Has anyone ever heard of the phrase "Everyone's a critic"? If so, then you can probably guess that this quote has gained a lot of traction with the onset of the Internet. Everyone has an opinion on someone somewhere doing something for better or worse. Sometimes it's helpful, but most of the time, it's not. And I can think of no better example than Lily Orchard and her 100 writing tips that she put on Twitter. While she did do this several months ago at the time of this post, and she has deleted the posts swiftly after making it, still watching all of them was the writing equivalent of seeing someone hit all the sides in Operation intentionally. It also has struck a chord with me in the months to come as I, as a writer, have felt someone stuck, stagnant, and doubtful of my writing recently. So sit back, dear guild, as I go over my gripes with Lily Orchard's writing advice.
Note
So to start, here are a couple of things that I want to address. This blog is not a direct attack on Lily Orchard as a person. Beyond her youtube persona, I don't know her besides the whole Steven Universe and Legend of Korra Sucks, and here's why videos. While I've heard of her displaying very toxic actions in the past, I'm not going to talk about her past unless there is a tip that I find that forces me to. I'm just using this as a platform to express my opinions on the tips themselves and sharing them with you. Also, please, if you want to debate me on this writing advice, go ahead. I've been writing on various sites for well over two years now, but I will never say that I'm a writing expert, I'm still learning, so don't think what I'm saying is absolute. Finally, I will not be able to go over every single tip. Instead, I'll break them down into general sections. I'm sorry, but I care about both your mental health and mine. If you want to see a video with much more qualified people than me and much more focus on every tip, then please look up Diregentleman's video on the subject since it is more informative with two actual professionals. Now let's get started on this show.
Opinion, Opinion, Opinion, Repetitive, Repetitive, Repetitive
Long story short, the biggest problem with most of Lily's advice is that it is highly opinionated, contradictory, lacks nuance, toxic, redundant, and not writing advice. The best examples I can bring up are 44: the best way to end a love triangle is polyamory. 78: As a general rule, slice of life has always been more popular than action and adventure. 91:Little Mermaid and Cinderella are more feminist than Beauty and the Beast. 42: If straight men really hate a certain character but lesbians love them their is a 90% chance that this is your best character. 46: Mary Sue is not a writing tip it's thinly veiled misogyny. 38: someone on this hellsite once made the remark "we need more lesbian non con because purity is boring. "That is a dangerous violent person do not listen to them. Seriously my god what is wrong with you people? 40: of abuse fetishest are giving you shit for not caving into their demands just block them. Don't argue with them don't debate with them don't treat them with good faith. Just block them and be on with your day. 48: goblins are inherently antisemetic.
Okay, so with all that said, please tell me how this can be writing advice because it seems here that Lily just did what Twitter got made for: making toxic and bad takes highlighted under unpopular opinions. None of these are writing tips; they are all just takes that can easily be argued. What if the love triangle has two mentally unstable bad boys as the choices? Polyamory wouldn't be a good way to end it. The Demon slayer movie Mugen Train (a battle shonen, mind you) made more money than A Silent Voice, a largely slice-of-life movie. I find the movie that features the literal strong, smart, independent women fighting off multiple toxic suitors more empowering than the women who sacrificed her voice to fall in love with a man and the woman who got only saved from the situation in part due to a prince. Mary Sue's are a mostly gender neutral term and has just been overused. Of course, my examples and claims are debatable but so are Lily's, yet she's making her opinions like their facts and discounting everyone else's even though they don't help anyone. What's the point of having tips on criticism if your just going to only spout your limited views on writing?
Subtle as a brick digs
This is an evolution of what I was talking about. Some of the tips are digs at popular kids shows that she doesn't like, and I can prove it. Those who want to get into Avatar and She ra and the Princesses of Power skip to the next paragraph to avoid spoilers. 4: Victims of abuse moving away from the negative impacts of their abuse (ie. Zuko) and becoming healthier are not redemption arcs. 6: Two women kissing in the last episode of a show after 4-5 seasons of trying to murder each other isn't "revolutionary." It's fetishized abuse and violence. 17: If the only lesbian in your work is an abusive rageholic with vague angst issues and a codependent relationship to a protagonist, you're a huge turd. 18: If your only nonbinary character is a nonhuman shapeshifter, you're a huge turd. 19: If your only autistic character is an ethically challenged number fetishist, you're a huge turd. 37: Romance Trope, but gay is not an absolute rule to live by. If She Ra taught us anything, it's that Gay Reylo was not an improvement. 43: If one of your writers believes Simon (infinity train) was misunderstood and Grace is a villain that writer should be punished immediately.
These are all digs on She Ra, specifically the characters Adora, Catra, Double Trouble, and Entrapta. Once again, these are debatable opinions, especially when they are fan favorites with arcs and context. A lot of the rules either attack various shows like Steven universe and Infinity train or feature topics of representation, so here's my take. If you want to have a story with a diverse cast but aren't inherently focusing on these diverse traits like sexuality, race, and gender, etc., then just make them well-written characters, avoid negative stereotypes and you'll be fine; if not, research to be respectful. I, as a straight man, have written a gay main character before (David Wiseman A.K.A. Gargoyle from Genesis), and I'm not going to pretend that I could ever properly experience the life of a gay person. However, I can write about a real person's experience, and that's what I'm going for. These tips are oversimplifying characters into base traits without also adding their various other traits and development. Like how even though these tips are anti abuse catra is a good example of how the abused become abusers and while we don't have to like her we can at least try to understand her POV. Though this all doesn't matter because at the end of the day these are more opinions, not writing advice.
Really Retroactively Redundant Restrictions
Another big problem is that these tips just feel mean and toxic like if I don't placate to Lily Orchard's specific rules on rules on writing, I'm a huge turd. 66: The best potential romantic partner for a character is her best friend. They're best friends for a reason. 61: Reclaimed slurs are not universal, and as such, should never be included in a work. 70:Sexual Awakening is not a real character arc. 62: Oppressed people fighting against their oppressors are not Villains. No, I don't care if you think they went too far. Not all those who respond with violence are wrong, and not all those who preach nonviolence are right. 8: when a character's body count is over 10,000 innocent lives, that character is no longer redeemable. 34: Perspective shifts are a staple of storytelling. Having only one perspective isn't a stylistic choice. It's just crap. 10: Everything in a story is there because the creator wished it to be there. Trying to explain bigoted story decisions using worldbuilding is a fallacy because you put it there, to begin with. 41: Rape victims are not villains and should never be written as villians. Don't be like Blizzard Entertainment . It costs 0$ to be a misgoynistic pig.
So a couple of things that need to get addressed could be good advice for some people, but the fact that she has to say that it's the best choice bothers me immensely. Fiction as a medium has so many trope subversions, satire, and parody that just saying what's best is ridiculous. There's more than one way to skin a cat and cliche's can be genius again if reworked and executed right. These tips actively harms people from trying to be creative, especially when I've been suffering from that. "Oppressed people can't be villains," why? Magneto from x men is one of my favorite villains in comics. His entire shtick is that he got treated as a monster by the literal worst of humanity and now seeks to usurp all humanity; innocents be damned. His character's beauty is that humans' xenophobia oppresses him, but he's also fighting back with the same prejudge as them, which creates a cycle of hatred. Suppose he got treated like a hero, then his main dynamic with Professor X is lost. It also contradicts the rule that comes after about having a body count. There have also been many movies about sexual awakenings for young folks, and it can change a character and be an arc Ex: Blockers, Love Simon etc. 34 is also contentious given various stories have given one perspective and I don't think books like Percy Jackson are crap. And for tip 10 and 61: what about a period piece, like if I make a story about an urban fantasy of a black man in the Civil Rights Era, does that mean I can't have any racism or n words in it despite me being black? Can I have a story that has bigotry to show why it's bad? Just reading these tips makes me feel blocked in; imagine trying to follow every one of them? Hell it basically just scares off new readers and turns honest mistakes into fatal ones.
Fandumb
Finally, there is a weird selection of tips blatantly about handling internet discourse and managing a fanbase, but I don't understand why this is writing advice. If most of these writers have a fanbase, I don't get why they would want tips from Lily in the first place since as far as I know she's not had any work in animation. 52: Your fandom will fight and argue. This is how people solve conflicts. It's typically better to let people fight it out than to be complacent and beg people to just stop fighting. 35: If you're making a cartoon, hire writers. Don't just have your storyboarders write the story. That's not what they're for. Artists draw, writers write, artists cannot just take over writing on a whim (so basically fuck manga authors). 55: Fanservice is a concept you should never think about. Fans who to be serviced are not actually fans. If you have fans, those fans are already having fun and don't need to be pandered to. 53: Related to the above, every headcanon is valid should never leave your mouth. Do you want pedophiles and fascists in your fanbase? 88: If the Sunk Cost Fallacy existed, shows like Game of Thrones and Steven Universe would've been canceled by season 2.
Again this is all not writing advice, and if I could create my cartoon, what authority do you have to tell me that if I don't follow your tips, I'm a huge turd? These are writing tips not how to make a cartoon tips. And if I had a fanbase, why can't I service them with like a callback or a what-if chapter where their favorite ship comes true, because that what fanservice is people it isn't just T and A. Again, this feels like a combo of the opinions and digs at other shows, and it's annoying. I might come out with a toxic fanbase yes, but I will address those issues when they come my way. Outside of that, they can parody and headcanon as they wish. I'm not going to tell you how to appreciate my work.
Epilogue
Long story short, while several tips in this can be good, like tip 27, which says don't worry about having things all planned out (even though it tells those who say they did as filthy liars), and 7, which says that Twitter shouldn't be the best place to give story details (and writing advice apparently) most of them are just garbage. But I guess it all pointless considering she deleted all this. Which probably leads to one principle question: why? If Lily deleted this, then these tips can't hurt anyone, and it's been months now, so why do this? And I think that because of what it represents to me now.
As I said before, this is not intended to bully Lily Orchard herself, and if you think that I'm trying to put my work as superior, then I'm sorry to disappoint you that I don't. My backgrounds sometimes have the description of a blank canvas; some of the fight scenes are messy, brain dead, exhausting, and hard to follow; I feel like a freaking idiot for even attempting to make diverse characters; my character design is plain as paper on some days. I sometimes look at the worlds I've made and wonder to high heaven what the hell was I on when creating this or that! No matter how many times I edit through Grammarly, new mistakes pops up like popcorn. Certain plots I've made seem so repetitively dumb it's infuriating that I know it came from me sometimes!
These past few weeks, I've hungering, begging, trying to improve to skyrocket into something new, but I feel stagnant while looking back at years of lackluster work. I want to create, I want to innovate, I want to make my name fucking known and etched! I want to be good enough to see my future set in stone with my own 2 hands no one else's. Because I've spent so much of my life trapped by my imagination, forever impressed by the stories and shows around me, I might as well have been speaking a different language to people sometimes, and I've spent so much time suffering from that miscommunication. So much to the point where there are days I've hated myself, hated the home I was born in. There are days where I felt like these ideas would forever remain ideas until I decided to use this platform to solidify them.
Recent years have opened my eyes to the world in ways I've never imagined. I've done things that my kid self could've never even dream of, experienced stories of all kinds I could never dream of. That's why I go so hard to analyze and critique them because I want to give them the appreciation and analysis they deserve. To give them the understanding I didn't get. That's why I hate these tips so much.
Mainly because they are everything I've hated about myself solidified. You want to know the best writing advice I've learned throughout my former childhood: BE LIMITLESS! Don't bother chaining yourself to one genre and type of writing, and don't be afraid to try something new. Go into it thinking you're good but can get better. Read widely and vividly and pick and choose what you want to borrow from to see different perspectives and if you're going to make a crazy concept, then do it and give it your best shot and just plan it out. And if you can't take some time away to spit off ideas. Most importantly have fun, take a risk, even if you don't want to write for a living at least be at peace knowing you put yourself out there, truth is something that goes a long way these days. Unlike these tips, I'm not going to stop you from expressing yourself.
Because I'm not going to let anyone stop me from expressing myself in any form, just like how I'm not going to stop working till I shake this bug off me, I know I'm worthy, even if I don't feel like it right now.