quaykey

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the struggle of writing fanfiction and not wanting the writing to read like fanfiction

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tai chi forms ~(˘▾˘~) (~˘▾˘)~

quick and dirty test using kyoshi's 3d model, it turned out okay :D

more content to come in the future... ? maybe

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Yangchen and Kyoshi’s first interaction 🤲

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KORRA NATION!!!

Because you’re all so awesome, we took the fun behind-the-scenes vid that we made for NYCC and added some deleted scenes.

Hope you like it!

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Korrasami Confirmed

Now that Korra and Asami’s final moment is out in the world, it seems like an appropriate time to express how I feel about it. I didn’t want to say anything right away so the audience could experience the finale for themselves.

The main themes of the Avatar universe have always revolved around equality, justice, acceptance, tolerance, and balancing differing worldviews. In subtle and maybe not so subtle ways, Avatar and Legend of Korra have dealt with difficult subjects such as genocide, child abuse, deaths of loved ones, and post traumatic stress. I took it as a complement when Joanna Robinson of Vanity Fair called the show subversive. There were times even I was surprised we were able to delve into the really tough stuff on a children’s TV network. While the episodes were never designed to “make a statement”, Bryan and I always strove to treat the more difficult subject matter with the respect and gravity it deserved.

And over the years we’ve heard from numerous fans, in person and online, how Avatar and Korra have influenced their lives for the better or helped them overcome a life struggle or setback. I am always humbled when people share their personal stories with us and I am grateful that my love for telling stories has been able to help people in some small way. So while Avatar and Korra were always meant to be entertaining and engaging tales, this universe and its characters also speak to the deeper humanity in all of us, regardless of age, gender, race, religion, culture, nationality, or sexual orientation.

Our intention with the last scene was to make it as clear as possible that yes, Korra and Asami have romantic feelings for each other. The moment where they enter the spirit portal symbolizes their evolution from being friends to being a couple. Many news outlets, bloggers, and fans picked up on this and didn’t find it ambiguous. For the most part, it seems like the point of the scene was understood and additional commentary wasn’t really needed from Bryan or me. But in case people were still questioning what happened in the last scene, I wanted to make a clear verbal statement to complement the show’s visual one. I get that not everyone will be happy with the way that the show ended. Rarely does a series finale of any show satisfy that show’s fans, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the positive articles and posts I’ve seen about Korra’s finale.

I’ve already read some heartwarming and incredible posts about how this moment means so much for the LGBT community. Once again, the incredible outpouring of support for the show humbles me. As Tenzin says, “Life is one big bumpy ride.” And if, by Korra and Asami being a couple, we are able to help smooth out that ride even a tiny bit for some people, I’m proud to do my part, however small it might be. Thanks for reading.

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"this female character feels too much" I hope she continues to feel too much. I hope she feels on all fucking cylinders. I hope she feels so hard she splits the atom.

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d the Award for being the best Avatar goes to ....

⬇️↙️⬅️↖️⬆️↗️➡️

EVERYONE BUT KURUK.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk

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"The Avatar always gets the girl"

Not a big shipper, but you better believe I'll sail Kyoshi x Rangi and Korrasami to the grave 😔👌

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Current obsession: Avatar Kyoshi and her cute gf

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Thoughts on Writing Anxiety, aka I hate my plot

For the last week or two I've had this anxious dread in my bones. I can't shake it. It's kind of like when you know something is off, but you can't quite put your finger on it. Some might call it a gut feeling, and I suppose it is. It's worse, though, because it's in my chest.

Something about my writing isn't working.

In this post you'll be able to join me as I process this anxiety and dread that's been killing me at work.

We know that anxiety is future based. When you're anxious, it always has something to do with an expectation of the future. Fight or flight (or freeze, or fawn). It's a mode of preperation.

What is it about my anxiety that relates to my writing? How does it relate to the future?

The plot. The outline. It's the thing that tells me in twenty thousand words:

I should be at roughly chapter seventeen, assuming I'm averaging a 4000 word count per chapter.

My characters need to be at this point in the overall journey.

Each character is at their own specific point in their own character arc.

Subplot B and D need to be paid off.

Subplot F needs to be setup.

I'd be surprised if someone didn't get anxiety over such a daunting challenge. I, however, am but a mere mortal.

Image: Takai Art

If you've ever played dungeons or dragons (or any kind of tabletop roleplaying game), you'll know there's a game master or a dungeon master who effectively narrates and crafts the tale.

It's the dungeon masters job to tell the epic story that the group of roleplayers are travelling through. They have to set the scenes, play all of the NPCs in realtime, and offer hooks, conflicts and payoffs to the party surrounding them.

I suppose a DM (dungeon master) has to balance a lot going on. They will most likely have a sketch of what they want to happen in mind. They'll know there's a mountain through a valley where a dragon lives, and the shady man within the inn offers them a contract to go and kill the dragon. The DM will have a few different ideas for combat or conflicts along the journey to the mountain. Maybe a 'puzzle scene', maybe a 'fight with orcs' scene. But the DM will keep the details light.

The DM can't prepare too specifically, because that will force the players to travel down a predetermined path that the DM has created. The whole idea of Dungeons and Dragons is that the players are in an open world! They can go wherever they want to go, and do anything they want to do.

When a DM forces players down a storyline, it's called Railroading.

Huh.

You're smart, so you've already seen the metaphor I'm drawing. As a writer, to outline is to railroad my characters along a single path. If I treat my characters like players - agents of their own story - then they can make an infinite number of decisions! I can present them with a situation or scenario, and see how they react as I write.

This is the best description of railroading I could find.

railroading: - telling a player he can't do something because it would break your story (a good scenario is robust to weird player choices) - continually spawning more monsters until they kidnap an NPC because it's necessary for your story (negating their strategies for protecting him) - putting a plot-centric event or creature in the PCs' path no matter which way they go (AKA quantum ogre, negating the players' choice of path. this will blow up in your face if the players - start scouting ahead or using divination) - fudging rolls to enforce failure (negating the player's luck because it would damage your storyline) - fudging rolls to enforce success (see above) - making the enemies beat your players in a race to a location because they have to get there first for the story to work (negating any clever transportation solutions the players come up with) - having a BBEG (ugh) that serves as a final boss that no amount of player ingenuity will defeat before you want him defeated (self-explanatory i hope) not railroading: - telling a player he can't do something because it's impossible (negating player choice, not to enforce a specific outcome) the villain redirects his orc raiders to try the kidnapping again, rather than continuing to rob travelers (difference: logical NPC behavior, the players have impacted his plans and changed the situation) - having a creature seek the players out actively (again, NPC decisions in response to player choices, with ripple effects on other parts of the situation) - player fails a check (negates decision, not to enforce outcome) player succeeds a check (see above) - the enemies beat the players to a location because the players decided to save money and walk (logical consequences of player decisions) - having villains that evolve (mostly into corpses, honestly) and develop relationships naturally through player interactions

Original Post

Dramatic Superposition is a fantasitc term made by someone who commented. Nothing exists until it's observed.

Really, truly, I should ask my characters what they would do, and I should respect their desire. From there, I can sprinkle in my sketched plot, or I can give them free passage. I could introduce new challenges or characters, or not.

So all this chatting. What's the point?

Well, you see - my attention is no longer stuck in the future. It's not thinking about the seventeenth chapter, and how many words should be there, and what plot that hasn't even been started needs to be finished.

My attention will be in the present, assessing and living through the characters on the page. What they want, I write. And if they want something stupid, I'll rewind, go back in time, edit or add things, and make that option stupid so they don't want it anymore.

Now I'll be in the present, and when I'm in the present, my anxiety dies.

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My love language is staring at you because you look so perfect.

Art by @kkachi95

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My Thoughts on Gardener vs. Architect

I figured it might be worth sharing the approach I take to writing because maybe some people out there might be people out there who find it interesting.

If you're unfamiliar with what the 'Gardner vs. Architect' idea is about, give this a read - it'll explain better than I can:

Gardener vs Architect, Which Type Suits You Best – LivingWriter Writing Blog

My approach is a hybrid between the two. I'm gardner who relies on an architect mentality to achieve a cohesive, creative whole. So how does that look?

At the start of a project, I start to list work out the ideas and themes I have in mind for this story. I'll use a document, a digital whiteboard, whatever feels right. This is supposed to be an idea dump - things I think would be interesting to read. The key here is that there's no structure.

From those pieces, I start to form structure. Perhaps a theme on "loss" could develop into a small arc; character A has to go through a tragic loss. How does the loss happen? What motions do they go through? I chart this idea out into something more structured. This is where the Gardner becomes the Architect.

I repeat this process until I have a bunch of stuff I could string together into a somewhat coherent whole. The purpose of what I'm doing right now is the get the overall storyline.

When I get stuck, I turn to a post-it note style of planning:

This is a barebones framework for a character arc. It could be the main story arc, or it could be a side arc. Regardless, it's not quite enough to write a whole arc with.

I'll seperate the story beats like so, and in the middle put blank post-it notes:

Now it's my job to fill in how we get from post-it note 1 to note 3. Again, this doesn't have to be detailed. It could be simple ideas, or specific scenes you had in your braindstorm that could fit in.

And volia, from nowhere, the bones of a story are starting to form.

I could continue this, or I might start to write the opening scene I have in mind.

While I'm writing that opening scene at the funeral, I might gardener myself some ideas which relate to the beat about "similar circumstances of death."

When she looked at her friends wrist, she noticed that a tatto she had was missing.

Now I have a new thread to add to my structure; the killer removes tattoos.

And during a later story beat, I might want to explain why that is. I'll add a small post-it note to remind myself to close that thread when I get to that section of the story.

Now this is no literary work of genius, but for an example it highlights how in a few minutes you can have the structure (architect) of something to allow you to behave like a gardner and explore your ideas freely and expressively.

As I write, I expand my outline. As my outline grows, I might have ideas that I need to go back and add into already completed chapters.

Here's the outline for the work I'm currently writing. It started off with only four or five post-it notes, and grew over the course of a week or two while I've been writing the first three chapters:

You'll see I use colours to represent threads/arcs/themes, arrows to show the flow of these arcs, and sub-notes whenever I have things I want to remember for future use.

I hope you found this interesting!

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Hi! I'm a fanfiction writer :)

Hello! I'm a writer who is currently... writing. This is my new blog that I'll use to post updates for new works and chapters. It's been many years since I was last on Tumblr and a lot has changed!

At the moment I'm writing a fanficiton - a spiritual sequel to The Shadow of Kyoshi. It's fourteen years in the future and focuses on how Kyoshi formed the Kyoshi Warriors, and expands on the nitty gritty of what happened with Chin The Conquerer.

I've always had a preference for canon and timeline friendly writing. It's important to me that my stories have solid plots which are engaging. Coming up with ideas that fit into the Avatar universe has been fun!

I hope you'll enjoy the work I put out into the world!

You can follow me here: Archive of Our Own