#and I've done jack shit in the grand scheme of things

[oopsallsyscourse]

Hot take take, syscourse is not activism

[staceymcgillicuddy]

annual writing self-evaluation

Thanks to @astorytotellyourfriends for the tag - I didn't do this last year!

1. List of works published this year (in the order that they were posted):

If She Lived in Space, Man, I'd Build A Plane crimson & clover pulling overtime model citizen; zero discipline what you give just serves me right two jack trippers and a chrissy perception check all my kinktober fills a hollow tree

2. Work you are most proud of (and why):

Gosh, that's hard. I'm proud of all of them for different reasons, and I have issues with all of them for different reasons. I guess I would say "what you give just serves me right" makes me happy, and was something I had to push myself to do, but I was pleased with how it turned out in the end.

3. Work you are least proud of (and why):

I hate that I have two fics out that I haven't updated in ages! I am not proud of that! And there are a few things in all of them that I'd tweak.

4. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

Oh golly. Alright, from a hollow tree, which was my Halloween fic featuring Lilith!succubus!Chrissy:

Fog slips into the van when he opens the door. A mist so thick it’s disorienting as he drops to the ground, and the shape of a girl forms itself out of the gloom.

5. Share or describe a favorite comment you received:

Almost every single regular commenter on Soul makes my heart sing and my panties drop, and I'm so sorry my brain is being stupid right now.

6. A time when writing was really, really hard:

Right goddamn now. It's like squeezing blood from a fucking stone, and I have no idea why, but everything comes out strained and blechy and I hate it, and I refuse to inflict it on anyone else so I'll just sit like a lump, churning out crap and never showing it to anyone.

7. A scene or character that you wrote that surprised you:

Genuinely did not think that I would get so into the Hopper/Chrissy/Eddie dynamic as I did when I wrote it as a crackship as part of kinktober. But, like, I could get DOWN with that shit.

Also, Hellcheerington surprised me. Oh, and writing Eddie's dad for Soul was weirdly cathartic? I was determined to make him a person and not a collection of cliches, which was easier said than done. I think I got there, in the end. Hope so, anyway!

8. How did you grow as a writer this year:

I didn't, I fucking regressed. Or, no, not really. I pushed myself a bit, tried to get sharper and cleaner with some prose. Read some theory books, worked on my rhetorical devices, forced myself to kill a couple darlings along the way (but not all the darlings, god damn it).

I also published a book, so yay?

9. How do you hope to grow next year:

I'd like to get back to writing original fiction. I've been in a slump with that, too, because it doesn't have the instantaneous feedback that fanfic does. I want to split my time between fic and pro writing stuff, and I want to be very realistic about how much mental energy my real job takes up. When I used to write like a madwoman, I didn't have the role I currently do, which is a senior project manager leading a team, working mostly with executive-level staff. Don't get me wrong, my job pisses me off a lot, and stresses me out, too, but it pays well and we live in a shithole of a society where money matters in the grand scheme of things.

So, like, I guess I hope to grow as a writer in writing even when my brain doesn't want me to, or it doesn't feel great to do so.

10. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

Freaking Shirley Jackson, man. That bitch can write.

11. Anything in your real life show up in your writing this year:

I'm always putting kinky shit I see or experience at the bdsm club into my fic. I am as God made me.

12. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

Everything is made up and the points don't matter. Stop comparing yourself to other authors. Turn off stats on your AO3. Write what you fucking want and quit worrying if other people are going to like it.

13. Any new projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

I'm going to be so, so glad when Soul is done because I love it so much but it is also the millstone around my neck.

14. Tag three writers/artists whose answers you’d like to read:

@binickandros, @pipergirl17 and @phoenixwrites please!

[gingermintpepper]

Not to be off topic on the main here but as a pretty boy enthusiast and a fan of Guilty Gear; I've gotta say, I'm not entirely thrilled with the decisions made for the Strive designs.

Guilty Gear's always been kinda unique in that it's a fighting game that has a lot of variance in the body types of its characters. Well, specifically its male characters - there's a bit of variation in the female body types as well but this is undermined by the fact that the women of Guilty Gear are all well endowed with a few exceptions like Ramlethal and May but honestly, that's a discussion for another time. In any case, fighting games have historically been a genre where the male characters are either grotesquely buff or slender anime pretty boys and there's little in between.

Guilty Gear managed to pretty admirably give a lineup of men who, while they were all muscular, did not have what I lovingly call Street Fighter Syndrome in that they were all the same degree of Totally Jacked. For a few examples just look at the differences between Sol Badguy and Axl Low (I'm going to be using their Xrd/Rev designs)

Sol is top heavy; he has a very defined chest and arm region - which reflects his fighting style as a character whose main weapon is a sword that's much more bludgeoning weapon than anything sharp - and has a notably slender waist with similarly slender hips, legs etc. His 'hourglass' figure's been a part of his design from as early as I can remember but with the turn of Xrd, the artists were able to exaggerate his body type to what I like to think is what was supposed to be its natural extreme.

Contrast that with Axl Low

Who isn't actually particularly muscular but rather just possesses a very average male figure with especially defined legs. Axl isn't buff, he isn't thin, he doesn't look like he exercises religiously outside of maybe being someone who runs/does marathons - but that's okay because it's still an acceptable body type for some random breadass british dude who's having a grand old time figuring out his place in the world. Axl just looks like a guy.

All of that is to say, Strive does away with all of the nuance of these great, varied designs to just make everyone the same flavour of 'stereotypically fighting game buff' and I absolutely despise it. And here's what I mean.

Enter Ky Kiske.

Ky's as generic slender anime pretty boy as you get. Even if he's similar in build to Sol in that they're both more defined in their chests and arms than they are in their legs, Sol is obviously the broader and more muscular of the two. Ky looks, well, pretty. His arms are particularly thick, his neck isn't particularly defined, he has very delicate facial features - thin jaw, fair hair, flowing clothing that accentuates his grace and technique as a swordsman more than it serves to intimidate or display his body. And Ky has always been designed like this. This is his Xrd design, but here are a couple of his older looks as well:

Man had always been a slender figure with his belt pulled a bit too tightly and his general figure loose and unfocused on his non-existent musculature. So, please, please for the love of god tell me why Ky looks like a completely different character for Strive?

THERE IS SO MUCH WRONG HERE I COULD WRITE A BOOK - but the spark notes version:

Why is his body so much fuller?? Ky has been a twink since inception, one cannot change their body structure/type to spontaneously develop a broader waist/hip when for the past 20 years, Ky's been sporting notable disparity with these measurements.

Getting rid of the loose flowing silohuette is troubling enough considering that's just kinda the look he's had for a hot minute, but his colour scheme is so wildly off. Black and greys are Sol's colours - and as Sol's contrast character limiting that to just the coat hanging over his shoulders is clever I guess but it is in no way enough to visually discern Ky from Sol from a distance or, indeed, when they're fighting and shit starts getting crazy. Ky's always sported a white and blue motif and if y'all were gonna give him waist fillings the least you could've done was keep his colour palette consistent.

I hate the way they phoned in his cross motif. Ky is a pretty devoutly religious man and that was openly obvious in prior designs. Now his cross motif is limited to the shape of his sword's hilt/guard and two pitiful dark blue crosses above the hem of his pants which aren't even noticable because his pants are fucking dark grey--

HE'S INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM HIS FUCKING SON

And this, ultimately is the big problem I have with the new designs for Strive. Guilty Gear has always had very striking and recognisable silohuettes and designs which made liberal use of things like body type to distinguish and characterise its characters from one another. This sort of bombastic and detailled designwork stopped the characters from blending into each other and it did wonders for keep track of characters when there was a lot going on - even if they mirrored each other or were literally based off of another character from the series.

Ky Kiske and his son, Sin are visually very, very similar. Their physical differences are the only thing we have to distinguish them since they share a colour palette and the character designers for Xrd took advantage of the fact that Ky was much more on the slender side to create visual contrast between him and his son who looks like this.

Sin has a stocky build. He's heavily muscled, his design is built around showing off how jacked he is. He barely has a waist, has arms for days, you could slice cheese on his abs - and because he has short hair, in Xrd, they did a pro gamer move and had Ky grow his out.

Now, however, in Strive - how are you meant to tell the two of them apart? Not only has Ky cut his hair short again, but his body type is no longer slender but rather is the same stocky, heavy set/buff build that Sin has - something that really doesn't suit the aristocratic swordsman that Ky's always been.

By beefing up the characters, the designers for Strive have erased a vital, vital part of the character of their characters and it's a damn shame because Guilty Gear was one of the few fighting games left that had genuine variety in muscular body types and forms without fetishising or exaggerating the human form to disfiguring degrees.