#also i love the wording of 'the narrator's done some questionable stuff'

[everysongineverykey]

some guy commented on my narrator + toriel fic saying "well the narrator's done some questionable stuff once or twice but he's not the one who let SIX children DIE just to SPITE her ex-husband" lmaoooo bro did you even play undertale? you can just say you have no reading comprehension it's okay

#like. of all the toriel slander i've seen this is by far the most ridiculous bc like #even on the most basic of levels it is so clearly wrong. toriel did not let the children go WITH THE INTENTION OF THEM DYING lmao #like her entire thing is not wanting kids to die and being overprotective because of it. that is a basic tenet of her character #and most toriel slander i've seen at least. knows this basic fact #they say shit like 'she's controlling and domineering' or 'she should've gone with them' #but this guy? no. they seem to believe that she. wanted them to die. to 'spite asgore'? how exactly would this spite him? #if i recall correctly (sarcasm. of course i recall correctly) #asgore was the one who WANTED the fallen humans to die. #or he didn't really want them to die deep down inside #but still he saw to it that they did. they would not be dead if it were not for him #and the anti-human laws he put in place #and his attempt to raise the kingdom's spirits by declaring war on humans. #i try to be as neutral as possible on any given character but you can't deny that that's an objective fact. #if toriel let them die she would be helping asgore's purposes. #her entire goal by living in the ruins is to take in fallen humans and protect them #so asgore DOESN'T kill them. so she can thwart his plans THAT way. #also i love the wording of 'the narrator's done some questionable stuff' #he exploded stanley. he erased all of stanley's friends and coworkers. he has made stanley's existence a living hell for god knows how long #i mean yeah yeah it's not really him who's in control they're both slaves to the narrative and all that #but he holds a lot of power over stanley and he uses it. and abuses it. #to act like wilful sadistic murder is on the same level as a distraught bereaved mother #trying to save other children from the fate her own suffered and becoming overprotective in the process #is just ridiculous. lol #anyways i deleted the comment :] no toriel slander under toriel-sympathetic fics pleeeaaase

[burntoutdaydreamer]

Book Openings I Love

Deciding how to start your book is an important and daunting question. I put together a list of book openings I love- and what makes them so good- to help brainstorm.

If you have any you'd like to add, please do! Let's keep this post ongoing.

1) Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Anyone who read this book as a kid will know exactly what I mean.

'The Lightning Thief' starts with a warning to the reader to stop reading the book immediately and believe whatever lies their parents have told them. Otherwise, 'they' might come for them.

An adult might roll their eyes at this, but as a kid, you believe it. You find yourself wondering if what you're reading is true. It makes you feel like you're a part of this story- even if you haven't realized it yet. So, as you read on, you might end up looking for the signs and clues that this world of Greek gods and monsters exists around you in real life. The lines between fiction and reality blur, if only for a little while, and you become immersed in the story, because on some level, you can't help but want it to be real.

It also leaves you feeling that by reading this, you're doing something forbidden- something dangerous. Exactly the kind of stuff that gets your heart racing as a kid.

2) Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Life of Pi is one of my favorite books of all time, and the beginning has a lot to do with it.

"This book was born as I was hungry. Let me explain."

The book begins with an author's note that's not exactly an author's note. It begins as any author's note might- the writer explains how his previous publication was a bust, and that he took a trip to India to reinvigorate his creativity as he tried to write a new book that ultimately sputtered and died. That was, until he met a man who promised to tell him a story that will make him believe in God. The man then told him to seek out the main character, who is alive, and living in Canada. When the author does, he agrees that his story is indeed a story to make one believe in God, and commits to writing it down as a book through the main character's point of view, only with the disclaimer "any inaccuracies or mistakes are mine."

As they follow this progression, because of the way it's all structured, there's a good chance the reader might find themselves asking "Wait, is this a true story?"

The answer is of course no, and anyone who's read through most of the book would probably figure that out easily. However, if you get to the ending, you realize the question "Is this a true story?" has significant implications for the story's themes- and that makes them all the more resonant.

TL;DR: Life of Pi's beginning does the same as The Lightning Thief's beginning, only in a less obvious way that's far more effective on adults.

3) One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus

The premise of "One of Us is Lying" is that someone killed a boy named Simon, and that the people in the room when it happened- who just so happen to be the four POV characters- are the main suspects. The book then starts off my immediately putting the reader in the scene where Simon dies.

Now I'm not sure if this is a common mystery novel set up (I haven't read enough of this genre to know), but it's an effective one. This has the effect of getting the reader engaged in the story right from the get-go. Instead of passively reading the chain of events, the people who picked up the book are already going to be searching in between the lines for any clues on 'who done it.'

But not only is the reader looking all the little details in the scene, but they're also going to be questioning the POV of the person narrating the chapter. From the very start of the story, the reader gets immersed in several levels of tension that hook them and carry them through the rest of the story.

4) The Giver by Lois Lowry

"It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen."

The first chapter begins with a scene of an aircraft flying overhead a peaceful community, and a child narrator who's overly careful about using the right words to describe things. The narrator's trait doesn't appear to be unique though- a quick flashback to a moment in his classroom shows that this tendency has been drilled into him, just as with any other kid. The reader immediately gets the sense that something is off. What that something is, though, is a bit harder to pin.

There doesn't seem to be anything nefarious going on, aside from maybe the mention of a citizen getting 'released' after the aircraft landed and everything calmed down. Only, later in that chapter, being 'released' gets mentioned twice again at his family dinner, as his parents discuss how their work went that day. But otherwise, the dinner seems to be a normal and mundane affair with an emotionally mature, functional family. Maybe a little too functional.

So, when Jonas decides that the feeling he's experiencing is 'apprehensive,' the readers start to feel that way too.

5) A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

The preface and first chapter of "A Natural History of Dragons" does a great job of introducing one of the series's greatest assets: its main character.

"One benefit of being an old woman now, and moreover one who has been called a "national treasure," is that there are very few who can tell me what I may and may not write."

In the preface of the book, we find out exaclty who the main character/narrator is: a famous Victorian-era woman and accomplished dragon scholar, who's too old to care about being a 'proper lady' anymore. What's more, she's writing a series of memoirs about her life to satisfy the many adoring fans who have been writing her letters in hopes of hearing about the juicy gossip of her famous expeditions.

The narration oozes with personality from the very beginning, and that's before we even get to meet any dragons. Following this introduction, we get to see where her passion for dragon studies began: collecting little dragon "sparklings" as a kid. While her fictional readers would know these little creatures as commonplace in her world, the actual readers don't, since this world is as new to us as it was to her as a child. As such, the reader gets to share in her childlike wonder, and gets excited by the promise to discover the secrets of dragons right along with her.

#creative writing #writing #writers of tumblr #writers on tumblr #writing community #novel writing #writerscommunity #book blog #bookblr #books #writing advice #on writing #writer stuff #writer #writeblr #long post #booklr #books and reading #reading

[mylordshesacactus]

LOVE, WATER, FIRE

What is your best writing advice?

"Show don't tell" doesn't mean what you think it does. Learn it better, and free yourself from a half-understood mnemonic.

When you show, you slow. Learn THAT one backward and forward as well; it won't fix pacing issues overnight, but it'll help you understand what causes them.

Writing fanfiction? Go back to the source material FREQUENTLY, or you'll lose all sense of the characters and end up writing someone unrecognizable.

If you struggle to block out action sequences, genuine advice? Think in terms of combat rounds in D&D. Not literally, of course, nobody should be taking rigorous turns, but: Play out the action in your head. If six seconds have gone by, everyone in this sequence should have done something. That thing could be charging into melee range--noting that this extra combatant is running toward the fight but hasn't gotten there yet. It could be reloading a weapon. It could be clutching their side in shock and wheezing. They don't need to be Selecting A Combat Action, but fight scenes become incoherent when you lose track of who's doing what. When you forget about Goon #3 and then have him show up again doing something that doesn't remotely track with where you last left him. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO INCLUDE THEM IN THE NARRATION if they're not important! If two seconds ago your protagonist kicked a guy off the dock, we can safely assume they'll spend at least the next several "combat rounds" climbing back out. But at any given moment, YOU should know where everyone is, what they're doing, and why.

But most importantly:

Anyone purporting to give The End-All Be-All Writing Advice is either delusional or a scam. Yes, including or perhaps especially famous bestselling authors. What works for them won't necessarily work for you, and there are plenty of people who don't even like their work. You're never going to be whoever's advice you try to mimic. Write your stuff, not theirs.

Do you prefer urban fantasy or high fantasy?

Yes!

Genuinely though. They're both good and they both serve their respective narratives in some way. In general I'm more drawn to high fantasy, personally, but I'm never not going to be interested in a well-done urban fantasy.

Pedantic nitpick though, these things are not the opposites they are being portrayed as. I think what the question was GOING for was actually "low vs high fantasy" which is a completely separate concept. Words mean things! But also, I'm not an ass, and the intent was pretty clear.

(High Fantasy: This story is set in a completely separate world from ours, with no crossover into our known and lived reality. ANY completely separate world, regardless of technology level! STAR WARS IS HIGH FANTASY. This is not an opinion, this is a genre fact.

Low Fantasy: The story is set partially in our world or includes crossover or other intrinsic connections to a realistic world that follows the same rules and expectations of our world. Isekai and portal fantasies like Narnia fall into this category, as do hidden-world/veiled-magic fantasies like the Bad Wizard Lady Books, Percy Jackson, and Artemis Fowl; and also a lot of true-anthropomorphic fiction like Watership Down, Warriors, etc. Note that "low fantasy" does NOT mean "gritty" fantasy or fantasy that focuses on the lower classes instead of nobles, nor does it mean a low-magic pseudo-medieval setting

Urban Fantasy: A story with fantasy tropes and themes that takes place in an urban setting. Can be low or high fantasy!)

What is the worst thing you've ever created?

Okay so this one time in high school me and my best friend Sam were trying to make lemon bars at his house and to this day we do NOT know what the hell ingredient we neglected to add to the lemon bars

but given the state of the results, there is a non-zero chance that the ingredient we forgot was flour.

#askmeme #not today satan I do not shittalk my work #i learn from it

[mocksart]

for your borrower au! how is Stanley treated in general before the narrator realizes he is sentient? what's the worst thing the narrator might do to Stanley in this time period? what is the softest moment?

sorry for all the questions, I just love this idea a LOT. g/t stuff is SOOO compelling to me :3

Hey, no worries, I love questions! If you can't tell, I also love this idea a lot lol

It is important to me to make it clear that the narrator is not intentionally cruel. He still sees Stanley as a living being with needs and wants.

Stanley is fed well - mostly seeds and grains due to his mouse-like appearance. This isn't wrong, as mice are also omnivores, though it does get a little boring. So basics like food and water are always available.

Of course, he is kept in a cage.

In my head, it's more akin to the ones rabbits are kept in, rather than mice or rats, but that's mostly due to me being more familiar with rabbits. Also the mental image of metal bars is more compelling to me than the plastic tubs that mice are usually kept in.

Standard bedding situation. It's less comfortable than his pile of fabric scraps at home, but it's not unbearable by any means.

The Narrator has a habit of talking to himself, and this turns into a sort of half-talking to Stanley as well. When he does directly address stanley, though, it's usually because he's frustrated with something Stanley is or is not doing. Plus, as in the game, the man is not above petty insults.

I've thought a bit more on it and I think it might be more fair to say that, rather than not realizing, the narrator can't admit that Stanley is sentient.

Subconsciously, he knows. He can see how smart Stanley is. How Stanley responds to his words. But he can't bring that thought into his conscious mind. Because the man has already done some terribly dehumanizing things to this creature. And admitting that this thing is a person would mean that he's an absolute monster. And he's not! Haha really, guys, he wouldnt do that!

The worst thing he does, especially early on, is leave Stanley alone. At one time, the borrower would have jumped at the opportunity to have some time to himself, just not like this. The basement lab is dark and lonely. Being in this environment for long stretches of time takes a toll on the borrower's mental health.

As time goes on, the Narrator does realize something is wrong. Subject 427 used to have so much more energy. It hardly tries to escape and barely protests when handled. He semi-correctly guesses that 427 needs some kind of enrichment.

He has Stanley for a few months before the borrower manages to escape. Toward the end of that time, he starts bringing Stanley up out of the basement (always in a container of some kind) to show the borrower around and talk to him about his old escapades. (This is where we learn that the narrator is quite well-traveled, and that he no longer leaves the relative safety of his own home.) And there are some genuine moments of connection that happen.

---

Much later on the narrator absolutely mortified by his own past behavior. The man never thought he was capable of causing harm like that, much less unthinkingly.

(He doesn't like to talk about it, a fact that Stanley uses to his advantage sometimes to get what he wants.)

The Narrator works hard to redeem himself as best as he can. He knows there's no way to fully make up for what he's done, but he tries anyway. Because underneath all his issues and traumas and poor coping mechanisms is a person who strives to be better. He wants it so badly. But for a long time it seemed like every time he tried, he just made it worse. So he stopped trying.

Being around another person, especially one who was absolutely not taking his bullshit, reawakened that part of himself that had been buried for so long.

#i love the narrator #hes such a compelling character #and can be taken in so many different directions #im always fascinated to see which parts people focus on when portraying him #sorry i dont have more specific instances of them interacting during this time #most of the stuff i have written is post-escape #this also got so long lmao #the narrator has the emotional intelligence of a rock i swear #and i love talking about it #the stanley parable #tsp #borrower au #asks

[spicymoonmenace]

Hi hi!!! This is for the ask the characters event!

For the boys (Sun, Moon, Eclipse) any favorite flowers? If you got the choice of a vehicle, what would you prefer (like cars, trucks, motorcycles, ect...), any hobbies you are or would like to get into?

Moon, what's your favorite kind of drink to make?

Eclipse, if you had to choose, what kind of client do you prefer to deal with? What would you say your relationship with Dante is?

Sun, when you perform, are there any dances or performances you like more than the others?

Possibly Dante if he's taking asks, which of the boys is your favorite? How do you feel about Eclipse (in general). How would you describe yours and Eclipses relationship? How well would you say he functions and does his job?

Also, a little question for you, our lovely narrator! How are the characters perceiving us? Are we just voices? Clients or customers talking to them? How insane can we make this? Btw I love you and this au, it's such an interesting story already and your designs are so stunning! I love Sun and Moon so much.

Sun: My, my so many questions sweetheart!

Well, for flowers I'm very fond of daffodils! They're quite beautiful, so it's always a treat when I receive them! My choice of vehicle would be a motorcycle. I'd imagine it'd feel so freeing and thrilling! Not to mention the almost tender closeness of holding onto your partner while you ride. Sounds dreamy~ *soft sigh* As for hobbies, I'd love to get into flower arranging. I quite enjoy flowers a lot and do my best to keep the ones I’m gifted as long as I can. 

When it comes to performances, I prefer more group choreography ones! I do enjoy the limelight but it’s also nice to not be the center of attention every once in a while. Not to mention I get to socialize with the other entertainers while we practice so that’s a nice little bonus!

Moon: I don’t normally get flowers like Sun does. I do enjoy irises though. I prefer cars, maybe something vintage. Don’t have many hobbies, but I enjoy reading the most. 

My favorite is simple drinks. Like margaritas. The more simple, the less hassle. 

Eclipse: Tch. I don’t have time to pick favorites. I have work that needs to get done, and thinking about what kind of fucking flower I like or some shit isn’t my top priority. But I guess I like cars or whatever. I don’t have time for hobbies. I’m busy. 

A client that keeps their mouth shut and lets me do my work is preferred. Dante is technically my boss but we’re business partners. I take care of a lot of important shit for him. 

Dante: Interesting questions.

I prefer Sun the most out of my bots. Eclipse is nothing more than an extension of myself for me to use as I see fit. I had him made to allow me some reprieve with the intricacies of the club and my fellow associates. A lot goes on in Eden that deserves my attention and Eclipse allows me to be in two places at once, while also providing judgement when it comes to my ‘employees’.

He does his main job well enough, and the occasional clientele performance helps pay back the debt he owes me for his creation. Though his aggression is an unexpected factor. He’s done well to keep himself in check, but if he slips up I’m more than happy to guide him back on the right path with a heavy hand. 

WAH ANON!!! You’re so sweet, thank you so much for all the kind words!!!!! I’m so happy to hear you enjoy the AU so much!!!!!! 🥺💕💕

Also with the boys, I guess you could say it’s a little bit like one of those shows where people are divided by a curtain and anonymously ask questions and stuff! You interact with them, just not directly if that makes sense!

#ask the club boys #club au #club au sun #club au moon #club au eclipse #club au dante

[lacependragon]

2024 Book #1: The Hanging City by Charlie N. Holmberg

Intended Audience: Adult Genre: Romantasy (Romance-focused fantasy) Length: 335 pages Finished: February 17th, 2024

Narration: single narrator, first person pov

Summary: In a fantasy world consumed by an endless drought, a young woman on the run from her father has arrived at the last place that might take her in: the troll city under the greatest bridge ever built. But in order to get in, she must tell the leaders of her strange magic ability - she can push fear onto others, though she'll feel it too. As Lark, our MC, tries to fit into trollis (their preferred term) society, she finds herself struggling to fit in when kindness and compassion don't get you far in a society of strength. But some trollis soften to her, especially a handsome one named Azmar that Lark can't stop thinking about, no matter how dangerous it is.

Review: This is a very good book. Lark is a fun, compassionate, and quick thinking main character whose mistakes are understandable and who uses all the information at her disposal in clever ways. I loved how her compassion and struggle to fit in led to so much of the conflict in the story, and I loved how it also was a huge part of her success in the story, too. Lark's relationships with other characters, including Azmar and Unach, who she lives with, are just so, so good. I loved the job that Lark ended up with - monster hunting - and I really appreciate how it never stops being relevant to the story, both in activity and in social situations. In fact, this is just a very tightly written little book and everything circles around in some very fantastic ways.

The writing is lovely, too. I really enjoy the way this author writes books - I own a few of them - and I find there's a nice cadence to the words. It's smooth to read. And that spreads into how information is given to the reader, as well. Everything feels very smooth and easy flowing.

And, just to come back around, I really, really love compassionate protagonists. I love when characters want to help others, no matter the cost, and sometimes make stupid decisions because of that. Lark is such a fantastic protagonist who works around everything she is given. I love her. I love Azmar, too.

I think my biggest problem is that this is a seriously closed door romance. A few on-screen kisses and that's about it. Some light references. I would have loved to see more - I prefer my romances a little smuttier - but YMMV.

Just a fantastic book, seriously. So glad it was my first of the year.

Things I liked, specifically:

The romance was good. I understood why Lark was attracted to Azmar, and even though we never get Azmar's point of view, it was clear to me why he liked her. Watching them fall for each other was just adorable. Also, I love when a romance doesn't rely on badly done miscommunication for its third act drama. This does something SO GOOD that has nothing to do with that!

The worldbuilding was really neat. This is a standalone, so there's a lot of questions left unanswered, but the answers we got were fun. I also loved how it tied into the plot, as well as the culture of the trollis. You really get a sense for what their people value when the architecture is described. It's very evocative. And the cultural bits we get, the government and tax and law systems, the currency and caste stuff. God it's all so good and intriguing. Layered in just enough, in my opinion.

The friendships. There are so many good supporting characters in this story, including Unach, the trollis woman originally assigned to look over Lark. She's Azmar's sister and she's basically my fave. She's so gruff and short-tempered but also fantastic. Love her. I loved all of the supporting characters. All of them were well-written, well-rounded, and had motivations that were clear to me.

LARK. Again, emphasizing that Lark is just a fantastic, compassionate and kind protagonist. She is tired of fighting. Tired of having to hurt others. She wants a family, friends, and peace, and it is beautiful to watch her strive for her.

The themes. Sometimes you can't change a place, only you can change. Family isn't what your born into, but the people who will accept you no matter what you are. It is always right to try and save others. What is a monster? What is a man? Just to name a few that I personally pulled out of the story that I just adored the execution of. It's so good. And the trollis society embodies both good and bad, and you get to see the way it echoes into the themes and guh.

Rating: 4 1/2 stars.

Recommended for: Fans of romance who enjoy good worldbuilding, fans of Holes, fans of Gentle Giant men.

#book reviews #books #reading #bookblr #charlie n holmberg #the hanging city #amreading #lace speaks #lace reads #lace reviews #lace reviews books

[beardedmrbean]

Well at least everyone from different races are shitting on the society of magical negroes trailer. Also it was white people who caused the most damage to black people. Yeah it was white people who abused the living shit out of Tyler Perry as a child and also molested and raped him several times growing up.

Wait his main abuser was his father, he was raped by a friend mom, sucked by a male family friend, etc.

All of whom seem to be black, hence why most of his early career is him becoming coping with his trauma.

You don’t put subplots of domestic violence, CSA, and SA in your films constantly unless you been through it or seen it. You just fucking don’t

Sorry for the heavy subject, I just want to use a prolific black creator on who causing the most trouble to black people.

Also if they can do magic, why no use healing magic to heal crackheads, oh a lot of kids who got shot thanks to gun violence would love that. Oh what about resurrecting LB Johnson and Regan for the damage they did to our community too? The Kennedys can beat up Johnson after black people are done.

Ugh it feel like modern black Hollywood is made by people who didn’t picked up the middle fingers boondocks were giving them

Also when was the last time we had a magical negro? Some say Morgan Freeman roles…but he old as hell so he prefer less active roles.

I mean I seen the rise of magical black bitch boys like what nick fury became after captain marvel join the MCU.

>Also it was white people who caused the most damage to black people.

like I said I don't want to bring statistics into things too much here, if we were to look up the #1 killer of black Americans, non natural death edition, it ain't gonna be white people.

Haven't seen a lot of movies recently so I couldn't toss out someone who would qualify for that title in the last decade or so off the top of my head, Will Smith in "The Legend of Bagger Vance" is quoted as one a lot, someone tried to convince me that Morgan Freeman was one in "Shawshank Redemption" problem with that one book has the character of Red listed as a white Irishman, my theory Freeman got the role because there's not many others out there folks would like to hear narrating it.

Also don't know about any of that Tyler Perry stuff, but I'll take your word for all of that.

I'm mostly glad to hear that there's people of all stripes calling this out, it's nice to know that's finally happeing.

Got the hat trick of the woman king, Cleopatra, and now this Hannibal thing all of which are serving up a good deal of schadenfreude for those of us who have been trying to point out the wild hypocrisy of ahistorical, faux history nonsense for years now.

The only real question is will it wind up making a difference.

#anonymous

[hilarychuff]

for the ask game :)

i carry it in mine + 3, 13, 14

howl + 9, 15

the ask game

ty for the questions!!

i carry it in mine - tag, ao3

3. what’s your favorite line of narration?

hmm it currently stands at 45k words so hard to pick just one but i'm p sure this was the line that i was like first working towards when i started writing it

He means to make me queen, she thinks, her legs turning to jelly as she sinks to the floor.

like the scenes in chapter 6 and 7 at the wall where he shows her his mark/she realizes the full implications of it all were for sure like one of THEEEE inciting visuals i had

13. what music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

i actually write mostly in silence 😭 i can plot and write notes etc with the tv on or with music on but honestly i usually find it too distracting!!! i'm a big singer alonger and i really need to like. concentrate for the most part when i'm writing for real. nooooo clue what would be a good soundtrack for reading bc i would want vibes to be similar to like medieval period piece stuff so maybe something sort of instrumental???? or like a softly crooning female singer songwriter type of vibe. something a lil folksy perhaps???

actually wait i lied sometimes i listen to asmr videos on youtube!!! not that i recommend that per se lmao. but just a lil something to provide a bit of sensory stimulation so that i don't get like. bored.

14. is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

hmmmm. i don't think i went into this fic with the intention of like "this is what i want readers to learn" so much as i was like wouldn't if be interesting if... and then if their places were switched....

but i will say that something i didn't expect while writing was how many people would be upset with jon in the beginning for not making sansa his priority number one. which i GET like it's a soulmate fic that's sort of the expectation and it's an uneven expectation because he knows something here that sansa doesn't. but i always kind of felt like.... sure sansa is something different to him here than in canon but at least in the beginning the love is very much the same and exists and always existed???? and i could have done a better job writing TO that if i wanted it to be clear but i think it never occurred to me that it wouldn't be. it's so clear to me in canon how much jon loves his family, including sansa, even though we never actually see them interact for ourselves. but the way he thinks about her is so sweet. and the memories he has of her are very tender.

i think probably for the most part anyone who stuck around found a way to move past that if it felt wrong/unfair to them but i guess if i had one thing i wanted people to learn it would be sometimes that your ability to help someone or be there for them is not always a reflection of the love that you have for them. sometimes circumstances are just complicated. sometimes there's nothing you can do. but that doesn't mean you don't love someone and have love for them and hurt for them and think about them etcetcetc.

i am very much a problem solver in my own life/relationships which i think frustrates people sometimes and also sometimes leaves me feeling useless if someone is upset about something and there's nothing i can do but sometimes just loving someone and making sure they know that is enough !!! not that jon does that either in the beginning i guess lol woops but he's very much a sad boy ok maybe cut him some slack 😭

howl - tag, ao3

9. were there any alternate versions of this fic?

WELL the first howl i banged out in literally a 72 hour period cribbing heavily from an old scream script i found online that wasn't quiiteeee screen accurate and there was only ever one version of that. BUT in the larger grand scheme sense of this i do have notes for a howl 3 and howl 4 so like. not alt versions but additional installments in theory!!

i think there in the initial like "casting" phase if you will i had different notions for what howl 2 would be. bc joffrey was an obvious billy but i was like then who is stu.... and then finagling howl 1 meant some changes for howl 2 but honestly those felt really right to me when i settled on them!!!!!

as for howl 3 that casting has also taken a LOT of finagling that probably still needs some ironing out so that has probably gone through a couple different mental makeovers about how exactly to handle the roman/john milton of it all but rest assured i have lots of thoughts!!!!!!

15. what did you learn from writing this fic?

WELL!!!! actually!!!!! one thing that always bugged me about scream 2 was sidney being an actress and doing theater when it felt so like antithetical to her character to put herself in the spotlight in any capacity. but it's so like baked into the movie that doing howl 2 i was like ok how do i keep it??? and in thinking about that for sansa i considered a lot about the interiority of the character and how like. sure it's putting yourself in the spotlight. but it's also an opportunity to step out of yourself and be somebody different which i think both sidney and sansa are really craving, especially when stab/knifed is putting them on a national stage in a lot of ways. so that was something i hadn't really thought about before!!

i also think there are lots of times watching a horror movie where you see a character doing something and you're like "NO WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT WHY AREN'T YOU DOING XYZ INSTEAD" and then when you're making it like prose narrative as opposed to a script and you're in their head you really have to make it make sense to yourself a lot more (like not just running away after the police car crash scene in scream 2/howl 2) and so that was something i felt like i learned more about too like. yes sometimes you are making a decision because it serves the plot. but also how can you reconcile that action with your character's needs/wants/turmoils/experience etc.

#my writing #ask game #i carry it in mine #howl #jonsa fic

[andiwriteordie]

why do you call it maroon fic ?

REMI! hi! ok i love this question & i'm gonna be long-winded about it because i'm a nerd. and i love writing. and byler. and taylor swift. so. you get a free maroon/byler analysis for your saturday.

a real fucking legacy, to leave is also called maroon fic whenever i post stuff because the title comes from the song maroon by taylor swift! this is one of my favorites off the midnights album, and i just have a lot of thoughts in general about this song buuuuut

when it comes to byler, i really enjoy thinking about how, when stripped down to a bare skeleton of a story, theirs is a story about love and loss. we meet two childhood friends, first through mike's eyes, and the whole first season is about mike trying to find his lost friend. and in some sense or another mike has been trying to find will (and will trying to find his way back to mike) since s1, because of the kidnapping, the possession, and the tension in their friendship across s3-s4. it's a story about two people who love each other but keep losing each other, especially when we consider it from mike's pov (catch me crying at the "maybe i lost you" line in s4).

anyways, with maroon now! one of my favorite parts of maroon is how the first chorus switches from the line: and i chose you, the one i was dancing with to the line and i lost you, the one i was dancing with. it's a simple change, but it tells the story taylor is sharing with us so incredibly well. it's a story of how this narrator went from choosing this person they love so much to losing them in the end—which i think just really mirrors mike's story very well in stranger things! will went from being such a priority in his life—so much so that he says meeting will is the best thing he's ever done—to then just time and time losing will again, first from the upside down then from his own distance and mistakes.

and here's where i get really nerdy, thanks to @wiseatom who pointed out that the official taylor swift music video for maroon has an incredibly niche detail within it:

that's a real fuckin' legacy, to leave

the comma between the words "legacy" and "to" add another little layer of nuance to the meaning behind this song, which i just looooove. that comma placement shifts the meaning slightly, implying that the legacy itself is leaving. the legacy left behind by the partner taylor is singing about in the song is leaving her.

so then, circling back to byler and from mike's pov, i could go on and on and on about how mike has a need to be needed and wanted and a fear of abandonment that stems from that, but i won't lol. the point i think about here is how the theme of love and loss is intertwined with byler as a whole, but then also specifically in this line, getting to explore the potential of mike's thought that it is, in a way, will who keeps leaving. mike keeps losing will, maybe not always as an intentional action on will's part, but it is always mike who loses will.

allllllll that to come back around and say this: i wanted to write a fic that explored the themes of love and loss in byler's story and then maroon came out and it just fit. the story kinda pieced together as it was about two people in a relationship, hence why i chose to explore established byler, so we could see those themes amplified to a greater extent than we even see in the show. :)

i could've answered that in 2 sentences, but i didn't bc i'm a nerd. so happy saturday 🤣

#byler #st x ts #i think i should get to analyze taylor swift songs and byler at least once a week #for my mental health #andi writes not dies

[gascon-en-exil]

In your opionion is there things that Engage did better than 3 Houses or things they did worse than 3 Houses ? if that is the case, which one and why ?

Those are two different questions, and ones that people have been bandying about online for months now. I thought for about five minutes about turning this into a video prompt, but there's already plenty exactly like this on YouTube - plus I'm currently working on way too much as it is.

What FE16 does better than FE17:

In general, character work - I say in general because there are characters I like in Engage and characters I very much don't in Houses, but the more substantive supports and other side interactions in the latter help the cast stand out more. They're also broken up more, so it's easier to focus on the groups you enjoy.

Non-Avatar queerness - So much lovely subtext, so many paired endings. I've done multiple videos centering around them, even. I said in a video a few months back that I dislike how so many of Engage's non-Avatar supports end with bland affirmations of friendship, which in combination with the lack of endings really kills the potential of pairings like Fogado/Bunet and Timerra/Merrin. Dimidue though? When their A support pivots around the word "friend" you just know that it's a euphemism, and that they'll be calling each other that mid-coitus that evening. Throw in around a dozen other pairings who've gotten big based on subtext and you've got a bunch to choose from.

Cozy life sim elements - The Somniel may be more streamlined and its loading screens slightly less agonizing, but the monastery better nails the feel of a persistent hub area - even if its coziness kind of undercuts the tone of the game's second half. This isn't something I'm really into, but I know a lot of fans get into stuff like gardening and fishing and tea time, and the calendar system and (weird) time progression does make Houses feel more like a life sim in contrast to the Somniel and its randomized character loadouts. Also, Engage has way more to grind for if you want to see everything, which is annoying. This is in contrast to...

100% Completion - It may be something only I care about, but Houses goes above and beyond any other mainline FE if you're a completionist. Of course there's the support logs and event gallery and such (features Engage doesn't even manage correctly), but there's also the in-game journal which provides a ludicrous but still doable 100% target in the form of watching a whole bunch of bars fill up very slowly over dozens of playthroughs. This requires so many spreadsheets to keep organized - love it!

What FE17 does better than FE16:

Story originality - Yes, really. Houses's story is three variations on the series standard plot, plus one other option - side with the conqueror -that Fates came up with first. Engage is the least politically-interested game in the series, and it barely even teases at a mundane war between nation before it's back to fighting zombies and collecting rings. Original doesn't necessarily mean good, but at least Engage knows exactly what kind of story it's trying to tell and what it can feasibly expect to do.

Tangible, linear worldbuilding - Engage isn't as ambitious, but it's more successful thanks to more traditional FE worldbuilding tools like talking to NPCs around the world as opposed to gathering them all in hub. The single story also helps keeps everything orderly and easy to understand, rather than going for an unreliable narrator + mystery box approach across multiple routes and half-assing the execution.

The Avatar - No contest here. Alear is an actual character with an identifiable arc, and while it's not the most compelling thing in the world it's leagues ahead of anything Byleth can claim. Byleth is a blank vessel for the player (and also Sothis for a while, lending them some facsimile of a character in the form of her reactions) with a ludicrously contrived backstory to justify why they are the way they are; Alear has fears and development and a backstory that's coherent even if it relies on a fair amount of cliché. Also, even in localization Alear as a god complex fantasy is undeniable, whereas Houses bends over backwards to act like a main source of its appeal isn't teacher-student sex. Speaking of -

Avatar queerness - Again, no contest - not that I especially care. Byleth's same-sex S rank options are limited, while Alear can give their not!engagement ring to every character regardless of gender, a huge step up in open-ended self-insert romance that gets mostly overlooked because they can also give the ring to preteens.

Understanding of FE's camp appeal - The above only underlines how much better Engage can be when it comes to the campy and the tasteless. From the ridiculous outfits to the Emblem stuff being compared to Saturday morning cartoons or Power Rangers or such to Zephia/Zelestia to the AU dragon incest wank nonsense, Engage wears its silliness on its sleeve. Houses doesn't totally lack that element, with stuff like the Proper Conduct Tournament and Manuela's...everything, basically, but like the teacher-student fetish it's hidden beneath this veneer of respectability that begins to grate after a while. Most of that is probably just overcorrection for the poor response to that sort of content in Fates, but it obviously didn't stick...not even for Fódlan content in Heroes. Look at the new duo Cathmir, and tell me these characters still aren't being sold on sex appeal aimed primarily at straight men.

Handling of characters of color - Not something I discuss often, but it has to be said. Solm is as developed of any of the other main four nations of Elyos, with just about as much of a role in the story and a presence in gameplay (i.e. you spend around half a dozen chapters there). There are still some oddities, like how the royals and NPCs are all dark-skinned but the retainer characters aren't, but compared to the various periphery nations of Fódlan it's a real standout and actually feels like a part of the world. Sreng is a plot device in Hopes, and even less than that in Houses. Duscur, Brigid, and Dagda basically only exist in relation to Dedue, Petra, and Shamir respectively. Even Almyra, from which we get two playable characters including one of the lords, barely appears at all, and most of Claude's Almyran heritage is left out of his writing because he spends the whole game disguising his identity.

Standard gameplay - I play on Normal and freely abuse time rewinding so my opinion here isn't going to be held in any regard, but go check out anywhere Engage is being discussed online and you'll see tons of tier lists and comparisons of builds and chapters and Emblems and whatever else. You know, the things that people ordinarily talk about when it comes to FE, and not -

Less enabling of toxic fandom elements - The inbuilt faction drama in a faux-serious war story, the continued growth of the anti phenomenon first seen when Fates was current, and a years-long global pandemic fostered endless division and conflict that persists to this day. It somehow even continues a year after the release of Hopes, now in the form of bashing Engage because it didn't sell as much (while still talking about its gameplay way more than I could ever bother, go figure) and IS is being more conservative with its Heroes appearances. There's still pointless nonsense to argue about here - like the aforementioned incest wank - but there's far less of it in a linear story that doesn't encourage players to latch as hard onto their favorites.

Non-100% replay value - Related to the gameplay, if you're not going for all the supports/bonds/achievements there's much more variety you can pull out of repeat playthroughs of Engage via the standard ways to mix up your runs in FE: using different characters, allocating resources differently, limiting yourself in certain ways etc. Houses's gameplay is so freeform and has such clear best options that for replays you're relying on the story...and there's exactly four stories. Worse, White Clouds is almost the same regardless of house, and there's a bunch of crossover content among the Part II routes as well, even Crimson Flower, which leads to it all feeling quite repetitive even if the narratives technically go to different places.

Nostalgic throwbacks - Not only the Emblems, but also the many legacy paralogues. These were a fun element of Awakening and Fates's DLC, and it's nice to see them brought back here with a bunch of callbacks for fans of those older games. Houses has...its batch of DLC classes all coming from Awakening, and the Archanean regalia appearing as random drops. Oh, and probably the least notable playable version of Anna ever.

Absurdly cute mascot factor - Could have talked about this under the camp factor, but some players get really into how adorable Sommie is. It's a fount of memes and goofy videos if nothing else. Is IS taking notes from Pokémon?

And yet I still prefer FE16 overall, because it better caters to my specific interests (gay stuff that doesn't involve Avatars, spreadsheets). The years of fandom toxicity are unfortunate, but I've grown accustomed to laughing at it when it amuses me and ignoring it when it doesn't.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #FE17 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Fire Emblem Engage

[kawaiidoodles95-blog]

The Stranger Stampy Circus: Chapter 6

The sixth chapter of a long series I am making!

NOTICE: This is 11+! Throughout this story, there will be light mentions of blood, death, war, darker humor, and violence. While nothing here is explicit, if this bothers you in any way, keep on moving. Trust me. I won't be mad.

AN: I am making this not only on here but on google docs. This is a crossover between Stranger Things, Stampy's Lovely World, The Amazing Digital Circus, and Wonka. Each chapter will have a name of one of the characters (or main POV's I refer to them as,) and whoever's name is on the chapter title is the person narrating the chapter.

Anyways, enjoy TSSC!

Chapter 6: Vecna

After dinner, everyone went to bed… except for me. How could someone die such a horrible death? I mean, I have experienced some horrific deaths, but how did that specifically happen? I know it’s video game logic, however, this is different. The person is actually dead.

“Hello?”

“I mean, what if I got stuck there? Good god, I am horrified just THINKING about it!” I cried in my mind

“Erm, sir..?”

“What if one of my citizens got stuck there, and we didn’t know?! I can’t sleep!” I kept thinking.

“SIR!”

I snapped out of my thoughts, and frantically looked around. “WHO THE HECK SAID THAT?” I screamed, grabbing a knife from the table and standing up. I kept looking around, but couldn’t see who it was. I finally looked down, and there it was. A small orange man with green hair stood in front of me. “Who the fudge are you?” I frowned. “I am Lofty, and I need your help,” The small man said. “Man, your voice is much lower than I expected…” I muttered. “Anyways, what do you need?” He gave me this look that said he meant no funny business. “So you know that portal room you have?”

-+*~*+-

“So which portal do you need?” I asked. “Type in the word ‘Wonka.’ Don’t ask questions about the name, got it?” Lofty asked. “Alright,” I shrugged. I typed in the word, and a brown portal opened. It looked like chocolate swirls. I, though, couldn’t savor the look for long, because I just got sucked in.

Just like what I  have heard the other’s experiences were, I woke up shortly after.

My face felt fuzzy, so I just touched it. “OH WOW, I BECAME MY HUMAN FORM AGAIN!” I grinned. I leaped onto my feet as I also realized I was now wearing 1800’s clothes. “I feel so victorian! I am a Victorian boy!” I screamed to the heavens while bouncing around like an idiot. “AHEM. We don’t have much time to waste, my good sir. He could die,” Lofty interrupted. “OH. OK,” I said. Scrambling back onto my feet, I caught up to him on the rescue mission

“So who are we saving anyway?” I asked, walking into the chocolate chapel or whatever the heck Lofty called it. “We are saving a boy named Willy,” he responded. He proceeded to grab a rock off the ground. “What will you be using that for? You’re gonna be breaking some stuff, aren’t you,” I sighed. “Yep. I will be breaking some skulls just in case,” he said, picking up more rocks. I just glared at him.

After he was done picking up rocks for what felt like 3 minutes, he looked at me. “You break into the downstairs and deactivate the chocolate mechanism,” he instructed. “Look, why don’t I just use a rock to break that glass right there?” I asked. Lofty looked past me, and shrugged. “Sure, but that’s the easy route. Why not a challenge?” I ripped a rock out of his hand, and pummeled it into the glass. “Hopefully that didn’t kill anyone,” I smiled. Suddenly, I saw a hand stick out of the broken glass dome. I ran over to see what it was.

I helped the boy out of the tank. He looked to be at MOST four years younger than me. He had fuzzy brown hair, light brown eyes, a baggy ripped blue shirt, and some tan pants. “H-hi…” he murmured. I quickly grabbed him because he looked like he was going to faint. He was covered in chocolate, which I struggled not to lick off, because that would just be really weird and uncomfortable. So I sadly didn’t. “Thanks… I am Willy.” He smiled slightly at me, and I smiled back a bit. “Come on, let’s get you home,” I said.

#willy wonka #wonka 2023 #wonka #vecna/henry/one #henry creel #001 #stranger things #the stranger stampy circus #vecna x wonka #wokna #dark fanfiction #fanfiction #crossover #crossover fic

[queenofbaws]

Climbing Chrash, “You have some weird New Years Eve/Day traditions”

“Boy oh boy, am I glad none of us went to school for psychology,” Chris said as he watched Josh and Ashley both furiously tear page after page out of their notebooks, each one getting an individualized tear-crumple-chuck experience, as though tossing the whole kit and kaboodle together just wasn’t insult enough. “We might have to sit down and unpack some of this if we had. Y’know. Done that.”

“I don’t seem to recall you questioning the wisdom of Ye Olde Burn Pit ten minutes ago, Cochise.” Josh paused for a second, his eye catching on something written on the page he’d only just torn out…and after getting past the first couple sentences, scowled like he’d gotten a big whiff of baking roadkill and shredded it to confetti. He tossed the handful of paper scraps into the bonfire with an Emeril Lagasse ‘Bam!’ then turned back to him. “All fun and games when it’s your shame, huh?”

It was hard to say when it had started, their strange little tradition, but the appeal of the New Year’s Day blaze was hard to deny: While everyone else was sleeping off the festivities of the night before, their resolutions already halfway abandoned by the time the hangover wore off, the three of them hunkered down in the Washington’s sprawling backyard and, well, did something a little more actionable than making themselves a million stupid promises to go to the gym more.

They roasted the old year like a stale old bag of marshmallows.

With a grunt of effort, Ashley dislodged the metal spiral from her notebook and set it aside. Unlike Josh, she didn’t give into the temptation of reading her old stuff, instead wadding each page up into a tight, miserable ball before throwing it into the flames. Already her palms were streaked with graphite. “Yeah, you couldn’t get rid of your old programming notes fast enough, could you?”

“That,” he said, raising his brightly colored energy drink can to his mouth, “was completely different.”

“Wow.”

“Okay.”

“It was! It absolutely was! I just wanted to pretend like the last couple semesters never happened – you two, on the other hand…” He lifted his other hand too late, one of Ashley’s paper balls bouncing off his forehead and falling to the ground. Chris pretended it’d been enough to knock him out, momentarily ragdolling in his chair before grabbing the ball from the dead, crunchy grass and quickly uncrumpling it. His time was short, he knew, so he read as quickly as he could: “‘Only once the moon hung in the air, a bright and mournful face behind the clouds, did she realize her mistake. To be alone? There, amid the danger pressing down around the estate? Why, it was – ’”

“Agh!” Ashley sprang up from her own seat, grabbing desperately at the piece of paper. “That’s not even funny!” she said, her arms stretching and fingers wiggling as Chris, clearly pleased with himself, leaned farther and farther back in his folding chair to keep it out of her grasp.

He grinned a big, cheesy grin up at her. “Then why are you laughing?”

“I’m not!”

“Think you are, Ash,” Josh teased, and neither of them had noticed him getting up at all, but suddenly he was behind Chris, snatching the paper before Ashley could get at it. “‘Why, it was madness,’” he continued in a true crime narrator’s drone, only the shape of his smirk giving the words any emphasis. “‘After everything she’d seen, everything that had befallen her companions, it was tantamount to offering herself as sacrifice to a vengeful and uncaring god.’ Holy cow, Agatha Christie, the melodrama though. I love – hey!”

But two could play at that game. Er…three. Three could play at that game.

Instead of settling for a single sheet, Ashley grabbed one of Josh’s notebooks wholesale, climbing up onto her chair as though that would prevent either of them from snatching it back out of her hands. She turned to a random page, then, without wasting a second, also began reading. “‘Exterior shot. Old house. Just super, super old. The oldest, most crusty house you’ve ever seen in your life. Ivy vines in the brick, cracks in the window, classic stuff, you know what I mean. The camera pushes into one of the windows, past a giant spiderweb full of gross cocoons, obviously, and into the darkness, where we can just barely see something moving. It’s a monster, and baby, it’s got a mouth full of teeth.’” Her eyebrows went up, but she didn’t have time to make any sort of judgment before Josh grabbed her around the middle.

“There’s a reason I’m burning it, Einstein!” Even though he was clearly struggling under her weight (and the ferocity of her wiggles), Josh let out a clipped laugh, waiting until he got Ashley back onto the ground before getting a hold of the notebook. “Out with the old…” he managed to yank it out of her grip and flung it, metal spiral and all, into the hungry fire. “…in with the new. And for your information? That monster? So many teeth. So many. Audiences just aren’t ready for that number of chompers in one mouth.”

“I do not get it,” Chris said again, and that time when he picked up the page of Ashley’s writing, he dutifully fed it into the fire. “You guys spend so much time being creative and junk! You put so much effort into it, and now you just…what? Sacrifice it to the writing gods? Makes zero sense to me.”

Instead of going back to his own pile of shame, Josh took a detour, circling around behind Chris’s chair and draping his arms around him from the back. Without any sort of pleasantry, he stole the energy drink from his hand and took a long gulp of his own, then gave it right back. “It really is a good thing none of us tried to be psych majors,” he joked, picking up where Chris had begun, “because if any of us had, this would probably be where they went on some kind of long, drawn-out monologue about the inherent shame of creating, and how much you start to hate your own crap when it doesn’t come out perfect the first time. Or maybe they’d say something about how taking the stuff that brings you that shame and destroying it so it can never come back to haunt you is the sort of catharsis that – ”

“Sure is a good thing none of us did try to be psych majors,” Ashley repeated loudly, catching Josh’s eye and sticking her tongue out when he raised an eyebrow. “Look, why did you get rid of all your old class notes and exams?”

Chris’s answer was immediate. “Uh, because I never, ever want to think about any of that stuff again. Ever, if possible.”

“Yeah, well.” She threw another few paper balls into the fire, looking more than a little like someone trying to set the world record for fastest snowball pitches. “Neither do I. I don’t want to think about any of this stuff ever again. I just need it gone. Out of my room, out of my brain, out of my life!” When her pile finally ended, and it was only crisped, brown grass that her fingers found beside her, she smiled and relaxed back into her chair. “And now I have more space in my brain for good stuff this year.”

“What she said,” Josh agreed. “Goodbye, shlock of yesteryear, hello award-winning masterpieces of this year. Hope you two are prepared, because this is the year you become little more than arm candy of the guy who wrote the most messed up horror movie of all time. Without ‘Aw Dang, Look At Those Teeth’ holding me back, it’s just a matter of time before Hollywood’s knocking my door down, looking to get a piece of this.”

Ashley zipped her jacket up a couple more inches, huddling down closer to Chris as a chilly breeze tore past them, making the fire dance. “Arm candy, huh?” she drawled.

“Like two wildly different sized Twix bars,” Chris laughed. “Or maybe Snickers. Since we’re, y’know.”

“Don’t.”

“Y’know…”

“Chris, please. Can we not start this year like – ”

He turned to Josh when it became abundantly clear Ashley didn’t appreciate his A-game. “A little nutty.”

“Not going the M&M route, huh? ‘Melts in your mouth, not in your hand?’”

Ashley also stole Chris’s drink, doing her best to hide her smile by taking a drink while Josh played along. “The whole point of this,” she reminded them once she’d finished, “is to get all the embarrassing crap behind us so we can start fresh for the year. I don’t know about you guys, but honestly, I think this sort of childish back and forth is holding us back.”

Chris and Josh exchanged a brief look, both still snickering (a pun which, if either had said aloud, most certainly would’ve been intended). “You, uh, you wanna throw us in the fire then, Ash?” Josh asked. “I mean, if we’re ruining your clean slate with our – ” As he bent over to toss a handful of loose-leaf into the bonfire, his beanie slid off and fell in as well, the flames consuming it with a soft ‘woosh’ of fabric igniting.

For a moment, the three of them simply watched as the hat caught – then really caught – and it wasn’t until the brief spike of flame lowered again that Chris cleared his throat.

“Oh thank God. That hat was really holding us back from starting the year off right.”

That did it. Once it was sparked for real, the laughter between them only grew and grew, leaving them to curl up contently against one another and in front of what was left of last year, the fire warm but their hearts warmer. And already, they couldn’t wait to do the same thing again next year.

#until dawn #climbing chrash #chris hartley #josh washington #ashley brown #queenie writes supermassive #new year prompts #taurealis #hehehehe hope you enjoy!!! ;D

[residentdormouse]

Make Note of those Nifty ‘N’ Words

Now knowing there's a necessity to narrow the given narratives, I may neurotically nitpick my selections less I become negligent about neutralizing all nonchalant news of upcoming nonsense. (insert River Song here) No need to nullify natural nuance that builds in later narration unless necessary. Maybe it's all for naught? A bit naive? Or maybe just narcissistic? Nevertheless, I will try and note only needed sections and limit the numerous spoilers regarding the gang and their notorious nightmare man.

(Also honored that you started reading this absurdity, @mrsmungus. I hope it doesn't disappoint!)

My Words: Name, Needless, Nasty, Nausea, Notice

Your Words: Outrage/Outrageous, Offer, Offend, Obey, Objective

As always, if you think it looks fun, don’t hesitate to throw up an ‘@’ and throw up your ‘O’ words!

Name

By evening, Hayden found herself back by the fire with Glen sitting next to her. Harold's music had now been replaced with his, and the vape pen passed back and forth, shared between the two.

"So you really think we just drop this? No more attempts?"

"You didn't see what happened, Hayden."

Using her chosen name always threw her for a bit. Giggles was her name to him, and she loved it. Hayden was formal, reserved for more serious matters. A warning label that implied, ‘do not follow with snark.’

"What happened there, can’t say it was normal, and--"

"Which is why I don't think we should treat this like it’s normal! There's no hard science researching this, Glen. Uncharted waters here on out.  Think we need to explore every--"

"Correct me if I'm wrong here Giggles, but you can't very well explore if you're dead.”

Needless

(This is only used twice between both stories. And I’ve also used both of these before - Another fail. At least I could go back a little further with this one, so its not all a repeat.)

"How much of this did Glen rehearse with you?"

The offense at the questions was taken immediately, and she made a note of just how little prompting it took to wind Lloyd up. “Hey! I am capable–”

"It's not commentary on you as much as observation of him, I promise.” She didn’t feel the urge to needlessly work him up; the fact that he was here now showed he cared in his own way. But she could see when a script was given, and Glen’s direction was shining through. “You can't tell me I'm wrong, though, can you?"

“The two of you are fuckin’ stupid for each other, you know that?!”

That got a smile from her. She wished that she knew exactly how he was aware of this fact. What they had done to warrant it. Examples. Stories. Memories she should have. But the lack of information on her end did not alter the truth in his statement, and she did not doubt he meant what he said.

Nasty

(Pretty far into Diving, but the rest were really bad on the spoiler deal.)

"Drink? I'd recommend the Macallan, it has aged quite well."

For as much as Max tried to make it seem otherwise, she knew very little about the woman in front of her first hand. And from what she could gather, not many did. Deliberate measures for sure, couldn't be anything else at this point. Her reputation preceded her, though, and Max knew there was no way to be around as long as her, get as high up on the ladder, without having some nasty business in your past.

The logic was enough for Max to justify retaining a resistant stance, despite Quinn's now questionable judgment.

"Little rich for my blood. But speaking of..."

There was no more to her sentence, it already served the intended purpose.

A polite laugh resounded while Gwen turned to mix something for herself. A carafe of dark red mixed with the translucent brown in an exquisitely crafted glass. An object made specifically for her no doubt.

"It pairs very well with A positive, I must say. O negative would do in a pinch. But if you're going to break into the good stuff, why tarnish it with an inadequate mixer?" From her peripherals, Max could see Harold stiffen at the open admission, and with how rigid he was to begin with, she could barely believe this was possible. “Perfectly fine in a glass, of course. No need for extracurriculars. Unless one would be into that type of thing.”

Nausea

With a small step, Fran stood to the side allowing her entry into the home. “Thank you for coming over. I wasn’t sure who else to ask.”

“Yeah, absolutely!”

It was then she noticed quite a few boxes stacked on the side of the porch. Susan grabbed the top two, and began to head to the living room. The post Fran held at the side of the door now relieved, she made her way forward towards the stack of items. Two steps forward and she was cut off with a very loud throat clear.

“Uh, I think not. You. Sit down over there. I got this.”

Fran didn’t need to be told twice. She was nearing the end of the pregnancy, and everything ached. Her feet and legs were swollen and screaming in pain at her. Random kicks to her kidneys would have her crying out at odd points in conversations. And the nausea… The plain cereal she just forced down was threatening to come up at the thought alone.

She let out a deep breath and relaxed into the couch. “I seriously can’t thank you enough. Wasn’t sure what I was going to do without Stu here–”

Notice

"Oh! Oh. No…it's not like that. Not that I wouldn’t… its just...” 

She didn’t expect campfire confessionals to be turned on her, especially on something she hadn't even fully admitted to herself. Of course Glen was a great guy. She’d be a damn liar if she said she didn’t think about him when he wasn’t there, that she didn’t feel a calming grounded energy around him. There was something more about him… a good nature and levity. He was funny, and... 

'Shit..’

She took a deep breath, reigning in the flustered energy. 

"Ok. Well played. Tables sufficiently turned.”

But if Fran had picked up on this… 

“...am I that obvious?"

She laughed, "No, you’re fine. I just thought I noticed a connection there as well, but I wasn't sure." Just as contagious as Glen’s, her laugh shifted the atmosphere to a more favorable one.

#mouse's tag games & reblogs #riding the train to alliteration station

[satohqbanana]

[folds hands] i'm sure u know what's coming. yes. that's right. something i've never ever done and swore i'd never do again. for that latest ask meme: any and all of them that you want to answer, i want to hear

I need to be drunk enough to answer the other questions. And what I mean is that I need to look at my fics, go back in time, ask myself whether I did write those things or not, own up to it, and find words to answer these questions.

Also, be warned I’ll be mentioning some other fandoms/series.

😅 What's a story or scene you've created that you're a smidge embarrassed exists?

My old stuff can often put me off, but also I'm glad they're off my chest and my mind.

🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?

When characters are at heightened emotions towards other characters or things that highly influence their, uh, character. I hope that makes sense.

🤡 What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?

Anything that involves a character being overconfident in doing gremlin shenanigans or hyping their own selves makes me laugh.

😈 Has there been a point in a story where you did something just to be playfully mean to your readers?

Not that I remember, but I think I've been mean by promising updates that I never made.

✍ Do you have a beta reader?

No, but rarely I do give my friends a preview of ideas or scenes that include stuff I'm not familiar with or need further advice on. Which is why you will see a lot of spelling and grammatical errors.

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

It's probably using the narration to discuss the characters' feelings and emotions. I usually never go without them.

Also, whenever I have the chance to, I make characters have The Moments in a dim place with lots of glowing, sparkling stuff like starry nights. The influence of the dance scene in Adolescence of Utena on me is that strong.

🎢 Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

I write a lot of them, I think. Right now, it’d probably be The Stink (Aveyond) just because of how weird I made Derez the Necromancer to be. Am I just confusing “wild” for “weird”? I don’t know. My other vote for this would be The Seven Jewels of Guardia (WITCH), which is, well, an experimental fic.

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

(in Gordon Ramsey to Christine Ha voice) "You're good. Stop doubting yourself."

💋 First kiss fics. Love em or hate em?

First kiss scenes are fine as something to “confirm” that yes there is a romance happening; I just don't like the idea of making the kiss scene the star of the show.

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

Sometimes! I look up playlists that give me the correct mood I want to work to.

🛠 What tools/programs/apps do you use to write?

Notepad, memo apps, and Google Docs are my recent go-to tools.

⛔ Do you have a fic you started, but scrapped?

(laughs and cries in failed commitments)

🙋‍♀️ Do any irl people know you write fanfic?

My sister used to. No, I’m not giving you her account.

🍦 What's the sweetest fic you've created so far?

Loving Hana. (Shaman King)

🍷 Do you drink and write?

Nope.

🍆 Do you write the spicy stuffs? If so, what's your most popular nsfw fic?

I used to because I wanted to be cool. :(

🌞 Do you have a preferred time of day to write?

Not really; any time is a good time as long as I have some inspiration to go off of.

💖 What made you start writing?

My sister technically did, because she was involved in small hobby writing circles and I was like, “Oh I wanna be cool like that.” But I was definitely making up stories with my toys or just my imagination even way way way back then.

💌 How do you feel about comments and feedback?

I love them. I want more of them if possible.

❌ What's a trope you will never write?

I never liked the “rape as backstory” trope, so I probably would never actually write that.

💲 Would you ever open commissions?

No, sorry. :(

🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?

I think I spend just about the right amount of time because, uh. I hate reading.

🏆 What's your most popular fic?

I don’t know, but people seemed to enjoy my Asakura family fics (Shaman King).

🎃 Do you write fics for certain holidays? Which is your favorite holiday inspired fic?

Yeah I sometimes do. But my favorite holiday fic is this WIP I have for AV1. It’s a Christmas fic set in the ADF universe, and the gist pretty much is that everyone in the party has family, friends, acquaintances, and so-so to spend the holiday with...

Except Lars.

🎯 Have any of your readers accurately guessed major plot points? Care to share which?

Unfortunately, no. I don’t have enough traction to garner some guesswork.

🎨 How do you feel about fan art of your stories?

They’re amazing. My friend Zarah used to create art for our stories and I love them.

📈 How many fics do you have?

Hundreds. The numbers on AO3 lie because I deleted some of them.

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

Both. For oneshots I have a rough outline of what kind of scenes I want to put; for longer stories I do have some form of outline prepared.

👀 Tell me about an up and coming wip please!

I guess I can say something about the next release of ADF. Now with authority to travel through the Peninsula, Rhen and the party head to Sedona, and there they find a house for sale, whose owner is staying at a friend’s place, wherein said friend is throwing a big masquerade party. You know where this is heading.

🤗 What advice would you give to new fanfic writers that are just getting started?

It’s fine to get weird. Feel free to experiment until you find something that you enjoy.

💞 Who's your comfort character?

Right now it’s my OC, Lestari Tenobor.

🧠 Pick a character, and I'll tell you my favorite headcanon for them.

Answering the previous question put me in an AV2 mood so:

Ean was initially squeamish towards the idea of a romance with Iya because he feared losing what he already had with her.

Iya, while she is whole again, feels like a part of her is still missing, and she often mourns it.

Rye thinks everyone thinks he’s dumb and untalented because he’s a farm boy and he can’t do magic.

Nicolas was spoiled by his mother because of how late he’s come into his family’s life. Also as he was growing he just knew of a time that Uthar was travelling or something, and thus never got to know the bratty Uthar.

The nymphs don’t hate Heptitus even if she does weird/bad things to them. That’s her job as a nymph; it’d be weird if she isn’t doing bad stuff.

🤩 Who is your favorite character to write?

Any character within the ADF universe gives me such a fun writing experience.

🤲 Would you please share a snippet of a wip?

Here’s something from my, “If I could have done it, I would’ve made someone yell, ‘You and me. AGNI KAI!’” moment of inspiration when I watched Shirleen/rhendarzon’s edit for the Rhen v Lars thing.

Lars stood straight, staff thrust forward and chin held high. It's a stance Rhen should be very familiar with, one his younger self often took when his pride was at stake, when he was challenged by Rhen's perspective and words, when he had enough of her plebeian nonsense. Sure enough, her eyes widen in recognition, and she too takes her own stance, one he was very familiar with: sword pointed at him, other hand behind her body as Lorad would teach her, and eyes seething with rage.

😬 Which of your fics would you be most horrified for friends, family, or coworkers to stumble upon?

I don't share my fics with IRL loved ones often, so I'd have to say all of them.

🎉 What leads you to consider a fic a success?

I finish it and I enjoy it.

✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?

Something off the last other series or media I’ve been consuming. So much of Drakengard and Nier is bleeding into my works now. :’^)

📚 Would you ever want to turn writing into a career?

I already have nonfiction writing as a job; I'd love to see how fiction writing can be my job.

⌛ How long does it take you to write a fic, or a chapter?

Pretty fast when I have inspiration for all the scenes I need.

🤯 What's a genre you struggle with as a writer (ex. romance, action, etc.)?

While I do more of them nowadays, action scenes are still the hardest to write for me. I still struggle to do fight choreography.

💔 Is there a fic of yours that broke your heart?

Circumstances and Reunited (Shaman King). The hurt feels are real, man.

💥 How do you feel about criticism?

It's fine for the OG stuff I make. However, I'm not really open to it for fan stuff since the fan stuff are for hobby reasons.

🤭 Do you have a favorite tag to use when posting your works?

I always include genres a la FFNet/FictionPress style after tagging pairings and characters!

🥰 How do you feel about reader interaction? Are you open to receiving questions about your fics?

I love discussions about fics! <3 Also uh feel free to discuss with me anything of what I mentioned above.

#ask #answered #k3ysm4sh

[t-eyla]

8 and 13 for the fanfic ask?

8) How often do people catch onto your little details?

I can't actually say! People sometimes notice stuff I want them to notice and sometimes they don't xD There's always things in my fic that people don't notice, but I could write two pages of meta on most sentences in any of my fics, so … people not noticing everything is very normal! With longfic, I also used to only post it when I was done writing, and at that point, the reactions don't feel as immediate anymore, because I wrote the stuff I'm posting weeks, sometimes months ago.

Honestly, most of the time I'm just curious to see what people DO notice. It's kind of like determining a cat's favorite food, you put out a bunch of stuff and see which bowl the cat goes for xD So if a reader notices detail 1 but not detail 2, I don't feel sad about detail 2 going ignored, I just file detail 1 away as something that caught people's attention.

I do sometimes fret about people not noticing plot stuff when they don't comment on it -- in my current fic, for example, because it's a case fic, I'm doing a lot of dropping hints between the lines (because straight up exposition just isn't very interesting to read or write) and then, when nobody comments on something I thought was hinting at kind of a big thing, I'm like BUT DID YOU NOTICE IT??? But then, people will catch on when the detail becomes a plot point, so even noticing that stuff isn't essential.

In conclusion, I guess the answer is "sometimes"!

Do you have a favorite character to write for?

Overall? That would be "the crossest man in Scotland" Jamie MacDonald (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZLkvzJGfJA). Warning for lots of offensive language and offensive everything in that clip, also really badly rendered video. Writing Jamie is entertaining and satisfying and just the right level of challenging. I haven't done it in a long time because the heart wants what the heart wants and I fell out of that fandom, but I do sometimes wistfully think back to being able to open a Word doc and just write a flood of Jamie MacDonald obscenities.

In DMBJ, it's a toss-up between Pangzi and Xiaoge. Pangzi is easy to write because he's fairly normal, he processes things in a narartive-friendly way, and he's got some spice to his mental commentary so it's easy to keep the narrative voice interesting. Xiaoge is less narartive-friendly, but I love writing him because the way his brain works is very soothing. He's very good at dismissing things he deems unimportant, so you spend very little time on irrelevant tangents and there's little deliberation or what-ifs or questioning of priorities. His POV is clean and pragmatic and very detailed -- he's a great observer and will produce endless paragraphs of introspective analysis on stuff, so when that's needed, his point of view is incredibly useful. (Unlike Wu Xie, who is the exact opposite of that; he'll spend six paragraphs thinking about architecture while having a gun to his head, sob.) I guess Pangzi is my go-to when I'm trying to move things along, and I go for Xiaoge when I need to zoom in on all the details and look at things up close. Wu Xie I use when I want the reader to feel confused and distrustful of the narrator xD.

#ask memes #writing #foxofninetales

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

4, 5, 8, 13, 34? :3c

HELLO THANKS FOR ASKING!!

Referencing this post.

4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral?

Full disclosure: I saw this question and promptly forgot every word I’ve ever known. What my brain came up with on the reboot was, “Honestly…~~feral~~ makes me lose my shit. You know shit’s about to get Real when somebody’s described as feral, and I’m always love feral characters.”

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?

I don’t know if this counts as a Superstition or just a Neuroticism, but: The color’s gotta Match. Holy heck, does the color gotta match. I draft by hand in ink, and I change pen colors for different projects, in different notebooks, and they all have to at least kind of coordinate with each other, or else words stall out. Color Family is enough when it comes to notebook/pen combos, but if I try to change ink mid-project to a Slightly Different Hue, mid-drafting stream, Disaster Strikes.

For instance: When I was writing my superheroes stuff, I ran out of pens, and thought I ordered the Correct Refills, but the refills were Very Slightly Darker than the turquoise I was using, and it threw off my NaNo writing mojo for literally sixteen hours (until I got The Proper Pens). I had an existential crisis about it, at the time. It was bad.

Perhaps closer to counting as a superstition: I also must Begin A New Project With A New Month. I can’t just. Start a new project, whenever. I have to time it right, or Disaster. I don’t make the rules (I wish I made the rules).

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

Okay, so THIS is a wild question because, depending on how you interpret it, I have…technically…done both, in the same book? The one I just finished, actually: the whole novella is framed as a conversation in a café, so the only Actual Real Time Action is one character walking in and sitting down (and then facial expressions and one (1) notable coffee-out-nose incident), BUT the whole thing Is (one side of a) Dialogue.

On the flip side: there no dialogue-indicating quotation marks until almost 11k in, and by that point the narrator has told the story twice in its entirety. And: I didn’t do No Dialogue intentionally in the first drafting? Since it happened on accident, it couldn’t have been hard, right?

If I had to Pick One Intentionally, though, I’d probably go with No Dialogue to see if I could do it? Since I already loopholed my way into No Action. Dialogue is fun and relatively easy for me to write, usually, so it’d be a good Challenge Mode to try to Not. (…hm. BRB, making vague general notes for a Future NaNo, because it sounds like fun…..)

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

Difficult: POLITICS/government lol. I don’t understand it IRL and I have a hell of a time trying to translate it into fiction (which is…an Issue, for, say. Secondary World SFF. And, uh. Guess what I have several ideas for, stuck in the worldbuilding stage…).

Easy:  Catch me adding SCIENCE to, like. Everything I write (even if it’s OOC for my narrator to know about). For instance: Birds? Feathers? Flight?? Love that shit, so anywhere it can go in, in it goes. Even if I don’t have the immediate knowledge to pull it off convincingly, I love learning about it, so I absolutely go down the research rabbit hole.

34. Thoughts on the Oxford comma, Go:

Mandatory. Seriously, if in general punctuation’s major purpose in life is CLARITY, whymst the fucketh wouldn’t you use an Oxford comma?? Why would only the FIRST item in your list get one? And commas are legitimately cute! So smol, and they have TAILS! What’s not adorable about that?

I also personally do my Best to increase the world’s total (properly-used) comma population at, like, literally every turn, in hopes that some of them will escape containment into the greater ecosystem and interbreed with native populations to increase species abundance.

Viva la Oxford comma!!

Thanks for the ask, friend!!

#text #answered #ask game #writing #ask meme #gosh i wish i had a coherent tagging system #rell #tide locked #ave oh