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phynoma · 15 days

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Oh hi!

I'm Phyn! I write things. I'm not going to get into a bunch of identity stuff, but I'm queer, I'm an adult, and I like writing queer adult stuff. Mostly horror (see: queer) and absurdity (see: the world)

I have degrees in english, theology, and more theology, which just means I have a bunch of experience doing critical thinking and analysis of storytelling, and enough imposter syndrome that I don't know how to put that on a resume.

FANDOMS!

If you're already following me it's probably for Pillars of Eternity, TMA, or LOTR/Silmarillion. I cycle through hyperfixations every few years. It's still TMA/TMAGP right now. You can find my TMAGP sideblog here, where I just collect art.

Other things I like: Fallen London, everything by Pia Foxhall/not_poignant, re:dracula, SILT VERSES, Rivers of London, Murderbot, Critical Role, Saga, Wicked+Divine, anything by Neil Gaiman, I Am in Eskew, norse myths, egyptian myths, jewish myths, the dragonlance books (don't judge me they were foundational), pretty much everything Mike Flanagan makes, and much much more

WRITING!

I'm on ao3 as Phynoma! What do I write? Well. I write in-depth explorations of characters placed in harrowing situations which draw out the very inmost parts of their vulnerabilities and--

Smut. I write smut, okay?

Almost all of these fics are explicit and PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD mind the tags, I am *very* careful with my tagging for good reason!!!!

HERE YA GO, YA FILTHY ANIMALS!

The Magnus Archives:

I mentioned this is my current fixation, right?

an extant form of life: pollen fic! You could say, maybe, that the Consuming AU uses pollen tropes, but I'm counting this as my first-ever pollen fic. Jon/Tim, Jon/Martin, maybe Jon/Tim/Martin, we'll see if Sasha gets thrown in there. Ongoing.

Hey, Jude: A hurt/comfort fic about what happened after Jon shook Jude Perry's hand. Jon & Georgie & the kindness of strangers (not those strangers) Oneshot.

The Consuming AU: My pride and joy. My baby. I started this halfway through listening to TMA the first time and finished the original fic in about two months in time for the Rusty Quill Big Bang of 2023. Canon is basically the same, with the addition of "what if there was a Entity of Hunger, (fear of) Intimacy, and Codependence?" Also Jon is turning into a succubus. Main fic is complete at a little over 100k words. Sometimes I add one-shots to the series.

~Incredible bookbinding done by @bluejayblueskies HERE ~Art of human-looking Rhia (by me) HERE and commission of eldritch angel Rhia by @isbergillustration HERE ~Commission of Naadia by @dcartcorner HERE

Kittens & Kink AU: Fluffy Somewhere Else one-shots. Cat play. Mostly nonsexual kink. Oliver/Jon/Martin. Ongoing, until I get bored of it, basically.

Pillars of Eternity:

The In-Between Series: A series of fics following the relationship of Watcher Mirad and Aloth Corfiser, ten years or so after the events of Deadfire. The world of Eora is ripe for a new cataclysm, and these two elves are trying to finally have the relationship they've been dancing around for two decades. Ongoing, on hiatus as my hyperfixation is elsewhere. I do plan to finish it, though.

Moments: same universe and characters as above, focusing more on events that happen in canon-- ie, during gameplay. Complete.

Faetales:

Mat & Kal: Fae AU: You know how sometimes you keep writing characters and put them through a blender so many times that they just become something completely new? That's this AU. Mateo and Makalo are two ancient fae beings trapped in the human world during the events of The Ice Plague (by not_poignant) who become bound by each others' lives and deaths. They hate each other, they love each other, they're in weird psychosexual sadistic codependency with each other. They're a cat-person and a snake-person. I'm not a furry but I like some of their ideas, okay? Series complete.

See commissioned art of Mat & Kal by @shojoshark HERE

The Silmarillion:

Mistakes Were Made: Imma be real, this is just straight up torture porn. Sauron is punished by Morgoth after the loss of the Silmaril to Beren & Luthien. Basically, I was annoyed by all the fluffy Angbang fics I was reading and wanted to depict them in all their horrifying, codependent glory. Complete.

Cost of Surrender: I read a really good fic about what it took for Mairon to grovel/debase himself to Eonwe to gain his freedom and I took it a bit further. Complete.

Good Omens:

the beautiful and the fitting: pretty sure the title of this is a quote from St. Augustine, too. I almost didn't include this one because I don't even remember what it's about. Fluffy sex times with nonsexual beings, I think. I started writing it because Good Omens is one of my favorite books, but tbh the fandom for the show exhausts me and I don't know if I'll come back to this. Abandoned, probably.

#writing masterpost #fic list #about me #phyn writes #sorry to all the folks I tagged I just want you to be loved #on the off chance anyone actually reads this #long post #pinned post

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dyed-red · 11 months

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I voted for priest Sam hair! Not only because it was the correct choice, but, hey, bribery! So for a mini Dickey, a choice between outsider POV of the boys being weird about each other or late seasons domestic!Winchesters? If neither of those work for you, write something you like 😁

I love that my bribery accomplished nothing, because everyone taking me up on the offer is someone who was already going to (or already had) vote for the correct choice anyway :D truly net zero impact on the poll, which is likely for the best.

and ahh, i do love both outsider PoV and domestic!chesters, so this is good. and in my typical fashion, my answer is:

Set after 12x11, "Regarding Dean".

They're very beautiful boys is the thing. Well, not the thing, but certainly part of it. Rowena thinks that anyone would be hard-pressed to judge her somewhat embarrassing lack of self-preservation in this regard, if they too got to experience the full effect of Sam Winchester imperious gaze or Dean's intermittently roguish and boyish smiles.

That or, like so many before her, she truly just did contract Winchester Derangement Syndrome. Oh well.

She'd wanted to skirt out of town quickly, after helping fix up Dean's memory. It would be the prudent thing to do. But it was also an opportunity, one that might not drop into her lap quite so easily again anytime soon, to get a read on the brothers without being observed herself. One had to wonder how they did it, held the world together with duck tape and a can-do attitude, considering how ordinary and brutish they'd seemed at first.

Well. Maybe not entirely brutish. Sam's command of Latin and spellwork had always intrigued her. But that was neither here nor there, and he wasn't accomplished enough a spellcrafter to see through the glamour that she wove around herself -- an angling and aging of the face, a darkening and straightening of the hair, a thinning of the lips and tinting to the eyes. Enough that, with an outfit passably dull, she could opposite to them in the pub where they made their way for dinner and rest before they'd set out in the morning. A quiet place on the outskirts of town, locals trudging work boots in and tired or sore from the day. Sam and Dean fit right in. They seemed to fit in most anywhere they went.

Better chameleons than even her glamour could afford her. A few hundred years and Rowena wasn't sure she'd perfected the art of invisibility as well as two men gorgeous enough to be on magazine covers. That was something.

She'd followed them in, waited across the parking lot, and wondered if Dean had injured himself somehow on the day's misadventures. She didn't recall anything, not much action except for at the end there, otherwise just Sam pasting sticky notes to objects and Dean becoming cuter and more bearable by the minute. She didn't recall anything, but Sam's hand never strayed from Dean's back as they made their way across the lot, and Dean never shrugged it off.

By the time she slipped inside, found herself a stool at a table with a view of their booth, they were seated across from one another. She'd never noticed, never bothered to, how far their legs stretched under a table, tangled up into each other's foot-space. At her height, not an issue she had frequently. But Sam was leaned back, fingers on the table, leg, ankle jostling against Dean's calf underneath it. He looked relaxed, and something in Rowena's chest eased at seeing it.

The curse was properly fixed then. Of course she wouldn't wait around in town just to be sure, she wasn't their minder and anyway she'd been certain it was fixed before they parted ways. Still though, confirmation never rankled.

Dean looked around and Rowena turned her gaze to the bland offerings on the menu and in her peripheral she heard his voice, not the words, and then Sam's laughter, loud and startled for a moment then quieter.

When she glanced over, Dean was grinning, leaned in, and Sam's face was so fond her own stomach felt a little gurgly, as if caterpillars (never butterflies) might take up residence.

There was a motion, quick dart, and Sam's hand was on Dean's. Overtop, maybe on his wrist. Rowena's caterpillars turned to lead -- waited with bated breath as their waitress came over and they separated, expressions shifting quick like guilty schoolboy -- and then burst forth into winged insects instead, fluttering around her insides. She bit the inside of her cheek, eyes alight, and ignored the moths taking up residence inside of her.

Well, that was something then.

It wasn't all that scandalous, that kind of sin. Proscribed by the law of every place and time, but something you saw a time or twenty if you lived long enough. It wasn't as if she hadn't suspected. Her imaginings had been more brutal though, more teeth gnashing end-of-world anger with each other, clinging and messy and mad with it. Hand touches across the tables and -- the memory surfaced from earlier in the day -- delighted grins over the potential for a front row seat to some 'live skinemax', that hadn't been what she'd conjured up.

And oh, to be the live entertainer with Sam, to have pleasure made into a show for Dean's affections. Too bad Sam had to be so focused on fixing his brother, they could have had some real fun that afternoon. She certainly wouldn't have complained.

She ordered something herself, a salad and, because life was short, two types of dessert to follow. If there was some thing cold-blooded American capitalism had done right, it was egregiously portioned and delectably indulgent desserts.

The brothers ate, and laughed, and sighed across their bench from each other, seeming weary but well. Ordinary, but far from it. Their legs tangled deeper into each other's space. Dean's fingers drummed an absent pattern, no doubt from one of those rock bands he liked, and Sam nudged him with his leg and directed him to where some dart boards were setup. They brushed shoulders and elbowed each other, were close enough for her to catch snatches of their conversation. Teasing, mostly. Challenging, boyish one-upmanship. Flirting, quite obviously, when Sam's voice dropped to growl something in Dean's ear she couldn't catch, the tone of which had her stomach swooping anyway.

They left not long after, when her second dessert arrived. A little flavourless, in comparison. She left without bothering to finish, left town that night without dawdling any longer. The boys were good, and were comforting each other, and they owed her one. The rest was between them.

#outsider pov #weirdcest #or whatever you want to make it #bribing votes ficlets #tumblr ficlets #phyn's writing #my writing #phyn writes #rowena #because why not #episode coda

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phynsmutstravaganza · 1 year

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Ongoing fic: Waelite

Well, that will make it easier to get down. Aloth gave the hidden stairs a rueful look. This is what I get for trying to think like the Watcher.

What was it ye said ‘bout him? Iselmyr piped up. How intelligent and clever he is…

I still hold to that. He also just has a penchant for doing things the most difficult way possible first. Aloth sighed. “Onward it is.”

Ayyyyyy it's a new fic!

Well. It's a fic I've had for literal years, finally making its way to the public eye.

There's a sorta actual plot in this one! Which is why it took me so long to finish it

#ao3 fanfic #aloth #aloth x watcher #fanfic #pillars of eternity #aloth corfiser #iselmyr #post-canon #watcher mirad #phyn writes

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phynali · 1 year

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me: disappears for a month and doesn’t write and barely comes on tumblr

me, the second the new term starts: welp time to procrastinate by going on tumblr and blurting out 1300 words when i’m supposed to be working

#why am i like this #i know why it's the adhd and the anxiety and the perfectionism and imposter syndrome #but like #why #it's also because i haven't written in a month and it tends to simmer and then bubble over whenever i take a break #writing has no balance for me #it's either taking over my life and fucking over my ability to work or else it's left ot the side for months at a time and just in my head #i just wish it would take over my life when i don't have quite so many important things that need my attention #(the lie is that i never feel like there aren't important things that need my attention except when i'm on vacation)#(i'll never end up writing unless there are other things going on in my life my brain just doesn't work that way)#(vacation is not a time to write it's a time to reflect and recharge)#(so yeah this is my lot in life and these tags are just me lamenting that reality)#phyn rambles in the tags #phyn vs. writing

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name-centrum · 8 months

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Name of the day...

Finn ˎˊ˗

ִ ࣪𖤐. ִ ࣪𖤐. ִ ࣪𖤐

Origin: Irish, Scottish, Old Norse

Meaning: Fair, white, clear; From Finland; Warrior, brave; Intelligence or wisdom; Thunder.

Notes: An androgynous name that is primarily used as masculine.

"Coming from the Irish Fionn, Finn was the anglicized name of a mythical Irish warrior and folklore hero. As a child, this little boy was blessed by the salmon of knowledge, giving him the wisdom and bravery to later, along with his followers, protect the king." (Source)

"The name Finn has several interpretations depending on its origin and usage. Generally, the name is associated with traits such as strength, courage, intelligence, and purity." (Source)

Finn is often short for the names Finnegan, Finneas or Phinneas, Finnean, and Finley.

Alternative spellings of this name are Fin, Fynn or Fyn, Phinn or Phynn, Fen or Fenn.

Nick-names: Fi, Fy, or Finnie

Popularity:

#Finn #fin #fynn #fyn #phinn #phin #phynn #phyn #names daily #name ideas #name suggestions #names #lgbtqia #transgender #trans #nonbinary #writing #original character #finn mertens #adventure time

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applecrumbledore · 5 months

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tag and wip ask game

I was tagged by @phynali ! thanks phyn!

Rules: Post the names of all of the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it.

I don't like to leave anyone who tags me in a game hanging but I have the worst file titles because I write on my phone, so I keep them very non descriptive because someone is going to see them over my shoulder and. they're usually linked on the home screen of my phone too. and I'm too much of a prudish little freak to want people to see "INCEST FUCKFEST 2K23" on the reg

so, presented boringly without comment:

JFO

PS hospital

PS non canon ch8

cameron

I don't have anyone to tag but consider this permission if you want to talk about your wip titles! tag me so I can see

#tag game #ronWIPs

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wordsandrobots · 6 months

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Welp. Here's hoping the amount I've been listening to 'Great Night' by NEEDTOBREATHE doesn't convince Tidal to recommend bands tagged as Christian rock to me on the regular. I do not want a repeat of the 'accidentally adding a track about sinners going to hell to my playlist because it had a good beat' incident (I am often very shallow about music, as the above probably proves; I have gotten better at listening to lyrics on the first go).

But hey ho. I'm listening because it's perfect for the crack(?)ship Iron-Blooded Orphans slash pairing that Wishing on Space Hardware has totally not been building towards (it honestly hasn't but I need about ten years of character development for this nonsense to work so --).

A free writing request to anyone who can guess what that pairing is (Phyn, Walrus, you two are disqualified on account of knowing already). I'll add an IOU to the pile along with said nonsense, the other side of the Venus debacle, more Yamagi/Shino smut and that McGillis/Cyclase meet-cute I should probably jot down (cute = potentially murderous) . . .

#writing #music #it's not that that stuff is always bad #it just often isn't my taste #and you know #American Christianity and so forth #now English folk songs about the Devil getting up to shenanigans?#always here for it

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nordleuchten · 1 year

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24 Days of La Fayette: December 8th - William Constable

William Constable is one of the reasons why I liked this research so much. When I first sat down to write this post, the name sounded rather generic to me, I had never heard it before. Not in connection with La Fayette or anyone else. I expected a few bites in letters, maybe a grave marker and a few listings in genealogy books – as it turns out, Donald G. Tailby (later associated Professor at the University of Georgia) wrote his PhD about the early career of William Constable (the dissertation can be partly read here) and the papers of the Constable family are for the most part held by New York Public Library.

William Kerin Constable was born on January 1, 1752, in Dublin, Ireland. The family originally hailed from France, but they moved to England for unknown reasons. William’s paternal grandfather, also named William Constable, moved from England to Ireland “in the King’s service”. In Ireland he met and married Elizabeth Owen (probably of Welsh descent). Together they had three surviving daughters and one son. The son’s name was John Constable, and he was born in Dublin in 1728. He married Jane Kerin, born 1731, daughter of William Kerin and Jane Ewer on February 6, 1749 in Dublin. Their son William (our William) was born on January 1, 1752 in Dublin, their daughter Eweretta was born in 1754. Two other children, Elizabeth and George, died young. A fifth child, Henriette, was born in Montreal in 1761. The couples last child, John, was born in North America in 1764.

There is considerable uncertainty when and how the family left Dublin. Before they came to North America, they settled for some time in Montreal. Family records imply that they moved there around the year 1754, shortly after Eweretta’s birth. John Constable was a regimental surgeon in the British Army and the city of Montreal was under French control until 1760 when the French surrendered the city to the British during the French and Indian War. It is highly unlikely for a British, non-Catholic family with a husband and father that works for the army to move into a French city during a war between France and Britain. Far more likely is the scenario that either the whole family moved to Montreal in 1760/1761 or that in 1754 John Constable was in Montreal with the army and his family joined him there in 1760/1761.

Anyway, by 1762 the family had moved to Schenectady in New York. John Constable was still employed as a military surgeon but earned his money mainly as a private physician. It appears as if William Constable was send back to Dublin to receive a formal education before returning to Schenectady. His younger sister Eweretta had married James Phyn in 1768. Phyn was one of the partners of the fur-trading firm Phyn & Ellice. James Phyn offered his brother-in-law an apprenticeship in his firm in 1769 and William started working there as a clerk despite his fathers wishes for him to study law. William met many of his lifelong friends and business partners during his time by Phyn & Ellice. Between 1773/1774 and 1777 he was sent by the firm to England. Little is known about his time in England, but soon after his return to North America, he joined the Continental Army and took his Oath of Alliance in Philadelphia.

It appears that during the Revolutionary War, Constable was not only La Fayette’s aide-de-camp but prior to that also an aide-de-camp to General John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg. Founders Online currently has two letters written by Constable during this time and in both cases, the editors of Founders Online describe him as Muhlenberg’s aide-de-camp. The last of these letters was written on April 7, 1781 and the first connection that appears between Constable and La Fayette is a letter from April 28, 1781.

While with La Fayette, Constable appears to have been often tasked with coping letters or taking dictations. Between April 28, 1781 and July 25, 1781 there are fifteen letters in Constable’s hand that survived. But Constable was doing more than simply copying letters. La Fayette wrote to the Baron von Steuben on May 31, 1781:

I am to beg your pardon for opening your letter, but I was gone from the place when they arrived and Mr. Constable who had remained behind hearing that Tarletons Horse were on his route to join me unsealed every letter on public Service that in Case he should destroy them he might know their Contents.

Idzerda Stanley J. et al., editors, Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776–1790, Volume 4, April 1, 1781–December 23, 1781, Cornell University Press, 1981, p. 150-151.

It appears as if William Constable never held a specific rank in the army because he always referred to as “Mr. Constable” and I could not find anything about potential commissions or further promotions.

After the war, Constable returned to his business endeavours. He was a merchant and a fur dealer, as well as land and debt speculator – he and his partner owned a tenth of the state of New York during their business’ peak years. Constable’s business endeavours were numerous and too complex to unfurl here in total, so a short summary has to suffice.

He was involved with such illustrious names like Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, William Duer and James Seagrove. He was a partner to Porteous & Company of New York, later Constable, Porteous & Company of Philadelphia. He had early business connections to Benedict Arnold during his time as military governor of Philadelphia and engaged together with James Seagrove in trade in France and Havana. He also entered a contract about the trading of tobacco with France. He is probably best known for his connections with the Morris’ and their combined endeavour to establish trade between America and China. During the early years of trade relations, few men were so actively engaged in the venture as Constable. He also had contracts with the government, especially as a partner at Constable, Rucker and Co. Beside Tailby’s PhD dissertation I also recommend his paper titled Foreign Interest Remittances by the United States, 1785-1787: A Story of Malfeasance.

Constable settled in Philadelphia and married Anna White. Together they had at least one surviving son, William Kerin Constable jr., who later settled in Constableville. The village was settled in 1796 and the older Constable was the sole proprietor after his partners pulled out. He sold parcels of land to people in France, England, and the Netherlands.

He died on May 22, 1803 in Greenwich near New York City.

Constable also had business and personal relations with Alexander Hamilton, especially in the late 1780s and early 1790s. Founders Online currently has twelve letters between the two of them. The Library of Congress has five letters written in William Constables handwriting, mostly parts of his correspondence with Tobias Lear.

George Washington Papers, Series 4, General Correspondence: William Constable to Tobias Lear, November 16, 1790, Manuscript/Mixed Material, Retrieved from the Library of Congress. (09/09/2022)

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anddreadful · 1 year

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Some self-indulgent barely-coherent OC A/B/O AU thoughts from 1:30am last night, yes sorry I am nominally into this horny garbage, if you don’t know what A/B/O is don’t google it on a work computer:

Storm kings: I got attached to the idea of Theseus as an alpha who for some reason was incapable of going into rut (and lacked “normal” instinctual alpha aggression) long before we found out what his canon deal was, and the way that tracks with him being not a true alpha but an imperfect clone of one fuckin hits. (Theseus is perpetually SUPER relieved he doesn't turn meathead when he's angry or horny like some alphas tend to.) I always loved the idea of Theseus helping Marin (and eventually an extremely peeved Rekhein) through their breakthrough heats not sexually, but just by being a soothing presence— in my A/B/O lore I really like the idea that the scent/ close attention/ nonsexual physical touch of an alpha helps with a heat as much as sex with one. Rekhien would find cuddling with Theseus while miserably horny almost more mortifying than just fucking him, but Marin insists it isn’t weird, and none of them have boundaries with each other anymore anyway, and it DOES help, so whatever. The stormchasers give off huge polycule energy despite none of them sleeping together (canon).

Speaking of Rekhien, he’s an omega who disguises his scent and passes for Beta for most of the campaign, because male omegas sometimes get dunked on/ disrespected for it. It’s Marin who ferrets him out and eventually convinces him not to hide it anymore— and she’s correct that they’re powerful enough by that point for it not to matter. Marin is an omega who magically becomes an alpha when she becomes Voc Rocsha— designations work a little differently for the people of the purple rocks, given that they’re not bound by the same biological rules as most species; I sort of imagine that the current Voc Rocsha is the only alpha of her tribe at any point. (I don’t ascribe to reproductive organs/ designation correlation, FWIW/ this is a non-mpreg-focused set of worldbuilding choices, sorry. But we do have mating/ claiming bites because those are hot.)

She’s worried Kitro (alpha) won’t be as interested in her now that she’s not an omega, but he doesn’t care what she is and doesn’t understand why she thinks he would. Drow, it turns out, tend to be very designation-pairing agnostic compared to some surface cultures that lionize alpha/omega couplings.

And Phyn is a beta. The most beta beta to ever normie alongside his hormone-riddled friends.

COS: if your strahd is an omega, you are so correct and valid, but in our game, strahd is an extremely typical alpha, and as I would write a full AU, Barovia has what could be considered some regressive collective beliefs about designations. (Tatyana as an omega and her choosing beta Sergei over alpha Strahd would have made him sooooooooo mad, it's too juicy not to do.) I have always loved the idea of Ismark (omega! which is obviously one of the reasons people don’t respect him) pulling teddy aside in the manor like, ‘hey, just so you know, I know what we are isn’t a big deal where you come from, but here you need to be careful. It’s good that you’re traveling with two alphas so people won't mess with you.’

Hot take! One of those alphas is Nim. Nim has a strong presence and a huge streak of stoic self-sufficiency that screams alpha to me. more importantly, it makes her abandoning her human family that much more fucked up, and is another layer to the maternal abandonment baggage that Borakov takes SUPER personally, as he buys in hard to the alpha-as-protector cultural messaging (which is probably a Barovian thing much more than an elf thing, to be fair to Nim)

Rahadin is a beta, but has some very weird and yikes ideas about designation and social hierarchy— as far as he’s concerned, part of Strahd’s absolute right to rule is simply that he’s The Strongest Alpha. Rahadin isn’t sexuaally interested in omegas because they “need” alphas, which he’s very matter of fact about not being, and Betas are fine, but what he really gets off on is putting “undeserving” alphas in their place. Hence his initial thing for being mean in a horny way to Nim, world’s least trad alpha. And if he's developing bigger feelings, well, maybe Rahadin can have a little unresolved cognitive dissonance about nim's alpha qualities (better than initially assessed, possibly leadership material) vs how much he likes domming her, as a treat.

Teddy and Borakov are, regrettably, the most obvious m/f alpha/omega trad-gender-shit-on-steroids heterosexual nonsense pairing ever committed to fiction. Just extremely classic territorial scenting protective horny bullshit. Sorry to everyone in Barovia.

Teddy goes into heat halfway through the campaign, in vallaki (she’s about four months out from her last dose of military-grade suppressants and hasn’t had a heat since she presented as a teenager, so it’s not pretty). Ismark kicks Borakov out of the entire building when it becomes obvious what’s happening. Strahd can’t get to her for some contrived reason but is sending her dreams telling her to leave the inn where she’s holed up to come find her alpha— unfortunately for Strahd, as far as her addled little brain is concerned, Borakov is her alpha. She sneaks out and finds Bork at the burgomaster’s manor and moves the Bork/ teddy sexual timeline up significantly. Everyone else is baffled that heat!teddy managed to secretly engineer her way out of the upper floor window of the inn while barely able to stand upright, but getting laid is a powerful motivator. For convoluted emotional reasons, Borakov refuses to claiming-bite her ~for her own good, which teddy takes very personally and becomes one of the reasons she later agrees to marry strahd, who is clear that he DEFINITELY wants to bite her for MULTIPLE reasons (and does).

Denethor is a beta. The consorts are a random assortment of designations. Doru is an omega and Miranda is a beta. Ez is a beta, Ireena an alpha, Kasimir an alpha but In An Elf Way. Van richten is drenched in suppressants and scent blockers, so good luck figuring that one out. The soulless inhabitants of Barovia don’t have designations— not even beta. They have no scents at all, which is unnerving.

Inspired by a Six of Crows ABO fic with really great worldbuilding, I was at one point brainstorming world-specific terms for "alpha" and "omega"-- I had loosely settled on "Volk" and "Ovechka" which translate to wolf and lamb in "old barovian". who doesn't love a hunting/ consumption motif for relationships in vampireland!

World torn: safiya is an alpha. Bo is a beta. Faraday is an omega and on some very strong magical suppressants. I go back and forth on tailor but I think I’d go with beta (but attracts so many omegas to his orbit you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise). Chess is an omega and slutty about it but extremely proficient in designation-fuckery magic— ever wanted to try being an alpha? They have something for that behind the bar at Cerise.

Brin is an omega. Most of the jacks officers are alphas. Nera Thorn was a beta who wore the most ghastly fake alpha scent you can imagine. Designations can affect how you get treated in some planes— fae tend to favor omegas and are more prone to tricking alphas, for example.

Unearthed remnants: Sev is a robot, so he does not have a designation. Clay is a beta (though depending on how his deal shakes out, I might make him an alpha who's disguising himself as a beta to support his 'bland' persona. I am not entirely convinced 'clay' is even his real name in actual canon) Aster is an omega and thinks the whole thing is stupid. Eon is a beta and Trollack is an alpha.

the end, if you read all this, wow, I am really impressed and sorry

#ABO #I love tumblr I couldnt post this goofy shit anywhere else

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coldtomyflash · 3 years

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I've seen your speech pattern analysis on Flash characters. I was wondering if you had any advice on how to create speech patterns for OC characters?

oh heck this is one of the coolest questions i’ve ever received.

i’m gonna try not to go overboard/overwhelming and just give a bit of advice, and then if you want more details please come back and follow up!

There’s a few things to think about up front with character voices / speech patterns. The biggest and most obvious is language and cultural background. The second is personality. The third is personal history. Fourth, briefly, is gender. And the final one I’d say is idiosyncrasies to avoid ‘same voice’.

Culture and Group Dynamics

Depending on the setting, there’s a decent chance you’ll be writing characters from different cultural backgrounds. Even if you’re focusing on a single culture, there will be subcultures. Even if you’re focusing on a single narrow group of people, there will be age and generational differences.

Think about where your character is from. If it’s a fantasy world, that’s still (and even more, in some ways) important. What country, what ethnicity, what mother tongue? Did they grow up urban or rural? High socio-economic status or working class? What sort of educational background and peer group did they have growing up (and presently) and how does that factor into their vocabulary and mannerisms, if at all.

All of these can influence how people talk. There are regional accents and different modes of speaking to signal your group membership. There is code-switching across groups, for those who have had to learn multiple linguistics codes to survive and thrive in society.

How much slang does this group and therefor this character use? What references (modern, outddated, topical, etc) do the rely on? What kind of references (pop culture, music, academic, etc)? What colloquialisms and proverbs do they say? Are these the same or different to their characters, even within the same culture, subculture, or group, and is it because they’re from a different place/sub-group or because of their idiosyncrasies?

You can use these to help your reader get to know more about your character’s background without having to spell it all out directly. Speech patterns and style are a great way to show instead of tell when it comes to details that are hard to drop in organically in other ways.

An important caveat: don’t write a bilingual character who switches languages in speech unless you’re ready to do a bit of research on that. In AATJS I did an absolutely horrific job of this because I was thinking more about fronting the fact that character was Italian rather than thinking through how people actually talk, and it came out exotifying and embarrassing. It’s important to make sure that the way you use language to bring in a character’s cultural and/or ethnic background feels authentic and manifests is a way that respects that language and its users. You can write a character with a complex cultural history without using multiple languages if you’re unprepared to do research and talk to bilingual speakers.

Personality

Probably the most salient thing in a writer’s mind when they’re trying to write character voices: is this the funny character? the serious one? the brainy one? etc.

Don’t overuse stereotypes and archetypes for creating speech patterns (or characters in general) if you’re trying to make a rounded, 3-dimensional character. Instead, go about three levels deeper.

Think about whether they’re introverted or extraverted, whether they are neurotypical or neurodivergent, whether they are introspective enough to express their own emotions clearly or whether they stumble when asked why they did a particular thing or feel a particular way (most people don’t or can’t clearly articulate exactly why they did something or how they feel, and come at things a bit sideways to circle around their motives and interior realities when pressed to make them external and concretely verbal).

Is this character calm, is their voice soothing, do they speak slowly? Are they excitable and loud and is their speech free-flowing? Are they angry? Do they swear? Do they use references for humour or are they more into puns? Do they laugh at their own jokes? Do they talk with their hands?

This character has social anxiety: how does that manifest in her speech? Does she clam up and get very quiet when she gets nervous, or does she go rapidfire and a little too loud (does she process by turning in or by distracting herself by turning outward)? Does she get very careful and deliberate in choosing her words (is she a bit high-strung?)? Ask yourself which fits best with the other elements of her personality and what you want the reader to know/interpret about her.

This character is incredibly smart and a bit awkward: how does that manifest in their speech? Do they tend to use 5-dollar words, or do they expend a lot of energy choosing their words more carefully (how considerate are they to their audience when speaking and does that influence their speech)? Do they stumble over their words and explaining things, or are they good at making points with clear language learned from a lifetime of tutoring and helping others?

This character is the bff, who tries hard to make sure everyone else is happy first: how does that manifest in his speech? How does he switch between his happy-mask versus his more authentic self, and what changes in tone, word-choice, and inflection come in when he does?

Personal History

I’m only drawing a distinction between this and personality (archetype, really) so that I can draw attention to ways to add simultaneously unique and shared layers to characters that are distinct but related to group dynamics.

Here’s sort of what I mean: the level of education of a mother (or primary caregiver) of an infant can determine that infant’s vocabulary size. While we can break down all the ‘why is that’ layers to this, the one I want to point is to the simple truth that the more education a person does, the more specialized language they end up learning over time. This doesn’t have to be formal education though -- the more you learn about something and the more you read and access new knowledges and perspective, the more and more words you learn, and then if you start using those words, they trickle down to those close to you.

So.

What’s your character’s educational background? Is it the same as their friends who you are also writing? Is the same as their family’s? How does this character’s family influence their speech? Are they formal, informal, warm, authoritative?

If you’re writing siblings, they’ll have some shared things! But also some very different ones! Me and my sister talk nothing alike in terms of vocabulary, but a lot alike in terms of mannerisms whenever we spend a bit of time together!

If your characters grew up around each other, they’ll have a lot of the same references. People from the same cities or regions will have things specific to that region, either due to sub-culture effects or because of local references.

The city of Calgary, Canada for instance has the Plus15 which are a connected pedway system between the buildings in downtown, so named because they are 15feet above the ground. Drive 3 hours north to the city of Edmonton, and you have an underground pedway just called the pedways, no special name. Go a few provinces east to Toronto and their underground pedway system downtown is called PATH. These are all known to locals and part of the vernacular, but are opaque to people outside those cities. And the whole idea of them is probably opaque to people who aren’t from super cold cities that don’t require building-connecting pedway systems for pedestrians to get around high-density areas like downtown (or university campuses) without going out into the cold.

Friends, families, and groups are like that too. In-jokes, shared histories, speaking in references. What are your characters’ relationships to each other and how does that history influence the way they approach talking to each other?

Gender

I don’t want to spend too much time on this one because ugh, gender. What even is it?

But like it or not, it has an impact on our speech patterns. There are cultural and societal norms in how men and women are likely to speak, and breaking those norms will be noticed regardless of whether you’re trans, enby, queer, or not. There are norms that people who are queer may fall into as well, sometimes without even noticing at first. A lot of these aren’t about word choice per se but instead about mannerisms and tone and body language, but some overlap or are specific to language.

Speaking in broad generalizations here, women use more emotional language and tend to speak with more hesitancies/qualifications. So more “i think, i feel” and less “it is”. More conversations that front emotions and dig deeper into those, with longer sentences to explain in detail. The obvious caveat is that personality matters more (i.e., is this a person who likes to talk about their emotions in detail or not) but it is something to consider because there will be general but subtle differences that you can use to help further distinguish your characters’ voices.

Sidenote: this can also be exacerbated by different cultural backgrounds and languages (a simple example is Japanese which has different words for “I” depending on your gender as well as your personality, familiarity with the other persons in the conversation, and situational appropriateness, so interesting ways that gender and social expectations intersect in language).

Anyway this isn’t typically a huge problem except that I’ve found that a lot of writers have a tendency to overgeneralize the speech patterns that fit with their ascribed gender due to early-life socialization, or conversely to overgeneralize patterns that fit with their gender identity (when not cis) either due to heavily identifying with their gender identity’s speech model (or sometimes possibly due to a knee-jerk sort of backlash). I say this as an enby who both struggles with it and notices it and tries to edit and correct for it.

I could get into all sorts of examples of ways this can lead to voice issues, but in general i think the point here is to make sure you’re writing any given character in view of that character’s personality and history, with gender only as a modifier for how some of these might come out in subtle ways but which can be important to help tell us about your character (and if you’re writing queer characters, it’s all the more important to consider how their relationship with gender and socialization might impact which speech models and styles they identify more with).

Idiosyncrasies

So, you’ve got a character. You’ve got their personality and history down. You know how they manifest in their speech. And you’re still getting some ‘same voice’ issues.

People really are unique snowflakes. Let that be reflected in their speech.

This person uses contractions differently than that one. This one says “ain’t” and that one says “isn’t.”

This person makes Simpsons references and that one doesn’t like Simpsons, and makes Brooklyn Nine Nine references instead. That other one doesn’t use referential humour much at all. This one loves old movies and hasn’t seen any of the new stuff so they make references all the time but no one ever notices.

This one loves the word “excoriate” and that one doesn’t even know what it means because what the hell, who uses the word excoriate?

This one talks about food a lot, it overlaps with their interests. This one uses metaphors. This one grunts in response. This one exclaims. This one says “like” and that one hates it. That one refers to themselves in third person. This other one uses reflective language an usual amount (e.g., “love me some candy”). This other one keeps misusing the word inconceivable and that one speaks almost without contractions but still comes off as more charming and humorous while correcting him.

I have an aunt who says “girl” or “girlfriend” a fuck-ton and she has been my whole life and I don’t know why because none of her sisters do, but she does and it annoys me so much the way she says it. I swear a lot when I’m feeling casual despite never ever doing it in a professional or even slightly-less-than-relaxed space, so the idiosyncrasy of comfort levels has a massive impact on my vocabulary in ways which, I promise, almost no one who meets me first in a professional space expect.

Let your characters be individuals and try to make them as unique as possible without overdoing it, or over-relying on a single verbal tendency or habit.

And ... that’s all I’ve got for now. Completely failed at being concise. I meant to give like 2-3 bullet points or examples for each, not paragraphs, but here we are. That’s one of my verbal tendencies: long flowing verbosity :)

Hope this helps!

#speech patterns #speech analysis #phyn writes #writing advice #writing #OC's #writing reference #didn't edit so apologies for typos i'm sure i'll come back at some point #Anonymous

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