Before I made it my update header, the marquee on the front page used to contain a bunch of things I believed in, mostly movements of various kinds. As a sort of spiritual successor, I've added this section here for a (very very brief) explanation of some of my beliefs.
As you likely may know from the kinds of things I reblog to my Tumblr, I am very passionate about diversity in media, particularly what makes good representation and how to avoid being stereotypical or offensive when you're writing. I am a large proponent of calling out racism in your fandoms when you see it—and that is "when", not if. Maybe a character has been whitewashed in all their fanart. Maybe your fandom sidelines a canonical love interest of colour to ship them with a white character with half a line of dialogue. Maybe your fandom's humanized art of nonhuman characters always makes the heroes white and the villains people of colour. It isn't always malicious—but it is there, and it is societal, so make note of it.
As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I understand that things are especially hard for my siblings around the world in recent years. I support my queer peers, and I recognize my privilege in being both cisgender and able to stay in the closet. Being alive right now is an act of protest itself when bigoted people are calling for your erasure, and it is extremely difficult. We have each other, and we need each other.
I am staunchly anti-generative AI. Accordingly, as a user of Ellipsus, I am also a member of the Defend the Em Dash movement. AI was trained on human writers—so why should human writers drop all our writing conventions for the sake of not being accused of "writing" with AI?
I am also a very anti-censorship kind of person. (Note: I hope the difference between censorship and criticizing bad depictions of marginalized groups is obvious.) Banning certain types of content always seems to disproportionately target creators who are not white, not cisgender and heterosexual and allosexual, and not privileged in any number of ways. It is always a good day to read banned books.
My inspirations
You may be asking, "But Ivy, how did you even come up with all this stuff?"
Luckily for those of you here today, I don't feel like writing out my whole list of inspirations, so let's stick to one main one per book:
Inspector Gadget for The Acorn Detective Agency's original premise
Mappy for A Mouse Among Thieves' original premise
Lab Rats for Kepia's three-character ensemble
All Quiet on the Western Front for The West, With Glory's tone
Undertale for Adventures in Fragmentation's premise
Super Paper Mario for The Book of Foretold Legends' premise
Real life for I Did NOT Sign Up For This!'s... everything
Crash Tag Team Racing for Book About Motorcross' original premise
Since I started thinking about these books so young, you can probably see that most of these are things I watched or played or read as a child or teenager. That doesn't necessarily mean the tone of these media will carry over, though...
More inspirations, as well as "X meets Y"-style pitches, can be found on each book page when they go up.
