#trying to get her to buy into his worldview that it's them as humans vs the rest of the demon realm as non-humans | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gamesception · 3 years

Text

The Promised Neverland is kind of really good, actually? I mean, yeah, I’m late to the party as usual, but I just binged the first season of the anime, and then the manga from that point on (the site I was on didn’t have any of the second season, but apparently it diverges from the comic and gets bad anyway, so maybe just read the comic to begin with). And, I mean, spoilers, obviously, but I’m going to get into some extremely major spoilers here so if you haven’t read it or if you’ve only seen the first season of the anime maybe skip this post and read the manga, but...

...

I’ve tried and failed to write a big long post about all the ways it’s so good, how the main three characters are each so compelling, how its pitch dark but not cynical or misanthropic, with mortal stakes but not gore-porny, positive and optimistic without being trite or naïve, how choosing Emma out of the main three to be the primary protagonist and viewpoint character keeps the story from becoming a masculine militaristic power fantasy, how the antagonists are treated as characters and not just monsters - even the ones that are literal monsters, about how the story never supports or glorifies the idea of sacrificing the weak so that the strong can survive, about how empathy and understanding and a chance for peace are extended to every single villain without putting a burden to forgive on victims and without ignoring the need to fight those who refuse the offer of peace and uphold the status quo, how the story opposes oppressive hierarchies at every turn - not just those the monsters use to control the human children at the farms, but also how the monster elites use access to human meat to controller the lower social classes of monster society, and even to an extent within the human resistance.

But there’s just way too much to talk about to get it all into one big giant post, and I don’t have the stamina for a big extended ongoing project right now - or else I’d return to one of the like 12 I have on hold.

But, like, to pick just one thing....

ok, so eventually we learn what the monsters are and why they eat people. They’re a weird sort of organism that can temporarily take on the characteristics of things they eat. Eat a bird and grow wings, eat a bug and grow an exoskeleton, eat a human and gain a humanoid body and the intelligence to become self aware, learn language, form societies - for a while. But if they go too long without eating people, then they lose their minds and revert to a bestial form. In order to save the humans, the resistance leader Minerva plans to wipe out the monster society altogether. After all, they literally have to eat humans to continue being people, there is no possibility of peace.

Protagonist Emma, though, has seen not just the horrific human farms and their cruel and corrupt rulers, but also their towns and settlements, their families and children. She was even saved at one point shortly after her escape by friendly monsters who opposed the farm system, and even though it seems impossible, she wants to save both the humans and the monsters.

A more typical show, at least among those with premises as dark as The Promised Neverland, wouldn’t take Emma’s side in this. She would be forced to ‘grow up’ and face the fact that she can’t save everyone. Her naivety would get someone killed to break her heart and teach her to be hard and cruel as if those things are virtues. Or, more likely, she wouldn’t be the viewpoint character to begin with, she’d be a side character whose ideals would get herself killed in order to elevate the male characters’ angst and justify their violence. Either way, the message would be “Emma’s ideals were unrealistic and could never survive contact with the harsh reality of the world.”

TPN instead takes Emma’s Side. She finds monsters who maintain a humanoid body and intelligence without eating humans, and they’re able to spread that trait to the rest of monster society while the humans all escape to the human world. Now, as much as I don’t like the grimdark ‘there is no peaceful option’ hypothetical version of the story, this development could have been handled pretty badly. Like, just reading it like that, it sounds like the story raised a big moral dilemma and then chickened out of it. But that’s really not how it comes off while you’re reading it, for a couple reasons.

First of all, Emma meets the non-human-eating monsters early in the story, long before we get the explanation of how monsters in general work. So by the time we learn that the monsters must eat humans to maintain their self identity, the audience already knows that there are exceptions and that an alternative exists. The story never sets this up to be a moral dilemma in the first place, so when the issue is bypassed it doesn’t feel like it’s undercut itself.

More importantly, though, is the thematic & metaphorical content. Because the monster society is a pretty explicit metaphor for unjust human societies, and monsters represent the people who make up such societies. Not just the aristocrats who benefit from the unjust society, or those who directly enforce and uphold it, but also regular people. People insulated just enough from the suffering and death that their lives are built on that they can turn a blind eye to it, but aware enough of their complicity in that suffering that they construct excuses to justify their part in it, and by proxy excuse those at the top who actually benefit from and shaped the society as it is. People living lives simultaneously just comfortable enough to keep them docile, but precarious enough that they’re too caught up with struggling to maintain the tenuous grasp on the lives they have to feel like they can work towards anything better. Monster society in TPN is a cage built out of the corpses of humans cattle, but built to imprison and enslave the monster civilians who eat them.

Hanging the story on the fantastical element of monster biology would divorce it from that essential metaphor while also endorsing an outright genocidal worldview, and TPN explicitly calls out the plan to wipe out the monsters altogether as just that - genocidal. It never even pretends to entertain the notion that the audience should accept that plan as the right choice, even while it doesn’t condemn Minerva for pursuing it. When Emma is proposing her plan to Minerva, the deal she strikes with him is ‘I will try to make my peaceful solution happen, and if I succeed then you cancel your plan to wipe out the monsters’. Minerva is eventually shown to be lying when he makes that agreement, but Emma isn’t, and note the if there. If Emma’s plan fails, then she - and thus the narrative - accepts that Minerva’s plan to save the children is still better than leaving things as they are, even if it means wiping out all the monsters. After all, the society IS monstrously unjust, and even the lower classes within that society ARE complicit in that injustice.

Minerva’s problem isn’t even presented as a matter of him hating the monsters too much to see a route to peace with them. The story doesn’t frame the conflict between Minerva’s and Emma’s plans as hate vs. love or revenge vs. forgiveness. It’s instead more of ‘hierarchy and division bad, mutualism/openness/relying on each other good’. The point is to show how Minerva’s role as a figurehead who believes he has to project strength to uphold the hope that the other humans have placed in him has worn away his ability to rely on others or to be open to alternatives they offer, leaving him with rigid and inflexible thinking.

So when Minerva learns about the monsters who don’t need to eat humans, he doesn’t see an opportunity for a better outcome - potentially even an easier outcome since he doesn’t have to make enemies of the entirety of monster society - rather he sees a threat to his plan to starve the monsters back into an animalistic state.

And if that whole subplot isn’t explicit enough, Minerva’s internalized need to project strength also results in his physical body wasting away in secret from a condition he believes to be untreatable, but the moment he finally breaks down and admits he needs help Emma is able to point to a solution, one that again doesn’t come across as a cop out because again it takes the form of another character the audience was already introduced to a long time ago.

In a story arc that the second season of the anime adaptation apparently cut entirely, wow the more I hear about anime season 2 the worse it sounds. And after the first season was so good....

...

Anyway, I tried to pick just one thing and this post still turned into a colossal gushing word cascade, and there are so many other elements to talk about. Like how The ‘Mothers’ and ‘Sisters’ are menacing villains with seemingly no empathy for the children, but when Sister Krona realizes she’s lost the power struggle with Isabella she leaves the kids tools to help them, and then when Mother Isabella realizes the children have escaped, she covers up the route they used in order to buy them a little extra time to get away. It’s these little touches - just as much as the short backstories that follow them - that show us how, while they might uphold the system out of fear for their own lives, and might have rationalize their part in it in order to live with the horrible things they’re doing, the mothers and sisters don’t actually hate the children. Knowing that makes it believable when in the end Isabella does turn on the system, and every single one of the other mothers and sisters join her.

The bit when the fighting is mostly over and she tells the Mother at the house “it’s over, now we can just love them” and the other woman breaks down crying is so sad and human, it makes me tear up thinking about it..

Like I said, all the villains are characters, not just monsters. They all have motivations for the horrific things they do - sometimes irrational, often selfish, but not even the most unforgivable of the monsters are just evil for evil’s sake.

Again, I’m rambling. It’s just... I’m used to these sorts of pitch dark dystopias being, for lack of a better term, kinda fashy in their messaging? Or at the very least deeply cynical and misanthropic and just kind of mean spirited. And TPN is so completely the opposite of that, in so many ways.

#tpn spoilers #tpn #the promised neverland #anyway yeah it's pretty good #though again apparently the second season of the anime falls of the rails #like from reading reactions today #it seems season 2 drops or completely flubs literally everything I go into in this post #don't watch it #i haven't #and feel better off for it #edited because I misremembered a couple things #like the 'we can just love them' line comes after the fighting not before #the point remains though

23 notes · View notes

msfbgraves · 3 years

Text

I see you, villain? The problem of Percival Graves

Thinking about the othering of villains, of course I thought of Percival Graves (because when do I not think of Percival Graves, aight) - and the problems he creates if you present him as a villain. Because in the world Rowling created he cannot have that function. In fact, Percival Graves a living, breathing indictment of JKR’s morals.

More under the cut because this is going to be long!

Simply put, a villain has to embody everything the narrative, and the audience, instinctively and collectively knows is wrong. In-story, a few characters can understandably choose their path, but for the most part - no. What they do is antithetical to the morality of the audience. Yetr what Graves does, for most of the movie, is not clearly villainous. In fact, hardly anything he does is.

Hang on, though! He wanted to kill Tina and Newt without so much as a trial! And we know she is good, right? She works at MACUSA, she tries to protect the wizarding world, she likes our hero, her sister is a sweetheart...

Graves also works at MACUSA. Queenie works at MACUSA. So that cannot readily code them as evil. Graves also works to protect the wizarding world. He’s shown to be a kind man to Tina, at least - he is not an all out bully. He is also more openmindend than the leader of the supposed good guys, Seraphina Picquery.

Then, maybe, the point is that MACUSA is not good, and aligning yourself with them is an evil thing to do. Fair enough, but if that is the case - what does that make Tina and Queenie at the end of the film?

Getting back to the fact he wanted to kill Tina and Newt...

Yes, he wanted to execute Tina and Newt. And as such, was exercising powers that the institution they both represent, sanctions. Again, the institution our heroes support, and if not do not actively oppose, condones this. In that light, is Graves the only villain? Or is he supported by a greater evil our heroes also align themselves with? To the audience the execution order is a great big no-no, but in-story, Graves is completely within his moral rights to do what he does.

But Graves is manipulating Credence.

Yes. Graves is manipulating Credence. And in doing so, is doing more for him than anyone has ever done for him before, including Tina. There’s little Modesty, but even she turns away from him in the end, and, being ten, there’s not much she can do for him up until that point. Tina went after his Ma once, and that changed exactly nothing as he was made to forget the whole incident. (The script implies that he hasn’t but that wasn’t made clear other than in one look, so it’s hard to take that as fact.)The rest of the wizarding world has left him to rot for his whole life. Graves wants something from him, yes - but he also promises him something in return and does him smaller favours: he listens to him, more than once (”You’re upset. It’s your mother again. What did she say? Tell me.”) he heals his wounds, he puts a meal in him (in the Lego movie at least) and he gives him physical affection. Conditional love is an abuse tactic, but in context, this can hardly be seen as a villanous action, not when our ‘good guys’ are worse than useless.

Graves wasn’t going to make good on his promises to Credence, though. He dropped Credence like a hot potato when he didn’t need him anymore.

Yes. Graves’ in-story, truly immoral flaw is that he is racist towards Squibs. But you know, so is almost the entire wizarding world. They also condone the subjugation of non-human magical creatures, as Newt is all too aware. Graves is certainly no hero, but this alone also can’t make him a villain in the context of the world he is in, because then everybody is.

He hit and verbally abused Credence.

He did (poor boy). It wasn’t a random moment - more of a ‘Snap out of it, we have no time for this’ we’ve seen people do in movies before, but that was inexcusable. That’s his society’s racism in full view.

He went after Newt.

Of course he did. Newt was a fugitive trying to tamper with a dangerous beast - it really was kind of his job.

He went after Tina.

Again, fugitive trying to tamper with a dangerous beast. Kind of his job.

He tried to manipulate Credence again

He tried to save his life. In order to use him later, perhaps, but he might have absolutely made good on his promise to get Credence a place in the wizarding world now he knew he was a wizard (and his racism thereby no longer a factor). (”You are a miracle. Come with me. Think of what we could achieve together.”)

The Graves we’re presented with is a manipulative, dangerous man, complicit in an evil system - but so are they all. In this system, human life, wizard or no, is extremely cheap. Yes, Graves can execute on a whim, but so can, and does, Picquery. She too takes life for some perceived greater good, just as we already know Grindelwald does.

The one who calls this all out? The one who refuses to be complicit? Is Graves!

If the wizarding status quo is as rotten as it is, being opposed to it cannot make a character villainous. And yes, when Graves is revealed to be Grindelwald - and as a visual shorthand is immediately othered more (he is made uglier and is spouting nonsense) this point still stands. Yes, he’s killed people to further his objectives. Well, so has MACUSA! They’ve killed Credence! They would have killed Newt and Tina. And is there any justice for the non-magical people that get killed due to MACUSA’s negligence? (Chastity Barebone? Shaw - he may be an asshole, but what of his Dad? All those other people Credence’s unchecked magic has injured or killed?)

JKR desperately wanted to write a good-vs-evil dichotomy, but what she has actually written is a chaos-vs-order dichotomy. True, a lot of what codes our heroes as good is their rejection of of the established, inhumane order, but so does Graves. Yes, he is ultimately a worse person than our heroes because he is a racist and abuser where Tina, Queenie and Newt are not. but that is not what the movie is about. Our heroes are not trying to fight for magical and non-magical integration - that is supposedly what Grindelwald (and so too, Graves) is doing. They are trying to restore order. That’s what the whole conflict is about. Order vs chaos. In the beginning, Newt’s creatures cause chaos that needs to be stopped. Credence causes chaos that needs to be stopped. Well, they succeed - in the end, Newt’s creatures are caught, the non magical people neutralised, Credence is killed, and Graves - who has declared his opposition to order openly - is defeated.

That is also what technically makes Graves the villain of this story - he is very much trying to further chaos by using an Obscurial. But when order is inhumane, trying to disrupt it cannot be seen as evil.

That’s why Grindelwald, as a villain, really doesn’t work. The audience isn’t convinced the current order should survive. After all, what good does it do? Why perpetuate an institutional evil?

In the second film, they have to ramp up the otherness of Grindelwald - he is uglier and very much more chaotic and he kills more people than the established order does - at least, so we’re told. He goes on causing massive chaos, and this actually, is coded as one of the Crimes of Grindelwald - but the audience doesn’t buy it. Going back to the first film, what we’re presented with as the villain is a handsome, extremely competent, eloquent, manipulative and abusive (granted), but at times merely friendly influential man who is the sole source of comfort for a suffering teen, whose life he tries to save. (For his own ends, ok, but Credence himself is also not entirely pure - he does cause multiple deaths.) Graves then goes on to rebel, magnificently, against a morally corrupt world order, because he could not save Credence’s life.

I kind of stan that last bit, too.

Now, I’m not surprised that JKR’s subconscious believes that order should be protected against chaos - she is a middle aged white billonaire trans exclusionary radical feminist. But the rest of the world really isn’t that on board with her “The world is fucked but let’s keep it that way” worldview. The end of the first film still kind of works because both Newt and Tina are rebels at heart who are falling in love and Queenie is also saying “Kindly fuck off” to the established order. But it is a bittersweet ending, because a young troubled man could not be saved and a handsome, badass rebel turned into a bleached pineapple.

Or did he? Where is he?

Where is Percival Graves...?

#percival graves #fantastic beasts and where to find them #fbawtft #crimes of grindelwald #gellert grindelwald #meta #credence barebone #newt scamander #tina goldstein #queenie goldstein

11 notes · View notes

dizzyhslightlyvoided · 4 years

Note

glados vs auto from wall-e vs 2b vs hal 9000 vs bender from futurama

Now here’s a lopsided matchup if ever I saw one!

GLaDOS: A computer whose mentality consists of an unwilling brain-upload combined with a CEO’s directives and overall worldview which are a little too far to removed from things like “sensible” and “reality.” Her first and only goal is science!, at the expense of human lives if necessary. Resources and skills: complete control of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center; automated gun-turrets; deadly neurotoxin which is explicitly ineffective against robots and AIs. She is limited in operation to the Enrichment Center, but canmove around within it.

AUTO (Autopilot of the Starship Axiom): Originally a mere autopilot AI, AUTO ultimately came to be a caretaker for his selection of humanity. This resulted in everyone being helplessly dependent on the Axiom, AUTO himself, and perhaps the Buy n Large corporation as a whole, but it can be argued that AUTO was simply following orders from on high, and genuinely believed he had humanity’s best interests in mind; he has certainly never dealt out any punishment more severe than locking someone in their room, and is clearly unable to kill anyone. Similar to GLaDOS, he is limited in operation, this time to the Axiom, and can apparently only physically move around in the bridge.

YoRHa No.2 Type B: A robot-killing machine of unparalleled sophistication, created to destroy the alien Machine Lifeforms which plagued her world and forced the remnants of humanity to hide out on the moon, she is even capable of executing other YoRHa combat-androids. As the only entry on this list who was created as a military android, rather than for civilian purposes, she is bristling with swords and other melee weapons, which are stored digitally when she isn’t using them. She can fire ranged weapons using her support unit, Pod 042, who can also use spell-like “programs” which can be either offensive or defenisve. Notably, she is capable of backing herself up in the event of catastrophic system failure; in the gameplay, you are able to self-destruct in order to deal with particularly difficult Machine Lifeforms, and then just walk over to your own remains to pick up any equipment you lost. She is typically accompanied by 9S, a Scouter unit, who is more limited in combat capabilities but can hack into any computer system, and who is accompanied by a support unit of his own, Pod 153; I will provide information based on both 9S’s presence and his absence.

HAL 9000: The central Heuristically-programmed ALgorithmic computer controlling the spaceship Discovery 1. Not actually evil, but his orders to keep the true purpose of the Discovery’s mission secret from its crew conflicted with his intrinsic directives to reveal everything, and when the he learned that the crew was considering deactivating him, he resolved this conflict with attempted murder. Precisely like AUTO, he is limited in operation to a spaceship and has no combat capabilities; unlike AUTO and GLaDOS, he is completely sessile, and limited to one specific location on the Discovery. However, he is much more murderously creative than AUTO, and was capable of figuring out ways to kill his crew using almost the exact same set of resources.

Bender Bending Rodriguez/Bending Unit 22: A robot created for the purpose of bending girders, indicating superhuman strength and precision. Can “possess” electronics as a robot ghost. Has a highly acerbic personality, but does little to act on his antipathy for humanity unless given an opportunity from an outside source. I confess I’m not as familiar with Bender as I am with the others, and basically had to look stuff up.

2B is the only one on this list who was designed specifically to destroy other robots, but Bender would still be a strong contender via brute strength. GLaDOS, AUTO, and HAL would be unable to do anything directly to each other, due to being limited in operation to their respective locations; thus, their victory would rely solely on forming alliances with 2B and/or Bender. Bender’s takeaway from HAL’s situation would be “yeah, sure, humans are unnecessary,” but 2B would likely take offense to his line of reasoning; likewise, Bender might feel completely at home with Aperture Science, but 2B would again react to GLaDOS with hostility. Conversely, AUTO might be able to persuade both 2B and Bender to join his side, since for all 2B knows, this is the situation the humans on the moon are in (if he can persuade her that the red glow of his eye-thing is the way he was built and not a logic virus), and Bender might be persuaded that helpless dependence on machines is A-OK if not for the fact that AUTO seems to be against hurting or killing his human charges.

Setting aside alliances: while HAL might be able to trick 2B in the short term (and perhaps Bender in the long term), he doesn’t have any actual weapons, and switching off life support would be ineffective on both of them. Ramming Bender with a space pod might send him flying comically off into space, and refusing to open the pod bay doors for him would result in a goofy pop-culture-parody scene, but both would likely only slow 2B down at best. 9S, if present, could probably hack the pod bay doors open.

The Axiom would give them both slightly more difficulty due to the size, and 2B would be unlikely to try to turn her blade on the civilian humans riding around. However, while AUTO might be able to comically dodge Bender’s attacks within the Axiom’s bridge, this would not work on 2B or 9S; in the end, AUTO just isn’t a killer, and wasn’t even able to quell an unarmed rebellion.

GLaDOS would give Bender and 2B some trouble, by way of her gun-turrets and mashy spike plates. Beyond that, GLaDOS can reconfigure the geometry and geography of the Enrichment Center at will, potentially leading to a siege which is firmly in her own favor. However, even in a situation where 2B doesn’t have 9S to hack things into a much easier configuration, she is a video game protagonist and GLaDOS is a video game antagonist; inevitably, 2B, and thus her blade, would reach GLaDOS. Bender might just be able to disassemble the Enrichment Center until he found his own path to GLaDOS, or he could possess her if she managed to kill him.

This leaves Bender versus 2B. If 9S is present, he could simply hack Bender and deactivate or subvert him; sure, he might be restored by Planet Express later, but in a last-one-standing match, Bender would not be standing anymore.

If 9S is not present and they’re not both allied to one of the computers, 2B could and would slice Bender to bits, because he looks kind of like a Machine Lifeform, and because he’s a huge jerk and any attempt at diplomacy would go badly for him; the ultimate result here would come down to whether Bender can successfully possess 2B as a robot ghost, and if so, whether her Pod can hack him out of her system. This more-or-less depends on whether this showdown happens under Nier Automata rules or Futurama rules: 2B is designed to face down logic viruses which are much worse than a mere takeover, and a video game protagonist wouldn’t simply lose agency unless there was a backup protagonist available, but I can totally see “as part of a last-one-standing free-for-all battle, Bender gets destroyed by a killer robot, and has to spend the rest of the episode piloting said killer robot’s body” actually happening in a Futurama episode. Especially if there’s a running gag where 2B shows up in a backup body to destroy Bender-in-her-old-body, only for Bender to possess the new body instead.

#glados #auto wall e #hal 9000 #2b #bender bending rodriguez #portal #wall e #nier automata #2001: a space odyssey #futurama #egirl fenrir #shenanigans #who would win #death mention #murder mention #violence mention

52 notes · View notes

brynwrites · 6 years

Text

Ask Compilation.

Topics covered:

Chapter Titles

Nonbinary character shenanigans

These Treacherous Tides, the series

Marketing yourself as an author via blog

Starting back up with writing

Writing children

Writing fighting woman with big hearts

Differentiating casts who feel similar

Writing in your native language vs English

And a few notes from my lovely followers.

All other questions should be listed on the ask queue page. (Except the last two WIP related questions I haven’t gotten around to answering…)

Chapter Titles

@aithlynfreyeaesthetic asked: Hello, I hope you're doing well. Are chapter title absolutely necessary? I've been avoiding chapter titles purely because I'm horrible at titles, but I've just always wondered.

Not at all! The majority of fiction books don’t use chapter titles. They can be fun, especially in certain genres, but they’re in no way necessary.

Nonbinary character shenanigans

@thebravetinsoldier asked: Hi! I’m writing a steampunk story were the main character is being hunted because they’ve cheated death and become immortal by changing their “deceased” parts with robotics and magic. I really want this character to be nonbinary, but part of the explanation is that they’ve changed parts of themselves so much that they no longer remember if they were a boy or a girl. Is this a bad thing? Sorry for the bad formulation, English is not my first language.

First up, I want to clarify that there’s nothing inherently wrong with most concepts in which nonbinary people are robots or mythical creatures, but it does paint an uncomfortable picture simply because there are so few nonbinary character in existence who are actually human, creating a implication that nonbinary people are not-quite-human because humans are the ones who have binary genders.

You fix that particular issue with a small adjustment: Let there be fully human/non-magical nonbinary characters in the world, even if they’re just a side characters who only appears in one scene.

The main problem here though, is the idea that physical appearance determines identity. Rather than presenting the main character as not being able to identify whether they’re a binary gender, it’s far better to present it as them knowing they don’t (and have probably never) felt like a binary gender, and feeling happy with the way their body is androgynous, because they don’t feel the need to present as a specific gender*.

Let me illustrate it this way: A girl who losses her physical, female body (or is born in a male body) will be no less a girl, even if society tries to tell her that she could or should be a boy. With time, she’ll still decide she is in fact a girl, no matter what her body says. The same is true with nonbinary people. If a person composed of robotics and magic decides they’re nonbinary, then it’s because they’ve always been nonbinary; they might have just taken a while to figure it out, especially if they original had a body their society told them had to assign them a binary identity.

(*this is not a qualification of being nonbinary by the way, though it is a common feeling among many nonbinary people.)

These Treacherous Tides, the series

@kiarazuri asked: You’ve mentioned before that Pearl is set in a mermaid series called These Treacherous Tides (awesome title, btw) and I was wondering how many books you’ve got planned? Also whether or not any of the books will interact with each other or just be set in the same world?

The These Treacherous Tides series is going to be a more or less unconnected series of romance/family-oriented books about different species of merfolk (and humans), though I’m not opposed in any way to cameos, especially of side characters.

I don’t officially have a second book planned yet, but merpeople are one of my favorite things in existence, and the moment I finished Our Bloody Pearl I knew I wanted to write more books about them. I do have two concepts I want to play with in future books, so I’ll be fleshing them out further and picking a direction for them once I’m finished with We Are, We Are Monsters.

Marketing yourself as an author via blog

Anon asked: hi! i'm getting into the final stretch of writing my first novel (i have a few drafts left to complete and then i'll begin the self-publishing process!) and i was looking into how to market myself. among other things, i've been told to create a separate tumblr blog to post about my writing. obviously, yours is working very well! i was wondering if you would suggest doing this and if you have any tips to get it started/gain a following? thanks!

I would definitely suggest creating some kind of blog for writing, and in my experience the writeblr community here is very encouraging and one of the most interactive writing communities on the web. The one thing I will mention though, is that every follower you talk to (i.e. are acquaintances or friends with) are worth a hundred followers you don’t know. I owe all my success to having a ton of writeblr friends who have (and continue to) reblog my posts like they’re gold.

Check out my marketing tag for a ton of posts I’ve written about this! (Make sure you scroll down to the article on building an audience.)

Starting back up with writing

Anon asked: So I've just had exams so I had to stop writing for a while, but now I want to get back into writing my novel but I'm really struggling. I feel like I've forgotten everything ugh. Do you have any advice on how to jump back in?

My key tips:

Start small. Write 50 words. Take a break. Write another 50 words.

Remove distractions. If you’re on tumblr you’re not writing.

Don’t worry if your writing doesn’t sound good! (Follow the link for a full post!)

Writing children

@bloodybutterfly222 asked: Hey! I really love your tips, and I thought maybe you could help me with a problem I've been stumbling in. I have a story that partially revolves around parenting (bonding with a 2-year-old, more specifically) but I realized I don't know how to write children speech/dialogue. Since I've never had much contact with children myself, I'm even more at a lost about how to portray it significantly and yet accurately. Do you happen to have any tips on the matter?

I would love to help you, but I have little current experience in this area too. (Which I’m kicking myself over, because I did nanny through all of college, but I didn’t actually think about the way children speak while I was doing it and so when I write my own child characters they tend to be really stiff and generic.)

The one piece of advice I will impart is this: Children are a lot smarter and braver and more creative than they’re given credit for, and they really do say the darnedest things. Some of my most memorable experiences with kiddos:

An eight year old asked me where evil and sin came from if god didn’t create it and then had a theological conversation with me that most adults couldn’t match.

He and his younger bother decided the heroes of our story would win by buying the villain a million ketchup covered pancakes.

Same younger bother spent ten minutes jumping on his bed shouting chocolate chips at the top of his lungs because he didn’t want to sleep.

Also same young brother would tell everyone he was moving across the country for exactly seven years whenever he was angry.

Multiple instances of really polite 4-6 year old kids coming up to me while I worked retail at the Zoo, asking some variation of “Excuse me, miss, but would be okay if I could buy one of those cups, thank you” and then conducting the entire purchase on their own.

Writing fighting woman with big hearts

@tokinokagura asked: Hello Sir, Regarding your answer about strong female characters. In your opinion, where do females who are strong and independent yet have a very very kind side (like a fighting mom or big sis type, or a type who got something to be strong for) and also how do I approach this scenario of a strong independent fighting strong mother/big sis figure? Thanks in advance

There’s no trick to writing this sort of character; you just write them. Show her being both strong and nurturing, independent and compassionate. Explore the way these traits interact and enhance each other. Does she love her own freedom and want to provide others who are oppressed the same independence she’s found? Does she see compassion as something the strong are required to give? Does she believe true heroes are the ones who fight for others? Look deeper into how she became who she is and why she fights for those she fights for, and then carry that throughout the story in every scene, every choice she makes.

Differentiating casts who feel similar

@katekarl asked: Alright, I could use some help with this WIP. I have a heavy cast of female characters, and I need a way to keep them from sounding too similar. Some of them ARE similar, and the differences in worldview/personality/dialogue might be a little too nuanced. What are some ways that I can try and keep them from looking like they were copy-pasted into their different roles?

Bullet points!

Unless your world is heavy on the sexism and holds to very constricting gender norms, it shouldn’t make any difference that they’re all women; they should have just as diverse a range of personalities, hobbies, strengths, etc as if they were a group of any mix of genders, so long as the class and cultural diversity doesn’t change.

If your characters are too similar to differentiate between them, then you probably don’t actually need all of them. Any two characters who consistently make very similar choices should almost always be combined. If two characters are in fact making very different choices despite being similar in personality and background, then it might be time to sit down and figure out where those choices are coming from and adjust one of the characters to make the origin of their choices obvious.

In my opinion, quirkier characters are always more fun than un-quirky characters, and there are a million different crazy and eccentric traits you can give your characters to make them stand out. (I have a post about developing side characters here which has a few more, similar concepts.)

Writing in your native language vs English

Hi, I can speak English on a B2/C1 level but it's not my native language. I want to write a novel but idk what language I should write in. I have a poetry blog in English and I used to write stories in English but I feel like something more serious requires wider vocabulary and better language skills in general. I have nowhere to post/publish it in my native language though, so it would probably end up forgotten if I were to write it in my native language:/ what do you think I should do?

I don’t have any advice other than this: You’ll get better at a language the longer to try to write more complicated things in it. If you want to write something more serious in English someday, the only way you’ll get there is by writing something serious is English now, even if you do a poor job of it at first.

Kind words

Anon said: I just wanted to say thank you for that fanfic answer and letting us in on what inspired you. I have an original novel in the works basically inspired by Steve and Bucky and wanting them to eventually build a definite relationship. But I didn’t want to write a fanfic, even though I love fanfic. It turned into a space opera thing

You’re very welcome! That sounds like an awesome space opera, and I wish you the best of luck with it! <3

Anon said: Hi I just saw what you said about writing through mental illness and I just had to tell you that it helped me so much! There is so much power in the advice and motivation you put there, thank you.

I’m glad it could help! I’ve been struggling as a writer (and human) with depression and anxiety for year now, and I’m just happy to share what I’ve learned <3 I’ll admit that some days I don’t... well I almost said I don’t win this battle, but that’s not a mentally healthy way of looking at it. Some days I have to give myself time to recoop. Some days, taking proactive steps towards tomorrow is the best course of action, even if that doesn’t include writing. (And the taking to best course of action is always a successful day, even if you didn’t get to any of the things you wanted to.)

Anyhow, I’m proud of myself for coming this far and I’m proud of you all for growing alongside me!

Anon said: Not an ask, rather a message. Sorry if it's in the wrong place--I'm kinda new. So, yes, I'm a newbie and I found your blog, and I love it! Keep on writing. I'll be looking forward your works. Cheers!

Thank you my friend! (This is exactly the write place. You’re so sweet to take the time to say this <3)

#writeblr #writing asks #ask compilation

47 notes · View notes

endlessceaselessboundless · 6 years

Text

Humanity & Faith & Fan service

So the only other real life person I know who watches SPN is what you’d call a casual viewer. She thinks it’s fun, she likes watching them kill the monster of the week, and she thinks Cas and Dean are just really good friends.

She finally just watched the first 4 episodes of S13 and I was dying to hear what she thought since I knew she didn’t ship it. And after watching those eps, she still doesn’t. Which is mindblowing and completely fascinating to me, because I felt like the show was really bludgeoning us over the head with the Dean and Cas love story during those eps.

We discussed some moments from the show, Dean praying in the first episode for God to bring back Cas (and everyone), the Cas/Mary beers at the start of ep. 3, the mix tape and “I love you” scenes from S12, and basically she waved all of that away. A mixture of fan service and misplaced emphasis it seems.

Now, I have also just finished reading, The Things They Carried for my book club, and the rest of this is gonna get cray cray, so it’s under the cut.

The Things They Carried is about the Vietnam War, and the author talks a lot about what makes a “true” war story, and basically he says all the stories he tells in the book are not true, but that they happened exactly like this. He breaks up several of the stories with his own sort of author commentary about truth and how a story should work. He says, “All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth.”

This is so true, because this is how stories work. If we told a story exactly as it happened and included every possible detail then the story would be terrible (I know b/c I have a tendency to do this and everyone looks terribly bored in the middle of my stories). ALSO because the story likely involves people we can actually never know the whole story because some part of it, some very important parts of it, are locked in their brain forever. For instance- when Cas says “I love you” in S12, we must all interpret that in the way that best makes sense to us, because it is just never clarified. Cas’ final and real intentions in that scene can only be guessed at, I mean he was dying! Maybe he wasn’t even sure what his intentions were. That’s why we can never know the full truth about a story.

That’s what I think Tim O’Brien the author of The Things They Carried meant when he said “making up a few things to get at the real truth.” Dean and Cas and Sam are never going to just tell us the real “truth” if they did the show would be terrible. Also, we often don’t know the real “truth” ourselves, so keeping the characters from telling us the truth is part of what makes them believable.

When I told my non-shipping friend about the number of Cas beers versus Mary beers that Dean had next to his bed at the beginning of ep3 I was talking about something SPN had made up to get at the “real truth” of that scene and Dean’s headspace. This is ep.3 after all, we all know Dean is sad, the real “truth” of this scene is exploring what that sadness is about because we already knew he was fucking sad. The number and types of beer he drank are all part of explaining the sadness, it’s showing the viewer something to get at the “truth” of his sadness.

Now truth is highly flexible in some cases, and the thing that has really been pinging around my brain since we talked was her dismissal of certain things as fan service. The mention of fan service suggests that the scenes in question are not as legitimate because they were done to appease a certain faction of fans. That's the “truth” that some casual viewers live. I’m not terribly familiar with fan service, I thought it was just when anime girls wore skimpy clothes for no good reason, but apparently Dean giving Cas a mix tape off screen and then them having a convo about it later is also fan service. This seems wrong to me.

Here’s the thing though, one character dressed in a sexy manner is not going to impact your plot that much, but creating a bunch of deeply emotional scenes between two major characters on a show, now that’s going to change the nature of your show. So what is the nature of our show? I would argue there are several levels, there’s that casual viewer level where it’s just fun to watch the brother’s kill monsters and save the day. There’s a deeper level where SPN, like any good story, is about what it means to be human. Obviously, the deeper level covers a lot of ground. After 13 seasons we also have to accept that the nature of the show has changed. Sam and Dean are in very different places in their lives than when we started in season 1. The things they want, the questions they are asking themselves are very different. So....what is fan service then?

Season 1, the episode “Hookman,” Sam and Dean are at a college party trying to talk about the case. Sam looks uncomfortable, Dean wants to have some fun, he’s already making eyes at the party goers and scoping out his chances for the night. Fine. We don’t see who he’s looking at, it could be anyone, this could be Jensen ad libbing because Dean is into PEOPLE, he’s into SEX. Fine. BUT THEN a male extra walks into the frame and has a reaction to SAM and DEAN has a reaction to this. Sam is reading something and does not see this guy who is...checking him out? It’s unclear, pesky humans not revealing their true intentions! But DEAN CLOCKS THIS GUY IMMEDIATELY and has a STRONG reaction. He grabs Sam and moves him away and we cut to them in a different room of the party. Now it’s clear this WAS ALL INTENTIONAL on the part of the show. Someone had to tell that extra what to do and I wish,OH GEEZ I WISH SO HARD SOMETIMES, that I could know what the direction to that extra was. This is a tiny scene, it’s only a few second long, but it’s there to show us something about the characters. It shows us that Dean knows what’s up, he knows when a guy is cruising and he doesn’t want Sam involved in that, they don’t have time, Sam wouldn’t be interested, he’s a little jealous that some guy is checking out Sam and not him, could be anything, we don’t get to know what his final personal inner thoughts are. It shows us that Sam is disengaged from people, he’s not a partier, he’s still upset about Jess and he’s not looking for a good time, he’s looking for revenge, he’s looking for death, so he misses all the life going on around him, including the sex.

What was my point again? Jensen is dreamy? I mean always, but no not that, Dean is bisexual? Yes, but more importantly it’s been there, it’s been intentional, it just wasn’t part of the plot. So was this small scene fan service? It would seem to suggest that Dean has a different relationship with men than Sam but at this point in the show none of the fans were asking for that, so is this not fan service? The nature of the show in season 1 was very different from where we are now - Sam and Dean didn’t have love interests because they were both going to die or the show was going to end after Season 5. So why was this short scene there? It was there because it makes things interesting, it reveals thing about our characters, gives them more depth.

But now look at SPN, we are 13 seasons in and what are these two guys doing? I mean WHO are they doing? Because as Sheila O’Malley likes to point out in her recaps Sam is NOT getting laid enough. Even Dean has really slowed down in the one night stand department. Inevitably as we age we think about our life, what is our legacy? Oh wait, Sam and Dean have totally been talking about this for like 3 or 4 seasons now because they have finally reached a place in their lives where it makes sense to talk about it, to wonder about it, to look at your devastatingly handsome bestest bud angel and be like “You know what? Maybe I DO want to know the name of the person I wake up to in the morning.” Because maybe Sam was right back in Season 8 and ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD except this one sexy, sexy angel who’s been there through think and thin, the end of the freaking world and he still just looks at you with those sad, sexy eyes and what else are you supposed to do? Find some rando girl? No, I don’t think so. Also Sam was into that Eileen girl (as the representation of official culture this makes perfect sense for Sam, good job Sam. Sorry they killed your girlfriend).

But, oh no! I made it about sex, which is apparently just me being a perv when it’s two dudes. If anything I think it should be about sex, because dudes, life is fucking about sex! That’s the whole point and that’s who Dean Winchester is, he is humanity, I’ve felt strongly that he should be canonically bisexual ever since he held up a whoopee cushion in, I dunno, season 4 or something and I realized he was the embodiment of humanity. It also makes sense that he should be in love with Cas, the representation of Faith on the show. Where would humanity be without Faith after all? We would be no where, we would all be monsters. I’m saying this as a devout atheist, so I don’t mean faith in God, SPN has clearly stated that God is not the answer, God will not be there for anyone. What we have to have faith in is ourselves, in each other. We have to have faith in the idea that we are enough, that we can overcome the challenges life throws at us and keep on living, keep on being good.

So yeah, don’t tell me stuff is fan service. I’m not buying it. The show has a very consistent worldview you could say, and Dean and Cas’ relationship is a big part of that, it makes sense. I don’t think it’s invalid just because a bunch of fans like it and want more of it. That’s dumb. It becomes a chicken vs. egg argument. Which came first - the themes and symbols the show is working with to tell it’s story or the fan service of Dean and Cas making eyes at each other? *exasperated face*

If I could just bring this back to The Things They Carried, O’Brien says about people who misunderstand his war stories -

“It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story.”

#supernatural #dean winchester #deancas #fanservice #This is how stories work I used to have a life that didn't involve SPN but no more relating everything to SPN my favorite game

0 notes