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yoshichao · 3 years

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the Smashers and their Host - Chapter ??? Preview

Series: Super Smash Bros.

Characters: Reader, Literally Everyone In Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Summary: You’re an inter-dimensional being that owns a huge estate situated on the cusp of spacetime. You’ve been asked to rent out your mansion for the upcoming Super Smash Bros. tournament. What could possibly go wrong?

Tags: Reader-Insert, Romantic & Platonic Harem, Comedy, Fluff, No Smut

Read the fic here!

[hi a year ago i was writing a chapter about characters getting sick but then a pandemic happened, making this no longer as fun to write. as a result i’m not going to be posting this one for awhile... but i’m going to share the beginning portion of it anyways. hope you enjoy?]

"Room service!" you call out, peeking into the room with a friendly smile and a tray in your hands. Upon your arrival, Marth sits up in his bed and tries to offer a smile in return... but it is visibly weak, marred by puffy eyes and a flushed face.

"Well this is a pleasant surprise." The Altean prince's voice sounds different from what you're used to. It sounds like he has a stuffed nose... which he does, of course. "If anyone was to be bringing me soup, I would have expected it to be Peach."

You step fully into the room, nudging the door shut behind you with your hip before making your way over to the bed where the prince lies. "It was Peach's idea to make soup for everyone," you confirm, "but after we started delivering it to people, I think the full brunt of the illness hit her too and I told her to go lay down."

Upon discovering that over half the Smashers residing in your mansion had come down with a cold, you took it upon yourself to be a good host and play a part in helping everyone make a full recovery. Of course, having lived alone and illness-free for god-knows-how-long, you were a bit at a loss at what to do... and thankfully Peach was all-too-happy to lend a hand. You recall she seemed tired from the beginning but did her very best to hide it, and an hour and a cauldron of hot soup later, the exhaustion seemed to hit the princess all at once. It took some doing, but you eventually managed to convince her that you and the rest of the team could take it from there. She (and Samus, who was rooming with her while mansion repairs were still being done) was one of the first people you delivered to, and her warm, grateful smile was enough to convince you that you could do this. You can trek across the mansion for hours to deliver supplies to forty or so different people all day.

Even with your handy "shortcuts", it's more draining than you thought.

"Oh dear." Marth chuckles weakly at your explanation. "Thinking about it... for as long as we've been in Smash together, I don't think I've ever seen her fall ill before... I suppose I didn't even imagine it happening to her."

You have a feeling that Peach has gotten sick in the past - she is just very good at hiding it and powering through it. You're certain she would have continued doing that this time as well had you not convinced her otherwise. However, instead of saying any of this, you simply shrug while placing the tray on the bedside table.

"Well, she is a princess. You can't have royalty looking all unkempt and snotty - that wouldn't be right at all."

Marth needs a moment before he realizes… you are making a jab at him. The prince is flustered for a moment before he lets out a laugh, which you respond in turn with a cheeky grin.

“Do I look that bad?”

He is visibly unwell, but you feel inclined to soften the blow to his vanity. “Nah, I’m just teasing. Anything else you need before I go?” You can’t help but glance around Marth’s room under the guise of checking if anything in particular is missing. You respect your guests’ privacy, so you haven’t been in many of their rooms after the move-in - including Marth’s. His room is fairly plain and orderly - the only thing that really screams “Marth” in here is the mannequin that is adorned with his familiar Smash garb. Said mannequin also holds his sword, Falchion. You suppose storing an outfit with armour on it in this fashion is easier than trying to keep it in the closet or in a drawer. Though considering you don’t see any other articles of clothing lying about, perhaps the closet is just full?

...How many clothes does this guy have?

You’re curious now, but decide not to pry.

“Thank you, but I should be fine,” Marth replies, bringing your attention back to him. “You’ve done enough already. Merely visiting me was plenty - you’ve certainly been a sight for sore eyes.”

For a moment, you’re flustered… but then you remember this man is currently sick in bed. His thoughts are probably a bit jumbled and unfiltered. And really, who wouldn’t feel better knowing there was someone bringing them soup? Beauty comes from kindness and within, et cetera et cetera. All these excuses and more fill your head as you effortlessly wave away Marth’s silly words - you, a sight?! Ha ha! Why, isn’t that saying often used platonically as well? Yes? Maybe? You are drawing a blank.

You’re so lost in denial that you forget to respond aloud. Marth seems to take your silence and (unbeknownst to you) goofy smile the wrong(?) way and starts stammering out an apology, possibly growing even more embarrassed than you are.

“I-I didn’t mean… What I meant by that was… Well, it’s not that I didn’t mean it, but I mean, I find you… quite… um…”

“If you want a sight, next time you need something I’ll be sure to send in the cutest maid we have on staff,” you joke, easily shifting the conversation to more comfortable territory. Marth relaxes at the topic shift and chuckles lightly, still looking a bit embarrassed.

“I’ll never live that moment down, will I?”

“Nope!” Your first embarrassing encounter with any of the Smashers has been so diluted by increasingly hectic and bizarre moments that you find it more funny than embarrassing these days. Well, you say “these days” like it wasn’t just a couple weeks ago that that happened… So much has happened since then that it feels like it has almost been two whole years! Really, it feels like the tournament should have started by now. Crazy how time works like that, huh? Ha ha.

Anyways.

“Anyways,” you say aloud, not sure where that oddly guilty train of thought came from. It was almost like someone was trying to speak through you to express their feelings. But that’s ridiculous! Best not to think about it anymore. “I’ve got more soup deliveries to make, so if you need anything, just…”

Oh. Oh wait you don’t have a system in place for this, do you? And you’re pretty sure most of the Smashers don’t have cell phones… Gah, you knew you should have implemented an internal phone line! Maybe you can ask Master Hand to sneak it in there while doing mansion renovations for future needs. If you do it, you’d have to do it in every single room one by one, which sounds exhausting. You already have a lot on your plate today!

“Don’t worry,” Marth says, “it’s only a cold. If I need anything, I have enough strength to get it myself.”

You open your mouth to protest but… actually, he has a point. It’s not like anyone seems to be sick with the flu or anything. And most of the Smashers are adults - they are all perfectly capable of getting up and retrieving anything they may need or want. Well, R.I.P. to anyone staying on the top floor because you still don’t have an elevator, but… they can at least leave a message on the door or something. Whatever.

This is already proving to be a very good learning experience at how unsuitable your mansion is in its current state for hosting this many people. You’ll have enough experience and knowledge by the end of this that you could run a rental business in your realm if you wanted.

“Well, if anything changes and you start having trouble, just leave a note outside the door,” you decide definitively. Going door-to-door to check on people would be tiring (and you’d also risk disturbing people who are sleeping) - but taking a walk through the halls every couple hours to check for notes or whatever? Easy. Even your shortcut-less partners could manage that.

Speaking of your partners, you should really be getting a move on.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Marth replies, wordlessly giving you the go ahead to skedaddle on outta here. “Thank you again for this.”

And he gives you such a kind and warm smile despite his ailment that you are practically stumbling out of the door, unable to figure out why it feels like there are butterflies inside you.

...Helping people out is good. That’s all.

Shaking away the strange feelings this encounter brought, you pop yourself back into the kitchen, where you are instantly greeted with the smell of hot soup. The room is warm thanks to the literal cauldron y’all made a day’s worth of soup in with Peach’s help, which remains on perpetual heat. There are only two Smashers in the room right now: femme Robin, who is using a laddle to scoop the soup into bowls and prepare the trays for delivery, and R.O.B., who is just on his way out with a tray balanced on his metallic arms. He stops when he sees you appear from nothingness, staring silently at you for a moment before turning his head back to a neutral position and rolling out of the room. Shrugging off the encounter, you approach Robin and the table of food trays.

“A couple more down - how many are left?” You spot the stack of trays that haven’t been prepared yet, each with a Smasher’s name stickied onto them. “Oh. That’s how many…”

“You work a lot faster than the boys do,” Robin chuckles, her voice notably different-sounding than usual. You’re pretty sure she’s sick too, but unlike Peach, she hasn’t been overwhelmed by it yet and waves away any concerns you’ve thrown her way. “R.O.B. can only carry one order at a time, and the Pikmin keep spilling or dropping things… or eating it. Shulk is… well, I think the stairs are too much for him.”

“That’s understandable,” you chuckle. Yeah, your team is not the greatest for this job. But you’re still thankful for the help. “You are giving him orders for people on the lower floors though, right?”

Robin gives you A Look before gesturing to the soup and the pile of crackers and bread… among other world-specific foods that are apparently good to eat when sick. “Hey, I’m busy putting everything together here! I don’t have time to tell everyone where to go! Just pick up a tray and go, that’s what I’ve been saying.”

Oh geez, not even you’re completely familiar with the rooms that the Smashers chose for themselves. You can imagine Shulk having to search every floor just to find the name he’s been looking for is on the top… Thankfully Peach managed to round up any and all roommate scenarios before leaving to rest, or else this could be even more hectic.

“Fair enough,” you relent, unable to stop yourself from smiling at the others’ hardships. It is admittedly funny to think about, but you intend to work hard enough so no one tires themselves out at what would otherwise be an endless task. You’re hoping that after this first round, you’ll all have a break when you only have to deal with specific orders… until dinner time, of course. Then this chaos will begin again.

“Ugh, and no one has even delivered food to my poor, sweet Lucy yet!” Robin groans dramatically, hand to her head like she’s acting in a movie. “Here I am, selflessly toiling away for the sake of everyone else, while my only daughter continues to suffer! Oh, won’t somebody deliver this soup to her in my stead?”

“Uh… Yeah, sure, I could do that. Or if you’d want I could stay here while you--”

“Oh you will?!” Robin cuts you off before you can finish, grinning as she scoops up the tray with Lucina’s name taped onto it and forces it into your arms. “You’re a lifesaver! A knight in shining armour! I’m sure she will be SO happy to know someone as sweet as you is looking out for her…”

With an awkward (but amused) hum, you accept the tray and adjust it so you’ll be able to grab a couple more. Before you can start browsing the selection though, Robin starts coughing - first soft, but then she’s leaning over and hacking into her arm. Uh oh. “Robin, why don’t you go lie down? I think the rest of us can take care of things from here.”

“No no, I’m fine. Really,” she says, considerably less bombastic than before as she manages a smile. You can tell that it’s forced. “Someone has to prepare all this food and look after the kitchen!”

She’s… not exaggerating. Olimar’s Pikmin tend to sample the selection any time they’re in here to pick up another delivery. And then there was the one time Kirby came in today…

...Best not to think about that nightmare.

“Well… maybe you can at least take a break?” you suggest, not wanting her condition to get any worse via pushing herself too hard. You all may need the help, but… you’re sure you can manage! “There aren’t too many trays left to prepare--” Ten isn’t much, right? How much work could it possibly be to put food on a tray? “--and we could just have Shulk or R.O.B. watch the kitchen.” You’d volunteer yourself, but like Robin said, you kind of are the most efficient person on hand right now. Even Palutena has this cold - there’s no one with teleportation powers well enough to lend a hand.

Robin puts a hand to her face, clearly considering your offer. You notice how tired she looks now that she’s not overcompensating her energy to hide it. “Oh, but…”

“You could bring a tray with you,” you tempt. “Go lie down, eat, maybe read or watch a movie? Then maybe in an hour if you feel alright you can come back…?”

The tactician is silent, envisioning the possibilities you are proposing. Finally, she nods and steals a random tray, ripping off the name and sticking it on one of the empty ones. “Alright, you got me. I’m convinced. Say hi to Lucy for me, okay?!”

With a cheeky grin, she leaves the room with food in tow. Briefly you wonder if she had been looking for an excuse to go sit down for a while now…

After Robin is gone, you start browsing the trays so you can deliver more than one order in a single trip. Should you try for a bunch on the same floor as Lucina, or should you grab some for higher floors instead so your partners can catch a break? Just as you think you’ve made a decision, a certain Monado Boy enters the room with an empty food trolley.

“I ran into Robin on the way here,” Shulk says in lieu of a greeting. He looks tired, but devoid of any cold symptoms that everyone else seems to have. “She said she was taking a break but seemed rather… excited about it. I don’t suppose that means we’re down another member?”

“I guess we’ll find out if she comes back or not,” you chuckle. You’re pretty sure Robin is a fairly reliable person but… she can be rather sneaky about her true intentions. “Either way, I think we’ll be fine! We can do this!”

Your positivity is infectious; Shulk returns the smile, albeit weaker than yours. While you’re certain he’s probably just tired from running around so much to help people, you can’t help but ask him again:

“Hey, are you sure you’re feeling okay? You’re not sick too or anything?”

Shulk shakes his head. “I told you before, I don’t seem to have it. Really, I don’t feel sick at all.”

When you asked him earlier, he told you that he had a weird history of never getting sick at the same time as his friends. He just never seemed to catch the same bugs as them. His explanation for it was as good as yours - which was no explanation, because he doesn’t know how it happens either. Just luck and coincidence, probably. When you try to imagine Smashers with strong immune systems, Shulk would have never been at the top of the list. He just… he looks so frail! But you can’t fight the facts: he’s one of the only human Smashers who is still perfectly healthy right now.

“How about you?” Shulk asks, returning the question. “You haven’t started feeling sick, right?”

He must be worried that you are going to ditch him too. “Nope! Like I said earlier: I don’t get sick. Like, at all.” You honestly can’t remember the last time you had gotten sick. Certainly not since you “moved into” this world, which was… well, it’s been awhile! Assumedly, it’s just one of the many perks of who you are and the realm you live in. Regardless, it’s been long enough that you’re convinced that “virus immunity” is one of your many undefined abilities.

Unfortunately for you, “not being a clumsy fool” is not one of your cool superpowers.

“Oh no!” You let down your guard for just a moment and accidentally let the trays in your hands tip, dumping all the food and utensils onto the ground. Man, you’ve been doing so good today! Shulk helps you clean it up, but a certain issue remains.

"Ugh, what if specific foods were on those?" you bemoan aloud. "I can't remember what came from each tray…" And you don't know anyone's tastes well enough to remake them. Though you suppose you could just leave the soup plain… put a bit of everything on the side…

"Who were they for?"

"Lucina, Yoshi, and Villager."

"In that case, I think…" Shulk picks up a blue-and-white bag among the mess. "...this is for Villager."

This makes perfect sense. "Now for Yoshi… probably all the fruit?”

Shulk ponders for a second, then nods. This also makes perfect sense. The two of you put all the bananas, berries, and peppers onto Yoshi’s tray.

“That just leaves the soup for Lucina!” You grin and rush over to the still-warm soup pot and fill a new bowl. “That was easier than I thought.” You are pretty sure you didn’t make any mistakes whatsoever. Except… wait a minute.

“Didn’t I deliver this earlier?” At your query, Shulk glances over to the particular tray you’re pointing at. It’s labelled for Peach and Samus, but you’re certain that this was one of the first deliveries you made!

...Wasn’t it?

“Um.” Shulk seems just as puzzled as you were. “Honestly, I’m not sure…”

You try to reach further back into your memory, but it seems to get further and further the more you try. Today’s events have been a blur of chaos and confusion. “...I guess I’ll just do it again??” It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember doing it, if the tray is here then that means you have to deliver it! You pick up the tray and put it on your trolley, then start loading the trolley up with more and more trays until it’s full.

“Oops, I almost forgot…” You turn and look at Shulk, who is also loading up a trolley. “Shulk, can you take Lucina’s? Robin asked me to, but I’m out of space.”

The two of them seem like good friends anyways, you’re sure Lucina will be more happy to see Shulk than to see you.

“Sure thing.”

Not wanting to waste anymore time, you start pushing your food trolley out of the room. As soon as you’ve exited the kitchen, you warp to the second floor of the mansion. Static dances on your skin from the instant transmission, but you ignore it as you approach Peach’s room.

[hello again its me, this is the end of the preview. there wasn’t much to it and it ends on such a Nothing note but i hope you liked it regardless. one day this will end up in the fic, but not anytime soon i think lol. i hope you have a good day/night.]

#the smashers and their host #fanfiction #super smash bros fanfic #tsath #super smash bros #fanfic preview

8 notes · View notes

seenashwrite · 6 years

Note

Dearest Nash, I've touched on this before in (I believe) in a discussion re: why some mainstream fics get oodles of notes while more original ones do not, *but* I wanted to get a bit more specific here. There are certain writers here whose writing has a definite vibe to it (if you will) that separates their work from others, and your name is one of the first that comes to mind. Bear with me, because trying to detail what makes your writing stand out is difficult while trying to articulate a Q

^ this is a gif with parts 2 - 4, just FYI

Hmmm… this is a bit of a brain buster. But I can answer it, and I think succinctly, maybe with a touch of that Spidey sense you mention:

Thank you for your inquiry, hope that helps!

I kid. But this is a brain-turner. And a characteristic which, like you say, ain’t limited to me. I’d honestly throw comedians under this umbrella, too, not because I’m necessarily gunning for a laugh every time, but because it’s pretty much their job to take a “basic” (a tenet or fact of life or present reality or whatever) and present the observation with a twist. I think of storyteller comedians specifically, your Patton Oswalt-s, Maria Bamford-s, Kathy Griffin-s, and John Mulaney-s.

So if I can sum up, assuming I’m tracking with you, what you’re more or less driving at with the “how” is this –> Is there anything beyond simply personality, or an auto-pilot thought cascade (for lack of better terminology) that contributes? Are there things someone could do/be proactive about, to perhaps cause this same sort of reaction to happen in their brain?

I think there just might be.

Folks reading this, let me ask you a question, and you cannot look it up:

What was the name of the Sherpa guide who led Sir Edmund Hillary up Mount Everest?

His name was Tenzing Norgay.

Nash, what in the name of the frozen corpse of George Mallory does this have to do with Lion’s question?

I shall tell you.

My father told me that fact when I was quite young, so young I legit couldn’t even ballpark my age for you. The context was that having little facts tucked away in your brain may come in handy. Not in a Jeopardy kind of way, more in a conversational way. I’ve no idea why the man thought the Sherpa guide who led Hillary up Mt. Everest would ever come up during a conversation with enough regularity to justify my knowing that fact (aside from him randomly quizzing me throughout my life) but hey, I guess it just did.

But speaking of Lil’ Nash, the situation for her was that she was the eldest of all the Nash litter by miles… like seven or eight years, I’m not bothering to check. So I had a lot of alone time, and my grandmother was my chief babysitter, so prior to kindergarten and then til I was in about second grade (so: all day long during the week, then every weekday after she picked me up from school), I was pretty much always at her house. Yeah, there were toys, but not a lot to do. And I’d read. I’d been reading on my own for a decent while, not because I was some prodigy but because my dad read to me *constantly* when Lil’ Nash was Itty-Bitty Nash, and it “took”. My mom also, every time she went to the grocery store always - and I mean always - brought back a book for me. It might’ve been an Archie comic—-

Mandatory #fuck the CW’s Riverdale tag

—-or a Babysitter’s Club, or Sweet Valley High, Judy Blume, Madeleine L’Engle, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, you get my point. Some small paperback. It would piss Dad off because he’s a cheap bastard and two buck books once or twice a month were really gonna cut into the savings [eyeroll] but also, in a way, because I’d kill it in a half day/a day. Wouldn’t put it down. After awhile, I started writing my own silly little kid stories, then - and this is where the creative writing love came about - I started writing soap operas for my Barbies. (When I was older - like, 5th grade? 6th grade, maybe? - none of my peers were still playing with Barbies, and I got made fun of when, at a sleepover, they saw my stash. And I was like - No, no, no. Those aren’t for playing. That’s my cast.)

Time went on, and when I was bored at post-church lunch/dinners, I would also read the old encyclopedias at my grandmother’s, the ones from the late ‘60s/early ‘70s that she had for my mom and my aunt. As I got even older and became fascinated with rooting through the boxes in gran’s basement, looking at all the cool old clothes, I stumbled upon my aunt’s collection of Whoa-Hooooo Shit There’s No Way My Grandparents Knew You Read These books. Those kinda Harlequin-esque ones, except my aunt’s tastes run close to mine, none were the same shtick with different covers, shmultzy-sappy romance, there was always some sort of intrigue along with the sexy times, and she also had, like, every legit V. C. Andrews (meaning: not the ones from the ghostwriter, this was way before her death) book.

What is my point? I read a LOT. Now-a-days, other than fanfic (which… straight up: I don’t read a lot of that, either. I peace out on probs 80% of it before the third-to-fifth paragraph. It’s gotta sell me fast, yo) I haven’t read fiction in probably, oh…. 12 years? I think the last ones were the first couple Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Wait, no! I lie! I read the 50 Shades books when I was traveling 2x/wk for a job about 4 years ago, and I needed the laughs. It worked. Oh my days, that woman can’t write. The screenplay might’ve been worse, it goes her, then Buckleming, then everyone else. It’s bad. In any event, past decade or so, it’s more historical stuff and true crime and science stuff and all that old fart jazz.

Okay, so that’s #1: Read. And not just anything, be well-read, and that doesn’t mean developing some level of expertise, by “well” I’m saying to cover the spread. You’re building your tool kit, is all. You won’t use most of it, but it’s nice to have options. You also don’t always have to get this stuff from reading now-a-days, because podcasts. Cover the spread there, too. Lemme look at my bookmarks….

[Spongebob narrator voice: A few moments later]

I’m back. Science - Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe; General current stuff without being news - CGP Grey’s Hello Internet; current events with shittons of pop culture, past and present - Greg Proops’ Smartest Man in the World; fun history stuff - The Dollop; entertainment stuff - How Did This Get Made.

#2: Keep a notebook with you and jot down turns-of-phrase that spark something in your brain - things you read on websites, on twitter, in articles, things you hear people say (real life, TV, movies, podcasts), and write it. Don’t snap a pic with your phone or make a note in your phone. There are studies behind this, I’m not hunting them down, you’ll just have to trust me, but there are, and it goes to being reflexive, a brain “muscle memory” thing, if you will. You’re not doing it to plagiarize, you’re doing it to dissect it, kind’ve like you did with the example you gave on me —> went from punch action to punch spiked with booze to a punch with a spiked gauntlet.

Which leads to #3: Mental dictionary. I have a large vocab repository, and it stems from the tons of reading - I stop and look up stuff if I either don’t know it, or it’s used in such a way that I think they’ve got it wrong and want to double-check that maybe there’s another usage I don’t know - and also stems from a drive to combat the (still fairly thick) deep South drawl I can’t kick, and not for lack of trying. But see, I couldn’t have whipped out that progression if I weren’t aware that one definition of “spike” is “to add alcohol to”, or of the common shtick in stories of spiked punch like at high school proms typically, or knew about the existence of spiked gauntlets / old school armor.

And I guarantee you that a good chunk of people didn’t really “get it”, and just thought “Nash Be Nashin’, that nutty gal”. So they “get it” on that level, but don’t Get. It., if you see what I’m saying. And that’s fine. Maybe it got something cranking in the back of their mind and it’ll hit ‘em in the middle of the night, or they’ll be watching Game of Thrones or something, see a gauntlet and be like “Oh goddamnit, I just got a throw-a-way one-liner from three years ago” and have a chuckle.

Related, re: looking stuff up and things that people “get”? I didn’t know fuck-all about Twilight, but it seemed of import to the folks around 5 years younger than me, the Nashlings wouldn’t shut up about it, so I got a good working knowledge of it. Same with Harry Potter, and through it I got to “know” J.K. Rowling, who I find to be an exceptional writer, so that was great, and I’ve watched the movies for the most part over the years at Christmastime, and I don’t give the first shit about what “house” I’m in, nor do I care about what Patronus I’d fart, but I have a working knowledge of what those are, and horcruxes and who Snape and Voldie are, you get my point. I can keep up. But to do it, I had to take the time to look it up. One thing I would not trade for gold is Michael Sheen chewing the goddamn scenery in that battle segment from the last Twilight movie. Have I watched the movie? No. But that scene is the shit. And that baby CGI is horrific on several subtle levels. And not-so-subtle. I’ve digressed.

Back to those notes: So if you’ve got these notes jotted, you might see something else and think “I feel like that could’ve been snappier…. why do I think that….” And you’ve got a resource at your disposal, that little notebook. Hell, jot that thing down - things you think could be done better. I have in many documents a highlight around chunks of scenes for my big dog story where it says in bold above or below “DO BETTER”. Meaning: there’s a better way to get from A to B, but I’m just not quite there yet. I’m pretty quick on the uptake and can crank out something snappy on the fly (like say, in CASPN chat or when banging out a short reply or thank you note) but there’s definitely times I gotta slap a DO BETTER on it and walk away til that snappy something-or-other light bulb goes off.

Here’s a recent one where I backtracked, matter of fact - that noir spoof thing I wrote? Along with my co-writer, Moscato? There was a line that I couldn’t hit with a good zinger, so I just said moments were going by like a fat hamster on a wheel, which is cute, but not really grooving with the setting/the vibe. Less tipsy, when I was correcting some inelegant formatting and a misspelling [sigh], I went “Oh! Why didn’t this occur to me last night? Right. Wine.” So the line is now about moments dragging like a rolling donut with a copper on its tail. Get it? The cop’s a fat ass. The donut-cop stereotype.

…….Fine, it ain’t my best, but it fits better. Moving on.

And this leads nicely into #4, and a specific tip I can impart - assuming you’ve got a passable-to-high level of vocabulary in your tool belt, practice messing around with making nouns into verbs, and twisting random stuff into descriptors and using bizarre words/things in metaphors/analogies. Like, I say “adulting” quite a bit. Ali - @littlegreenplasticsoldier - I thiiiink was writing recently about Sam being drunk, and he’s a tall wobbly Jenga tower on his last Jenga. Going back to the noir, pulpy detective style, try messing with the whole “S/he was like a ___ that ____”. Add on to stuff that’s well known - He was like a dog with a bone, if the bone was a ____ and he was a ____ and we were in a ____. (I have *nothing* in mind to fill those blanks, by the way, feel free to twist it into sumpin’)

What else…. okay, here’s a #5: In drafts, let yourself wander, and see what kicks out. It can be fueled by silliness or anger, but I don’t reckon you’re gonna get the “snappy” you’re aiming for if you’re down in the dumps and going full-court-press angst. The best stuff, IMO, comes from the space in between goofy and pissed, and that is The Land Of Snark. You can always re-style it to bend more dry or wistful should you need to, certainly, depending on the situation.

Have a sample of a primo Nash Digression that was fueled by ire in a recap from Season 12 (episode 19). I had said - RE: the random inclusion of the character Joshua, which still pisses me off because they burned a character that held massive potential for future stuff as he’d been shown to be the only angel with direct access to Chuck, so, y’know, that could never come in handy, like ever again in the series, right? - the following.

Mandatory pre-emptive #fuck Dabb

[Spongebob narrator voice] A few moments later —>

On god, I have no idea where that came from, and here’s where we go back to ol’ Spidey up there, because end of the day?

All that other stuff’s the foundation, sure, but there’s always gonna be the weird iggy, the thing that can’t be learned or taught, whatever the quirky synapse is that fires off in my/our brains. In my experience, it’s an ADD-ish sort of jam mixed with the Nostradamus effect. Meaning, (A) we’re at Level 10, rapid fire thought processing >50% of the time, and (B) throw out enough stuff for long enough, some of it’s going to stick. And I whiff it plenty. Multiple times in CASPN chat I’ve been like “Whoo, tough room” when something falls flat.

A specific example: @mrswhozeewhatsis - and I think you saw this, but anyone else seeing this may not have - gave probably the most fantastic analogy I’ve seen regarding the whole “getting it” thing, and while it was on the topic of meaty plots that get too far into the weeds (my specialty) and how it can lessen appeal to a broader audience, it still applies here.

She said “Sometimes, when I’m reading something of yours, I feel like there’s a joke I’m missing. It’s like watching Spaceballs without having seen Star Wars.” I say that to say - nobody’s gonna land references that cover the spread 100% of the time. And, y’know, fine. I figure maybe it’ll prompt someone to do a quick google for - well, let’s use Spaceballs. Most folks will no doubt get the Star Wars part, but maybe not Spaceballs. Maybe they’ll check it out, find something they enjoy. Or learn a new word. Or get a brainstorm for a story. Who knows?

Last tip: Don’t actively mimic anyone’s style. Much fail. And I don’t only mean because if they’re on a social Venn diagram with you, would likely recognize themselves in your stuff——

Takes a moment to wave to the peeps still trying with me! #bless your hearts

—–but because it’s fucking hard. I did it broadly on the noir thing, that’s not a hard thing, to homage generalities, but the way I’m messing with doing this on that silly Princess Bride series? Purposefully styling it like Goldman? It’s good challenging and all, and it is making it feel more in the groove with the book/movie, but I have to be in the right frame of mind or it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard, and when I have pushed it, then gone back, it’s sloggy, soggy garbage.

I say all that to say: it’s an amalgam of brain-wiring/personality, and world/life perspective(s), and knowledge acquired over time. The first just is; the second will evolve in myriad ways, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse; the last is the one where you/we have control, we can fill bucket after bucket of information, and the well won’t ever run dry.

Sorry this took so long. I kept adding and subtracting. This is the edited version, if you can believe it. Welcome to Nash Brain. 😉

#Dear Nash #becominglionhearted #Writing Advice #and / or #Writing Stuff #maybe #Writing Tips #unsure #we'll go with all of it #ah I know #Writing Style #that's the ticket #Queueby Dooby Doo #Dad's on a blog post and #he hasn't been queued in a few days

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madzwanted · 3 years

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𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 ;

this is basically all the connections that i listed at the bottom of my intro but i gave them proper descriptions so you can see where my head’s at ! i’ll also be marking taken connections here for my own reference :-) putting it under a read more just because it got really long oops

⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯

* 𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐰𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 ( 1 / 1 ) : DELANEY DARLING . her better half , her best friend , & the biggest pain in her ass all wrapped up in one . they’ve gone through everything together . maddie loves her sister with her whole heart & couldn’t imagine doing life without her . delaney is also temporarily living with maddie while she gets her life together , so they’re roommates !

* 𝐟𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲 ( 0 / 1 ) : alright i’ll admit it ... i want this for angsty reasons . but pls , maddie pulled a dick move by having his baby & never even telling him , never even gave him a choice in the matter of whether they’d raise their daughter together or not - she just left for a year , agreed to give the baby up for adoption , & then showed up again acting like nothing happened . she never would’ve confessed to getting pregnant in the first place if it wasn’t for the fact that rumors are flying because of the 786 website . so that’s just a cherry on top of this shit show ˆ

* 𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐢𝐞 ( 1 / 1 ) : GABI ROMAINE . best friend . they’ve been through a lot together & have come out stronger on the other side . they trust each other with everything . well , almost everything . maddie has yet to share with gabi the truth about what she went through during her year away . it just never seemed like the right time . gabi was dealing with cancelling her tour & losing her own baby - it just feels wrong to maddie to bring up her own woes while her friend is going through a hard time of her own . but the longer she keeps the secret , the worst things might get .

* 𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 ( 0 / 1 ) : maddie just needs that little devil on her shoulder that pushes her to take a trip on the wild side . they encourage her to indulge in all her worst behaviors and make her live a little , because what’s the worst that could happen ?

* 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐞𝐬 ( 0 / 1 ) : classic situation where they’re nice to each other’s faces but talk shit behind each other’s backs . people probably get whiplash from the two of them because one might they’re getting along fine & the next they’re throwing shade like it’s nothing

* 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 ( 0 / ?? ) : their parents are friends & as a result they’ve grown to know each other well enough . maybe they’re so close that they go on family vacations together & have a blast . or maybe they’re just casually friendly enough that it’s not *that* awkward when they’re forced to sit through shared family dinners .

* 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 ( 0 / 1 ) : maddie is already painted out to be a sweetheart but it’s always nice to have someone that encourages her angel behavior . sometimes her other rowdy friends steer her off course , so it’s nice to have this person around who keeps her on track

* 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 ( 1 / 1 ) : CAMILA NUÑEZ . there’s never a dull moment with cami around that’s for sure . cami is the wild child out of the duo which maddie doesn’t mind at all . maddie cranks up the mom friend tendencies whenever they go out . it’s her way of showing that she cares

* 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐭 ( 1 / 1 ) : LENNON DAVIES . the most supportive & loving friendship . lennon is maddie’s favorite person & the one that she feels most comfortable around . so she feels safe enough to tell lennon everything - even confiding in her with her deepest secret

* 𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥 ( 0 / 1 ) : could be a rival in the dance field or just a personal rival . they’re just dead set on trying to one up each other . maddie is hella competitive so she’d probably get really into a rivalry even if it was started over a dumb petty reason

* 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥 𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐝 ( 0 / 2 ) : i’d love a little trio girl squad ! think like the bold type ! just gal pals supporting each other & getting into nonsense , we love to see it

* 𝐧𝐨𝐧 𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐛 ( 0 / 3 ) : classic og gossip girl reference ( i’ve never actually watched the show . . . but that’s irrelevant ) give me that friend group of stupid rich kids that go through pretty much everything together . sometimes they love each other , sometimes they hate each other . but they’ve always got each other’s backs

* 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝 ( 1 / 1 ) : SAMMY NAVARRO . not only are they both from tennessee but their dads are good friends , so the darling sisters grew up close with the navarro’s . sam is likely maddie’s longest time friend & is like the brother she never had . they have a playful , trusting relationship but it’s turned a bit sour considering the state of his on / off relationship with her sister . maddie’s quite used to sammy & delaney fighting . but calling off a whole engagement ? this is new territory . she’s hoping that their friendship will be bounce back soon

* 𝐮𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝 ( 0 / 1 ) : according to all laws of aviation , there is no way that these two should be friends . they’re just so different from each other that you’d think that they’d clash . however , sometimes opposites attract & in this case they actually complement each other pretty well , forming a pretty good friendship

* 𝐞𝐱𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐬 ( 0 / 1 ) : despite their romantic relationship ending these two have managed to stay pretty good friends , all things considered . they still check up on each other from time to time & go grab lunch if they’re both free . just a duo that’s better off as friends than romantic partners

* 𝐞𝐱𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐬 ( 0 / 1 ) : their relationship ended on a bad note & has left a sour taste in maddie’s mouth . they can’t be around each other for extended periods of time without rehashing old arguments by bringing up old shit . maybe one day they can be civil but for now , maddie regrets ever dating them in the first place

* 𝐞𝐱 - 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝 ( 1 / 1 ) : AZARIA NKOLO . i’ve said it once & i’ll say it again , maddie pulled a dick move by ghosting everyone she knows & loves & then coming back like everything is super casual . zari was one of maddie’s best friends & she just kept blowing her off when zari kept offering to visit her while she was gone . now that they’re back in the same city , maddie’s avoiding her like the plague . but she won’t be able to get away with it for long

* 𝐩𝐫 𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐲 ( 0 / 1 ) : i just think it would be funny if these two started beefing on the internet for shits & giggles . like maybe people started speculating on the internet that they had a problem with each other . this conspiracy has been getting them both a lot of attention in the media . & the reality of the situation is that they don’t , but all publicity is good publicity right ? so they’re keeping up the charade that they hate each other just to keep themselves relevant basically . i imagine them roasting each other on twitter while sitting next to each other giggling about how silly the whole thing is . it’s just fun

* 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐦𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐬 ( 0 / ?? ) : they haven’t had the chance to get to know each other super well irl but they’ve been following each other on social media for awhile . whenever maddie is actually active , she’s always commenting on their posts hyping them up & stuff

* 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐛𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬 ( 0 / ?? ) : if you catch maddie out having a good time , it’s not unlikely that you’ll find her out with them . they always find each other at parties & just spend the night drinking , dancing , & getting into some stuff that might result in them being featured on the cover of tmz in the morning

* 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐤 - 𝐮𝐩 ( 0 / 1 ) : for whatever reason , it can’t be public knowledge that these two are getting it on behind closed doors . so around other people they act like they don’t even know each other . but in private , they’re all over each other . maybe there’s feelings there on one side or both , but they still can’t go public & that’s putting some strain on the relationship . or maybe one of them is embarrassed to be hooking up with the other so absolutely no one can know for their sake

* 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐡 ( 1 / 1 ) : ELEANOR SINCLAIR . maddie’s developed a certain fondness for elle that she just hasn’t been able to shake . she knows things aren’t going anywhere , elle has been sure to turn her down ( gently ) more than once . but the other girl’s got a hold on her that she just can’t escape . no matter what , maddie will always care for elle . but if she knows what’s good for her , she’ll learn to set some boundaries in order to get them out of the vicious cycle of give & take that they’re in

* 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐭𝐬 ( 0 / 1 ) : any friendship can be made better or more complicated by adding sex to it . could be strictly no strings attached & no feelings beyond physical attraction going on . or it could get messy with one catching feelings without telling the other . i’m up for either !

* 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐲 ( 0 / 1 ) : let them have spontaneous adventures to the florida keys for the weekend or taking a private jet to new york . or maybe they just go skinny dipping at the beach at midnight or take 3am trips to mcdonalds . they’re just always down to clown together

* 𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐭𝐬 ( 0 / 1 ) : they both claim to hate each other’s guts & yet maddie lets them rearrange hers on a semi - regular basis . they fight a whole bunch but the sexual tension is there & they can’t ignore it every time

* 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬 ( 0 / ?? ) : fellow professional dances or just anyone that is interested in dancing ! gimme people that maddie has performed with or people that maddie partners up with at dance class for funsies

* 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐫 ( 0 / 1 ) : someone that maddie looks up to either professionally or personally . she’s been taken under their wing & wants to be just like them when she grows up ( nevermind that she’s already an adult )

* 𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 ( 0 / 1 ) :

* 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 ( 1 / 1 ) : GIO VELASCO . king & queen of good vibes , reigning together over an absolutely drama free zone . gio is a treasure to maddie simply because he keeps things light & chill . it’s the sort of positive energy they both need in their lives . neither one ever bothers to ask the other to open up about their problems , they simply go to each other to decompress & have a good time . it’s just what maddie needs right now

* 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 ( 0 / 1 ) : a sorta slow burn relationship were it’s like the feelings are mutual they’re just both idiots your honor . they’re friends that are on the edge of being something more . even though everyone else can see it , they don’t see that the feelings are mutual & they’d definitely be together if they tried . whether or not they ever actually get together is up in the air honestly

* 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐞𝐫 & 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝 “𝐢𝐧𝐣𝐮𝐫𝐲” ( 0 / ?? ) : admittedly , there’s something sus about maddie . like she’s clearly hiding something & her story behind why she was gone for a whole entire year doesn’t totally add up . pls gimme someone that doesn’t buy her sorry excuses & is willing to be nosy enough to see what she’s really hiding

#connections

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isitfake · 7 years

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A list of rejections of famous authors was circulating on Tumblr awhile back and, because Is It Fake was in exams at the time, Is It Fake got really into debunking them. It has now been more than a year and Is It Fake is just gonna put it up and let this roll.

See, they’re all or almost all from Rotten Rejections, a book written with a marvelous disregard for facts, and they’ve therefore been in circulation for more than twenty-five years. Some of them are entirely true; some of them are totally fake; a lot of them appear only in Rotten Rejections but can’t otherwise be disproven. Many of the stories behind them are fantastic.

As a general note, although this was only really useful for Plath, if you enjoy this we recommend “Publication is Not Recommended: From the Knopf Archives,” which is available on Project MUSE if you’ve got access and is just… it’s wonderful. Blanche Knopf was a riot.

Okay, let’s get going!

TRUE

Sylvia Plath: There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.

Not only true, but actually much worse than depicted here. Internal rejection only. The editor, having been told that this is contest-winner Sylvia Plath’s book, rereads, and is marginally nicer and 500% more patronizing: "maybe now that this book is out of her system she will use her talent more effectively next time.” Accurate text available here: http://cloudyskiesandcatharsis.tumblr.com/post/57272275430/sylvia-plath-originally-submitted-her-novel-the

Emily Dickinson: [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.

True! Thomas Niles to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, June 10, 1890— the brackets are wrong, because he was addressing another possible publisher, to say that he thought it would be “unwise to perpetuate” the poems, oh my STARS.

Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.

True, and directly to Hemingway himself. To F Scott Fitzgerald he managed to get up an “I am less violently opposed to Torrents of Spring than anyone else who has read it” but to Hemingway himself, nope, full no.

William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don’t think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don’t have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I can’t publish this!

True. Both are true. They are so true.

The first refers to Sartoris/Flags in the Dust, and the story is really funny and sad. Faulkner sent it to Horace Liveright (his publisher) with enormous confidence: he called it the “damdest best book you’ll look at this year” and tried to ensure at this early stage that the printer not screw up his punctuation (“he’s been punctuating my stuff to death; giving me gratis quotation marks and premiums of commas I dont need.”) He also insisted that the title was perfect and that he had designed his own dust jacket which he would send by separate cover. Anyway, bye, he was going on a hunting trip, he looked forward to Liveright’s glowing acceptance!

Liveright did not exactly… do that. Besides the quote above he also noted how much he hated Mosquitoes, Faulkner’s last book, and how disappointed he was w/this one and how much he really wanted Faulkner not to submit it anywhere else, in case he got blacklisted, because the book was so, so bad.

WHOOPS

(Thanks to "Flags in the Dust and the Birth of a Poetics” by Arthur F. Kinney for those quotes.)

The second is about Sanctuary, a book Faulkner hated and described as a “cheap idea…deliberately executed to make money.” The full rejection, according to Faulkner in his introduction to the book, was “Good God, I can’t publish this. We’d both be in jail.”

Edgar Allan Poe: Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.

Not quite the exact quote, because “(especially fiction)” should appear after “works” and “entire” should be “whole”— but true. Harper & Brothers rejected Tales from the Folio Club in 1836 with this phrasing, the second of their three reasons for turning the stories down. The first was that a lot of them had been printed already, and the third was that the papers were too “learned and mystical,” like spooky bonbons.

http://www.eapoe.org/papers/psbbooks/pb19781c.htm

Poe responded to this by writing The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which he privately referred to as a “very silly book”, and which is a classic of American literature.

MIXED TRUE/FALSE

Jack London: [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.

Sort of true. This rejection is from the Atlantic on the 3rd of May, 1900, it’s about “The Law of Life”, and it was a lot nicer than this, because according to Ellery Sedgwick’s "A History of the Atlantic Monthly, 1857-1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tide”, this was a period in which the Atlantic was being very ruthless and cynical about what would run, because depressing things didn’t sell commercially.

The full quote is, “We have heartily liked the vigor of it and the breadth of treatment with which you have written it. But the subject is forbidding—in fact seems to us depressing, and so the excellent craftsmanship of it has not changed our mind."

Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.

True, but not about Carrie. It’s from Donald A. Wollheim at Ace Books and it’s about the Richard Bachman book The Running Man, which King had written after Carrie got rejected basically everywhere in the world. “The book, unfortunately, was not fantastic,” he later commented, which might’ve been because he wrote it over a weekend in a “low rage and simmering despair.” Thanks to the Stephen King Companion for this one.

UNATTESTED (AND, ONE SUSPECTS, NOT REAL)

Rudyard Kipling: I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.

Unattested. ID’d as the publisher of the San Francisco Examiner or Call writing in 1889, or is it 1899? Yeah, probs not, and Is It Fake couldn’t find it.

That said, the Call fucking hated Kipling. For example, the San Francisco Call did write about Kipling in 1899; it castigated him for his poem “the White Man’s Burden,” saying, “the white man’s burden is to set and keep his own house in order. It is not required of him to upset the brown man’s house under pretesce of reform and then whip him into subjection whenever he revolts at the treatment.” (Among other sources, can be found here.)

Another review of “The Lesson” from 1901 opens "KIPLING'S latest poem, 'The Lesson,’ must be very gratifying to Mr. Alfred Austin, for, if it does not confirm Austin's right to the office of Poet Laureate, it at least shows that Kipling has no better right.”

Dr. Seuss: Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.

Unattested. But he was indeed rejected 27 times for his first book.

The Diary of Anne Frank: The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.

Unattested. The diary was rejected by 15 publishers before publication, but Is It Fake can’t find any of them who specifically said this. Here’s one from Knopf:

In the summer of 1950, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. turned down the English-language rights to a Dutch manuscript after receiving a particularly harsh reader’s report. The work was “very dull,” the reader insisted, “a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.” Sales would be small because the main characters were neither familiar to Americans nor especially appealing. “Even if the work had come to light five years ago, when the subject was timely,” the reader wrote, “I don’t see that there would have been a chance for it.”

Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.

Unattested. Catch-22 (or as it was called at the time, Catch-18) was rejected over and over again, but this exact language is just vapor.

On the other hand, we have some of the language of acceptance, thanks to Vanity Fair:

“I … love this crazy book and very much want to do it,” Gottlieb said. Candida Donadio was delighted by his enthusiasm. Finally, someone got it! “I thought my navel would unscrew and my ass would fall off,” she often said to describe her happiness when negotiations went well with an editor.

And this incredible rejection from Evelyn Waugh:

Dear Miss Bourne:

Thank you for sending me Catch-22. I am sorry that the book fascinates you so much. It has many passages quite unsuitable to a lady’s reading

You are mistaken in calling it a novel. It is a collection of sketches—often repetitious—totally without structure.

Much of the dialogue is funny. You may quote me as saying: “This exposure of corruption, cowardice and incivility of American officers will outrage all friends of your country (such as myself) and greatly comfort your enemies.”

George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.

Unattested. It was rejected for a lot of reasons, but most of the ones I can find histories of were basically for it being anti-USSR at a time when the Russians were war allies. One publisher was basically ordered not to run it so as not to hurt the war effort, by somebody who later turned out to be a Soviet spy, like a lot of people in wartime Britain.

If you want to read T. S. Eliot rejecting Animal Farm for being too pro-Communist (not a joke) (jazz hands), you can find that here.

Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.

Unattested. Could be real and internal, but it was never given to Nabokov, because Nabokov gave us a recounting of his rejections, and this wasn’t in them.

Is It Fake’s fave bit: "Some of the reactions were very amusing: one reader suggested that the firm might consider publication if I turned my Lolita into a twelve-year-old lad and had him seduced by Humbert, a farmer, in a barn, amidst gaunt and arid surroundings, all this set forth in short, strong, realistic sentences. (He acts crazy. We all act crazy, I guess. I guess God acts crazy. Etc.)"

Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)

Unattested, and Is It Fake doesn’t even have anything interesting to say about it.

H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would “take”…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader

Unattested. It is the personal opinion of Is It Fake that they’re both false. The Time Machine was actually commissioned as a novel, so it’s hard to see why it’d receive a rejection like that, and both stories were serialized before publication, not run in book form, so the War of the Worlds one doesn’t ring true. Fun supplemental fact--War of the Worlds was immediately pirated upon release and rerun as “Fighters from Mars,” localized to New York and Boston respectively and run with a story called “Edison’s Conquest of Mars” about how Thomas Edison took over Mars and Is It Fake is not making this up.

Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…

This must be false (no one ever appears to have been under the delusion that Moby-Dick was a children’s serial, and in fact he got it printed kind of as like an art book, a 500-book edition with great critical acclaim and no sales) but since one can’t actually prove that it is, “unattested,” but Is It Fake would like to register the strongest possible objections to anyone who would bother to make up a reason for Herman Melville to be sad, dude was like high king and priest of making his own ass sad in the desert, leave him alone

If for some reason your life has been missing negative reviews of Moby-Dick you can find the full spectrum of praise to castigation here. Personal fave goes to the writer who said “There is nevertheless in it, as we have already hinted, abundant choice reading for those who can skip a page now and then, judiciously....”

PROVABLY FAKE >:(

Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.

False. Is It Fake can’t believe even people talking about Oscar Wilde are getting the Oscar Wilde effect. It’s attributed to a bunch of people, but the oldest attribution found was to John Clayton, from Albert Chevalier’s autobiography of 1895, as

“My dear sir, I have read your play. Oh! my dear sir! Yours truly, John Clayton.”

As Albert Chevalier was a comedian & music hall performer and this is part of a collection of anecdotes, one is perhaps not super convinced this was ever real, from anyone. (There’s also a fwithout the last line: “My dear sir, I have read your play. Yours, Fred Thompson.”

Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.

Possibly true, in that Is It Fake can’t find the date of publication of her first poem, but not substantively true, in that Three Lives ran when she was 35, so unless we’re counting whatever she submitted at 13, this is false. Stein was constantly and continually rejected though. Like just absolutely constantly, and crushingly too. This rejection letter is particularly amazing.

#mixed #famous authors #books #i don't know what to tag this. 'mistakes'#'lengthy mistakes'

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philly-osopher · 7 years

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C, H, N, P, U! (I hope you're done working for the day cause I don't think this is what "yelling at you if I see you post" looks like tbh.)

C: Which character do you identify with most?

So here’s a thing that may come as a surprise to readers of this blog: it’s not John Laurens, although I love him very much. I am far more pragmatic and less angry than he is, and I self-flagellate much less. I am also not as stupidly reckless– in fact, I think of myself as very cautious. But I admire his idealism and his bravery a lot, even as I can see where the extremes of those traits lead him to tragedy. That sense of such great potential, along with all the details we have on him due to @john-laurens‘ fantastic and tireless research, is what draws me in.

Okay so I explained it’s not John. I definitely projected a lot of my mannerisms/ quirks, especially anxiety-related ones (memorizing data, making lists, talking to myself, getting really insistent and precise with words) onto Macaroniverse Alex. That said, musical!Alex doesn’t really have those traits. But in terms of his ambition to Be Somebody in his field and his willingness to work really hard to do it, sometimes to the detriment of… uh… everything else in life? The way he likes to plan? The enjoyment he gets from discussing ideas and constructing arguments? Those things definitely speak to me.

H: How would you describe your style?

Versatile! I try to adjust my style to what I’m writing, and I’m pretty proud of my ability to switch because it’s something I’ve worked on a lot. Even between third person Alex and third person John in Macaroniverse, the voices are different; Alex gets longer sentences and more looping/ leaping, while John is very concrete and linear and pretty bad at noticing his own emotions. For example, John:

The plastic bag inside the box slides out and he spills Cheerios all over the floor. Then he can’t work broom and dustpan at the same time, so he ends up picking up all the spilled Cheerios and throwing them in the trash one by one. Then he can’t get the milk carton open. He almost gives up, because Cheerios without milk are just not fucking worth it, but something in him refuses.

Hemingway might approve, if not of the content, then at least the sentence length and structure. (Actually I kind of like the Hemingway comparison because his is the Stoical Manpain voice and John def has a little Stoical Manpain going on in this story, the silly dear).

Versus Alex:

And even though he trusts Herc to be careful with his pins, and not to judge him for the enormous quantity of free dental dams and condoms he steals from the table outside his door, and to help him discriminate between normal-sick and dangerous-sick… he doesn’t trust him with this yet. He should—he really should.

One, Herc owes him for agreeing to serve as his mannequin after his poor sweet Thimbleina was stolen by a bunch of giggling tri-Delts on a scavenger hunt. (Not that Alex minds getting to model Herc’s edgy, sculptural creations every once in awhile. They make him feel badass. Particularly the poison-green women’s blazer currently taking shape on his shoulders.)

Two, Herc’s also first-gen, he was born in Nigeria, he knows what it’s like to stick out like a sore thumb. Alex frowns. Does that metaphor make sense? Why do sore thumbs stick out? Are they swollen or something? What happened to Herc’s poor sore thumb? In this case, was it sore from the hammer-blow of class, racial, and native-born privilege?

See how he likes to make lists? And starts running with sentences and just kinda… keeps going with them? And how he gets distracted and goes off on mental tangents and has to loop back to the topic? He’s not disorganized to himself, he just has a different system. With his stories sometimes I struggle to get in-voice and sometimes I have the opposite problem of keeping everything from exploding into the confetti shower that is Alex’s inner monologue.

For canon-era stuff I try to use a totally different voice, which isn’t authentically 18th-century but has absorbed approximately that flavor from all the Patrick O’Brian I’ve read. From the rivers/ guns sequel I’m working on:

On the mudded-out track through the endless woods and rolling hills of central Pennsylvania there walks a woman—young, clad in widow’s black, the heavy fabric falling round the gentle swell of her belly. Her black hood is cast down to shield her face from the wind; her head is bowed but her back straight. Before her the sky is clear and blue in all the glory of early fall; behind her it is ink-black and uncanny, and uncanniness clings to her skin like the smell of death clings to men off the battlefield. No band of brigands dares accost her; no friendly washerwoman inquires if she is well, if she needs a bite to eat, what business a woman in her state has on the road. The uncanniness holds them back—well, that, and the creature that scuttles along at her heels: low-slung, many-limbed, panting and coughing and drooling ink from its gibbering mouths.

I count three semicolons, one colon, two em-dashes, and 22 adjectives. Hemingway no longer approves. He’s coming for me with a big knife. If you never hear from me again, you know whose ghost to blame.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

Yes, but thank god @herowndeliverance is writing it already.

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)

Here’s what happens, most of the time. I get an idea for a passage of dialogue or a premise or an ending to a fic. I’m nowhere convenient to write (usually walking somewhere or at work) so I write it down in the notes to my phone and then think on it obsessively for the rest of the day, trying to turn it into something story-shaped. I get home and try to capture what I thought of. Inevitably something isn’t working and I have to talk/ appeal to someone to get the idea loose. Mostly I do this by shouting at my friends in messages and then going back and copy-pasting the whole conversation into the document.

So, I think I end up planning quite a lot, even for shorter stories. Even if I don’t deliberately outline, I’ve at least gone through the story several times in my head before I start typing.

For longer stories, like the rivers/ guns sequel excerpted above, I outline before I get started, but inevitably things will change and evolve as I’m going. Sometimes when I garden too much my inner architect has to tear out the gardens I made because they’re in the wrong places or they don’t match the house, which is always a sad process. In fact, as I’m writing I’ll actually tell myself when something isn’t working, like Philip thinking, this is so dumb, why am I acting like this? when I was trying to take a plot shortcut that unfortunately led to Bad Characterization. That’s a sign more planning needs to happen.

U: A pairing you might like to write for, but haven’t tried yet.

I’m not naturally inclined to do much in the way of shipping, and my Lams obsession is actually very out of character for me. But I’d love to do more of Laurens and Lafayette interacting, because whenever you think about their characters, there’s some very clear compare-and-contrast you could do. @your3fundamentaltruths has also convinced me that there’s a lot of potential with stories featuring John and Angelica, although I can’t ship them because I headcanon John as Kinsey 6 100% Gay.

I also haven’t written any Mariliza, even though I think there could be potential there. Obviously not in the canon timeline, because Eliza would probably rather slap canon!Maria than just about anything else, but in an AU where Maria and Eliza meet before Maria and Alex do? You could see Eliza being the Concerned Mom Friend when James Reynolds is being terrible to Maria, and being moved by how hard Maria tries to protect her little girl (maybe Little Eliza and Susan are friends in preschool and Eliza and Maria start talking when they set up a playdate?), and wanting to help her. Actually, you know what, I don’t really ship this but if somebody wants that premise it’s up for grabs :D

#writing meme #fic meme

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pcinvasion-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on PC Invasion

New Post has been published on https://www.pcinvasion.com/dead-rising-4-pc-technical-review

Dead Rising 4 PC Technical Review

There are whispered rumours that Dead Rising 4 actually released awhile ago, on the Windows 10 Store. These rumours are obviously unverifiable because nobody actually uses the Windows 10 Store. With its recent Steam release, though, now seems a good time to have a look at Dead Rising 4 and figure out if its PC version is a shambling corpse, or the sort of lean and mean beast that runs full-pelt for your face. Which is probably a bad analogy considering most people agree that slow zombies are the better zombies, but shush.

I’m running this on my usual system: an i7-3820 with 16GB RAM and a GeForce GTX 970. As ever, please bear in mind that my computer is apparently powered by a wizard, because it has a tendency to run things it should not be able to run. Nonetheless, this should give you a rough benchmark for how a comparable system will handle Dead Rising 4.

First up, the options, which are wonderfully abundant. Resolution goes all the way from 5120×2880 at 144Hz down to 640×480 at 24Hz, so you’re almost certainly covered – although I’d dread to see someone trying to run this game on a system that has a maximum resolution of 640×480. Not sure if it handles some of the odder aspect ratios, but I wouldn’t be entirely surprised considering the wealth of options it has.

There are a grand total of 16 visual tweakables, ranging from the usual stuff like Texture Quality through to, uh, Translucency Lighting and Dynamic Load Scaling. I don’t really know what those do, and that’s a little disappointing as Dead Rising 4 actually has really good menu help in most of its other sections. Selecting a language has a zombie say (in the text of that language) “Graagh… If you can’t read this… grrrh… you’d better pick another language”, while all of the keybinds have snarky little asides. For instance, highlighting “Move left” displays a tooltip that reads “Scientists have recently discovered that this is the opposite of going right.” A little touch, but a nice one, so it’s a tad disappointing that the options that would actually benefit from some detail are completely ignored. Oh well.

The other disappointment is that there’s no Motion Blur setting, because Motion Blur is awful, and as far as I can tell it’s not parcelled in with another options. Those two little niggles aside, this is an excellent set of options which can be carefully tweaked to your optimum.

We’ll get into how it looks and runs shortly, but first let’s glance at the other options. Audio is basic volume/subtitles. Heads-Up Display lets you turn on or off a number of pop-ups and HUD elements, from tutorial updates right up to having a reticle and minimap on screen; there are enough of these that you might as well have a screenshot.

Language offers a wide variety of languages (surprise!) far past the usual, including two types of Spanish and three types of Chinese; while Gameplay offers up the usual control sensitivities along with aim assist, control inversions, and whether you want Sprint and Aim to be held or toggled with a tap. Finally, keyboard settings let you rebind whatever you like. I haven’t experimented a great deal with this as the default keyboard controls seem spot-on to me, but it’s there!

So: lots of options, and I’m really rather pleased with them. Plenty of graphical tweakables, plus keybinds, HUD adjustments, and a bunch of other stuff that’s often overlooked. Really good stuff.

Direct comparison screenshots are quite hard to do with Dead Rising 4 because of the zombie-filled nature of the game and because you have to quit to the main menu for texture quality changes to take effect, but here are a few showing the differences between Very High and Low.

Very High.

Low.

Very High.

Low.

Two things of note are the shadows (which on Low appear to have been stolen from Minecraft) and the environmental texture quality. Low also has a bit of noticeable aliasing (check out the straps on Frank’s harness in the Cammy costume), but the character models and the like are still alright. They do seem almost like they’re pasted onto the rest of the environment thanks to the huge difference in quality, though.

For the hell of it, here’s another Low quality screen showing the game in action rather than a still of Frank.

Not great, sure, but not as bad as the non-action stills might’ve led you to believe.

There’s less of a difference around the middle of the spectrum. The other screenshots you’ll see on this page are around Medium/High, and I don’t think there are any particularly huge differences between them. In a non-screenshot sense, there is a bit of pop-in on the lower end of things (an item halfway down a corridor faded into view as I approached it, and on Low, store marquees notably fade from incoherent blurs to readable textures as you approach) but for the most part it’s the shadows and the environment textures that have the biggest changes.

I’m hard-pressed to say that Dead Rising 4 looks particularly great, though. I mean, it’s fine: even on Low, zombies explode into wondrous amounts of gore and the blood-splatters soaking the clothing are really quite lovely… which is a sentence you probably shouldn’t say out loud in public. I think it’s more an issue with the game’s art style than anything, because unlike most Dead Rising games, Dead Rising 4 is – so far – unrelentingly grey. It’s quite a departure, and not one I’m too keen on.

It does, however, run really well. On 2560×1440 Very High, I get around 40FPS. Medium and High both sit around the 50FPS mark, while Low is around 60FPS. Drop it to 1920×1080 (which, really, is what my graphics card is aimed at) and Very High sits comfortably at 60FPS while Low skyrockets up to about 90FPS. So yeah, it’s just fine on 1920×1080, and not too much tweaking is needed for higher.

Although it obviously looks a hell of a lot nicer on Proper Quality. And no, this doesn’t really impact the framerate much that I noticed.

It’s worth noting that even the 50FPS bits seemed to be running really well. This is either down to the way it handles frames, or it’s G-Sync doing its impressive trickery to fool my eyes. Either way, it’s within the region I’d consider playable.

It controls just fine, too. I haven’t even bothered trying a gamepad simply because the mouse and keyboard controls are great. There is a weapon wheel (several of them, actually) but taps of 1, 2, and 3 swap between your throwable, melee, and ranged weapons respectively, so the only time you need to dip into the wheel is to combine weapons… which you can generally do just by holding E when near to an ingredient that’s not in your inventory anyway. Otherwise, any three-button mouse can handle just about everything you need. The only iffy part of controlling it on a mouse and keyboard so far has been trying to steer a vehicle, but if memory serves, that’s never been Dead Rising‘s strong point on any control input.

Gamepad controls aren’t manually rebindable, but there are a bunch of different presets that… probably work? Look, I don’t know; I don’t use a gamepad if I can help it. I was tickled when I saw this loading screen, though:

I have no idea if this was a default thing or if it detected that I’ve previously used a Steam Controller or what, but hey, that’s one of the only times I’ve ever seen a Steam Controller referenced within a game. Nice.

Three quick and relatively minor issues with the PC controls. Firstly, one tutorial (combining weapons) got a bit confused when I wasn’t using a gamepad, but luckily it was incredibly easy to figure out what to do. Secondly, one pop-up told me to press the Back button to check something, which is not a button I have on my keyboard. Third, one of the unlockable skills makes the controller vibrate when a particular collectible is nearby… which isn’t much use on a mouse and keyboard. Hopefully that has some sort of visual or audible indicator too, or that’s going to be tremendously useless on PC. I mean, I once tried combining my mouse and a motor, but the last time I saw that mouse it was rocketing through the sky while making a noise that sounded like the mating call of a lawnmower.

On the plus side, despite looking more grey and gritty than usual, Dead Rising 4 still has tremendously silly bits even early on.

So! Good options, good optimisation, good controls, iffy art direction. I’m also a little uncertain on the game itself, honestly. I’m happy to be back in Frank West’s shoes, but based on the early chapters, a lot of what made Dead Rising into Dead Rising appears to have been stripped out. No time pressure, no escorting, significantly more linear (although it may just feel that way because there’s always an objective), and so far at least the Maniacs have been both less threatening and totally lacking in horrific intro and death scenes. On the plus side, combining items into improbable weapons and using them to bash the unliving shit out of zombies is still as chunky and brilliant as ever.

Unsure if I’d recommend the game just yet, then, but if you know you want it then I’d happily recommend the PC version. Nice work, Capcom.

#Dead Rising 4

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