this is gonna be a ramble
my dad is a notorious punster. the problem is, his delivery sucks ass
so at the tender age of 10, i started giving him criticism. "this would have been funnier if you hadn't used the same words in the punchline as you did in the setup. give us a riddle."
unfortunately my dad's jokes still suck ass (and he's kind of falling into the conservative "this isn't even a joke" jokes that are just like, weirdly smug condescension from a place of total vapidity
i learned how to write good characterization from christian dramatizations--where people who weren't Christian somehow simply hadn't heard The Message, or had heard The Message but believed they were too far gone, or were in fact actively, Hail Sataning devil worshipers
and i went: this is weird as hell. nobody talks like this. who created this? they could have done it better. i could do it better.
i also learned how to write good characterization from bad porn (thank fuck for my demisexuality), where characters' thin, wibble-wobbly characterization and awkward dialogue was such a turnoff that i was forced to write my own (or roleplay with others who were capable of doing better)
i learned good smut writing the same way
analyzing and overthinking what worked and what didn't may have been borne of spite, but damn if it didn't do wonders for my writing
