For The WIP Guessing Game: Start

For the WIP guessing game: start

She'd sat patiently and listened to Degan tipsily explain everything they had left to do, the human trials she wanted to start - 'There are just so many things we don't know yet!' blubbered with the kind of excitement that she knew only came from someone who was eager for it, hungry for it.

This is everything to me.

WIP

Jackson kids: pro skater 3

I would assume a lot of this is because many fanfic writers for the fandom are probably younger, themselves, and feel more comfortable writing a female perspective from someone closer to their own age - and I don't begrudge them that.

Most people who follow me know that my main project in the fandom is a Joel / OC story, where he has an age gap with said OC. I don't go out of my way to point that out - because of the same reasons listed above; I don't think Joel would be particularly comfortable dating someone around the same age as Sarah, if he thought about it too hard. (That said, my OC is a little older than Sarah would have been, and he doesn't meet her until she's nearly forty - I personally don't like to read age gap stories where there is a clear power imbalance, but my OC is a whole-ass adult with a lifetime of experience behind her, and I don't consider that to be quite the same thing.)

I have a lot of reasons for why I made her the age I did, and the people who read my fics know why that is - her age is relevant to the plot. But that's a subject for another post.

But I will also say this: the point of fanfiction is not to just write things that are canon-compliant. Would canon Joel date a twenty-year-old? (Or even fuck one?) That is...unlikely. But I also don't see the majority of those fic writers straining to make the argument that their fics are meant to be canon-compliant, or believable in terms of canon. It's fanfiction - we change things, we write the things we want to see, and we don't always take it super seriously.

I don't like "daddy" smut fics, I don't like fics where Joel chases after barely-legal manic pixie dream girls, I don't like non-con or dark! Joel non-con fics, so I just...don't read them. My Discord friends know I am honestly a h8r about so many of the smut tropes that exist in this fandom, they can vouch for how much I agree with your opinions about a lot of this, lmao, but at the same time I'm not going to dictate how other people choose to write their stories, you know? My own series isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I don't expect it to be.

Do I wish there were more fics that approached Joel finding a partner in a more nuanced and believable way? Sure. And if you do, too, you should try to write one. (General "you," btw, not calling anyone out, lmao.)

I hope the girls who write for joel miller knows that what they write it's just a personal portrait of the character and don't think that canon!joel would really do everything they read, because there's no way he would date a girl younger/the same age as his kids. And no, he wouldn't let any partner call him daddy, the word for him must have a very deep meaning for him, if not traumatic.

.

I always end up cutting scenes out if I don't think they're working - it's why I have a sixty page document just full of cut scenes. I never throw anything away - and sometimes I am able to fit things in at a later time, so I'm glad for that!

One of the best writing advice I have gotten in all the months I have been writing is "if you can't go anywhere from a sentence, the problem isn't in you, it's in the last sentence." and I'm mad because it works so well and barely anyone talks about it. If you're stuck at a line, go back. Backspace those last two lines and write it from another angle or take it to some other route. You're stuck because you thought up to that exact sentence and nothing after that. Well, delete that sentence, make your brain think because the dead end is gone. It has worked wonders for me for so long it's unreal

Not to be all “oh, woe is me, the agonies,” but oh, woe is me, the agonies.

Rules: Post your Lock Screen, wallpaper, last song and last picture of an animal/something pretty.

Thanks for the tag @jessthebaker!

My phone wallpaper is the Joel & Benny fanart made by @mote-of-star-dust. The song is the last song I listened to (welcome to my writing playlist), and the cat is the bane of my existence even though I do love her.

No-pressure tags: @march-flowerr @ameerawrites @two-birds-alone-together @toointojoelmiller @ayeleye