fallenhero-rebirth

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he’s a good listener

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Very rarely on tumblr anymore, but was told of this and went back and set all of mine tumblrs to no third party sharing, and I wanted to share this post so others would know how to change the settings too.

its official: tumblr is selling our data to Midjourney

we'd been hearing rumors about this for a bit but now its open and out there. some details from this article

it goes without saying, but if @staff goes through with this its going to be an utter shitshow and im all but certain the website will not survive it.

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You keep staring at the picture, rigid lines, shifting organic paint layers, clashing bright orange and mustard yellow against a black that's not black as much as deep greens and blues masquerading as buildings. Oppressed. The sun hangs too low and heavy, pressing down on the buildings like a hand on a heaving chest. Pretending to be still. Pretending to be dead.

I was very fascinated by this description of the painting, so...

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Brilliant work!

Fallen Hero Retribution: The Complete, Unabridged Guide

9½ months. 650 pages. 75,000+ words. Pages of notes, countless sleepless nights, and one Revelations demo later- Finally, here it is. Our answer key to all things Retribution. Enjoy.

So, You Want To Be A Villain?

As of posting this has not been play-tested. If you notice an issue, feel free to let me know.

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Legitimately the funniest way this scene have ever been depicted.

This is how that scene went right

#levi #hollow ground #will be more on tumblr come autumn #just needed to reblog this

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Just your average day at the Los Diablos Ranger's HQ pantry

A little bonus:

#fallen hero: retribution #I need to get back to reblogging #soon more time

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Boris Pavlenko

#fallen hero rebirth #fallen hero retribution #Boris

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Rosie the Riveter

#fallen hero retribution #fallen hero rebirth #Rosie

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Another one for @fallenhero-rebirth! For the Nanosurge this time, because it sounds absolutely horrifying.

#fallen hero rebirth #sweet music for horrible times

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A little something for @fallenhero-rebirth because Heartbreak makes me very emotional. I hope you like it too!

#fallen hero rebirth #music #this is so lovely

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Got asked for some writing advice

How did you improve your writing specifically beyond 'just writing more'?

The first thing is to read different things from different genres. Read an old book, and see how that is written. Read a genre you normally don't read. Read some poetry. Go to the library and walk to a random book, open it in the middle and read. Read on paper, and out loud. And then read some more. And when you read, try to think about why you don't like or likes something. Is it boring? Why? Is it hard to understand? Why? What is it in the words you like? Does it feel good to read out loud? If it doesn't, why not?

A tip is to take a book you think is interesting. Take a paragraph from the middle at random, and write it down in a word document. Pay attention to how it feels to write. How are the sentences? Do they feel different from your own? Close the book and continue to write a few paragraphs. Does your style change? What is the difference between your paragraphs and the one above? Sentence length? Comma use? Does it make it better or worse

Another tip is to write down a bit of dialogue from a tv show or movie you like. There might be transcripts online even. Take that dialogue and write a scene with it. Especially if you find dialogue hard to sound natural this might be freeing. Or, you might even find that what sounded good on the screen looks terrible on paper when it's not said by a charismatic actor.

A third is to write fanfiction and try to make it as good as you can. Try to make it real, as if it might have been from the original source. Think about what it was you liked about it, and then try to imitate that and make your own story. Fanfiction gets a bad rep, but it is a great way to experiment with writing without having to come up with characters and a world. That way you can just focus on the language.

Would you have any tips regarding writing interesting characters? Mine are always very flat and bland OR 'mary sues'

First of all, there is nothing wrong with a "mary sue". The way this is used these days, it might as well mean "protagonist". If Batman or James Bond can get away with their shit, your protagonist certainly can too. And your characters will be flat at the start because a story consists of so many parts. You have your language, your plot, your world, your story rhythm. And when you are starting out, there's simply too many things to focus on. You won't get depth in all of them, and the characters are what you spot being flat first, because that's usually what attracts us to a story in the first place.

My characters were terribly flat when I started out, but I wrote short story horror so it didn't matter. Nobody read that for the characters.

A trick I have to try to get my characters to feel alive is to write arguments. Take two characters you have trouble with and let them talk. Argue about something. Be stuck in an awkward situation together. Don't bother writing anything but dialogue, never mind the actual scene. Just write them talking, and after a while you might get a feel for how they feel different from one another. Maybe they start talking about things about them that you didn't even know. Explore. Have fun. Have them say something weird. Something hurtful. Write reactions. Don't bother thinking if it's usable or not. I've written pages of dialogue just to get a feel for how people talk.

I usually build characters by combining archetypes. I start with one people will know immediately, then add another, and a third. They will be uncovered one at a time, adding depth. Let's take Ricardo Ortega for example. The first archetype is "the sexy leading man/hero". Then, we get to know what I fondly call "the himbo". And finally, we discover "the clever, sneaky asshole". I didn't need to bring in all those things at once, as long as I got writing the first archetype, people would be interested and intrigued when they learned about the new facets.

Would you have any tips on writing humor/banter? You're pretty dang good at it but I could never figure out how to be funny lmao all the jokes I write are Extremely Cringe.

Oh I wish. I honestly have no idea. I was terrible writing characters and dialogue. I think something clicked when I wrote massive amounts of DA2 fanfic, because that was a game which consisted of nothing but banter, so I tried to mimic it the best I could. I have never liked comedies or really understood humor, so I never try to be funny. It's the one part of my writing I truly does not understand, some of my characters are just like that.

What's your plot planning process like, if you have a consistent one? I can only figure out the very generic broad strokes but it falls apart as soon as I try to come up with details.

All plots are generic broad strokes. Rebirth is basically just emo protagonist monologues a lot, meets up with some old friends and proceeds to beat them up. That's it. All plots will look flat and boring in your head, because what makes a plot cool and interesting is that you don't know what's going to happen. You do. You're the author. So of course it will look flat and uninteresting in your head. The hardest thing is trying to ignore this.

My workaround to this is only knowing the barest of broad strokes. I know where I want to go, who the opposition is, some basic scenes that needs to be there (not in detail) and then I write and discover things as I go along. That is the only way for me to remain interested in the plot, if I had planned it in detail I'd get bored. And oh, sure, there's a lot of foreshadowing and hidden things in my writing, but that's only because I know some big things that's going to happen. It's not like I have sat down and detail planned every chapter, what things I need to plant there, and so on. A lot of the times I forget things, and have to go back and add them, and so on. I would say focus on the characters before the plot. If you manage to figure out how to write fun characters first, nobody will care if the plot is bland.

#writing #tips and tricks #creative writing

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bow down to the ghost, to the god in the mirror he knows no mercy nor tolerates weakness

#fallen hero retribution #this rocks

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Dog Dad.

#fallen hero: retribution #steel #this is objectively the best image #spoon what are you doing?

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I can finally post the art I did back in August, with some newer stuff mixed in. Chen 100% knows Emery is Heartbreak. Ricardo might have his suspicions but not enough. Either way, Emery is going into the next book rough.

#fallen hero: retribution #ortega #sidestep #steel #anathema #oh my hart at the last one

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#fallen hero: retribution #ortega #sidestep #yeah this hurts good

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That one time where Ortega endorsed stretch dress pants. (based on this)

Bonus:

#fallen hero: retribution #ortega #might as well be canon #at least it wasn't underwear

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Some FH: Retribution Guides

Sup gang! Here are some guides I made back during alpha/beta season, mostly just notes about what choices affect certain hidden stats you can use to craft your Step.

I highly recommend playing blind a couple times first just to see how consequences play out naturally before diving in. These obviously contain huge spoilers.

They should be mostly up to date, but I may have missed one or two things. Feel free to drop me an ask with any questions/issues. These guides just show dialogue choices and the affected stat. Everything is more or less in chronological order outside big sprawling areas (therapy/auction/endings).

Scar Guide - Remember setting your Heartbreak scar in Rebirth? In Retri, it's now a hidden variable that essentially tracks how well your Step is dealing with their trauma. Affects some flavor/variables at this point. Please see the last section for notes about the Suicidal scar, it's very different in Retri. Scar and scar level affect flavor throughout the book. <50 is considered low scar. Scar cannot get below 0 or above 100, it will revert to either if it escapes these bounds at the end of every chapter.

Clue Guide - For Rebirth and Retribution. Tracks how well your Step is doing at staying under the radar. Please note Ortega has 3 separate variables, Sidestep clue (oc), Puppet/Sidestep connection clue (ortega pup), and Puppet criminal clue (pup proof) . Herald does not have a clue stat at this time, he's too good for this world. Also includes clue for Special Directive. This stat affects flavor throughout the book and endings. 40 seems to be the magic number for most changes in flavor/consequences for Chen and Ortega.

Rangers Doubt Guide - hidden stat that tracks how much the Rangers are starting to chafe at the status quo. Does not have any pay off yet, will be used more in the future. Some Rangers will be easier to convince than others.

Puppet guide will be coming this weekend!

#fallen hero: retribution #for anybody who likes guides #but go bold and make weird choices the first few times #you want the surprise #trust me