haven’t suddenly lost the ability to think, write, or feel joy, I just haven’t eaten in 20 hours.

2. Leaving the house for ten minutes will fill my head with more words than continuing to bath it off the desk for another three hours. 

3. Write that thing you want to write, it’ll help with all those things you have to write.

4. All you ever have to do is start.

Ah, all of these! Especially #1. I need a fridge by my work desk.

meatyyogurt:

Jackie tries to go to the film shoot, but her concern for Tom brings her back to Middleville. Or it might have been that she wasn’t all that into the shoot anyway.

Got a bit distracted from updating the Meaty Yogurt tumblr, but it’s all caught up now. Tom’s birthmother drama collides with Jackie’s acting drama. Drama drama drama.

Both YU+ME and Meaty Yogurt star main characters who are fairly self-centered, and the story gets told from their perspective to reenforce that. But the non-main characters always have their own stories going on, and I never forget that, and I like including chapter like this to show that these little universes I’m creating don’t revolve around Jackie or Fiona.

If you like this, there’s more to be found at MeatyYogurt.com.

jetbunny:

Dr. Zagar coughed profusely, specks of acid phlegm spattering the stone before him as his mouth tendrils flapped against his forejaw. His human associate, Dr. Woodfield, patted him on the carapace reassuringly.

“We’re close, Professor. We’re so close. You’ll live to see your dream come true.”…

It’s long, but rewarding.

#26: Stop writing about writers. Just get a blog like a normal person.

I am learning about trains!

bigbigtruck:

austinkleon:

Novel-writing process flowchart by Maureen McHugh

currently at point 4

I think I’m at point 5 but it’s gonna turn out I’m only at point 3 or 4 and the Dark Night of the Soul is still to come. Who said I could write? *hides under bed with wine and gameboy*

projectchancecomic:

A few days ago, I said on Twitter that I wanted to write a “strong, atypical” young woman as the lead for this story. By “atypical” I mean that I will not be writing a straight, white, middle-class heroine. There’s nothing inherently wrong with straight, white, middle-class characters; they’re…

Hello there! I stumbled upon your work quite a while ago, and you are by far one of my faourite artists. Thank you, Megan, for doing what you do.Never stop being awesome.

Now, this question concerns both writing and drawing. It would be all to convenient to ask you “how did you learn to draw?” or “who taught you to write like that?”, but that might just be the case.

At the moment of typing this I can’t write to save my life, nor can I draw. The obvious solution to this would be to write and read/practice a lot, but that’s not very specific now, is it?
What I (and wager that most young “artists”) lack is guidance(and in this particular case, creativity.but that you can’t teach,sadly). Thus, I turn my hopes to the artist I most admire. To be fair, I ask you to “set the course” if you will, because the advice that i’ll (hopefully) recieve from you will influence from now on. If you provide a starting point, there’s no way failure could creep in.

Ok, enough of that. I wish you all the good in the world. Keep up the good work, remain awesome and take care.

—-

Read just as much (actually, more) than you write. Read all kinds of things. Figure out what you love about your favorite stories. How they’re structured, what types of language and word choices to use, how to describe things, how the characters develop.

Then you have the awkward stage where you’re copycat writing. It’s okay. All creativity is derivative in some way. There is no parthenogenesis for ideas, they evolve from those who come before us. A lot of us learn to write and draw by making terrible Mary Sue stories that are basically rip offs our of favorite comics and books, that our friends will find a decade later and laugh hysterically at. (That’s not just me, right?) Don’t get stuck at this stage, but realize the purpose it serves. It’s kind of like being a teenager. Really awkward, trying to figure yourself out, eventually you grow out of it.

And then, when you do grow out of it, you’ll be at a point where you’ve figured yourself out. Who you are, what you want to write, and how you want to write it. You’ll retain pieces of inspiration from those stories you love, but you’ll have evolved enough to have developed your own style. You won’t even notice that you’ve got your own style, but other people will.

By the time you reach that point, you’ll pretty much be off and running. Oh, you’ll still have plenty of room for improvement, but you’ll know what things need to be improved and how best to grow your own individual talent.

Go forth, my child, and read!