Cleansing the Brainrot
Nov. 12th, 2025 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI'm writing an original short story for my Ruins zine called "Pride and Joy," and this is the story summary:
During a filmed interview, a woman in Strawberry Mansion explains how her neighborhood, now a historic preservation district, survived because no one wanted to live there. There was no development, and the maglev line passed it by, so everyone had to keep the block running on their own without help from the city. She shows the camera crew her ramshackle house and says her grandson lives on the planetary ring and develops low-gravity robotics technology. His work is so groundbreaking that they’re naming a prize after him, she says, but he still comes home every Christmas.
Strawberry Mansion is a neighborhood in North Philly that's roughly analogous to my own South Philly neighborhood of Point Breeze, by which I mean: it's a bit abandoned. But it has its charms, and I mean that unironically.
So here's the question: I grew up in and around Atlanta and now live in the place I'm writing about. Would it be considered "appropriation" if I wrote the character speaking in my own natural dialect?
And here's the answer: This is not something normal people care about. You can't write in fear of bad-faith dipshits on the internet. As long as I'm not doing some sort of Stephen King level of caricature, I think I'm probably fine.
ETA: I think I got the voice down, and it's good. What gave me trouble ended up being my speculation on what robotics technology will look like fifty years in the future. But again, I decided that it's best to listen to the story itself and not think about the meta too hard.
During a filmed interview, a woman in Strawberry Mansion explains how her neighborhood, now a historic preservation district, survived because no one wanted to live there. There was no development, and the maglev line passed it by, so everyone had to keep the block running on their own without help from the city. She shows the camera crew her ramshackle house and says her grandson lives on the planetary ring and develops low-gravity robotics technology. His work is so groundbreaking that they’re naming a prize after him, she says, but he still comes home every Christmas.
Strawberry Mansion is a neighborhood in North Philly that's roughly analogous to my own South Philly neighborhood of Point Breeze, by which I mean: it's a bit abandoned. But it has its charms, and I mean that unironically.
So here's the question: I grew up in and around Atlanta and now live in the place I'm writing about. Would it be considered "appropriation" if I wrote the character speaking in my own natural dialect?
And here's the answer: This is not something normal people care about. You can't write in fear of bad-faith dipshits on the internet. As long as I'm not doing some sort of Stephen King level of caricature, I think I'm probably fine.
ETA: I think I got the voice down, and it's good. What gave me trouble ended up being my speculation on what robotics technology will look like fifty years in the future. But again, I decided that it's best to listen to the story itself and not think about the meta too hard.
