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waveridden · 2 years

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all the prime numbers for fic writer ask!

thank you for testing my basic mathematical knowledge. let's go

1: fic you're most proud of

i have several for different reasons lol but i was thinking about this powerful throwback earlier so i'll drop it in here: forward momentum is a rock band au i wrote when i was like 17 based on cw's wildly popular program the 100. it's a little odd in places because. i was like 17. but it was the first long project that i finished and it is something i still feel a lot of fondness for and i am so proud of it because i did it! it was the first project i committed to in that way. happy 7th birthday to that fic

2: what's a fic that took you to an emotional/dark/hard place?

writing stuff during the pandemic is very much looking back and going "oh, that was about the pandemic!" and nothing did that so extremely as stand tall, which is a blaseball fic about the snackrifice. i reread it a while ago and i was like. oh huh! a story about people experiencing physical separation who have to connect with one another via storytelling and adjust to the distance and loneliness! wonder what could've inspired that!

putting everything else under a cut bc i just realized how long this is going to be

3: what's a fic you're emotionally attached to?

oh i'm attached to many things i've written lol but i am going to shout out syrinx which is a taz balance merle character study about religion and is one of those things that i have just. always liked! sometimes there are ups and downs and sometimes "liking" things i write means going "yeah that was good" but this is one that i have always fully enjoyed and thought was sweet and i am immeasurably fond of it

5: what's a fic of your own you won't read?

my ofmd fic because it freaks me out looking at how many comments and kudos it has lol. i know this sounds like a humble brag but like 20% of the kudos i have ever gotten is on that fic and it's intensely intimidating

7: how does receiving or not receiving feedback impact you?

wow what a complicated question lol uhhh. the person whose opinion i care about the most is mine, let's start there. i try to write things that i am proud of and happy with. that being said! i like getting comments and kudos! i think it's cool when strangers read things i write and enjoy them, and sometimes it's frustrating when i put in a lot of time on something and it just...... doesn't get a big response. and at the same time i am always grateful for anyone who takes the time. it's one of those things where there are a dozen contradictory and equally true statements that i could say. i wish i could say the numbers don't matter to me, but they do! if i didn't want people to read what i write, i wouldn't post it. (there's plenty of stuff that i don't post!)

11: has a fic you've written ever caused issues/controversy?

there's a story here that i'm not going to tell lol but real ones remember free play (derogatory). my second answer is i wrote a page for the blaseball wiki recently that somehow indirectly resulted in a couple lore jams and major rewrites and issues. i don't really follow how like nobody told me i was involved but i guess i was

13: do you take pride in your writing, or does it embarrass you? why?

oh i'm so proud of it! this is a skill i've worked on and like i'm not kidding myself about my odds of getting published but that's not the goal, the goal is writing things for myself and my friends that i like and i am GREAT at that.

17: what is the best interaction/feedback/engagement you've received on a fic?

long comments make me happy! actually the thing that makes me lose it is transformative works, i've received three podfics and a translation and a sequel and some art (and of COURSE jamie who sent this ask sent me a physical bound copy of my d20bb fic destination as well as leaving a comment that delighted me and that's like. one of the all time coolest things.) idk i just think it's neat when my art moves people to make more art

19: if you could write an ideal fic, what would you include?

oh MAN what a question. uhh i'm never good at listing favorite tropes/plot points or things like that but i WILL say something i really struggle with is like. subplots and plot motion and things that feel external to the characters. so my ideal fic would include a strong subplot. (i am DYING to try and write a mystery sometime, i just haven't had a good idea yet.)

#waveridden.ask #jlinns #gilears #THANK YOUUU

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itsmeizumine · 3 years

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so, i searched high and low for a post i swore i made talking about why i wanted to make a naruto oc and had this initial blurb and everything that i just intended to add on, but since it disappeared somehow, i'll start again

it's going to be long, but feel free to tag along the ride under break!!

_________________________________________

so, i know anyone who has followed me for a while might have caught up to the fact that i’m on my own naruto nostalgia personal hell right now. it has been dragging for a few months in and out since my lil sibs started to watch the ENTIRETY of naruto franchise just because (we’re talking about all filler eps, all arcs, all ovas, all movies; they’re real champs like that). we all are stuck in the same rooms with each other and nowhere else to go so there was really no way to escape this even if i wanted too, which… i did, in the beginning, not gonna lie (i can’t handle second-hand embarrassment guys, i just can’t, and kid naruto is– oh my god); but then i kind of settled on this constant utterly mortified state so deeply nothing else phased me enough to stop watching the damned thing with my sibs, and here we are.

(and pls, don’t get me wrong. i love naruto, it was important to me as a kid and i still feel echoes of its impact on me even now in my life; it’s just– watching it with my kidsie sibs and parents in the same room with it dubbed in my native lang and them having no context to most things anime, just… no lol)

and god, as much i like the series, rewatching it made my heart ache too. kid naruto had an awful life, dude. for real. it just made me want to swoop in, adopt him and get him somewhere else asap the whole time we watched classic. it was devasting blow after devasting blow since day one, and it took too long for him to find support and bonds (as flimsy as they were) he could cling and lean on (and even then he was left/had to leave behind some).

idk guys, i might be overthinking this but kids in precarious situations always make me emotional af

so i thought: my mojo is making ocs, okay, that’s how i dive into fandoms and such, maybe i could make someone he could call a friend? even if it’s just to comfort him and myself a bit?? yeah, let’s go with this

and like, i wanted him to have someone to goof up with and be silly and talk freely and not have to appear awesome to with that false bravato of his (because he uses that when he’s not comfortable, and i really really really need him to be, for once) but i also wanted him to have someone he could fall back whevener he wants, no questions asked, and that could take care of him if things came down to it, but couldn’t strip naruto’s control over his own situation as an adult would (because that’s terrifiying thing to feel, no control over what’s gonna happen to yourself; now imagine that as a kid that has to live and tend and watch out for their own well-being themselves or else they might as well die in a ditch and no one - in naruto’s mind on the very beggining of classic - would bat an eye?? yeah, no good indeed); so an older kid it had to be. older sibling figure or whatever.

and since i wanted this older kid to approach naruto amicably, they couldn’t be a kid native to konoha, even if they were there from on and beyond. or else they’d first think of naruto in the preconceived notions leaf-civilians kid thought (as a vague monster/demon their parents made of him), or as leaf-nin kid thought (a dumb numbskull, disgrace of the academy).

so before i even started on the kid themselves, i had to settle on a place out of konoha to start the deal (hahaha going through naruto wiki pages on my dying computer was so much fun guys, you have no idea)

i didn’t find a location that made sense in the wiki so i came up with something on my own. it turned out really cool actually. i’m going to link a post talking about this location in particular because this post is too long already, but what you need to know about shokinin daichi is that it was a completely civilian-based settlement. no one was prevenient from a ninja clan and married out of it for peace and quiet, no one had a second cousin that once dreamed about shinobi life as a kid or anything. i know it seems unfathomable in naruto’s universe to such a place exist, especially with how the world is exposed to us on the anime at least, but believe me, it’s more likely than you think. there’s far too much empty space on naruto’s geography and petty, small 1x1 feuds between clans for it not to. shokunin daichi was a place civilians were relatively content with their lives, and if one of them was more ambitious they’d aim for bigger things, yes, but it wouldn't usually scale so far as to become ninja.

my kid, kawarake, was the same. his family made up one the cores of the sanka clan, but since no one was looking forward to taking the clan head’s position from the main family anytime soon, they all lead relatively quiet lives with their own thing going on. the sanka clan run the ranch of shokunin daichi, and each of its cores took care of one kind of animal. kawarake’s family core took care of horses, and he spent most of his days since he was five tending to them or taking care of his littler cousins who wanted to tend them. if he wasn’t on the stables, he’d be strolling in the settlement’s main square to talk to and help all his extended family, or he’d be in his little hide-out by the river farther south from it. he was looking forward to start an apprenticeship under kakka’s clan on metalwork once he was bit older to have the excuse to go out of the settlement more often, but there was no rush on his part still. he was fine like this.

one seemingly random night, with most of the settlement preparing to lay down for the day, a group of nuke-nin found the place. no one knew how, nor who they were; and whoever was left after that disaster could only guess why, but as soon as the rogue shinobi caught sight of the quaint little thing that was kawarake’s home they started to set things on fire. they pillaged and ransacked and destroyed everything in their wake and soon it became clear that there was little to no thing the civilians could do to defend themselves, even with their mattocks and sickles and ropes and wooden planks and the strongest men and women there. smoke and heat enclosed around all of them, and people that had lived their entire lives there together were forced to leave with no plan or direction, just the clan heads’ ultimate order to grab who they could in their way out and survive. hope against hope that they’d find each other again.

kawarake had managed to find his nephew, and be found by his mom before they had to leave the remains of their burning, collapsing ranch behind. with stingy eyes and searing burns and scratches and soot here and there, they made their way out of the settlement to find kawarake’s dad and a distant cousin by chance, but couldn’t manage to reach a group - their people - running in the distance before they too dispersed each to some direction in search of safety. between the kawarake’s mom, dad and cousin, they decided that their best bet would be to seek refuge in konoha for now; and there they fleed to through forest and packed dirt as the night went on.

i don't think it's confirmed in canon but i've seen it around enough in fanfiction to think it might have been implied somewhere. the politics of seeking refuge in a hidden village might change from country to country but i think there's a consistency on the treaty: it has to be compensated for the risk it takes in accepting the refugee, either by trade if the said refugee can has capital to start producing right away or by demanding a shinobi from the refugee's household.

kawarake then becomes the first gen nin of his family, in order for them to stay in konoha and under it's protection. he's the best conventional candidate because of his age; his cousin and parents at too old for the academy, and his nephew too young. he's uneasy in the beginning, he's surrounded by ninja that can, with a few hand seals, create a catastrophe as big as what happened on his settlement just because they felt like it, and that's disconcerting af, but once he realizes that he's also gaining this power, and he's also also learning how to counter it, he manages to ease up a little bit. he even starts to look forward to the possibility of making missions out of konoha in the end; that way he can look around for all his family, and warn them they have a safe place to stay in konoha.

his family arrives two years after the uchiha massacre, and he graduates as a genin on team 3 the same semester as neji, tenten and lee. here's what i have of him and his team, intend to post more soon

he's a nice kid, guys, but he really shouldn't run around with a kunai like this

here's him, isako (also oc, gotta write stuff for her) and shiyoka (same, tho y'all have seen art of them and kawarake together already), their sensei is dope too and deserves her own presentation just because.

#izumine talks #naruto #oc #long post #character backstory #character backgrounds #kawarake #isako #shiyoka #eihi #man i had to get this out of my system #but this wasn't the best way to do so #eh whatever #i got carried away #i was on my computer

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hiruma-musouka · 7 years

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If you don't mind a random question. So you said once that you're picky about characterization regarding Madara and Tobirama (MadaTobi, specifically). What's your preferred characterization? What do you think about when you write them/when you're working out characterization in general, if anything? I really like the dynamic you have for them, and I'm curious if there's a process and what it involves, I suppose. Thank you for your time!

I welcome random questions! (I’m just really bad at answering them promptly) That being said, buckle in because you’ve hit on a topic I love and I’m feeling chatty so I basically wrote you an essay.

At this point in my life I’m picky about characterization in general to be honest. It’s not about Madara, Tobirama, or MadaTobi specifically, it’s everyone. I wasn’t always picky (as my reading history will attest) and even now I will sometimes read stuff with characterizations I’m not 100% fond of, but I’ve been reading fanfiction voraciously for well over a decade now. I like to pretend that I’ve developed some taste over that time period. And I tend to read in fads when I find something I like, so name a thing and, if I like it, I probably read several pages of AO3 fics on that pairing/trope/fandom etc.

Even if I sometimes go back and wonder how the fuck I sank a week into reading insert trope. Your tastes change as you age.

Basically what this means is, I have gotten to the point where I’ve really figured out which things are deal breakers for me instead of just reading on and on and wasting my time hoping I can make myself get used to it. I have time management issues and no time turner: I can’t afford to waste precious hours on stuff I’m halfheartedly enjoying.

And for me the ultimate deal breaker has to be the characters.

Plot is excellent, I LOVE good plots because they’re what helps makes a fic engaging and unique (bless astolat for example whose plots keep sucking me into fandoms I’ve never heard of)… but I have to care about the characters. They have to feel right to me.

Now, let me explain what I mean by “the characters have to be right” because I don’t want people to think I’m elitist purist who believes there is ONLY ONE WAY to do things. I wouldn’t love fanfiction if that was true. There are two things I mean by “right” in reference to characters.

ONE: (and this is essential) They have to be people. They do not have to be human. LOOK AT MY FICS! I keep writing non-human characters. I love well done fics about fae. When I say they have to be people, I mean that they have to be nuanced. They need to react like a genuine article of whatever the author is writing. People are complex! They can be straightforward, they can be assholes, they can be sweet, they can be ashamed, they can be kind-but-god-stop-BRINGING-IT-UP-YOU’RE EMBARRASSING-ME… people can be so many things under the sun and that’s what I want to read. I want people.

You know that thing they recommend in writing: “show, don’t tell”? This is sort of part of what I mean. You can’t just say a character is a coward or just explain things to me and have your characters lurch to the plot’s demands. If you’re writing a person, and not just a name on a word document, they’re going to feel different if you know what I mean. If you have ever hear of an author complain about their characters, they’re probably writing people. And this is because characters are stubborn little wretches sometimes! Because what they want to do is not always what the author wants them to do for the plot. One of the really damn hard things about writing is somehow juggling all those assholes into doing what you need them to do. Sometimes it involves reexamining why they’re doing it and just getting into their head a different way. Sometimes it involves switching POVs because their actions feel right but you have no idea why they hell they’re doing it (or at least you have no way to explain it to the readers yet). Sometimes - and this might make you cry - you have to scrap all your hard work and either redo the plot or admit that certain shit doesn’t work with certain characters without being ooc.

All of the above is stuff that comes with time and effort and a bit of talent. Everyone has their own specialties when writing, but regardless of whether you get into a characters head or just write their actions from an omniscient pov, if you’re writing people, I can feel it.

(There are some rare story structures that don’t focus on people, but I’m already up on one soapbox, so we’ll set that detour aside.)

TWO: If you are writing from a canon rather than an original character, they need to feel like that canon character to me. For anyone who’s read fanfiction and had that one moment where you’re like “that’s them! that’s so them!” - this is what I mean.

Now, this is where we get onto the topic of preferred characterizations.

(I’ll use Madara and Toibrama as an example here since that’ll drag me back to your original question.)

I don’t think there’s only one way to characterize people in fanfics, but I like to think of canon as the “core” of a character. Metaphorically, canon is the bullseye on a dartboard of characterization. THAT is what people shoot for when writing. If you get too far away from that bullseye, things feel ooc and you tend to lose your reader. The character feels like someone else with a name slapped on.

BUT (and here’s the awesome thing about fanfiction) everyone has a different interpretation of exactly what that bullseye is and what qualities make up the different layers of the rings around it. For some people one quality is vital, but another can be done in different degrees and still feel in character. This is why (for example) myself, @blackkatmagic, @redhothollyberries, and @elenathehun can all write fics with Madara and Tobirama and they will all feel uniquely, subtly different and yet still in character to all of us. What we feel is in character for those people - what we think of as the bullseye and in inner rings of our characterization - overlaps a lot with enough minor variation around the dartboard for us to all be unique.

This is also why my Madara tends to feel slightly different sometimes in different AUs. When I write, I keep in mind that different backgrounds make slightly different people so the characterization changes slightly. That part is pretty organic for me. I feel it more than decide it and then work out how to explain the difference as I’m writing to make it clearer and more consistent.

So when I say I’m picky, I mean that my idea of traits is defined for them. I have thought about them enough to know what my dartboard looks like so if I read a fic with an interpretation that varies strongly enough from my bullseye, it stops feeling like them to me. Characters that I’m not as familiar with (either as a reader or writer) get a much wider dartboard because I haven’t really made a definitive opinion on them yet so there’s more leeway in how people write them before it throws me off.

This isn’t to say that my way is the best way and that others are wrong, but it does mean that it’s my interpretation of canon and what I feel resonates best as “in character”.

Of course, sometimes it’s fun to read something with a premise that has no evidence in canon - like “what if this person liked X” - but as long as the rest of the characterization holds up, that’s basically how fanfics work and it’s interesting.

So you can see a lot of my preferred characterization in how I write people. Of course, the more I write a person, the better I feel I know them or the more I think about them so sometimes I’ll realize “wait, this feels better” and then that will change my idea of their bullseye for future stuff. That also happens when I read really persuasively good fics, btw.

Now we have your question about my process as these characters specifically. My process for a new character tends to be the same for everyone. If I have read a lot of fics, I tend to draw from those characterizations and what they had in common to get a feel for the person. I will also CONSTANTLY reference the wiki’s personality section because that breaks people down into rough descriptions that I find useful. It also lets me review quickly what they did in the manga and sometimes why which helps figure out how they tick. (I still haven’t had time to read anything but specific sections of the manga, goddamnit…)

Figuring out how characters tick is HARD but very important because knowing how someone ticks is vital to writing AUs. An AU that doesn’t have a lot of similarity to canon makes it easier to be ooc because you’re drastically changing their backgrounds. Conversely, it also means that you can’t forget that changed backgrounds should mean changed characters somehow.

(Case in point: canon Kakashi is massively traumatized. Unless you have another terrible background, coffee shop au Kakashi should be different.)

I also love to discuss characterization with Kat, Elena, Squid, or Holly because active discussion makes it easier to verbalize and consciously realize why one thing feels correct and why (the why is always important) other actions or dialogue feels wrong. Elena is fantastic for me, for example, because we approach characters from different methods so she sometimes verbalizes reasons when I’m stuck or points out things that haven’t occurred to me yet.

If I have the time (and more importantly the chapter numbers), one fantastic thing is to reread sections of the source material with important moments with that character.

And here’s where I developed Madara. A large part of why I started with this character is because blackkat’s writing sucked me in. When I started to write him though, I had to decide how I wanted to write him which meant figuring out what were the “core” elements of Madara’s character. Given that Madara’s canon characterization is… unconventionally written, I basically started by deciding that if I wanted a protagonist then I had to draw from pre-psychotic break Madara. I can look at later Madara too because it’s still helpful for different elements of his character, but such a drastic change means there’s a literal canon option for good versus crazy Madara when you’re writing his characterization.

(I am experimenting with his darker characterization but that’s not as helpful in most of the stories I want to write at the moment.)

So I take the material, I look at the characters and I try to get a feel for what the person is like, how they interact, what underlines the choices they make. Knowing what people value, what they like/dislike, and how they express themselves helps to write not only what they would choose but how they would speak or react.

Madara’s characterization for me ends up being roughly this then >> values family, somewhat open, competitive, teasing, resolute, dreamer, exasperation, reacts/snaps when frazzled, annoyed when people don’t get to the point aka straightforward, skilled (!!!), disciplined, bit blunt, protective, willing to fight and enjoys challenges, and not hateful.

Later events in the manga add in things like ruthless when necessary, does not deal well with being the last man left standing among close family, I definitely think he had depression at one point, respects skill/power, patient if it’s for a purpose, and good at manipulation (if not necessarily inclined to it as a first option since young Madara was terribly to the point and open with Hashirama).

Given how long this is, I’ll stop here, but if there are other points you’d like to ask about or have me expand upon, please feel free to drop another ask! I know I got diverted while on this soapbox, so let me know if you still want Tobirama or anything.

#Characterization #uchiha madara #naruto #about writing #anonymous #asks

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