divinemissem13

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@curator OMG PLEASE WRITE THIS

Picture it: Space, 2258 …

I’m just saying Strange New Worlds as The Golden Girls in which Una lives with her mother, Pelia, and two other women on the USS Miami. Christine is from St. Olaf and worries her boyfriend, Spock, will die of a sex-related illness. Erica has cultural ties to the South (America) and is usually up for a good time despite sadness in her past.

Sometimes Una’s annoying ex-husband, Chris, shows up, and the girls never know if he’ll be wearing his toupee or not. The lanai deck has lounge chairs and the food synthesizers are always ready with a cheesecake.

I’d watch it.

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Good lord I love Jett Reno/ Tig In Space

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY - S5E7 Erigah

#star trek discovery #tig notaro #tig in space #jett reno

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#this is getting serious #vote janeway

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Sharon saying "the... Wind...Millers?" lives rent free in my head forever.

#she's just adorable #i love her your honor #sharon raydor #major crimes

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“No weapons were discharged, Cap’n. And he didn’t do anything wrong, exactly.”

“So you just decided to come down here and cry in your car for fun?” Sharon asks pointedly. Brenda looks away and Sharon immediately seems to regret her tone because she reaches over and squeezes Brenda’s hand. “Sorry. You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to. I’m here for whatever you need.”

This week’s word is…

✨ CAR ✨

Find the word in any WIP and share the sentence containing it. Reply, reblog, stick it in the tags, tag us in a new post, or keep it private. All fandoms, all ships, all writers welcome.

#wip #wip game #word game wednesday #brenda/sharon #brenda.sharon #brenda leigh johnson #sharon raydor #the closer #I wrote this #fanfic #back on my B/S

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On writing: crafting character knowledge vs. audience knowledge

One of the most wildly difficult things I think there is to do in writing is setting the parameters of character knowledge. IE, how to not have your audience think that your character behaved idiotically for the situation they're in.

This is closely tied to the problem a lot of amateur writers run into when they first start out and borrow heavily from their real life experiences.

For example, "Yes, after one misunderstanding, these two people parted and never spoke to each other again, but that's what really happened!" "Yes, this person survived falling out of an airplane because it happened in real life too!" And other things too, you get my drift, it crops up all the time in 101 Creative Writing classes when people protest that sure, it doesn't make sense in a story, but it really did happen and that's got to be enough that the reader should accept that it happened in fiction, right?

Wrong.

I mean, obviously that's wrong. Because unlike real life, fiction needs to make sense. Even fiction that seems absurdist on the surface follows strong internal rules if you know what to look for. And unlike real life, we're not presented the grand entropy of all possible facts, a writer who is doing their job will only present facts that are somehow relevant to the story. One reason for the enduring popularity of the mystery genre is that it's specially keyed to a promise with the reader that all the facts presented are relevant to the story, but that some might be red herrings, facts that are tossed out there as a facsimile of real-life entropy (ex. suspicious behavior in a town where a murder took place but which is not directly linked to the murder) but that too is in service of the story because one of the pleasures promised by the genre is that the clues could be assembled incorrectly if one isn't attentive enough.

This plays to the human need to organize our universe and our desire to live in a universe where everything makes sense and can be solved. It's another reason why mystery is a great genre for authors to get their start in, and many of the most popular stories have a mystery as their subgenre or as their entry point into the story (Riverdale, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Harry Potter particularly in books 1-3, are all examples of a "Whodunnit?" being used to introduce us to the larger world of the story). Because they demand that an author carefully control the flow of information and start from the point of view of knowing that the audience will be attentive to every detail in search of the answer to the mystery, so the author cannot be sloppy or lazy in what information they dole out, down to and including otherwise innocuous character descriptions or interactions that might otherwise be a place to use stock phrase or be brushed over in the interest of moving quickly.

Now, to get back to the larger point, controlling the flow of information to the reader is especially critical in mystery writing but it really is also critical in pretty much any fictional endeavor.

One reason I find it so infuriating that genre fiction is taught as a lesser genre in US academia is that genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc) includes a heavy thread of worldbuilding as an expectation. That is, rebuilding the physics of the universe to say how things work in your world. Historical fiction is often viewed in literary circles as a sort of "lesser sin" genre fiction, which is laughable, because historical fiction relies just as much on worldbuilding as fantasy, and for similar reasons. Almost no historical fiction is 100% accurate to its time, it's all updated for the modern audience in some way, and the choice between what to present of historical accuracy and what to ignore lies at the heart of rebuilding the world to couch your story.

However, even fiction set in the current modern world that is not including any magical/genre fiction elements, should pay attention to worldbuilding and the inherent logic of this reality-adjacent world you're working in, because it's not actually the real, photorealistic world, and we the audience need to know where the divergence points are.

You know how some films are photorealistic but others that are still nominally set in the real world will sometimes use saturated colors to show that we shouldn't take some of the hijinks and coincidences too seriously? Yeah, like that. Because in the real world, it's possible but pretty rare to spill coffee on someone at a coffee shop and have that spiral into a love story where that moment of klutziness is the meet-cute with your soulmate. It's not impossible it's just unlikely in the grand entropy of the number of times we might spill coffee on someone, apologize, and never see them again. So, in film, you might wash the scene with a pink filter to show, "We're in rom-com land now, don't get too attached to the gray realities of photo realism." Or, if it's a detective thriller and the murderer is the one who just accidentally spilled coffee on the detective trying to catch them, in another unlikely coincidence, which triggers the detectives brain to realize later that they ran into the killer, we might wash the scene in gray to show a darker, edgier tone, but we are still departing from photorealism there.

But in my opinion the most difficult thing when controlling this sort of information is when you're in a mostly photorealistic world, you've controlled your flow of information, you've established the rules of your world, however, your character acts with information they know realistically, but since they lack omniscience, they act differently than the audience who has all the information does.

A classic case of this would be the, "Don't go in the basement!" impulse in horror movies. When it's done well, we're shown someone who is at home, minding their own business on a normal day, with no way of knowing that a murderer broke int their house earlier and is planning to kill them if our victim goes in the basement. Why would any normal person think that on a given day? So they go in the basement, and they get killed. The character very reasonably didn't know there was a killer down there or that they were in a horror story. They can't hear the soundtrack.

When done well, we the audience are terrified and frustrated but we know why they behaved this way reasonably speaking.

When it's not done well, we get the, "Everyone becomes an idiot the minute they're in a horror story" genre trope of people actively running from a murderer deciding to split up and then getting picked off one by one in increasingly stupid ways.

But this too loops back to, "But in the real world, why wouldn't I go check the circuit breaker in my basement if the lights went out? I wouldn't know there's a killer down there!"

And the fact is... I don't really know how to answer this one. Not every audience member is going to track back to all the information they've been shown that the character has and reasonably conclude that the character acted logically. There's a sort of confirmation bias in humans where when we're spoon-fed all the necessary information that someone else doesn't have, we assume despite evidence that we would have, in their place, magically figured out this information on our own or that somehow, magically, the person who has not been given this information somehow knows it. See: every fight between couples where the point of conflict is the other person not magically reading your mind to know what has upset you, because the world isn't a story, it's full of entropy, there's many potential causes for every effect, and one of the pleasures of fiction is the ability to read another person's thoughts by delving into their POV, something we can't do outside our own heads in the real world.

Really, the only solution is to get a second pair of eyes to ask, "What information do you need to know why the character acted this way?" Sometimes, it requires a bit of spoon-feeding, which many authors are averse to. Sometimes though, you do need to spoon-fed the audience because they're being thrown a lot of data points and unlike you, they don't know which ones are relevant. You can't know what other genres or stories they have in their head, or their own lived experience where what's obvious to you isn't obvious to them as a solution, or what the character should do next. Sometimes, you're just gonna lose. Sometimes you can put all sorts of work into making a character act intelligently and realistically and then they lose on their goal because of factors truly beyond their control, and the audience will think they're stupid because humans also have a success-bias, where the actions that lead to success are considered intelligent even if 99% of circumstance they wouldn't work (for example, buying a lottery ticket is 99.9999% time a dumb move, unless you're the person who wins, and then everyone else is stupid for not buying a lottery ticket. Human brains are bad at math).

Sometimes it's on the audience for not being attentive enough. But really, that's no excuse. As an author, you should do your utmost to craft the experience you want the reader to have. That might include ambiguity but even that should be deliberate. Controlling the flow of information is key to this and genuinely one of the hardest advanced level craft elements out there.

#writing #writing advice

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sharon raydor in season 2

#so much sass #sharon raydor #mary mcdonnell #major crimes

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Reblog if you think a woman can be complete without children

Y’ALL HAVE TIME TO REBLOG THIS. IT TAKES LESS THAN FIVE SECONDS.

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#vote janeway

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Don’t know what I would’ve done without fanfiction this year.

#facts #ao3 #fanfic

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Chapters: 16/? Relationships: Brenda Leigh Johnson/Sharon Raydor Additional Tags: Romance, Mutual Pining, Fluff and Angst, Rules and the Reasons the break them, Rules, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Angst, Introspection, Femslash, Emotional Growth, Idiots in Love Summary: Sharon Raydor has a list of rules she lives her life by. But Brenda Leigh Johnson very might be the catalyst for her to break each and every one.

Rule 15: Do Not Become Overly Attached To Anyone

#shit's getting real people #fic recommendation #the closer #brenda/sharon #brenda leigh johnson #sharon raydor

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5 basic things you can do to improve your ao3 experience +1 thing that will not help

Get an account

There is a process to this- you need to get on a waitlist and then will be sent an email to make an account (at this point in time the wait time is about a week)- but once you have an account you unlock a lot of features that make the whole experience better, such as the marked for later list, turning off the extra acknowledgement for adult content, mute users, and you can see more fics that are only available to people with an account.

2. Use a site skin

This can be as simple as just getting dark mode (the reversi skin), or it can dramatically change the viewing experience. There are premade ones to chose from that require absolutely zero coding. Skins can also just be applied to one platform- for example on mobile devices you can consolidate tags. You can also use skins to hide works or tags you don’t like or that have a lot of fics that clog up search results.

3. Search by things other than fandom

If you love a trope and want to see more of it or love a niche character, click on the tag to search within it. You may get fewer results but it will allow you to scratch that specific itch without having to wade through 100s of pages of results. If you search by a trope, you can then apply a fandom tag on top of that so you see the characters you love.

4. Download fics

AO3 makes downloading fics super easy and you should do it! Whether you know you will be offline, are concerned that a fic could be deleted, you want to read on a e-reader instead, or you just want to be prepared for the next AO3 crash, downloading fics can let you read with no limits. The download button is at the top of each fic and lets you download a bunch of different file formats.

5. Interact with authors

One of the things I love most about reading fanfic as opposed to traditional media is that the people writing the fics are just as into the fandom as you are. So by leaving kudos, commenting, subscribing and checking out any linked social medias, you can get involved or give back to the community. Take this with the warning that authors may not want to interact back with you and have no obligation to, but to some authors a comment on their fic will make their day which is just a good goal to strive for if you liked a fic.

Even if you don’t want to leave a comment or follow an author's socials, a subscription is a nice way to feel a bit included in the writing process. Once you subscribe to a work, series, or author, you get fun emails whenever something updates! It keeps you from wondering if you missed something and makes reading your email a more enjoyable experience.

+1

Don't make it anyone else's problem if you didn’t like a fic

This is a little obvious but it is worth repeating- commenting that you didn’t like a fic changes nothing. If you don't like a fic, you don’t have to finish it! If you did finish it but wish you didn’t, that is what the back button is for. If you keep forgetting you didn’t like a fic and keep clicking on it, you can create a skin that blocks it from view, or mute the author. If you didn’t like the content, filter out the tag describing that thing using "Other Tags to Exclude" within the Sort and Filter menu.  If something is against the AO3 terms of service, you can report it. 

None of those things need to be shared with the author and doing so just makes the internet a less fun place. 

Happy reading!

#ao3 #5+1 things #fanfiction

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The discovery represents a potential new way to recruit the immune system to fight treatment-resistant cancers using an iteration of mRNA technology and lipid nanoparticles, similar to COVID-19 vaccines, but with two key differences: use of a patient’s own tumor cells to create a personalized vaccine, and a newly engineered complex delivery mechanism within the vaccine.

Within 48 hours, the four human study participants showed remarkable results: their immune systems went into turbo cancer-destroying mode. And without surgery, radiation, or dangerous chemotherapy.

Folks, we may have a cure for cancer within your lifetime.

#holy shit #i hope this is real #and keeps working #science ftw

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Admiral Kathryn Janeway! An old WIP I never got to finish. A friend from uni loved it so I'm posting cause she deserves some love ❤️

#aww look how cute! #kathryn janeway needs a hug #admiral janeway #other people's art #kathryn janeway #star trek prodigy

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Sketch commission for admiralarachnia! :D

Beverly, you’re never going to get the sample analysis notes by fourteen hundred hours if you keep squeezing the science officer in charge of them.

THOUGH, KATHY DOESN’T SEEM TO MIND. AT ALL.

#eeeeeee #kathryn janeway #beverly crusher #kathryn janeway x beverly crusher #crushway

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OH Mondays suck right? So asking you the asks! 6, 9, and 15 ❤️

Ugh especially a Monday when I have things I need to do and I just don’t wanna 😩 😝

6. Share a bit of a WIP

Ooo I’m so glad you asked because I have been itching to start posting this one… I just want to have more of it written before I do! This is from the sequel to Beautiful Disaster. And it is absolutely definitely not intentionally a date.

As Brenda floats back down to Earth after her first blissful taste of flan, she notices Sharon watching her over the rim of her frozen margarita. The brunette’s mouth curls into an enigmatic smile and as good as she is at reading people, Brenda can’t quite decide if it’s a look of amusement or derision.

“What?” Brenda demands. “Do I have somethin’ on my face? Damn!” she fumbles for her napkin and begins to wipe at her face and Sharon’s smile blossoms into a full-on grin.

Sharon reaches across the table and gently pulls Brenda’s hand away from her mouth. “Your face is fine. I was just thinking how glad I am that we did this.”

Brenda’s cheeks flush, a little bit because she isn’t used to people so openly enjoying her company, and a little bit because Sharon’s hand is comfortably warm on hers. It reminds her of that first night at the wine bar, the night Brenda was so certain she had ruined everything by overstepping certain boundaries. But maybe this is just what girlfriends do. Brenda takes a chance and brings her other hand on top of Sharon’s, gives it a squeeze. “Me too,” she agrees sincerely. “I can’t remember the last time I had such a nice evening.”

For her bravery, Brenda is rewarded with one of Sharon’s magical smiles, illuminating the dimly lit restaurant. Brenda can’t believe no one else seems to notice.

9. Write a recommendation of someone else's fic you enjoyed!

@missparker ‘s Brenda/Sharon body swap fic was a pure delight. It’s buried in a larger collection of one shots… but this link takes you right to the first chapter of Let Me Hear Your Body Talk

15. Have you noticed your style change over time?

I’ve been leaning more into writing in present tense lately. I feel like it makes the connection to the characters more immediate and personal.

#asks answered #fanfic #brenda/sharon #wip

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I believe that’s what they call taffy that is short in both stature and vocabulary

They taffied Jankom

#star trek prodigy #jankom pog #pog