Madelyn Himegami

lol god yeah with my personal project the setting is kinda anarchist? like i dont really go that deep into it outside of "well there's no money exactly and people help each other out if they can" and i gotta wonder if people will get weird about that part of the politics when its mostly just that im not interested in figuring out the nuances of that lol. its not about that either way but god its always kinda nagging thing to worry about.

Yeah, I've had thoughts along these lines about what I Wanted the fanfic I'm currently writing to turn into and am slowly turning into "whatever, let's just put something down and see what happens..."

Except I haven't written anything in like two or three weeks now, oops

I get So trapped in the Notes Dimension making sure all the bits are in place and while it's a little fun it's also so draining to comb through every little detail making sure every little bit of symbolism meshes with the specific Theme and building some complex web of character interactions making sure they all have some very specific dynamic while Also making sure it's not literally thoughtless and just, I never start the dang thing.

The best way I can think to articulate my own intended solution that may or may not be helpful is that if art is communication and writing is a conversation then all I can do is say my own thing. I can't make someone understand "what i'm trying to say", it's literally up to the other person to process that information. There may be miscommunications but when it comes to writing it's not up to me to fix those, the reader is going to take what they get from the thing and that's up to them. I'll never be able to polish a story enough to make every single person understand the single specific One Theme that it's About, so I want to learn to just take an idea I think is cool or interesting and run with it without stressing about how messy it'll be or if people won't "get it" or whatever.

Of course sometimes "what i'm trying to say" and the moral of the story is that There Was A Weird Man, doesn't always need an essay video explaining the themes and secret intent behind the thing (that will inevitably be based on the essayer's own interpretation anyway and will probably be wrong and then all that stress will be for nothing)

Yeah. I try to imagine what a good-faith reading could see, because I don't want to accidentally say awful things, but I don't particularly try to appease bad-faith readings that intentionally misread stuff, bc that's unavoidable if people get determined to read that way. I used to worry about this endlessly when writing queer stuff (will people think this bi character by a bi writer is bad representation because she's dating a guy??) and it definitely made it difficult to keep up the drive to write

Definitely a blocker I encounter from time to time. Sadly, I haven't really figured out how to get around it. I think my coping method is just to really stick close to what I know 110%, even though that can often be so basic and predictable that I wonder why I'd bother writing it at all.

Constantly bouncing between This Could Be Problematic and Literally Everyone Has Already Said This can be quite the mental whiplash.

I would comment but I already wrote a whole post on this topic, so I'll just link that.

In summary, though, I think just being true to your own experiences is already contributing to Good Politics or whatever else, however you do it. Especially doing whatever makes you happy.