"Cheer Up!" Said She.

Into the Spider-Verse Brainrot - Jeff knows its Miles

Listen, I don't even care if this is an original thought. You're telling me, Jefferson can recognize Miles' stickers from his car. You're telling me Jefferson Davis can recognize Miles' art despite there being a million other stickers and pieces of art up around Brooklyn.

...and then Miles-as-Spiderman shows up, in a suit HE PAINTED, and the FIRST scenes where Jefferson sees Miles-as-Spiderman IN THE NEW SUIT are also the first scenes where Jefferson is suddenly on Spiderman's side.

Uh huh. The man knows it's Miles.

Into the Spider-Verse Brainrot - Jeff knows its Miles

Listen, I don't even care if this is an original thought. You're telling me, Jefferson can recognize Miles' stickers from his car. You're telling me Jefferson Davis can recognize Miles' art despite there being a million other stickers and pieces of art up around Brooklyn.

...and then Miles-as-Spiderman shows up, in a suit HE PAINTED, and the FIRST scenes where Jefferson sees Miles-as-Spiderman IN THE NEW SUIT are also the first scenes where Jefferson is suddenly on Spiderman's side.

Uh huh. The man knows it's Miles.

writing badly and cringily is actually an essential part of the writing process, both in terms of individual projects and in gaining voice and confidence as a writer in the long term. there is no way around the cringe. there's no way around the work.

James Baldwin.

Also: I think Aragorn gets a bad reputation now because so many lesser franchises have tried to imitate his archetype without understanding why he works. In the original movies he’s just a big gentle sad guy with a sword, who knows he’s not the real hero of the story and dedicates himself to supporting those gay little hobbits. The aragorn knockoffs are not his fault

Never have I felt so much like a protagonist

your protagonist doesn’t need to save the world. maybe they just need to save their plant collection, one dying ficus at a time.

Hello! I just wanted to write to thank you.

One of my favorite lines I've ever read is “Jim was already familiar with the incessant activity of that cool, curious mind as it tirelessly hunted answers. But now he saw where the activity came from - Spock’s utter certainty that there was no higher purpose for his life than to burn it away in search of truth, and to give that truth away when he found it. More, Jim saw what fueled and underlay that certainty: a profound vulnerability paired with a great, unreasonable joy”. That, combined with the YW series (which I recently reread), is very good for my soul.

You and your work are truly an inspiration to me! That Wounded Sky quote resonated with me for the theme that joy and curiosity really can underpin an entire, happy, successful life. Young Wizards has so much of the same - books and libraries are magic, but so is nature, and space, and manmade machines, and whales and sharks. Your stories strike a balance I can't always put into words - that curiosity and joy can be self-sustaining. They are not dependent on a single field, a single datum, a single discovery. They can be a lens and a philosophy and they can fit in your pocket for everyday. Curiosity as a mindset, and an exercise in loving and engaging with the world; joy as a result of realizing how many exciting things there are to love and be curious about.

On a parallel note, I am fascinated by how you seem to blend fantasy and sci fi - your Star Trek feels loving and magical, and your fantasy feels grounded and tangible. I am in awe of how many things you've been a part of creating, because it gives me hope that I, too, might avoid having to pick a narrow niche. But in the meantime, I am so grateful to be able to escape into your books, because I fall in love with them again every time, and then I come back and fall back in love with life.

I’m glad to hear it! Thanks for letting me know. ☺️

Also: generally, I think niches are best left to statues. Create what works for you and makes you happy. Life’s too short to waste doing otherwise.

It’s easy to forget JRR Tolkien was a fairly prolific academic translator with an interest in early medieval literature and philology. It’s so inspiring that he found time to write The Hobbit while fighting for his life over Beowulf.

And this is why you can't write a grimdark LOTR that has ANY resemblance to the original - if you don't tell a story that's about kindness and light and love, no number of epic battles can save you

I'm reading the lord of the rings and I'm once again amazed at how... good most characters are. Like, they are genuinely good people. They are a bunch of kindhearted, gracious, caring people, coming together under adverse circumstances and trying to figure things out and find a solution and support each other through it all. Like Frodo and Sam meet Faramir and Faramir is a bit suspicious at first and kind of implies Frodo may be a spy, and then when he hears his story and he's like Frodo, I pressed you so hard at first. Forgive me! It was unwise in such an hour and place. And this blows.my.mind. He wasn't even particularly mean or threatening to him in the beginning, he's just such a kind, considerate man, recognizing the kindness and honesty of another man. And they're all like that. Even Gollum starts slowly changing (for a short while) when he encounters Frodo because that's the thing about kindness and humility and grace, they are contagious. They transform people, even a creature like Gollum cannot be immune to that. Like, you may consider all this simple and basic and I get it but, hear me out. It is quite rare to see that in modern media and it is also pretty difficult to pull off in a way that is not corny and simplistic. It is mind blowing that you actually don't have to present the entire palette of human cruelty and vice in order to tell a compelling story, contrary to popular belief. Lotr does the exact opposite, and it is just beautiful and it warms my heart. Especially taking into consideration tolkien's pretty grim growing-up experience, him being a double orphan without a home, raised between an orphanage and a priest and having no family apart from his brother and then the war and then he almost dies and then he's poor as hell and then a second war and it all makes sense somehow. He writes to his wife who is also an orphan two days before the marriage "the next few years will bring us joy and content and love and sweetness such as could not be if we hadn't first been two homeless children and had found one another after long waiting" and, yes, yes! The love and sweetness just radiate from his work, the entire lotr series is a little radiant bubble of hope and love and grace that he imagined in his head to deal with a dismal reality and then he just gave that to the world, and isn't that what imagination and art is all about after all?

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