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ceo-of-kimona · 2 months

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What to do with Scott…

A question that many many Kimona enjoyers face in our time is thus: “where the hell do we put Scott Pilgrim?”

The guy is a weird case. He’s the main character, the damn series was named after him, he’s integral to the life and stories of both of these women. Although; he is also a massive cockblock (or vag block?? Idk) and must be obliterated in order for the two to be happy. So, to prevent Kimona fic writers (also known as the greatest and most noble heroes of our time) from needing to contend with this great query again, I shall compile a list of potential things you could do with Scott to get him the hell out of the way. In no particular order.

1. Break Scott and Ramona up

Probably the most direct and simple answer, especially if you’re going for a more cannon compliant, post cannon universe. Though it does kinda invalidate all of the shit they got through to get together if they just split up like that. So I suggest that if you do break them up, make it on good terms. Make it so that it’s mutual and mutually beneficial and mature. Less of a “I hate you and I never want to see you again” and more of a “it was fun, you helped me a lot, but now we gotta go our separate ways in life.” Their development shouldn’t be rendered moot by the breakup, instead make the breakup part of their development.

2. Create an AU where Scott does not exist

A fairly easy one, if Scott doesn’t exist, you can just go along your merry way with your shipping. Fics where Kim finds Ramona before Scott or fics where Scott doesn’t ever fall in love with Ramona for whatever reason also fall under this category. These are good, but a bit bland. There isn’t a great lot you can tell here cause Scott’s douchery kinda holds together the plot pretty much. It is only by him being a rat-ass fuckboy that anyone ever meets anyone in the comics. Also, without having her relationship with Scott, Ramona just doesn’t have her vital character arc that the relationship brings. She’s always gonna be the same ol Flowers when she comes to Kim.

So unless you plan on retelling the entire story of the… everything with Kim instead of Scott, you’ve gotta very flighty and traumatized Ramona Flowers on your hands for the entire fic. Now, this is perfect for angst fics, as using pre-arc flaws to create a tragedy has been a a tool for angst fics since god damn Shakespeare. Also fluff doesn’t really need the “primest character development” in order to be good, so if you’re planning to either make angst or simple fluff then AU is your best bet. If you wanna make something more cannon compliant or lighthearted yet complicated, you’re out of luck.

3. Polycule

Self explanatory. Why not have both? Keep Scott and Ramona’s cute dynamic; and just bring Kim into the mix. While this can be very fun (I’m actually writing a fic where this happens at the moment) it isn’t great for every fic. Cause let’s face it: if you’re here and queer for Kimona, so maybe you do not want to write for the feelings of the dude who got here first so he’s also tagging along. Some people just don’t wanna write Scott, which is perfectly valid. Also, polycules are messy and complicated, both in real life and in fic writing. While complications can create some good drama, it’s also a lot of moving parts to manage. You aren’t getting a Kimona + Pilgrim fic down to 2k words without sacrificing a lot. This one is not built for oneshots or general Pilgrim-haters.

4. Send him off to be with Wallace

Probably one of my favorite options to use. It’s kinda an extension of the “breakup” idea, but it gives a happier ending for Scott, as it lets the breakup make sense. Scott falls in love with Wallace and can’t bear the pining so he communicates with Ramona about it, and they mutually agree that it’s for the better for them to split so he can be with Wells. It also will keep the Scollace shippers at bay, may their apocalyptic wrath be kept at bay /s.

If you don’t really have much stuff outside of Kimona in your fic and don’t know how to get Scott out of the picture, try this one. Just throw in a sentence about Scott being with Wallace and everything will make sense and be chill. Truly an option for us lazy bitches out there who just want yuri. It can also potentially set up some Scollace content later down in the fic if it comes to be of a larger scale, but if you just want your yuri you can throw out a “Scott is with Wallace” line and not need to elaborate further, we get it. All around a flexible, powerful, potent, and fun option. Though if you have any Wallace pairings already set up in your fic and you can’t fit Scollace in, this option obviously won’t be that useful to you.

So…

That’s all of the “bye bye Scott pilgrim” tropes for Kimona fics that I could think of. Now for which one is the best… prepare yourself, the answer is disappointing.

None of them!

No one of these is always gonna work for everything. These tropes are all just tools in your toolbox at the end of the day, and which one you use is up to what you’re writing and how you’re feeling. So don’t be afraid to try multiple of these for your fics, throw shit against the wall like spaghetti. Maybe you’ll find something new that you’ll like.

But that’s enough yapping from me. Now go forth and WRITE!

#also you can hit her with the transgenderification beam but I don’t know how that would help things #it would make them more funny though! so worth concideration #kim pine #ramona flowers #scott pilgrim #pineflowers #kimona #ramkim #scott pilgrim vs the world #rant post #fic writing

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seventeenlovesthree · 1 year

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Fandom Shipping Polls - Koushiro Izumi Shipping Analysis (Poll I + Poll II)

As pointed out in the main post, every single Chosen Child will get their individual analysis post to check on the status of the current popularity of their ships. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at Koushiro, shall we!

The overall results / spreadsheet

Disclaimer: As the “Someone from 01/02″ and “Others” options from poll 1 and the “Someone from 01/02″ option from poll 2 have been excluded from the final analysis due to redundancy reasons and all results were culminated in another “final count”, the results will not be 1:1 to what the polls look like:

Overall votes: 112 (approx. 92 in sum after the exclusion), the main poll got 84 votes, the secondary poll got 28 votes.

The “Others” choice in the main poll received 7% (approx. 6 votes) and 14% (approx. 4 votes) in the secondary poll. The comments/tags did not specify any preferences here (aside from characters that were already part of the main choices).

Ship Analysis

1st place: With a lead of over 50%, Taichi (55%) clearly won the overall vote. Which, in terms of his role in the Adventure verse as Koushirou’s main point of contact throughout the entirety of the series, is not surprising overall. Koushiro is Taichi’s right hand tech specialist and generally considered to be his best friend (besides Sora and Yamato), they share screentime and history together while solving problems and riddles to drive the plot forward, with a few emotional hick-ups in between, but a lot of mutual trust and loyalty to keep them focal points for one another. Breaking through the stereotypes of brawns/brains, extrovert/introvert or jock/nerd in several ways. On the other hand, as viable as they appear to be, also thanks to the various artists and writers in English and Japanese spaces - we shall not overlook that a potential bias may have taken place here. As mentioned in the main post, Koushiro is my favourite character and Taishiro my favourite Digimon ship, hence it is likely that an exposure/follower bias has taken effect. Considering that Koushiro’s polls were shared in Taishiro-centric spaces, this may have caused the huge lead for Taichi (51 votes). While I am not intending to downplay their popularity in itself (despite the fandom being fairly quiet at the moment), the results may have looked more balanced/differently in other spheres of the internet.

2nd place: The second spot goes, without a single shred of doubt, to Mimi (21%), as Koumi is considered to be one of the most popular Koushiro centric ships world-wide. This is due to their set-up in the series as being odd-balls of the same age while simultaneously bouncing off of each other very well as one of the go-to “opposites attract” dynamics. Additionally, Tri canonically made Koushiro crush on Mimi, solidifying a consistent fanon-headcanon (which usually goes the other way round, with her having a crush on him instead). While the portrayal of the crush was not appreciated everywhere equally, they have always been going strong for valid reasons - and Mimi’s number of votes (19 in the end) had been closer to Taichi’s at the beginning of the vote. While she never surpassed him at any point of the voting time, the gap just became bigger by the end of it.

3rd place: This has been a very close one - as Taichi and Mimi already took up most of the votes as being Koushiro’s most viable options, the race for the third spot had been a bit more variable throughout the voting. After overtaking the likes of Jou and Miyako at several points of the vote with the tiniest of leads, Hikari (4%) eventually came out on top (even though I could have been stingy and made her tie with Miyako based on number of votes, each being 3). Tumblr is actually one of the few internet spaces that considers Koukari as a somewhat valid choice besides the comparably huge shipping “giants” that are Taishiro and Koumi, as they did share subtle but gentle moments together throughout the Dark Master’s Arcin 01, the World Tour Arc in 02 and Tri, having both displayed a deep connection to the Digital World.

Honorary mentions: Granted, there aren’t a lot of votes left to work with, but we shall take a look at the niche choices: Miyako (3%) technically got the same number of votes as Hikari after all. Then there are three other choices that received at least 2 votes, namely Menoa (2%), Jou (2%) and Daisuke (2%).

“The 1 vote squad”: The remaining, very niche choices include Sora (1%), Takeru (1%), Ken (1%) and Iori (1%). Then there is his “friend from America” (1%), who helped him figuring out several issues throughout the series and provided for his office. Last but not least, there is Willis (1%), who is “The Digimon Movie” version of Wallace he got in contact with over the whole Diaboromon fiasco.

“0 votes go to...”: Here we only have Yamato and Meiko.

Annotations: Koushiro’s polls received the fourth least amount of overall votes (after Iori, Sora and Jou, excluding Meiko, since she only had one poll). Despite that, a potential bias - as mentioned above - can not be fully excluded. Overall, it can be stated that, while Koushiro in general is usually not among the MOST popular Chosen Children, he still has his dedicated fanbases.

What did the other polls say?

First of all: Koushiro won Taichi’s poll (27%), came in second (in a clutch!!!) in Mimi’s (19%) and also finished third in Hikari’s (10%), thus mirroring his own results 1:1.

As for the other polls, thanks to the comparably low sample sizes, we might have a case of follower/exposure bias in effect once again - but that also provides for some amusing, somewhat less common results. The 7% he got in Iori’s poll were not too surprising, with him being basically his mentor. In Jou’s poll, while he was more of a niche choice, he still came in fifth and tied with Sora there (5% each). He also got 3% in Ken’s as well as in Daisuke’s poll - which made him tie there with Taichi (3 votes each), who would objectively appear to be the much more viable choice. And despite Meiko getting 0 votes in his poll, he actually received 1 in Meiko’s (2%).

Thus, for the majority of the rest, he was merely a niche choice, such as Sora (1%), Takeru (1%) and Miyako (1%) - even though the latter almost became third in his own poll.

Yamato is the only character he got never voted for, which was mutual, thus having nobody pick Yamashiro as viable option.

Notable additions / comments / thoughts

Similarly to Sora’s poll, both the low sample size and the overall established fandom preferences were the main drivers in Koushiro’s polls. Despite a potential exposure bias towards Taishiro, it was to be expected that Taichi and Mimi would receive most of the votes and dominate the polls overall, as they have historically been his most popular shipping choices for him due to their dynamics and interaction patterns - which is perfectly understandable, as Taichi is portrayed as one of the characters Koushiro interacts with the most throughout big chunks of the entire series, whereas Mimi is literally framed to be a canon love interest for him in Tri. The other options have all been very close in (very low) numbers and while there have been some unexpected and amusing notions (such as Daisuke receiving as “many” votes as he did), Hikari could have technically been overthrown as third placed option at any given time. As mentioned, she is generally considered viable in certain niche fandom corners due to their personalities and the few interactions they had - but the same could be said about the likes of Jou, Miyako, Menoa, Iori - or even Takeru and Sora. Let’s not forget that Hikari only got t h r e e votes after all. Thus, I really hope to reach a wider audience if I choose to repeat the polls once the fandom is not as quiet as it is right now.

The comments in the tags have only referred to the already mentioned choices. So the “Others” option - despite being picked “relatively” often - did not reveal any other potentially preferred suitors. This leaves room for speculation, but usually, the option is reserved for OC ships, for when people prefer to not ship a character at all or when they’re considered asexual (which will definitely be a future option to include as well!). With the latter being somewhat popular headcanons for Koushiro based on his personality, this may be an indicator as to why those options were picked that often.

Other Analysis Posts

Taichi Yagami Shipping Analysis

Yamato Ishida Shipping Analysis

Sora Takenouchi Shipping Analysis

Mimi Tachikawa Shipping Analysis

Jou Kido Shipping Analysis

Takeru Takaishi Shipping Analysis

Hikari Yagami Shipping Analysis

Daisuke Motomiya Shipping Analysis

Ken Ichijouji Shipping Analysis

Miyako Inoue Shipping Analysis

Iori Hida Shipping Analysis

Meiko Mochizuki Shipping Analysis

#koushiro izumi #koushirou izumi #izzy izumi #digimon #digimon polls #digimon shipping #meta #my two cents #my edit #taishiro #taishirou #koumi #koukari

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bossuets · 10 months

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Hey there, Jamie! First I gotta say that I love all your sets and I’m really glad you’re giffing again. ❤︎ Then I’d ask something: I’m someone who likes to gif unpopular shows/movies and it’s obviously really discouraging when I feel like I have no one to share my creations with. Have you ever felt like this? And since tumblr hasn’t been helping us gifmakers and even popular stuff (unless they’re popular *this* week) don’t make notes/don’t get to the people who would actually enjoy seeing our creations, what do you think I could use as motivation to keep on doing it? I know it’s kind of a dumb question but I LOVE the process of creating the sets, and then I post and feel this overwhelming drop of my energy, like: see? It’s worthless, what you do. And it always gets me in the end… :( sorry for being dramatic about it, I just thought you’d be the right person to ask because you’re such a lovely person to your anons :,) anyway, I’m wishing you a good time while giffing and nice days ahead! Xxx 💐

hi anon!! first off, i don't think you're being dramatic at all!! no matter how much i love giffing - and i really do love it - it is still so discouraging to post a set you're proud of and then get pretty much no notes. gifmaking is art! i know it feels so impostor-y to say it, but it's true! it is an art! and when you make art and share it with the world, you want it to be appreciated! i don't think there's anything dramatic or wrong with that. i feel like that a lot, honestly. i'm making a gifset as we speak that i know is gonna get like 30 notes, maximum. and it makes me sad because i'm putting a lot of work into it and it's going to look pretty and that isn't going to make a single difference in how popular it ends up being.

i don't think that's a dumb question at all. i am going to tell you something so arrogant and self-obsessed that pretty much everyone who sees this is going to laugh at me for the rest of my life: my main motivation for giffing at this point is literally just seeing pretty stuff on my blog. every time i finish a set, i go look at it on my blog and think, "wow, this looks lovely on my blog!" the more time i spend on tumblr, the more i think of my blog as a scrapbook of the things i love, and when i make a gifset, it's another addition to that scrapbook. and i love being able to go back and look at a gifset i made and think "wow, i made something beautiful for something that i really enjoy!" and sure, i'll still get a bit bummed about the note count (a set i posted a few days ago literally only has 5 notes right now), but i still get to have it on my blog and i still think it's beautiful.

you mentioned that you love the process of making your gifs. i'm glad! that is the thing you have really gotta hold onto. even if your audience is limited, this is your art. this is something that you made, because you love it. you have really gotta let that fuel you, because unfortunately for all artists, public opinion changes with the wind and validation comes and goes quicker than anything else. i hate it. i hate it for me and for you and for every other artist just trying to put their work out there. but we have really gotta let our own love of creating be the thing that motivates us.

i'm glad you came to me to ask this question, anon. i hope i helped a little bit ♡ also for the record you can always tag me in your creations, even if i'm not in the fandom or if we aren't mutuals! i would love to see & appreciate your work ♡ and if you don't think your creations are reaching an audience that is out there, my #1 tip to you is this: join or start a sourceblog! i have a bit of a problem when it comes to starting sourceblogs (as you may have noticed) but it actually really does help. it also motivates me more knowing that there is an audience out there and i can reach more of them with a sourceblog. it's definitely not for everyone but if you're interested, i say go for it!

if you wanna talk more or have more questions for me, my askbox and dms are always open!! sending you lots of love and i hope you have a wonderful day/evening ♡

#thank you<333 #answered #anonymous #love letters only💛

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hellyeahheroes · 2 years

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20 Writing Things I Wish I Knew 20 Years Ago

It’s my birthday. At 32 I feel old. I am still full of things I wish I learned earlier, when I started trying to become a writer. A lot of regrets for time wasted and mistakes made. So here is the 20 basic things I wish I knew 20 years ago. Maybe some of it will help someone else save off some time on their own path. If not, maybe you all will have a good laugh.

1. All Advice is Subjective

You will notice a lot of the points on this list are mutually contradictionary or make you go “this is just like an exception to point X”. This is by the design. All advice and all thoughts on writing you will ever read, this list included, is what is working for the person who wrote it, within the framework of their personal perspective and preferences. It may not necessairly work for you. Moreover, I am a person who often goes “but what about...?” when being told something only works in a specific way. There is an exception to every rule that is often a different rule for different purpose. I would even say that every contradictory pair or rules exists on a sliding scale and it is your decision towards which you lean more or whenever you disregard one enteirly in favor of the other. Cherry pick what works for you, disregard the rest, if you find everything I say trash but walk out of this post picking even a single thing you find worth remembering, my time writing it was not wasted.

2. Rules Are Made to Be Broken

One of ironclad rules is that you can never make your hero too strong. That if they can just rollstomp over every opponnent then the tension of the story is enteirly gone and no one will care. We can look at several titles that didn’t listen to it and never gained any fame, now being doomed to obscurity forever, like Hellsing, Overlord or One-Punch Man. Wait, they’re all popular? And most popular superhero of all time is Batman, despite being at this point a giant meme about how he always wins?

(sidenote: don’t come at me with some crap how Batman struggles or you can believe he is in actual danger, it may be just me but I never could beleive he will be anything, but midly inconvenienced at best, since he unbroke his back in the 90′s. Not even when he was laser-point nuked in the face by cosmic god of fascism, from which he walked out perfectly fine btw)

For every rule you will read, there is a perfectly good way, several even, to disregard or break it enteirly. Honestly, you can do whatever you want, as long as you know what you’re doing. As a matter of fact, you should question every rule, even on this list. As I have said before, they often are made by and for people with specific outlook in life, that reflect on their writing.

Just so you don’t think this is baseless rambling, even the pros are questioning the validity of supposedly fundamental rules all the time. I’ll demonstrate this on a big one: Viet Thanh Nguyen has argued in 2017 that the “show don’t tell” rule, which so many take as gospel, is a rule invented for white people born in country they publish and pretty much useless for POC and immigrant writers, who may often need to describe emotions and experiences impossible to show. Eric Bennet points out the rule was, not even joking, part of CIA’s Cold War propaganda effort. Cecilia Tan on the pages of Uncanny Magazine #18 opens her own dissection of the rule with “ Yes, the dreaded “infodump” is seen as a hallmark of bad writing, but it’s faulty logic to conclude that therefore all infodumps are bad. Try telling that to Neal Stephenson the next time he wants to exposit about Sumerian”.

3. You Cannot Break What You Do Not Know

Fuck ‘em rules, got it? However, you cannot accomplish it without actually knowing the rule, what it does and why people adhere to it. The cases of ignorant gracefully stumbling into a great subversion or a fresh take on a cliche are few and far in between. It’s not that they do not happen. but the chances of you managing to pull it off are too slim to attempt it deliberatelly. If you want to break the rule you first need to understand how it works and where are it’s weak points and most importantly, what happens when you do break it.

4. You Can Have Too Much Of A Good Thing

This really applies to anything I will advise, but since we mentioned breaking the rules and subversion, it comes with perfect illustration. Why did Game of Thrones finale suck so much? In my belief it is because the show was designed on the principle of subverting, deconstructing and defying as many tropes of classic fantasy, chilvaric legends and fairy tales as possible. And that did carry it on for a very long time by the sheer novelty. Then came a moment they had to actually set up the end and creators found themselves in a pickle. Because there was no way to set up a satisfying ending that did not, in one way of another, play into the same tropes and genre conventions they spent so much time tearing down. So they ended with narratively unsatisfying clusterfuck that seems more concerned with defying expectations than actually giving a proper conclusion. Staying true to what got the series popular in the first place and making something that feels narratively complete at the same time turned out to be impossible.

5. Have Something To Say

Everything you write is saying something. Everything that has a story is going to have message, themes and politics. Every book, every comic, every game. People who rush at you with examples trying to prove how such claim is wrong either do not see or willfully deny what lies at the very core of that example. That or said an exception proving the rule. Demanding someone proves to you politics of Tetris only shows that you need to be some abstract nonsense, divorced from any semblance of the narrative to not have politics in it.

You either will say something intentionally through your story and shape it to fit what you are trying to say, or you will do unintentionally. And believe me, people are gonna take different things from your creation anyway, last thing you need is to let something from your messy subconciousness slip through.

Be passionate about the story you tell, be passionate about its message. Speak of things you love, speak of your fears, speak of what angers you. Writer cannot be detached from the world, from life or from people. You’re not a dispassionate, objective observer removed from reality. I get you may be shy, or feel your own experiences aren’t worth talking about. Or maybe the memories are still too painful for you to open that particular wound. That’s okay. But I’m sure you are passionate about something. Even if your work is deriverative in some way. I touched upon it in my previous list. Even if you’re passionate about things like fictional characters or stories, there is likely a deeper meaning to them, that resonates with you. Tap into it.

6. Shut Up

Stories have different levels of clarity. In some it is obvious what is happenning, others intentionally muddle the waters to confuse the audience. Readers should put down your work having clear picture of everything you wanted to make clear. At the same time, they should be full of question and uncertan about things you purposefully left ambigious and unexplained. The former requires no explanations from the author outside the work itself. The latter should never be explained that way. If you find yourself having to go on the record and explain or clarify things you didn’t intend to left out unexplained, you fucked up.

7. Take Care of Your Needs

Don’t write when you’re hungry. Don’t write when you’re sleep deprived. Don’t write when you’re horny. In each of these cases the quality of your work is going to suffer. Even smut needs you to look at a sex scene with a rational, un-horny eye once in a while. Eat a hot dog, take a nap, masturbate. Take care of your needs, then go back to writing. If you know a scene can cause you to crave one of your needs, go take care of that need in advance and THEN write it. Similiarly if you know the writing you’re about to do may hit one of your triggers, prepare the tools of emotional support of your choice at hand.

DISCLAIMER: I have never done drugs aside coffee, not even a smoke. I have no fucking idea how this advice may interact with addictions so please do NOT take it as encouraging you to do that kind of things.

8. Characters Matter More Than The Plot

Plot does not matter as much as people like to think. At the end of day it is merely a framework within which the characters operate and interact. You can craft the most complex, intricate plot ever created. But if it unfolds for a cast of dull cardboard cutouts that have less agency than a pawn on a chessboard and seem more concerned with saying lines that will get them quoted on Tvtropes than experiencing actual human emotions, nobody's gonna give a shit. Great plot will not save the story with bad characters, but the opposite is very much true - if you have great, multi-dimensional characters and respect their choices and agency, people may stick with you even if the base plot is a convoluded storm of cliches and a mess of increasingly nonsensical events. As long as it feels that it is convoluded storm of cliches and a mess of increasingly nonsensical event that the characters made by their own choices and actions.

In RPGs an equivalent of this advice would be “situations, not stories”: Don’t design a story of what is going to happen on a session and then railroad the players to experience it. Create a situation, have a plan how it would develop if the player characters never got involved, then let them wreck it with their own choices and decisions. I’m not sure it is applicable to writing, however. At the end of the day YOU control ALL of the characters. They aren’t real and do not make their own decisions, you do it for them. Ultimatelly all chocies they make are serving to tell the story you want to tell. However if you can convince the readers of the opposite, make them believe that characters make choices in accordance with their personalities, instead of making choices you WANT them to make, that you respect their agency first and foremost...well, that’s what we call a “character-driven story”.

9. Plot and Theme Are Intertwined

Similiar to previous point, themes you are exploring in your story and the message you are telling won’t save it if the events makes no sense. The plot should complete and explore the theme. That means plotting the events that show the protagonist issues related to the theme and force him to take a stance. While showing and exploring opposing viewpoints to intended message can help with that, overall the main character should journey to learn the lesson you want the audience take from this work. Or, if they have a negative arc, they should learn all the wrong lessons so that the audience can see their downfall as a cautionary tale. If your theme is that murder is wrong but the plot rewards the protagonist for killing until he makes a sudden turn in the finale, suddenly feeling bad for killing a girl he fancied, but not about slaughtering his way through dozens of human beings through the whole story, it will feel jarring. Unless the real message was that the protagonist is a huge asshole, that is.

10. Aesthetic Is Narrative

The stylistic choices, be it in art, set/costumes or description, are part of your narrative and inform the reader what kind of a story it is. Say a character decides to join the good guys and gets a costume change. The moment they step out of changing room will send a different message if that costume is an army uniform, a padded biker suit with red scarf floating on the wind or a black, sleevless leather jacket with a dojo symbol on the back. First one evokes an image of a rebel being brought into the fold and tempered by military discipline, second implies the character’s newfound desire to protect the innocent by bringing to mind Kamen Rider and Tokusatsu heroes, and the last suggests a “reformed, but not tamed” wildcard deciding to fight for the school he respects.

This applies to what the character is wearing but also their overall design, body language, as well as the scenery. Imagine Jenny the Thief, dressed in plain clothes, scuffling nervously through the alley, keeping to the shadows cast by tall castle walls and towers, that the narrator compared to claws of a monster trying to grab sun from the sky. It evokes a much different image that the same Jenny dressed in colorful dress with many acessories, striding confidently, wishing one of palace’s fantastic towers would be casting a shadow on this back alley, so that she doesn’t need to suffer Sun’s full attention.

If you’re working in a medium that utilizes music, this appleis as well. For evidence, listen to 3 different entrance themes of professional wrestler the Undertaker - Rest In Peace, Keep Rollin and Memory Remains - and think about how they evoke a vastly different character.

This is also why an overt sexualization of women is often so cringe-worthy. It’s not that this is always bad (though I despise it on many levels), but it has its place and time. If a vilainess shows up in a skintight latex suit with proportions and body language of a stereotypical dominatrix femme-fatale, you better be writing smut or at least a shamelessly horny pulp, not a hard science story about troubles of long-term space travel.

Important exception, of course, is a deliberate subversion. A character whose looks are supposed to evoke certain set of expectations, only for their personality to be near total opposite, when used properly can make us question the reader’s assumptions and biases. For example, my favorite DC superhero is Cassandra Cain, whose costume as Batgirl evokes an image of typical dark and gritty 90′s antihero, and who actually has stronger moral code against killing than even Batman. Be warned, however, that this subversion must be done deliberatelly and carefully, othertwise it will just become jarring.

11. Google Every Word You Make Up

Stole this one from this very website but it’s worth repeating. If you make up a term, google if it doesn’t mean something unfortunate in some language. I’m just going to point out how at some point Magic the Gathering made a character named Sram and I will never stop laughing at them for that, because in my native tounge “sram” is a very vulgar way of saying “I’m taking a dump”.

12. "Convincing” not “Realistic”

Nobody wants a realistic story. We do not care what would be a realistic outcome of doing X in real life. What people want is to be convinced this could happen. We want to believe this could happen. We can take a lot of a story, even something so over the top fantastical like Gurren Lagann or Devil May Cry. But we need some point of reference for characters actions. Dragons, giant robots, eyes that are portals to punch dimension? We can buy that easily with some bit of handwaving like “divine will” or “the X gene” or “Minkovsky Particles”. What is really important is to convince us the characters are making decisions rational humans would. Not just the characters, but the world itself. We need internal consistency to your world’s rules and to the sociopolitical actions taken by nations and societies of it.

This is why we won’t usually accept in-universe excuses for something we know is a stupid decision. Your heroine can wear an “armor” that is basically just a metal bra because “she cast a spell of protection that defends her as much as a full plate would”? Yeah, that is still going to break my suspension of disbelief. In theory there is no threat to nurses, lawyers or teachers at work. But no woman who wants to be taken seriously in any of these jobs would come to work in a bikini, would she?

I will admit, what one finds convincing can vary from a person to person and may even change within the same person overtime, as their experiences pile up and perspective is refined. You might have seen it in some recent sentiments, like “When I was a kid I found Wheel of Time unrealistic because it was so hard for the heroes to unite the nations of the world against evil. After last few years, I find it unrealistic because they DID manage to unite everyone at all”.

13. Pick Characters Who Contrast Each Other...On Equal Footing

There is a lot of advice on why it is important to make characters who are great foils to one another, especially the protagonist and the antagonist. But what people forget often is that it is important to give them enough ground to stand on equal footing. Enough narrative weight it doesn’t feel one orbits another, existing only to enrich the latter’s story. If in Iron Man II James Rhodes, Justin Hammer or Whiplash asked “ Big man in a suit of armor. Under that what are you?” and Tony Stark just replied “ Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.” , we would be quick to dismiss their question. This is because each of those characters, while contrasting Tony in different ways, is not as well-developed as him or given enough narrative weight to stand on his own, they are merely there to help tell his story. When this exchange occured in the Avengers, however, it became one of most memorable moments. Because the man asking was Steve Rogers, a character of equal narrative importance as Tony.

This is why so many people love good villains and rivals. Because they are sometimes the only people getting as much narrative pull as the hero. And yes, that is a dig at the Whiplash in Iron Man II not being well-written.

14. Make Sure Your Character Fits The Story

If Otello and Hamlet switched plays, neither would happen. Quick to action Ottelo would have Cluadius’ head on a pike before his father’s ghosts is done speaking. Always doubtful Hamlet would question Iago’s words enough to realize he is being played. Shakespeare choose to tell the story with each character because their flaws were what lead them to a tragic end in this specific situation.

Think carefully if your hero actually works for a story you’re trying to tell with them. Don’t bend over backwards to make it about a character you think will be more marketable for target audience. People can tell when you’re doing that and it always rings false to the whole story. And if you have to contrive reasons why you’re telling a story about your protagonist in the first place, the chances are that the story would benefit from cutting them out. Usually when that happens, there is someone in your supporting cast who fits the role of main character much better. For example, in the comic book version of the Boys Billy Butcher and Wee Hugie are incredibly boring choices for the protagonist, as each’s motivation to oppose evil corproation, and superheroes it makes, boils down to “they killed my woman”. Compare it with Mother’s Milk, whose entire life has been ruined by the same corporation and who lost his entire family due to that corporation’s actions, and he makes much more compelling character.

15. Not Every Trope Fits Every Story

Let us take previous point a step further. Each genre has its own conventions that you need to respect to a degree at least. There are storytelling tools that may work in one type of story but not in another. Casually killing characters for shock value may work wonders in a gripping, dark fantasy war story like Glen Cook’s Soldiers Live. But comic books like Ultimatum or Avengers Arena have shown that it does not translate well into a shared universe of uplifting superhero narratives. Readers of Cook come in with an unspoken understanding that he is writing a brutal world, where death is quick and merciless and does not care who you are. His heroes are, at the end of the day, just humans. Slaughtering superheroes right and left just makes the reader ask what exactly is different now from all those times when they saved the day with a smile. Why are they sudenly dying when other heroes are fine? Why is this edgy bad guy with tech able to kill someone who survived one-on-one with an actual god? And if you cannot provide a convincing answer, the audience will feel like you’re just flipping them a bird for liking characters you don’t care for.

16. Not Every Genre Fits Every Story

Taking the last two points even a step further, you need to make sure you are telling your story in a genre, or even a medium, best suited for it. Infamous creepypasta Sonic.exe can only work if you don’t think about what is happenning for more than five seconds. Othertwise you realize that the narrator is for some unexplained reason unable to tell fiction from reality and freaking over characters dying in a hacked copy of Sonic the Hedgehog game more than over death of his friend...and then playing anyway. A very common opinion, that I share, is that the story would be much better off if it ditched human narrator and presented itself as a dark fic, a genre always open for another “beloved character suddenly goes serial killer on the cast” story.

In more broader sense, there are things a specific medium does better from others. If your story relies on heavy introspection, discussions of complicated scientific concepts and thick worldbuilding, chances are it will work best as a novel, than a comic book. If you want to have a lot of martial art battles, any visual medium is likely going to convey it better than written prose. But even then, you need to know different forms of that medium to match your specifics. Western comics have length of 20 to 36 pages per issue, depending whenever its American or European standard. The audience excepts to get, in one such issue, roughly balanced mix of verious elements, which is why most action scenes are going to be swift, maybe only few pages. Meanwhile manga is used to hyperfocusing on a specific element of story at the time. It is also more decompressed, with longer chapters of 30+ pages on average. Meaning it fits more a drawn-out battle full of twists and turns over the course of multiple chapters. If your want to make an action-packed show or a film, live-action budget can much easier take in something closer to real life, with little to no powers, realying on choerography and actual martial arts. Meanwhile, in animation it is going to be as expensive to make two people fight one another regardless if they’re throwing around knives or laser beams. Of course if you overcomplicate on the powers, you can reach a point where it would be better off as a prose after all, which is why it is important to know what kind of story you want to tell in the first place.

17. Set Up Some Lines

Once in a while you come across a work that does something that is considered bad in this genre, medium or just this kind of story. And yet gets away with it, at least for you, if not for everyone. Maybe it does a particular trope you usually dislike but manages to pull it out just right to not bother you. Maybe they did something that made your most hated type of character at least bearable? These are worth studying as to how do they accomplish this, obviously. But it is also useful to note them as a line in the sand, so to speak. They clearly hit a sweet spot before the overdone thing becomes actually overdone. If you ever find yourself dealing with this kind of topic in your own writing, you can reffer to the line.

For example, let’s say that you’re wondering whenever to make a superpowered battle series a comic, animation or a prose. You may look at something like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, a franchise that has been for decades getting away with having very complex abilities and characters explaining and/or analyzing them in great detail, despite it being something that should be avoided in a visual medium. You can set up a “JoJo Line” by asking yourself - would an average character of my story need more time/page space to explain their powers than an average one in JoJo?”. If answer is yes, you should probably make this a novel.

18. What You Do Not Show (Doesn’t) Matter

If you relegate certain action or things done by a specific character to happening “off-screen” and merely be something we see a result of, or are told about, you send a direct message this thing or character doesn’t matter. If you want to make sure readers consider a character competent at something, you need to show them being competent at it. Think of every time you have seen a scene where hero bursts to the room to save a woman from a villain, only to find her fine and the baddie tied up. How many of them actually established the woman in question as a badass in her own right? I bet you it were only those where we actually have seen her fight or outright overcome the villain, not the ones where it all happenned off-screen. Adventure Time brilliantly parodied how useless this type of scene is, by showing us how an incompetent villain manages to accidentially tie himself up, in front of a very confused girl, and heroes severly misread the situation.

What I’m trying to say here is that things you choose to not show matter....because they don’t matter. Your chocie what to ommit enforces an idea what the story is about and that the part you skipped is outside of that scope. It informs the focus of your narrative and the idea of what is relevant or irrelevant. So if you want a character to be part of main cast, be wary of pushing too much of their accomplishments or arc to happen off-screen. In case of accomplishments you can skip them if you already showed character good at the thing. If you have established the hero as badass by showing them beat a big, strong enemy, you can probably skip them fighting some losers as we know what outcome will be. You can then only show hero’s fights if there is an actual risk the character losing, to use what you were previously not showing to enchance the tension. But if you ever show the character losing and all their victories are from off-screen fights, it just shows they’re a fake who cannot win against a real opponnent, and their reputation as strong is as good as an informed ability. After all, if we never see them win, how do we know their “victories” aren’t just all from enemies slipping on a banana peel?

19. Overt Complexity is Self-Congralutatory

Resist the temptation to make the villain’s plan overtly complicated. The more steps the plan needs to accomplish, the harder it is to believe when it goes off without a hitch. It is very easy to reach a point when the plan no longer makes villain look like a master manipulator, but as if they have crystal ball and can see the future, as they account for events they had no way of knowing about

Make sure to keep your villain’s goal in mind and that the plan is actually serving accomplishing the goal and not just showing how smart the villain is. I recommend studying a movie Usual Suspects for this and realizing how the villain’s plan ends up undermining the very goal it was conceived for, just because the writer wanted to make sure we see him as a mastermind.

As with everything, remember you can have too much of a good thing. Gargoyles’ David Xanatos showed us that villains who can accomplish secondary objectives can look smart even if their main goal is thwarted. But the same writers’ Young Justice has took it to a such extreme it became a joke and sucked all tension from the story - why bother caring if we know the bad guys from the Light will win? Because they always win, even if they lose, they still win.

20. It’s Okay To Figure it Out As You Go

I bet this all feels very intimidating. So let’s me make one thing clear as my closing words. You do not need to have fully fleshed out characters before you begin plotting your story. It’s okay to not have the plot all figured out before you choose the theme of your story. Hell, it’s okay to just start writing scenes with your OC and figure plot and theme as you go. It’s okay to go without a plan or unprepared, stumble and make a note of the issue. At some point you will need to make revisions anyway, first draft is always supposed to suck. Once you finish it, you can start ironing everything out so that it fits neatly together.

Anyway, Happy Birthday to me

-Admin

#writing #writing advice

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taketwoinink · 1 year

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I posted 1,942 times in 2022

That's 1,942 more posts than 2021!

355 posts created (18%)

1,587 posts reblogged (82%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@chilikit

@secretsinthevoid

@eleilinnrallin

@moony4pads

@thatfaecreaturee

I tagged 1,500 of my posts in 2022

Only 23% of my posts had no tags

#reblog - 202 posts

#mutuals - 105 posts

#answered asks - 81 posts

#thatfaecreaturee - 64 posts

#queer - 60 posts

#signed in ink - 53 posts

#the ink answers - 45 posts

#yes - 43 posts

#<3 - 38 posts

#tumblr trick or treat - 37 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#also i was trying to write this story and i was going to push the coming out until like five chapters in and no it happened like right away

My Top Posts in 2022:

Sister: "Don't date your friends, you're not going to be able to stay friends after you break up"

Me, a demiromantic:

61 notes - Posted July 11, 2022

this is kind of a half-baked thought but here we go

there's this thing commonly said in the trans community of "we didn't pick our genders, this is just the way we are"

yes, this is true

however, I do want to bring attention to the idea that perhaps it isn't true 100% of the time. And for those people, whoever they may be, who maybe don't feel as if they were always trans, you're valid too in whatever gender you choose to be!

I think that saying we were born this way is how we kind of argue against transphobes and people saying that we're just confused or we don't know what we're talking about. And for so many of us, it's true! personally, yes, I feel as though I was never a woman but have always been something else but hadn't yet figured that out. (which is why I feel weird saying I discovered I was nonbinary because yes that is the true but in a way I've always been nonbinary. that's a talk for another day though)

But as I've thought about it, I've come to the conclusion that in any other timeline, when placed with the option to be a cis woman, I would choose to be nonbinary every time.

And not everyone would.

And that's okay! We're all different! Being trans/nonbinary is a struggle. It's isolating and sometimes feels hopeless and it's frankly just a lot to deal with. And everyone deals with it in different levels and different situations.

So I believe that not all trans people are born this way. AND THAT'S OKAY. They are every bit as valid as any other trans person, or any other person in general! And people who were born this way? Also valid!

Whatever reason someone may feel as if their gender switched, maybe it's trauma, maybe it's preference changing over time, maybe it's just something random and not completely understood, it doesn't matter.

I think they should be recognized and included just the same as anyone else.

-- I haven't ever actually met someone who has told me that they don't feel as if they were trans their entire life. However, if someone can change sexuality over time, then why shouldn't it be possible for someone's gender to change over time as well? I understand that there are a lot of differences in how sexuality and gender evolve, but there are also a lot of similarities.

Just something to think about.

64 notes - Posted August 25, 2022

Here is the longer version of the thunderstorm for anyone who wants it!

71 notes - Posted August 3, 2022

oops I made another one

Aromantics:

and another one

See the full post

79 notes - Posted September 8, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Alrighty folks, you know the drill.

I found another picrew

tagging! @earthtokit @gemstarstarlight @venusqq @thatfaecreaturee @jinxneedssleep @eleilinnrallin (if you're into this sort of thing!) @quinnick @chaserofstarsandtheabyss @secretsinthevoid @lilywolfgray @elumax-archive @ringnea (ONE DAY YOU HAVE TO SUBMIT TO MY WILL AND DO ONE OF THESE)

547 notes - Posted October 6, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

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cthulhubert · 1 year

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I posted 28,458 times in 2022

That's 2,097 more posts than 2021!

78 posts created (0%)

28,380 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@argumate

@ernilthur

@sweetest-garlic

@bdigfreakingwooper

@preggo-my-eggo-meggo

I tagged 18,154 of my posts in 2022

Only 36% of my posts had no tags

#what can i queue - 13,722 posts

#words - 503 posts

#long post - 428 posts

#deja vu - 352 posts

#rationality - 240 posts

#endorsed - 213 posts

#frog - 206 posts

#goal body - 163 posts

#homestuck - 130 posts

#lemon text - 123 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#a wizard appretice has such bad ocd he discovers a conspiracy to rule the world and has to get a princess and her pet gremlin to save his li

My Top Posts in 2022:

The worst thing about Blasphemous is that they never added Achievements for any of the expansions (fyi: all included in the price of the game now).

Stir of Dawn added New Game+ with three choices of “Penitence” that make the game harder (you can only do one per run, and each gives you a unique bead on the next NG+), a series of five new bosses, and a gold sink donation box that gives you a bunch of bonuses, including a unique skin when you max it out.

Strife and Ruin added a Boss Rush mode, a series of five platforming challenges (that are part of a crossover with Bloodstained), and new prayers and beads.

And Wounds of Eventide added two new bosses that you have to beat to get a new Heart which adds a second phase to the second to last and final boss fights which gives you the True ending.

I’ve done all of these now because they were fun but I crave external validation of the matter!

12 notes - Posted May 6, 2022

Bought a gallon capacity (four liters, actually) insulated water jug, mostly on a whim. It’s not bad but it doesn’t really offer much over my old stand by 40oz bottle beyond mild physical comedy. Every time I use it I legit feel like this:

12 notes - Posted June 23, 2022

Blasphemous, a 2D retro styled action platformer is on sale for 75% off (6.24$) on Steam, on GoG, AND on Nintendo’s store for the Switch (those are all links). Steam’s, at least, ends April 4th.

There’s a sequel announced for 2023 and that’s an instant buy for me now.

I started out kind of lukewarm on this game but by the time I beat the first boss, I was kind of in love? The platforming stuff gave me some big old school Prince of Persia vibes (maybe it’s the instant death spikes); and the combat is fun. Some of those exploration/metroidvania elements. It’s “Souls-like”, though the difficulty isn’t really turned up to 11, it’s just got the whole “parrying, death means you need to go reclaim something, health flasks that refill, story is mostly in item descriptions or hidden away” kinda thing. I know it’s been done before but I really loved the whole “Evil(er) Fantasy Catholicism” aesthetic.

CW: Lots of blood and gore and some pixelated bits and bobs, if you dislike that. And obviously some, uh, look at the name.

16 notes - Posted April 1, 2022

"#arknights #I honestly enjoy the bafflement everything I see about this game (it's a game right?) induces" - look, it's simple: you play as a mesothelioma charity that inexplicably keeps getting involved in catgirl civil wars

I am now enlightened.

18 notes - Posted May 16, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Had another dream featuring tumblr mutuals and follows.

It was a fairly sprawling dream, and had something almost like an adventure narrative except it was really chill. Basically I went from place to place via various methods, accomplishing tasks. A lot of it blurred out of memory, but near the end I was at some kind of... distribution center? A giant blocky gray building full of offices and warehouses. I seem to recall it was a government service. I was definitely there with somebody else to pick up a large package. But I walked into one waiting room, possibly looking for water, and a bunch of trans and non-binary people from tumblr where there (I remember @beste-glatisant and @transgenderer, maybe @natalieironside?) and we shot the shit for a minute, and I mentioned how I’d run into TRAINS (I think but can’t be sure that this was something that actually happened in the dream, but I forgot except for the part where I referenced it later, during the same dream); which was... some kind of organization, except you always refer to its members/representatives as being the organization itself? The name is an acronym (and I think the T was for Trans). And all of you were excited and amazed and talked about how rare it is to run into them “organically”.

I was so caught up in pondering the implications, and the odd grammar, that I woke myself up.

42 notes - Posted February 11, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #lol that dream was this year? wild #lol two posts about blasphemy-at least it's a good game?#that longest tag was from a reblog bait thing: 'describe your current writing project as badly as possible in the tags'#frogs didn't make top 5??? need to up my game in 2023

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schnaf · 1 year

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@loveyouhomex tagged me, thank you ♥

1. Why did you choose your url?

short version: i used it on another site before. long version: one time, when i was really bored at school, i doodled some animals and everything felt normal, but then i realized the animal i doodled wasn't a regular animal but a sheep - snail hybrid - a schnaf in german, if you will. a few days later, i decided to make a new account on my first (and up to that point only) fanfic site because after one year, i felt like i needed a new start. but it felt rather temporary - i left the old account after not that long either and i thought i'd stay on the new account even shorter. so i just picked a random name - the animal i came up with a few days before. joke's on me, it became my identity.

2. Any side blogs?

yeah, i have a football side blog where i posted pics i took at matches, i have a side blog for a former fandom but i lost interest in it as soon as i created the side blog so... sorry, no new side blogs for fandom, i'm a one blog mess once again ♥ also several shared blogs for projects and stuff

3. How long have you been on Tumblr?

i deserve senior discount and stuff, it's been a bit over 11 years now

4. Do you have a queue tag?

i once used a word, then i used q, then i decided to just let people know EVERYTHING is on queue here. also if i'm actually online and posting... no i'm not ♥

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

a friend of mine had tumblr and she always sent me posts of cute animals and footballers and one day i was like "ah imma join the source" - again, it didn't feel like a big decision and i didn't think it'd last that long

6. Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

it's a screenshot from this video

youtube

gaon was insane for this. that's all.

7. Why did you choose your header?

it's from the hair cut mv and it's just such a peak scene....... THE VIBES THE COLORS the two pretty bois hehe. added bonus is gaon's "welcome" but well, couldn't put that into a gif.

8. What’s your post with the most notes?

it's a sernando gifset 😭😭 a friend back then was like "oh there was a sernando moment right now" so i looked it up immediately and was like "you know what? imma make a gifset right away" and it still gets notes nowaday, even though it was such a short moment and rather low effort

9. How many mutuals do you have?

almost all the people i follow are mutuals, that's very nice ♥

10. How many followers do you have?

quite a bunch ♥

11. How many people do you follow?

a few less than follow me

12. Have you ever made a shit post?

have i ever not made a shit post

13. How often do you use tumblr a day?

too often

14. Did you ever have a fight / argument with another blog?

👀 why would i, the most peaceful person on this webbed site, have an argument, let alone a fight, with someone on here. so yeah the answer is yes

15. How do you feel about the ‘you need to reblog posts’?

the good old "reblog this or you're a shitty person" stuff sucked, but it almost died out? it got a little revival through the polls tho. currently, there are those instructions how to be a good blogger and how to avoid looking like a bot and it's like reblog stuff!!!! and oof. i mean it's valid but it's pretty annoying. also i don't want people to reblog stuff bcs they feel like they have to - they should do it on their own will. for example, sometimes, i feel like network people only reblog each others post and compliment each other because they have to (or feel like they have to) and oof that's pretty annoying. but 🐸☕

16. Do you like tag games?

it may not look like it because it takes me such a long time to answer them, but there's a reason why i keep them in my likes and answer them even after a long time ♥ so yesss!

17. Do you like ask games?

same as above!

18. Which of your tumblr mutuals is tumblr famous?

you shouldn't be famous on tumblr

19. Do you have a crush on a mutual?

i heard they're all on tumblr, that's pretty embarrassing, so... no ://

20. Tags

@jcamilov06, @blacks-phoenix, @sunshine304, @ker-sunshine, @eyes-of-simha, @xjungsu, @todaviia, @manuelmueller, @chipsyio and @jorzuela - do itttt ♥

#careful - i accidentally spilled some tea ://#Youtube

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doctorfreak · 2 years

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i understand and appreciate the “organize!!!!” call-to-action after horrible events stemming from systemic societal issues, but i think just saying “no more posting online, get out and organize!” is close to useless. i’m coming up on two years as a community organizer, so here are some of my insights:

1. joining an existing organization means you will meet people likely involved in other orgs. if you start working in one and decide you don’t like it, you’re more likely to learn about the local landscape and find an org you actually do like.

2. there are a lot of different structured orgs doing a lot of different work. there are hierarchical and very funded nonprofits, there are anarchist-type mutual aid groups, there are education and outreach groups and tons of shades in between. there will be places that suit your values and how you like to work and others that don’t. it’s ok to hop around!

3. you are probably not going to join an org to benefit you personally but there is a lot to gain! i’ve gained more friendships, community connection, resources, opportunity to do fulfilling work, and transferable skills than i did in school or elsewhere.

4. that helpless frightened feeling after public tragedies is much more conditional. when we are alone and isolated, mass shootings and police brutality are terrifyingly out of our control. in an organization with pooled resources + with many heads and hands coming together, action is much more possible and there is never “nothing to be done”

5. the work is hard but fulfilling. most people burnout at some point but it’s avoidable. good orgs will have a shapeable culture and understand that moving slow and taking care of yourself makes for better, sustainable work.

6. there are a lot of valid reasons people (especially marginalized ppl) may not want to participate in large organizations, but just getting 10 of your friends together regularly, you could come up with a small and feasible cause to organize around. with time and public communication and good faith networking, small projects can really take off.

7. half of the work is scheduling, a quarter of it is reaching out and following up with people, 10% is strategizing and planning, and the rest is actually showing up and doing the things.

#long post #i’m genuinely down to discuss anything abt organizing just hmu

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roleplayerconfessions · 2 years

Note

689911372311658496

1. My following isn’t small by any means, not to mention I have several well established blogs and I have been roleplaying on this website since 2010. I am in three different extremely popular, highly active fandoms to boot, so not to rub salt in these wounds of yours but I think a survey my active mutuals across my blogs probably does hold a good indication of what is “common” rp practise. Listed activity levels are very common. And as a side note it was brought up a slew of reasons why some people’s estimated activity levels might not add up to reality and they’re valid points. Holding hate toward these people and being disrespectful is really a you problem. By all means, this is a vent blog, you can come to it and vent out those nasty feelings all you want, but that doesn’t mean you’re not gonna look embarrassing doing it, even if most people can’t put a face to the complaints. “Low” “high” “medium” etc, activity listed on someone's blog may not be a perfect indicator of the frequency of rp replies that are being posted but its a good start as far as gathering a clue as to what the blog’s rp activity is like. I also assume you’re fully capable of actually LOOKING through the blog to properly determine for yourself whether or not this is a person who is putting out the kind of content and activity that suits you. Thats really the bottom line.

2. I’m almost 100% sure this was completely covered in one of the submissions and you would be completely agreed with. Those kinds of people suck. I’ve encountered them too, especially over the last few years and they do totally suck, you’re valid in being unhappy with those people. Now personally, I dont feel any need to harbour hate or frustration toward them. They disappoint me but that's the extent of how far my negative feelings toward them go because at the end of the day this is indie rp on tumblr. Its a hobby, not a serious contract. This being said some jerk who approaches you to write and then never delivers is a far cry from just being a random blog that does near nothing to incense you into believing you’re going to be a magic exception to their lack of rping. I think it was also pretty clear this was the topic, not jerks approaching and wasting time which we obviously all agree are, in fact, jerks.

3. Yeah. Thats what people should do. No one argued against this. Don't follow the kinds of accounts that don’t work for you and you’ll minimise your frustration. Explanations and alternatives as to why some people don’t rp on their account and why some people blog hop were offered and readers were asked to consider these things before they decide to be hateful toward the types of people in question, spurred by the fact that it was mentioned people had experienced receiving hate from random followers for not being active and for blog hopping. Someone in the comments also mentioned not understanding why some people think they can label themselves a role-player when they don’t rp on their accounts. It was then explained that some people use Tumblr to advertise and rp elsewhere, ergo, that's no ones business and just because a blog doesn’t have rp on it doesn’t mean the blog can’t say they're an rper because you’ll never know whether they’re rping or not under these circumstances: I believe the point was it doesn’t matter what someone calls themselves if they’re not approaching you and promising interaction that they’re not delivering.

4. Your own misfortune isn’t mine and isn’t majority. The rpc here would be completely dead if blog hoppers and no-rpers were as big of a problem as you say. I don’t think it would be possible for me to have several highly active rp dashes if these people were oversaturating the place and driving all the “long term” rpers out. Most of the people I personally write with have been rping here for as long as, or near as long as I have. I have relationships between my muses and others that have been developed for over 8 years. I meet new people almost every other day and discover they’ve been been rping here for a very long time too and have similar long lasting partners and friends. I think the shortest partnership I have and the relationship that they’ve developed with one of my muses and theirs is now nearing 9 months.

That aside I’m pretty sure a solution to your problem was mentioned: Group rp. Group rps are stricter with their muses, plots, activity levels, in character content and so on. They would be a pretty good fit for someone who is apparently struggling to find people with consistent in character activity and long lasting threads. If there is no current group rps to your taste, make one. If you can’t get a group rp off the ground its very likely you’re in a very small / non active fandom as most of the popular / active rp communities here have multiple group rps and new ones popping up all the time. Not being in a popular fandom is probably more your issue than blog hoppers.

I also wanna say. I wouldn’t want to write a single thread for six months if I didn’t have to. If you have a thread that goes on for six months you’re probably exhausting the fuck out of your rp partners and there's another one of your problems right there. I’m assuming in order to get such a thread you must have plotted it out extensively and even so with such extensive plotting its probably not necessary to write that thread consistently for six months. You should have laid down the basics in your plot, and followed the script to create the scene then moved on to the next scene? Unless you're randomly adding stuff as you go along and that would drive me insane. A lot of people need breaks and need new, fresh scenes/plots to stay stimulated. They can always build on from the last ones and have those intersect, but in general its good to have breaks and finish scenes so no while I’d call myself a long term rper as well I wouldn’t endeavour to make my threads last for more than six months if I didn’t have to. I’m not saying you're wrong for wanting threads like that but yeah, of course you're a minority in the current rpc as a result. I also dont understand how you can admit that a lot of the rpc in general follows “trends” and then complain that my big volume of “trendy” followers and mutuals are not a majority? Again, consider making a group rp. You’ll probably have more success finding people who are compatible with you in that type of environment. Other than that, if you’re having THIS much trouble on tumblr maybe you should try another website? I also wanna say, this disagreement aside, you seem like the kind of person I would personally be writing with (barring a six month long thread lol) and I hope you find more compatible rp partners and satisfying threads in the future.

In response to this ask about this submission.

#Submission Replies #Muns #Preferences #Consistency #Blogs #Threads #Self Care #Communication #Bullying #Trends #Popularity #Long Post

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ilikemilkbread · 2 years

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i was thinking for a long while about whether there would be any purpose to me making a "goodbye" post here, considering i barely talk to anyone here anymore nor have i really had anyone i used to talk to reach out to me

but. i kinda want to. just to use tumblr to talk about myself for one last time. and say that final goodbye. except not final lmao

its been 6 months since the last time i reblogged a post. which is weird to think about. its been longer since i was actually active here. its been longer since i last talked to a mutual. oops. i still definitely value the people ive met here, but... i just stopped using this site. its hard to talk to people if you arent using the same platforms for communication

to a big block of text that may actually comment on things:

im doing a lot better now.

across a lot of my time on tumblr, i think ive come across as an often vitriolic person. i most likely was a vitriolic person. i spent ALL of my teenage years on this site, and my teenage years were some of my outright worst. i used tumblr as an escape from that, but i allowed my emotions to spill across. i talked negatively about things often (because i couldnt vent to people in real life). i often outright criticised things i knew my mutuals liked. i would be dismissive and negative about topics for the sole reason of hoping that it would be enough to make a mutual unfollow me. i gained some sort of sick validation from that feeling. its weird to think about. its weird to know how much i cared about these interactions with people i barely knew

lately, ive moved away from online spaces. a bit. ive probably spent way too much of my time on youtube watching study content and fucking discrete mathematics guides lmao. but ive done less doom scrolling. i dont really know what shows are popular anymore, and im fine with that

the biggest change that helped me, i think, was finding other queer people. my university has a queer collective. ive never been more blessed to know such people

i also met my beautiful boyfriend there.

university has treated me kindly. now that were back in-person, ive been thriving. my current units are... something, but i find computer science as a whole thrilling. ive had the opportunity to interview for some related roles (mainly lvl 1 helpdesk lmao) and its been an overall fascinating experience (yes im still a first year shhhh)

with the assistance of a friend, ive found a nearby clinic that does hrt currently accepting new patients. if you know the state of trans healthcare within australia, finding a place accepting new patients is HARD. i am endlessly grateful to my friend for informing me of the clinics status. ideally, ill be starting hrt soon

but. mostly, ive come so much further than i thought i ever could. im out in a small community, and im going by my chosen name in many circles. ive cut my hair off. i have a boyfriend who is part of the queer community himself (though cis) who accepts me. i NEVER thought i would have this opportunity pre-transition.

and my queer friends i have found in life. there is beauty in community. i care so much about all of them. i didnt realise how lonely and isolated i was, as a trans person not knowing any other queer people.

my life has changed for the better. this post exists solely so i can ramble about that.

im probably not going to delete my tumblr. its still too useful for when i need to find certain things from my past. but i wont post regularly ever again.

maybe ill do another long ramble-post if something important happens in the future.

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seventeenlovesthree · 1 year

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Fandom Shipping Polls - Mimi Tachikawa Shipping Analysis (Poll I + Poll II)

The overall results / spreadsheet

Overall votes: 127 (approx. 111 in sum after the exclusion), the main poll got 89 votes, the secondary poll got 38 votes.

The “Others” choice in the main poll received 4% (approx. 4 votes) and 2% (approx. 1 vote) in the secondary poll. The comments/tags did not specify any preferences here (aside from characters that were already part of the main choices).

Ship Analysis

1st place: As you may have guessed, I had already started to prepare the graphic designs a few days before the polls had ended - and I actually did expect Koushiro to win this one, considering how many times he had tied with Jou and actually surpassed him in the votes for the majority of the run-time. However, Jou (22%) picked up speed in the last few days and won with a lead of three votes in the end. Within the tumblr fandom - and especially throughout the last year -, the ship has gained visibly more attention than it has in other internet spheres, especially Japanese centric. Considering how their bond is displayed in the anime, framing their arcs to intertwine at several points in the timeline around the theme of “selfish choices vs own choices”, it is not surprising that they are viewed as viable romantic options for each other as well. They do discover their roles as supporting characters while also supporting each other just splendidly, with tiny hints of (mutual) affection sprinkled in, making it quite an appealing ship.

2nd place: Koushiro (19%) came in as second choice, despite the fact that he had led the poll by a marginal lead several times. And that is not surprising at all - as mentioned in his own analyis already, Koumi is considered to be one of the most popular Koushiro centric ships world-wide. This is due to their set-up in the series as being odd-balls of the same age while simultaneously bouncing off of each other very well as one of the go-to “opposites attract” dynamics. Additionally, Tri canonically made Koushiro crush on Mimi, solidifying a consistent fanon-headcanon (which usually goes the other way round, with her having a crush on him instead). While the portrayal of the crush was not appreciated everywhere equally, they have always been going strong for valid reasons.

3rd place: For the first time, we actually have an undeniable tie, as both Sora and Taichi received the exact same number of votes (14 = 13%). While Sora had comfortably remained as sole heir of the third spot for a long time, Taichi had slowly but steadily caught up to her - leaving several choices behind that will be thoroughly mentioned in the Honorary mentions section. Sora’s lead is easy to explain, as both girls have been supporting each other and growing together throughout the series, displaying a gentle and loving bond despite their obious differences in character and design. Taichi on the other hand may appear to be more of a subtle choice in canon, but enjoys a lot of popularity as potential partner for Mimi in fandom, due to their rare, yet endearing interactions with one another.

Honorary mentions: Here we have quite a number of interesting characters, such as Miyako (who had tied with Taichi for fourth place for quite some time, but ended at 9%), Meiko (7%), Yamato (6%) and Michael (5%). While Miyako, Meiko and Michael are usually shipped with Mimi due to their foundations in the anime - with Miyako and Meiko being clearly enchanted by her and Michael and her bonding during her time in America -, Yamato is among the male fanon favourites. As Honorary mention among the honorary mentions, Takeru (2%) can also be mentioned.

“The 1 vote squad”: This spot is reserved for for Ken (1%) and Wallace (1%).

“0 votes go to...”: Hikari, Daisuke and Iori received 0 votes each.

Annotations: N/A.

What did the other polls say?

Mimi won Jou’s (38%) and Meiko’s (42%) polls, came in second in Koushiro’s (21%) and (technically) Sora’s (18%) and also finished third in Miyako’s (17%), thus making her one of the most represented choices in the “higher tiers”.

While Taichi and Yamato scored higher in Mimi’s own poll, she did not receive as many votes in their respective polls (5% and 4%), but still counts there as Honorable mention.

She was more of a niche choice in the polls for - surprisingly - Iori (2%), Takeru (1%) and Daisuke (1%).

In the polls for Ken and Hikari, she received 0 votes - just like Hikari did in her own, thus ruling Mikari out as viable ship completely.

Notable additions / comments / thoughts

While her polls did not receive the most amount of votes, it is quite clear that Mimi inherits the reputation as currently being one of the most popular Adventure characters overall. With 127 votes, Mimi came in fifth after Taichi, Ken, Takeru and Daisuke, and even though the overall numbers are still just a comparably small sample size, it still makes her the female character with the most votes - and the most diversity in the results so far. While Jou and Koushiro were never threatened to be surpassed as first and second place, the competition between them - as well as between Sora and Taichi as third place - had been tough. Plus, several characters (Miyako, Meiko, Yamato and Michael) surpassed the “niche” option of 1-2 votes, indicating that there is quite some variation in the way how and with whom people like to ship Mimi. There is also the (in my opinion very important) notion that she’s a highly popular choice not only in the polls for the male characters (Jou and Koushiro in particular) but also in the polls for the female characters (Meiko, Sora and Miyako in particular). Which is absolutely backed up by her canon portrayal, as she is having some of her most emotional character development moments during interactions with other female characters - while also displaying quite a tendency to be affectionate and physical with them. With some male characters, she may not share as many interactions in comparison, but due to her personality structure, openness, kindness and sincerity, it is absolutely understandable that the fandom enjoys the potential her relationships offer. Still, I really hope to reach a wider audience if I choose to repeat the polls once the fandom is not as quiet as it is right now.

The comments in the tags have only referred to the already mentioned choices (”MIYAKO” and “SORA”) in all caps in particular). So the “Others” option did not reveal any other potentially preferred suitors. This leaves room for speculation, but usually, the option is reserved for OC ships or for when people prefer to not ship a character at all or when they’re considered asexual (which will definitely be a future option to include as well!)