#sure the editing part can sometimes get a bit repetitive and boring (to read it again and again and again)

[softzosan]

writing fic is like so much fun what the heck

[callipraxia]

The Interview: A Running 'Live' Commentary

Well, you asked, kinda, @the-orion-scribe...

Disclaimer: One of my…things is that where there is a transcript, I'm gonna read the transcript first and then may or may not tackle the audio version later. As such, I'm inevitably going to get some of the subtler bits indicated by gesture and tone of voice wrong. I hope it won't be anything that significantly changes the meaning, but we shall see. I'm doing this live, (redact) it! And partially on my work breaks at that, so apologies if anything gets repetitive or disjointed as a result of different bits being read several hours apart. Full transcript is available here from, I believe, @fordtato, who seems like awesome cool folks.

That all said, let's begin.

[On the SAG-AFTRA strikes]

Alex's grandmother was an actress? Interesting. Also, generally approve of the sentiments stated there, very good, no actual notes.

[On the pilot and the 'Next On' reel]

When I was a much, much younger Callipraxia, I also had an interest in TV work - we had this class at my middle school call Careers, and we had to do a research project on, well, a career every year, and one year I did mine on being a soap opera writer (early nineties soap operas were my first literary influences, and I suspect it still shows). I therefore find this glimpse into the industry fascinating, even though I don't have much to say about it beyond giggling at the image of executives having such reptilian, limited-intelligence brains that they could be tricked into thinking something already exists and therefore just approving it so they don't have to think about why they're being asked to approve something that already exists because it would make their heads hurt.

"I was working...on a cartoon called 'Flapjack.'"

I'm 99% sure I've never seen a single frame of this show, but also 99% sure I've heard of it somehow. Not sure why. No idea what 'Fish Hooks' is, though.

"Then, when we did the Cipher Hunt, I was running out of rewards and treasures to give the audience because I'd already bled Gravity Falls dry of every drop of content that was inside it..."

See, this is what I find fascinating about Proper Creators, and this one in particular. Their creations can seem so much fuller to us than they do to them. This baffles me, because even when I don't do things on purpose, I generally do realize that I did them sometime, you know? (Edit: ha, Hirsch actually talks a bit about this at the end)

"I remember asking him, 'Hey, Mike, you read the bible, right? What do you think about this Jesús character? Do you think it's working? Do you think people will get it?'"

Even though I clearly read the words 'series bible' right above this, my first thought was that Alex was asking Mike if he'd read The Bible - y'know, the religious one. And I was so confused. And then I stopped being confused and I facepalmed in real life.

"Instead of embracing that this is part of lore that fans love...in his mind, he, as a serious videogame programmer, made a mistake, and is ashamed of the mistake, and doesn't want to acknowledge it, doesn't want to encourage other people to corrupt their own game, and so he said 'there's no such thing as MissingNo.'"

This is another "I just don't get Proper Creators" moment. I'd have embraced it so thoroughly I'd have written a sequel just about it and only revealed that it was actually serendipitous (not 'a mistake' - word choice, people!) years later!

Sometimes no answer is better than a boring answer.

This is why I love that thing Robert Jordan used to say - "read and find out!" and the fandom shortened it to "RAFO," and now that's a one-word response to questions you don't want to answer, at least if everyone in the room is familiar with The Wheel of Time books and fandom history...so many times I've wanted to just reply "RAFO!" in a review, but then realized the odds were excellent that the other person would have no clue what I was talking about.

"I know that we did cut like 12 pages from the journal, just due to length."

I've been told that I can make people feel cussed out without ever uttering a single swearword, when I'm annoyed enough with them. I would like to try to do that to whoever it was who decided on this length restriction. Give me lore! All the lore! More! More lore!

[On the walls of genre cards and character beat cards and how this led to rejected episode ideas]

I'm gonna try this writing method out, it sounds interesting. Thanks, Alex! And also thanks to everyone involved who's mentioned any of these rejected ideas over the years, as this allows us to play with them instead! (one day, y'all will know the tale of Wendy as a weather witch. I've got a whole arc planned for her with that one).

"When [Rob Renzetti] and I are together, we're very much like Grunkle Stan and Ford, and he is Ford and I am Stan."

I wish so much that someone had asked if there were ever any RL fistfights during the production of the book. It's barely even funny and would have wasted time, but I wish they had anyway.

"I still recall when Ford had a long beard and was a hippie."

...No.

"We were thinking it'd be kind of more like a zen kind of guy"

I mean, technically I suppose he still is. Apparently quite big on meditation back in the day, and the Journal strongly implies he's a firm believer in divination now. He could have been a sort of hippie lite, had he gone for drugs other than brain demons and/or Truck Stop Coffee I Initially Assumed Was A Euphemism For Significantly Stronger Stimulants.

"I remember talking about, maybe, J.K. Simmons and then thinking, 'Gosh, you know, he's got a very familiar voice, is he gonna feel too overexposed.'"

Ford was actually the first character I ever heard Simmons voice, because I have acquired what passes for my pop culture literacy mostly completely backward. My mother was watching reruns of whatever that cop drama he was on was (was it The Closer?) one day, though, and I did a double take at the TV because why is Ford here on one of Mama’s shows? Did he get arrested again or something? Why are they acting like he's one of the...ohhhh.

Which yes, means I found my way to Portal 2 via Gravity Falls instead of the other way around. That isn't so surprising, though, because video games are another of my...things. I absolutely love a lot of the stories and will happily read about them and watch cutscenes and video essays about them and player-keeps-quiet playthroughs all day, but I've never actually played video games because I have poor hand-eye coordination and rather low frustration tolerance when it comes to entertainment. The puzzles would drive me mad. I adore complex things, but I hate having to figure them out before I can move on with the story if I don't want to stop. Let me figure stuff out at my own pace, dangit -

Er, that got off-topic, sorry. The point was, I've watched a ton of clips of Portal 2 now, and it's kind of fascinating to me that it possibly wasn't a conscious influence, because Cave Johnson is...not really that dissimilar to a thing that Ford could have become, in a lot of ways. Or what he and/or Fiddleford might have actually become in the "Better World," for all we know. He's probably closer to what Fiddleford did become in canon, though, at least for a while/in my possibly somewhat weird interpretation of Fiddleford.

"So we're putting this character together, we're putting blocks together, we're moving blocks and putting them up, and it's only at the last second that a Ford is revealed that we're like 'I guess we did it?'"

This is how I construct plots basically, more than characters, but - oh, gosh, I wanna do a lore dump so bad but this isn't the time or place. Never mind, I'll ramble about character development another time.

Also, I am amused by the visual of, like, Stan or someone performing a dramatic flourish and being like "Behold: A Ford!"

"What to you comes across as 'oh, Rob understands Ford's ridiculous recklessness' to me comes across as 'Rob IS Ford and Ford does rationalize.' That's what he does. One of Ford's greatest powers is rationalizing. So you're seeing Rob as Ford rationalizing Ford's bad decisions. In that moment, I think what's being revealed is less Ford's recklessness, and more Ford's ability to justify anything."

Why not both? But yeah, fair, I've observed this about the character myself. He censors himself when he doubts. It's a defensive mechanism I think - it keeps him alive and functional to a degree, because, well...we've seen what happens when Ford admits he was wrong, twice. In the Journal, he nearly lost his mind, and in the finale, he basically went from thinking of himself as He Who Shall Save The World to He Who Is About To, However Reluctantly, Become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds in an alarmingly short period of time. Extreme black and white thinking with him a lot of the time. Not a psychologist, just a nerd, but the longer I think about the character, the more probable a personality disorder seems. Which is one reason I worry about him and Stan both after the series ends. They're both going to be confused as all get-out when it dawns on them that "...wait, we're not suddenly better after all? We're both still really, really screwed up?"

"When you do a clone story, the point of a clone story, in my mind, is a character seeing themselves in a different light, right?"

Depends on which side you're looking at it from, really ;)

"They're all wonderful, wonderful dumbasses, all of them."

Accurate.

"They know that I am a detail-oriented bastard."

...Less accurate, in a way. I've spun whole worlds out of details that the writers have admitted were unintentional or screwups, not to mention the later discourse on Alex as the "emotional" story one while Rob was the "make it a story" guy, or the specific detail that was actually under discussion here. As for that one....

"When you're editing, when you're writing, and then you reread your writing and you edit it, and then you reread your writing and you edit it, there's a very subconscious process of streamlining, literally making paragraphs look nice - it's entirely possible that me or Rob made that change out of one in a million changes specifically because we knew that psychologically Ford is not traveling this path alone, he's traveling it with his muse who he has a very complex and fucked-up relationship with, and even in Ford's private thoughts, he would not say 'I'm alone,' he would say, 'Oh, I have a very important relationship in my life with Bill, but I don't have a friend, that is a difference!'"

...except he canonically referred to Bill as his friend, too, so, uh...yeah, there's that.*

Interesting to hear someone else's perspective on rewriting and editing; I'm pretty sure that there's very little sub-conscious going on with me when I'm editing. If anything, I'm double and triple checking to excise anything that even hints of subconsciousness out of the manuscript, and I am very, very conscious of times when I go out of my way to make paragraphs physically neat and pretty, because I always feel really stupid about doing it. So I suppose I'm glad to hear other people do that, too.

I also found it interesting to see the description of the relationship with Bill as "very complex and fucked-up." Ford, at least, wrote and spoke as though he was under the impression that his relationship with Bill was very straightforward pre-betrayal, but here's the Guy, on the record saying it was in fact "very complex." This doesn't confirm that Ford was on some level aware of this, but it does make me feel more confident about my theory that Ford invited Fiddleford up not so much because he really needed the technical expertise as because his subconscious was throwing up enough red flags to cover every square inch of land in the U.S.S.R. and he just couldn't admit it to himself consciously because admitting that he is not in control of a situation tends to render him non-functional.

*Full disclosure since nobody's read this far anyway, but hi if you have, have a full disclosure: I would not say I ship it, because in context - Fiddleford married, Ford on the brink of sanity, Ford as Fiddleford's employer, Fiddleford mind-wiping both himself and Ford behind Ford's back after a certain point, and that's all before we consider that on occasion, it's entirely possible Fiddleford was interacting with someone who mostly looked like Ford but, uh, wasn't - it would be incredibly dark and messed up and suitable for nothing but a full-blown adult psychological horror story, but I do consider "Ford was in love with Fiddleford, regardless of whether it was reciprocated or not" as a perfectly valid reading of the Journal. I also consider it perfectly valid to read it as Ford just being prone to really intense attachments, regardless of what kind they are - he either adores you or he hates you, whether you're his brother, his muse, his friend, his romantic or sexual interest, or what-have-you, which is kind of what I was saying earlier about the potential for personality disorders there. Ford writes in a style more like he's from the mid-nineteenth century than from the mid-twentieth, or at least like he's trying to imitate that style, so that could make things sound gay that aren't gay, but by the same token, much of Ford's rhetorical style seems to exist to allow him to not-quite-lie to himself while using his superpower of Justify Anything, so ultimately that means nothing, too. I went through the Journal line by line once and determined that you could make roughly equally strong cases for Ford being some form of straight, some form of gay, some form of bi, and some form of ace, and that it also wouldn't be unreasonable to come away with the view that he's not into humans so much but might very well be into one or more types of alien. I don't know and so will potentially read any variant of these things, as long as it's a decent story.

"You know the thing about working with a big company, it's like working with a friend who swaps their head with a different head every couple of years."

Huh, Alex has met Olm, has he?

[Hana] "By the way, I know there's a lot of fake blood on this page, that's for one of my YouTube videos, ignore that."

Why is this the moment I laughed out loud?

"That's the trouble of a puzzle box, is it's like, there's two flavors of it, there's a question with a satisfying answer, and then there's a question that is sort of an open-ended invitation to a kind of, uh, you know, group improvisational session. We've created a prompt for fans to 'yes and' their own story out of it, and the sense that there might be something in there creates a sense of excitement along with it."

Pretty sure this is sums up my general thoughts on the Interview/is the part of it I regard as Important so far. Also, I wish I could write something like that. If I leave a loose end hanging, it's very blatantly a loose end. I can improvise a 10,000-word essay about Ford's anger issues on the fly, doing that out of someone else's work is incredibly easy and natural for me, but I can't do the same in my own work. It's a frustrating thing.

"The Mystery Shack is a bucket full of misshapen, lost, odd oddities, and these character are a bucket of full of misshapen lost odd oddities, and like the idea of them all having a place where they fit in, and - and loving each other as a family, was very important to me."

...Ok, this is another Important bit, but for completely different reasons. Basically sums up why I'm here, really.

"That means that Dipper and Mabel's parents may have had children at a concerningly young age, and is this show's intent to say that it's okay for those relationships to exist?"

Here's a thing that I think is just...me not quite getting how a lot of people work, I guess? To me, there's a world of difference between "that could be what happened" and "and that means I approve of it." The Pineses are a really screwed up family. They should have called that pawn shop Dysfunction Junction, that’s how messed up they are. Apparently it was Filbrick who knocked someone up at a drive-in movie once (one of my 4.5 Shermies is actually a much older half-brother who only gets to know Stan at all after they meet at Filbrick's funeral, though I never decided if his mom was the shotgun wedding or if that was with Caryn. Either way, though, he was vaguely aware that "yeah, Dad and his second wife had those twins" but he'd had very limited contact with them and bought that he'd mixed up which one was supposed to be weird and have six fingers without too much trouble), and Mabel's level of proto-sexual aggressiveness is...occasionally disconcerting, to me at least. One or more generations of teenage parenthood seems perfectly in character for them to me, without it meaning anyone approves or disapproves of that. It's fairly realistic, however depressing, that a much younger son in a family as dysfunctional as theirs might well have started acting out, resulting in Indiscretions - my second fic was based on the premise that the "you gotta raise a kid, your life falls apart..." was Stan talking about Shermie's lot in life rather than his own, as I hadn't yet heard the remark about it being a Filbrick quote (the whole events of that story were constructed with the idea of keeping Stan's line about how he lied to everyone, including "my family" and "your parents", literally true, so every event was created to explain how Stan got away with it for a little longer without anyone noticing, basically). Mabel also seems impractical enough, even post-character development, to get waaaaaay too into a high school relationship with unfortunate results. That's not approval of such relationships, that's just...reality? Goodness, people don't think I morally approve of everything (or even very much at all) in my stories, do they? That's an unsettling thought.

"I think we say 'damn.' I think we say 'hell' maybe, um, yeah."

Ford specifically says "I'll be damned" in the Journal (though, in context, it seems less like swearing than like he possibly means it some form of literally; there's several hints in the Journal that suggest Ford believes in...Something, though he's almost certainly not a member of any organized religion and almost definitely not a member of any organized religion we'd recognize). Stan, for his part, says "hell" in "Lost Legends," referring to a part of the carnival that he thinks would be a good hiding place.

Since Disney allowed people to refer to going to literal, capital-H Hell in at least two properties long preceding Gravity Falls, though (specifically, David Xanatos infamously says "pay a man enough and he'll walk barefoot into Hell" in the pilot of the animated show Gargoyles, and Claude Frollo sings a whole song where he repeatedly yells the words "Hell" and "Hellfire" without a care in the world in The Hunchback of Notre Dame), I am still more shocked that they let Ford say the word "suicide" on the show proper, on Disney channel. And...okay, Frollo is significantly less child-friendly than Bill, even given the torture scene. Frollo does things that are just as violent as that scene, plus Frollo is quite blatantly driven by a perverse sexual obsession with a woman, so that he attempts to coerce her into sex with everything but the word 'sex' on screen before setting her on fire. There's distinctly perverse undertones in Bill's every interaction with Ford in the Weirdmageddon Trilogy, but Bill's been an energy being without physical form since before the birth of the Milky Way, which takes the edge off...a bit, anyway. Bill in the Journal flings down and dances upon the line between "this is a metaphor" and "...okay, so, the way this is being written about is so on the nose that I'm not sure this counts as a metaphor for any practical purposes anymore," but Bill having "extract information" as a motive in the most blatantly unsettling scenes of the show proper means he's still less overt about it on screen than Frollo.

...What was I talking about, again? Oh, right. Disney Channel: A lot less squeaky-clean in general than it wants you to think, Parents! They've been letting animated people say "Hell" occasionally since I was four!

"We talked about 'is there a way for this government agent who knows about Trembley to be connected to the government agents who picked up this disturbance?' We weren't really able to find a way to make them connect in a satisfying way, so, I wish we had done more with it."

Welp, there's another one for the "Projects to Eventually Do" List. Y'know, I'd never even thought of associating Powers and Co with the guy in "National Treasure"? It's one of those episodes I kinda mostly forget about tbh, the S1 filler episodes - I remember facts from it because they're useful when constructing my "Nathaniel Northwest was a warlock who made deals with Bill and here's how that could play out" theories, but I never think about the plot. Kind of like how I forget that Dipper's infatuation with Wendy is why the Paper Twins exist, even though they're now major characters in a lot of what I've written and are even bigger players in the vast majority of what I plan to write in future....I can tell you way, way too much about "Double Dipper," but I'm always slightly surprised that "oh, the Wendy obsession is why all this other stuff even happened!"

[On a very long section of text about McGucket and the memory gun]

OMG OMG OMG I WAS RIGHT! I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE ALCOHOLISM METAPHOR, IT'S CANON, I FEEL SO SMART RIGHT NOW, WHEEE!

Ahem...sorry about that. Got a bit carried away there. So, Alex also compared McGucket's relationship with the memory gun to alcoholism. And to taking anxiety pills, but...well, there is a reason you don't mix those, I suppose. I want to dig into this so much more, and I'm probably gonna end up printing this section and tacking it to the wall next to my writing table, but right now I have gotta do my mother's taxes, she refused to admit they hadn't been done yet until a few hours ago, arrgh, I don't have time - yeah, that bit's probably gonna get its own analysis post eventually.

"It's like he has to always have a mission in front of him, because if he doesn't have a mission in front of him, he's thinking 'how have I treated the people in my life?'"

Hey, I think I said that...like...three times in this insanely long post, and I know I've said it before. My character interpretations are being validated. It makes me faintly grumpy that I'm as pleased by this as I am. I have a...complicated relationship with validation, let's leave it at that.

"The same way you know a black hole is there by the light warped around it, it's like, you know the damage someone's family has done to them by all of their weird tics and behaviors. So who is the character who would result in Stan being this hurt and needy and mad and also longing?"

I'd argue that it was the whole family dynamic, really - Stan clearly had a ton of daddy issues on the boil even before he got disowned, and while Caryn seems to have been more openly affectionate toward him, I can't imagine it did his psychology any good to grow up with a mother he calls a "pathological liar" without missing a beat. There'd always be that uncertainty (much like there later is with Stan himself) about what was real and what was a lie, what was a performance, because Caryn, like Stan, was an entertainer - it's the thing they were good at. Meanwhile, Filbrick is a fifties and sixties father of the most rigid sort, someone who is clearly uncomfortable expressing any positive emotion of any kind, or really anything except anger. He's either indifferent or he's shouting, and he apparently calls his sons by the same name to the point that they can say "he means you" when he's bellowing for "Stan Pines," because Stan's unimportance in life has been so thoroughly underlined for him by his parents, long before Ford personally was in any position to inflict much childhood trauma, that he struggles to have any form of identity separate from "Ford's twin" by a very young age, and never really grows past this until maybe the final moments of the show - I really wish we'd had a moment of Stan claiming his own name properly, but at least it made the news. Until that point, he'd literally failed at everything he ever did as Stanley, as himself, because he had no direction without Ford - even the Mystery Shack, as built around his specific talents as it is, was created because the mission in front of him had Ford as a focus point. That's a crucial thing, too, about his bond with Dipper and Mabel, and Soos, and even kinda Wendy - he's built a life for himself outside of just being Ford's brother. It's implied none of them even knew he was a twin, that the Other had ever existed. He still defines himself in relation to other people to a large extent, but that's still less restrictive than defining himself (and being defined by others) solely in terms of one other person. Fairer to Ford, too. But I digress.

"And it's like 'oh! I think he's also aloof and distant from himself.' I think he is, uh, deeply, deeply hiding from his real feelings about things, because at some point early on, he decided that he could run from hurt by achievement and by creation, and has dug that hole so deep that he has no relationships."

Accurate, at least at times.

"The shows I was watching growing up were, like, Doug and Rugrats, and there were no holy wars about whether Chucky Finster, uh, should be interpreted this way or that way. We had no idea the world that was coming into consciousness as we were making this thing."

I found this kinda interesting, because I remember those shows, too - but by the time I was old enough to be aware of very much, Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer had already created the core of modern fandom culture as we know it, so I at the same time have the concepts of "there is no Rugrats fandom" and "that did not make fandom a surprise to me, because it was falling into place right about the point where my memory starts/I became dimly aware of the world outside of [Microscopically small town I'm from]." I don't know if this is something where he maybe remembers early childhood more than I do, since I have very, very few distinct memories from before I was 10-11 - a few, but they're like isolated snapshots with limited context, except what I know happened because people have told me it happened. I know Hirsch is older than me, but also not *that* much older than me, so I wonder if it's down to those few years (like he said about how gay marriage had just been legalized as the show was wrapping, and it's disconcerting now to think how different so many things were back then) or if it's a difference in personalities or what.

Well! That was more enjoyable than I expected! Thanks for prodding me to finally read this thing, @the-orion-scribe. It's eaten much of my day and seems set to eat a fair bit of it tomorrow, too, since I had to cut myself short at a couple of interesting points, but it was fun.

[just-jordie-things]

i dont know if you were asked this before, sorry if i am bothering you! Do you have any writing tips? I don't have anything specific but just any in general. I really admire your work!

you're so sweet!! i feel like i'm the last person who should be giving writing advice as i just blindly go into a brainrot induced stupor and spout off into docs as if i'm screaming into the void-- i have been asked this before but it's no trouble to copy it!! <3

a biggie take your time finding your style- as you can see on my masterlist i have a looot of shit on there from years of writing fanfic and experimenting. getting out of my comfort zone can be kinda hard for me personally, but with writing it was so worth it bc you can really see a metamorphosis there of when i was writing just to write and when i was writing with a drive.

don’t be afraid to ignore the rules of grammar. run on sentences are beautiful. i’ve found that especially so when the plot is driven by someone’s stream of consciousness as though they’re narrating it. thoughts are messy, they’re long and sometimes awkward and there’s no such thing as grammar in your mind !! of course spelling and punctuation are important and i’d recommend editing tho (idk her 😳) but get creative with it!!

thesaurus.com is my bestie 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 i often find myself using a lot of the same words and i don’t want to bore readers with repetitiveness! and also it’s just an easy way to expand my vocabulary too. (in person i stammer and have the reach of a fourth grader lmfao so i always want my writing to be concise and make the reader feel exactly what i want them to with my language)

also something i’ve started doing recently !! when i’m away from my wip and daydream about it, i write it down right away! in my notes app or on sticky notes or even my hand hehe. sure if it’s a significant enough plot point i’ll probably remember… but there’s no time like the present!! i want A to look at B a little differently in that one quick scene? i want to make them eat something different for foreshadowing? little details like that can be huge in your writing !! something a reader might gloss over but then realize later it was all a part of a greater scheme?? yes. so take note of those thoughts and daydreams you have !! even if you don’t end up adding it to your work, it’s better than having a profound, fic changing idea that you forget before you get the chance to write it!

this one is simple but a biggie- think about what you would want to read. i’ve been trying to keep this in mind as of late, especially when writing longer pieces where i want to make y’all suffer. find new ways to build the tension in your plot. give us different points of view, give us an untrustworthy narrator that thinks they’ve got it all figured out. throw in extra conflict. fanfiction is the melting pot of whatever the fuck you want !! so go stupid go crazy and make it something you love, and you should be good to go!! not to be cheesy but as long as you love it then you’re solid. doing something you love over and over will naturally lead you through growth and finding your style. don’t be wrapped up in notes right away (yes it can be a bit of an issue on this app- but none of has have control over how people enjoy your work- so you might as well focus on enjoying it for yourself) because as long as you’re doing something you’re passionate about and sharing it with us, more people will soon flock to enjoy it with you <3

lastly i just enjoy making mini playlists for whatever i’m currently working on. they don’t have to correlate completely with your plot. sometimes the sound of a beat is good enough for me to throw it on. if it gets me excited and planning out scenes i haven’t gotten to yet then it’s good enough for me!! i will listen to the same song on repeat in the name of ✨vibes✨ even if the words themselves have nothing to do with the plot i’m writing. that’s probably lazy basic advice but it works well for me and i love listening to music so !!

hopefully the copying of a previous ask isn't annoying and ya find this helpful! just my thoughts and processes tho, you gotta find a style that's best for you! and remember its a hobby. if you get stressed take a break and come back later! you're on your own schedule, and you don't owe anyone anything, so just have fun!

[reidsnose]

doodles

overview: reader doodles on her hands a lot and spencer has to give into the temptation of coloring it in

genre: flufffffff

a/n: sorry ive havent posted a fic in like a week, ive been in quite a slump but i had this idea well after midnight but i just had to write it so lmk what u guys think of this one :)

masterlist

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doodling on your hands: a once nervous habit that had seeped into your everyday life and now is just a regular habit. nearly everyday you would come to work with clean hands and get home with a mini art gallery on your non dominant one.

Spencer admired this from the moment he noticed it. at first he thought you had a tattoo but when you came back the next day with it completely gone, he was a tad confused, only to catch you doodling on that very same hand a couple hours later on the jet. he thought maybe it was an occasional thing, a habit you'd quit once you got better situated into the team, but after nearly a year you still left work almost everyday with some cutesy sketches drawn on your hand.

Spencer found himself looking forward to your doodles, imagining in his head what you might draw each day, and thinking of all the colors you would add if you had the time. being the great profiler that he is, he noticed a pattern: you subconsciously correlated your doodles with your mood.

after especially hard cases or just bad days you always drew roses.

when you were very happy you drew all sorts of fruits.

anxiousness bore little swampy creatures and lily pads.

tired days filled your hands with random, intricate designs that you didn't even have to try hard to make.

and content was anything else.

he was so impressed and absolutely adored your little coping mechanism. watching you concentrate on making those teeny pieces of art simply for your own pleasure was definitely a sight to see. the way your eyebrows furrowed and tongue poked out a bit was absolutely positively adorable. and soon he had noticed that he was looking forward less to the doodles and more to watching you draw them. and after that he began looking forward to just you.

you were sat on the jet with your back to the corner of the last seat on the plane, creating a pattern of roses on the back of your hand. Spencer plopped down in the seat next to you, growing tired of watching from so far away.

"that bad, huh?" he asked, noticing the type of flower you were gracing your hand with.

"hm?" you looked up, confused.

"you only doodle roses on bad days." he explained, pointing to your hand.

"what? no i don't!" you defended, " i just think roses are neat."

to be fair, you were having a bad day but he could've profiled that without the doodle. he cant be right, can he? there was no way you had a mood system for your doodles! unless there was.

"repetitive strokes are therapeutic, so roses being rough days make sense. the spiral in the middle followed by however many layered petals you want is a perfectly repetitive while still interesting enough to doodle."

"if i didn't know any better i'd say you've been spying on me, Dr. Reid," you teased, enjoying the slight rouge that appeared on his cheeks.

"what! no! i'm- i'm a profiler i notice patterns! i just- spying sounds creepy." he stammered.

"ok. how about admiring." you jabbed, turning a little red yourself.

"fine. but you know coloring helps too." he flipped back to the old topic of conversation.

"unfortunately i only have the standard blue, black and red ink."

"roses are red." he chuckled.

"interesting point," you bent down and reached into your bag, pulling out a red pen and handing it to him, "knock yourself out."

"what?" he looked at you slightly bewildered.

"coloring is therapeutic, you said it yourself. and you and i both know that you need something to relax you after a case like that. we all do." you explained, trying to be as nonchalant as you could knowing his skin would touch yours.

he grabbed the pen and clicked it open, coloring smoothly and slowly inside the lines you had already made in black, careful not to go over them and smudge the ink. you and him both tried your best to ignore the warmth shooting through your bodies from every place your hands touched. his fingertips lightly grazing your knuckles as he worked.you worked your way up your arm, giving you both space to work and by the time you landed, you had a half sleeve garden of surprisingly well colored (and somehow shaded) red roses.

you went home that night and bought a pack of colorful (washable) pens, hoping this little rose garden with him wasn't a one time thing. and even if it was, you would want to add your own pop of color to your doodles.

thankfully it wasn't.

you and Spencer found yourselves drawing and coloring on your hand a lot. he would catch you doing it and pop in over your shoulder just to add a touch of color where he thought it fit. and you began to feel sad washing off what the two of you had created that day, feeling nostalgic for time that has hardly passed.

and sometimes on the jet you would get tired of your own skin, so you would draw little doodles on his hand, often times leaving a little heart at the base of his thumb. these little hearts he avoided washing off for as long as he possibly could because they felt like a part of you was always with him. he started doing the same thing to your hand, a sort of signature the two of you shared.

most days, the doodles on your hands were pretty much fully colored in.

but now Spencer began to worry. what if you get ink poisoning because of his coloring? sure, the risk was statistically low, improbable even; but never zero. so one night after work he went out and bought a little sketchbook and on the front he scrawled,

"y/n's super duper special sketchbook"

upon receiving it, after giving him a hug he never wanted to let go of, you took a sharpie and started editing the title he had given it. so it now read:

"y/n and Spencer's super duper special sketchbook"

the two of you used up a whole page that day, front and back filled with all types of fruits. Spencer smiled to himself, knowing this had made you very happy. you took a second to take a step back and admire him doing the very thing he admired you for. and you understood why; he just looked so precious and you suddenly realized you craved the feeling of his hand touching yours. so you leaned over and drew a little black heart at the base of his thumb. he looked up at you, smiling widely before returning a red heart to the base of your thumb.

and you guys tore through that book, using a page a day and filling it cover to cover in no time. your own personal handmade coloring book. it turned out to be both of your most prized possessions, a pang of sadness filling your chests as you finished the last page.

you felt bad taking it home with you that night, wondering if maybe Spencer wanted to keep it. maybe you should keep it at work so you can both have it. thats the fair thing to do. you looked down, smiling sadly at the little red heart on your hand.

he did want to keep it. but he had a better idea in mind. he looked down, smiling excitedly at the little black heart on his hand.

the next day when you arrived to work all your worries were solved. on your desk laid a new sketch book entitled:

"y/n and Spencer's super duper special sketchbook: volume ii"

you laughed as you read a small lilac post it note that said, "i want to keep this one please" signed with a little red heart in the corner.

-

-

ultra mega super cool taglist:

@mac99martin @imhreid @spencersmagic @hollydaisy23 @raelady1184 @a-broken-pact @padfootswife @hey-there-angels @star-stuff-in-the-cosmos @sonnydoesrandomshit @coffeereid-deactivated20210303 @averyhotchner @laurakirsten0502 @reidyoulikeabook @rem-ariiana @spencerreid9 @vampire-overlord @takeyourleap-of-faith @s1utformgg @violetspoetic

[duckprintspress]

How to Edit an Over-Length Story Down to a Specific Word Count

One of the most wonderful things about writing as a hobby is that you never have to worry about the length of your story. You can be as self-indulgent as you want, make your prose the royalist of purples, include every single side story and extra thought that strikes your fancy. It’s your story, with no limits, and you can proceed with it as you wish.

When transitioning from casual writing to a more professional writing milieu, this changes. If you want to publish, odds are, you’ll need to write to a word count. If a flash fiction serial says, “1,000 words or less,” your story can’t be 1,025 and still qualify. If a website says, “we accept novellas ranging from 20,000 to 40,000 words,” your story will need to fall into that window. Even when you consider novel-length works, stories are expected to be a certain word count to fit neatly into specific genres - romance is usually around 80,000 words, young adult usually 50,000 to 80,000, debut novels usually have to be 100,000 words or less regardless of genre, etc. If you self-publish or work with a small press, you may be able to get away with breaking these “rules,” but it’s still worthwhile to learn to read your own writing critically with length in mind and learn to recognize what you do and do not need to make your story work - and then, if length isn’t an issue in your publishing setting, you can always decide after figuring out what’s non-essential to just keep everything anyway.

If you’re writing for fun? You literally never have to worry about your word count (well, except for sometimes in specific challenges that have minimum and/or maximum word counts), and as such, this post is probably not for you.

But, if you’re used to writing in the “throw in everything and the kitchen sink” way that’s common in fandom fanfiction circles, and you’re trying to transition only to be suddenly confronted with the reality that you’ve written 6,000 words for a short story project with a maximum word count of 5,000...well, we at Duck Prints Press have been there, we are in fact there right now, as we finish our stories for our upcoming anthology Add Magic to Taste and many of us wrote first drafts that were well over the maximum word count.

So, based on our experiences, here are our suggestions on approaches to help your story shorter...without losing the story you wanted to tell!

Cut weasel words (we wrote a whole post to help you learn how to do that!) such as unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, the “was ~ing” sentence structure, redundant time words such as “a moment later,” and many others.

When reviewing dialog, keep an eye out for “uh,” “er,” “I mean,” “well,” and other casual extra words. A small amount of that kind of language usage can make dialog more realistic, but a little goes a long way, and often a fair number of words can be removed by cutting these words, without negatively impacting your story at all.

Active voice almost always uses fewer words than passive voice, so try to use active voice more (but don’t forget that passive voice is important for varying up your sentence structures and keeping your story interesting, so don’t only write in active voice!).

Look for places where you can replace phrases with single words that mean the same thing. You can often save a lot of words by switching out phrases like “come back” for “return” and seeking out other places where one word can do the work of many.

Cut sentences that add atmosphere but don't forward the plot or grow your characters. (Obviously, use your judgement. Don't cut ALL the flavor, but start by going - I’ve got two sentences that are mostly flavor text - which adds more? And then delete the other, or combine them into one shorter sentence.)

Remove superfluous dialog tags. If it’s clear who’s talking, especially if it’s a conversation between only two people, you can cut all the he saids, she saids.

Look for places where you've written repetitively - at the most basic level, “ ‘hahaha,’ he laughed,” is an example, but repetition is often more subtle, like instances where you give information in once sentence, and then rephrase part or all of that sentence in the next one - it’s better to poke at the two sentences until you think of an effective, and more concise, way to make them into only one sentence. This also goes for scenes - if you’ve got two scenes that tend towards accomplishing the same plot-related goal, consider combining them into one scene.

Have a reason for every sentence, and even every sentence clause (as in, every comma insertion, every part of the sentence, every em dashed inclusion, that kind of thing). Ask yourself - what function does this serve? Have I met that function somewhere else? If it serves no function, or if it’s duplicative, consider cutting it. Or, the answer may be “none,” and you may choose to save it anyway - because it adds flavor, or is very in character for your PoV person, or any of a number of reasons. But if you’re saving it, make sure you’ve done so intentionally. It's important to be aware of what you're trying to do with your words, or else how can you recognize what to cut, and what not to cut?

Likewise, have a reason for every scene. They should all move the story along - whatever the story is, it doesn’t have to be “the end of the world,” your story can be simple and straightforward and sequential...but if you’re working to a word count, your scenes should still forward the story toward that end point. If the scene doesn’t contribute...you may not need them, or you may be able to fold it in with another scene, as suggested in item 6.

Review the worldbuilding you’ve included, and consider what you’re trying to accomplish with your story. A bit of worldbuilding outside of the bare essentials makes a story feel fleshed out, but again, a little can go a long way. If you’ve got lots of “fun” worldbuilding bits that don’t actually forward your plot and aren’t relevant to your characters, cut them. You can always put them as extras in your blog later, but they’ll just make your story clunky if you have a lot of them.

Beware of info-dumps. Often finding a more natural way to integrate that information - showing instead of telling in bits throughout the story - can help reduce word count.

Alternatively - if you over-show, and never tell, this will vastly increase your word count, so consider if there are any places in your story where you can gloss over the details in favor of a shorter more “tell-y” description. You don’t need to go into a minute description of every smile and laugh - sometimes it’s fine to just say, “she was happy” or “she frowned” without going into a long description of their reaction that makes the reader infer that they were happy. (Anyone who unconditionally says “show, don’t tell,” is giving you bad writing advice. It’s much more important to learn to recognize when showing is more appropriate, and when telling is more appropriate, because no story will function as a cohesive whole if it’s all one or all the other.)

If you’ve got long paragraphs, they’re often prime places to look for entire sentences to cut. Read them critically and consider what’s actually helping your story instead of just adding word count chonk.

Try reading some or all of the dialog out loud; if it gets boring, repetitive, or unnecessary, end your scene wherever you start to lose interest, and cut the dialog that came after. If necessary, add a sentence or two of description at the end to make sure the transition is abrupt, but honestly, you often won’t even need to do so - scenes that end at the final punchy point in a discussion often work very well.

Create a specific goal for a scene or chapter. Maybe it’s revealing a specific piece of information, or having a character discover a specific thing, or having a specific unexpected event occur, but, whatever it is, make sure you can say, “this scene/chapter is supposed to accomplish this.” Once you know what you’re trying to do, check if the scene met that goal, make any necessary changes to ensure it does, and cut things that don’t help the scene meet that goal.

Building on the previous one, you can do the same thing, but for your entire story. Starting from the beginning, re-outline the story scene-by-scene and/or chapter-by-chapter, picking out what the main “beats” and most important themes are, and then re-read your draft and make sure you’re hitting those clearly. Consider cutting out the pieces of your story that don’t contribute to those, and definitely cut the pieces that distract from those key moments (unless, of course, the distraction is the point.)

Re-read a section you think could be cut and see if any sentences snag your attention. Poke at that bit until you figure out why - often, it’s because the sentence is unnecessary, poorly worded, unclear, or otherwise superfluous. You can often rewrite the sentence to be clearer, or cut the sentence completely without negatively impacting your work.

Be prepared to cut your darlings; even if you love a sentence or dialog exchange or paragraph, if you are working to a strict word count and it doesn't add anything, it may have to go, and that's okay...even though yes, it will hurt, always, no matter how experienced a writer you are. (Tip? Save your original draft, and/or make a new word doc where you safely tuck your darlings in for the future. Second tip? If you really, really love it...find a way to save it, but understand that to do so, you’ll have to cut something else. It’s often wise to pick one or two favorites and sacrifice the rest to save the best ones. We are not saying “always cut your darlings.” That is terrible writing advice. Don’t always cut your darlings. Writing, and reading your own writing, should bring you joy, even when you’re doing it professionally.)

If you’re having trouble recognizing what in your own work CAN be cut, try implementing the above strategies in different places - cut things, and then re-read, and see how it works, and if it works at all. Sometimes, you’ll realize...you didn’t need any of what you cut. Other times, you’ll realize...it no longer feels like the story you were trying to tell. Fiddle with it until you figure out what you need for it to still feel like your story, and practice that kind of cutting until you get better at recognizing what can and can’t go without having to do as much tweaking.

Lastly...along the lines of the previous...understand that sometimes, cutting your story down to a certain word count will just be impossible. Some stories simply can’t be made very short, and others simply can’t be told at length. If you’re really struggling, it’s important to consider that your story just...isn’t going to work at that word count. And that’s okay. Go back to the drawing board, and try again - you’ll also get better at learning what stories you can tell, in your style, using your own writing voice, at different word counts. It’s not something you’ll just know how to do - that kind of estimating is a skill, just like all other writing abilities.

As with all our writing advice - there’s no one way to tackle cutting stories for length, and also, which of these strategies is most appropriate will depend on what kind of story you’re writing, how much over-length it is, what your target market is, your characters, and your personal writing style. Try different ones, and see which work for you - the most important aspect is to learn to read your own writing critically enough that you are able to recognize what you can cut, and then from that standpoint, use your expertise to decide what you should cut, which is definitely not always the same thing. Lots of details can be cut - but a story with all of the flavor and individuality removed should never be your goal.

Contributions to this post were made by @unforth, @jhoomwrites, @alecjmarsh, @shealynn88, @foxymoley, @willablythe, and @owlishintergalactic, and their input has been used with their knowledge and explicit permission. Thanks, everyone, for helping us consider different ways to shorten stories!

[gh0st-patr0l]

ADHD in DSMP

So about a week back, I made a post about Karl Jacobs (a bit of a passive aggressive one, I’ll admit, but I think it was justified), complaining that a lot of the ‘criticism’ I see about Karl is actually rather insensitive towards his ADHD. I got a lot of responses to that post, and the most common sources of confusion I saw were:

People not understanding what I was saying they should avoid being judgmental of, or-

People who didn’t know that Karl had ADHD or didn’t understand which behaviors were caused by it.

First of all, Karl has confirmed that he has ADHD.

(NOTE: Yes, I know he said ADD. ADD and ADHD used to be categorized as separate disorders, but in the most recent edition of the DSM, it was decided that they are both simply subtypes of the same disorder- ADHD is the correct technical term. ADD is still sometimes used as shorthand by some practitioners to diagnose primarily-inattentive ADHD, but it's a bit outdated.)

Secondly, that original post made me realize that a lot of people who may be well-meaning may genuinely not fully understand ADHD and its symptoms as well as they want to or think they might. If you aren’t aware, Karl isn’t the only one in the DSMP with ADHD- to my understanding, both Technoblade and Dream have confirmed that they have it as well. So, I thought it would be helpful to put together a comprehensive crash-course on ADHD symptoms and how they effect people’s behavior!

Now, before we go further, I want to address something- as I said earlier, I saw some people unsure of whether certain behaviors are ADHD or “just his personality”. I feel the need to point this out above the read more so people will see it. To answer this question, as someone with ADHD;

A lot of times, it’s both. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, meaning that it’s caused by the way your brain developed from birth. A lot of the symptoms and effects of ADHD are extremely influential towards the way we think, act, and behave, to the point where “symptoms” and “normal behavior” really don’t have a clean differentiation. This is why it’s technically classified as a ‘disorder’, instead of an illness. While certain aspects of it can require treatment, the condition itself as a whole is not something to be mitigated or eliminated- it’s a part of who we are as a person. This is also why sometimes, even if you don’t have ADHD, you’ll look at certain specific behaviors or experiences and go “Oh, but I do that too!”. A lot of ADHD ‘symptoms’ are just a bunch of normal traits or behaviors, but in combination with each other and some actually problematic aspects, form the appearance of the disorder.

So, what are you allowed to nitpick about it? Well, there’s no real ‘authority’ on this, and even if there was it certainly wouldn’t be me. But if you want my opinion? Nothing.

See, here’s the thing- what I was trying to say when I made that post was not that you can’t be critical of Karl. If you want to say something about his Actions, his Ideals, or the content he creates- sure, go for it, that’s fair. I will agree that there are some very valid and constructive points to be made. But when you post ‘criticism’ about the way he speaks, his interests or preoccupations, his personal behaviors? That’s not criticism. That’s just judging someone.

And you’re allowed to think that stuff! Nobody can control what annoys or bothers them. It doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person. But you don’t need to be vocal about it. You can keep your mean thoughts to yourself. And if you do make posts or communities or whatever about judging someone for things they can’t change about themselves, don’t call it “criticism” or try to morally justify it. It’s not productive or righteous, it’s just rude. Nothing else.

Anyway. Back to Education!

The following will be a descriptive list of visible ADHD behaviors, using Karl’s behavior as examples.

I feel the need to add a disclaimer here- I am not a mental health professional. However! I have ADHD myself, I have taken some psychology courses and done a Lot of research into this stuff, and I’m the daughter of a therapist with access to a DSM. While I’m not an expert, I’d like to think I’m fairly well versed and knowledgeable on at least ADHD. (That being said, if by chance anyone who Is a professional sees this post and notices mistakes, by all means let me know and I’ll fix it!!)

WHAT IS ADHD?

You’re here for the behaviors more than the science, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. ADHD is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Known in the past as Attention Deficit Disorder). Despite its name, the root problem of ADHD is not in the person’s ability to pay attention, but their brain’s capability to manage itself. In simple terms, people with ADHD have a lot less control over what their brain does and wants. This results in some behavioral differences along with some personal challenges, namely a difficulty with attentiveness and self-discipline.

Now, onto the symptoms!

ATTENTION

This is perhaps the most visible and pervasive of the ADHD symptoms, hence why it’s the namesake. Inattention is a lack of focus and an inability to stay present and occupied with certain tasks or thoughts.

Because ADHD impairs self-management of the brain, people with it have an extremely hard time directing themselves anywhere but where their brain instinctively wants to go. This results in inattentiveness and the easiness of distraction that is often mocked or stereotyped for people with ADHD.

Here are some examples of how Karl can sometimes display his inattentiveness;

When he has an idea that he seems passionate about, only to drop it or switch to something totally different without warning soon after (either forgetting or getting bored of his original idea).

When he sets out to do something like a build, works on it for a short amount of time, and then immediately gives up or gets someone else to do it.

When someone else is talking and he totally zones out. (NOTE: While I wont make a whole section for it because it’s not easily observable, maladaptive (constant and intrusive) daydreaming is a common ADHD symptom as well!)

It’s important to remember that the whole problem with ADHD is that we can’t control when or what we focus on. When someone with ADHD zones out during a conversation or activity, it doesn’t mean they’re doing it on purpose, and they likely don’t mean any offense! We often are trying our best to listen or participate, but our brain just wont cooperate.

However, inattention is not the only way ADHD effects our focus. There’s also what’s called hyperfocus or hyperfixation, which is when we are so absorbed into a single subject, task, or idea that it is extremely difficult to get us to think about or do anything else. This is usually because our brains have found something that is getting those satisfaction chemicals flowing, and it’s clinging to that with everything it’s got.

People with ADHD will often experience brief periods of hyperfocus. Think of how Karl talks about spending hours straight working on a build or project without eating or drinking, or how he’ll sit down to play a game with someone and end up going six hours without even noticing.

There are also hyperfixations, where someone with ADHD becomes extremely preoccupied with a certain subject, topic, etc. for a period of time. These can be short term- personally, my hyperfixation can sometimes change as quickly as a couple weeks at a time. However, it can also be long term. Karl has been obsessed with Survivor since the second grade- not to mention his memorabilia, rambling, and constant references to Kingdom Hearts.

HYPERACTIVITY/STIMMING

This is a BIG one for Karl. I should clarify; ‘stimming’ is not a technical term, and in professional situations these behaviors are just referred to as Hyperactivity. However, I personally like the term stimming much more and find it far more accurate to what the behaviors actually are, so I’ll be using that instead for this post.

If you’re not already familiar, ‘stimming’ (derived from ‘stimulation’) is an unofficial term used to describe consistent and abnormal patterns of physical and vocal behavior typically expressed by people with ADHD and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). This includes things that people usually call fidgets or tics.

(NOTE: There are differences in how people with those two disorders stim. This post will explain stimming specifically from an ADHD perspective! ASD stimming is caused by very different factors and presents itself in much different ways. Do your own research if you’re curious!) 

There are two major observable forms of stimming- physical and vocal. Karl expresses both VERY often! I’ll use examples for each type;

Physical Stims: Flapping his hands/arms, jumping up and down when he’s excited, twisting around into odd positions in his chair, throwing, hitting, or tapping things, standing up and pacing around when he’s hyped up or laughing, twisting his rings, etc.

Vocal Stims: When he gets excited and repeats a certain phrase incessantly (Think any variation of “I’m popping off”), making certain repetitive noises while he’s focused on something or bored (”la la la”, the meow-noises, the weird heart-beat noise, etc.), singing or humming, tongue clicking.

It should be noted here that it’s pretty common for people with ADHD to get “stuck” on certain phrases or noises, and be unable to stop repeating them (reminiscent of echolalia, a symptom of ASD, but not the same thing). Think of how Karl might sometimes keep making a weird noise for an extended period of time even though it’s not that funny, or that one time he was physically struggling to keep himself from singing the Bakugan theme. These repetitions are completely impulsive and trust me, we usually know how annoying it is while we’re doing it, but we physically cannot stop.

ADHD stims are caused by the fact that the barrier between our brain and body is much weaker than a normal person’s. Because of this, most ADHD stims are actually very positive expressions of joy, excitement, or enthusiasm! Y’know how when you get excited, you feel like you wanna jump or dance? The ‘hyperactivity’ of ADHD is basically just that, but we don’t have the self-control to Not do it.

Stims can be caused by negative feelings like overstimulation, but in ADHD this is not nearly as common. Usually, the most negative reason we’ll stim is when we’re bored- in that case, our brain isn’t getting the Constant Stimulation that it naturally wants, so stimming is a way to make our own.

Whatever the cause, stimming is natural and impulsive. While different people experience it to varying degrees, those who regularly stim typically have little to no control over it. Suppressing stims is very hard and very frustrating to do.

Besides that, like I said- ADHD stims are often an expression of joy, excitement, or enthusiasm. They’re a beautiful thing that shouldn’t be seen as shameful or annoying!

BEHAVIORAL DIFFICULTIES

ADHD is a disorder which causes a lack of self-control. Naturally, this means that people with ADHD are inherently reckless, impulsive, and struggle with a lack of self-discipline that they cannot fix.

Of course, people with ADHD do still have some level of self-control, and they are still responsible for conscious, long-term behavioral patterns and decisions. However, in regards to most things, they are much, much less capable of controlling themselves than an average neurotypical person is.

These are some examples of how this will often present itself in Karl;

Excessive rambling, dragging on a joke or conversation when it could and should probably have been dropped, etc.

Speaking over or interrupting other people (NOTE: As someone with ADHD- THIS IS ALMOST ALWAYS UNINTENTIONAL. I know it can seem rude or annoying but I promise, 90% of the time if someone with ADHD talks over you, they either didn’t realize or physically couldn’t help it. Please try to be patient!)

Lack of awareness towards social cues (NOTE: Unlike ASD, in which the person is incapable of/has problems fully understanding social cues, ADHD results in a lack of awareness. For whatever reason, we’re often just not paying close enough attention to pick up on things like body language, tone of speech, and facial expression as well as we would normally.)

Indecisiveness and overthinking

Bluntness, lack of subtlety

Unintentional dismissiveness, accidentally ignoring things/people (NOTE: Again, this behavior is purely accidental. In this case, it’s usually just the person genuinely not hearing or processing things.)

Making noises, speaking, joking, etc. at inappropriate times

There’s probably more, but I think you get the idea by now. A lot of the time, behavior which results from ADHD can be seen as rude, lazy, dismissive, or otherwise intentionally harmful. In reality, we just aren’t wired to navigate common social interaction with grace.

In Karl’s case, he’s clearly an incredibly sweet, empathetic, and kind-hearted person, if the various close friends who have talked about him are to be believed. Just because he talks over people or makes a poorly timed joke, that doesn’t mean he meant any harm. 

I think that’s about it for how much I wanted to point out! You can do more research if you’re curious, but I feel like this post should be enough to tell you what to keep in mind and be understanding about when talking about/making judgements on Karl, and other people with ADHD.

[dropofgoldensun]

omg hiiiii i am here from cat (@luvdsc) wondering if you could offer any advice about college apps 🙏 especially about the uc piqs? thank you so much i hope ur doing well!!!!!!!!

yes yes hello friend !! 💝 miss cat directed you to me because i did my college apps last year !!! (yikes one year passed already?? why does that feel ages ago 🤧)

first of all, congratulations on making the decision to apply to college !! i know it’s been hard for a lot of people our age to figure out the college situation recently, so i’m proud of you for choosing to take the extra step this summer to buckle up and write those essays 💞

i’ve compiled a few tips on answering the PIQs (i was actually in the middle of typing this up when i received your ask haha), but some of them can be applied to other essays, as well !! they’re all under the cut (because, unfortunately, being brief is not my forte) 😊

(and for reference, the prompts i chose were #2 (creativity), #6 (subject), #7 (community), and #8 (anything) !!)

tip #1: understand the prompt.

before you even begin writing, it’s important to understand what the question is really asking. for the UC PIQs, this will look different depending on which four prompts you decide to do.

in question one, for example, they want to know about your skills in leading others, but notice that they’re also curious about your resolution abilities and teamwork experience. or in question two, they don’t want to know that you paint and that you love painting—they could be asking how resourceful you are, how you think outside the box when you have an idea.

once you know the question you’re going to be answering, you can move on to brainstorming!

tip #2: write down three (3) key takeaways.

these are like the most basic, not-even-a-sentence answers you would give to each question. so for me, in response to question eight (“what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for the UCs?”), my answers were perseverance, courage, and character. i had a story about that, so i wrote about my experience with martial arts.

i recommend you do something similar. decide on three things that you want to communicate to your audience, and write them in the footnote of your document. your goal is to cover all three points so that, if anyone were to read your essay, they would walk away understanding those three things about you.

i found this strategy really helpful for keeping my essay streamlined while writing—if a sentence didn’t relate to any of those main points, i would cut it since those words would take up valuable space in the word count. stay focused on what needs to be in this essay, and if you have extra words left in the word count later, you can add those details back in.

and once you’re done with your essay, make sure to refer back to your takeaways and check that you covered all of them sufficiently!

tip #3: highlight your stories.

i sent cat an ask a couple days ago with a few pictures of my response to an end-of-year college counseling survey that referenced this tip (you can find it here). basically i said that, when choosing what topics to write about, pick things that interest you! if you get excited talking about it, your audience should get excited about reading it, because they’ll pick up on the passions you have and then everyone’s excited !!! :D

i’ll tell you a secret: everyone you meet, everyone you see, has countless unique experiences that few others may have. me? i spend hours making mashups out of kpop songs. i earned my black belt years after a traumatizing experience during training. i get russian harry potter and spanish dr. seuss books from the library. and i created a collaborative online google photos album for my classmates that now has thousands of entries. although these aren’t necessarily unique to only me, they’re still special enough to the point where, when you put them all together, you get a better image of the person i am, and what i value.

so find a story, a habit, a hobby that makes you different, because i believe that everyone has them. give them some food for thought, or that one-liner that sticks in their brain and won’t go away. and remember: these stories don’t all have to be extraordinary—they should be about people or moments of special value to you, because that’s what matters.

personal tip: when i was brainstorming ideas, i decided that the best way to get ideas out there was to go on a rant (because sometimes it helps to just have a conversation with yourself !!) and i recorded myself, so i could replay what i said !! this was so so crucial to me finding my own voice for writing essays. notice the way you word things when you talk—a good line or two may make it into the final draft :)

i found it helpful to read sample essays as well! they give a lot of great ideas on the kinds of topics people write about. (also, it’s kind of fun, because who doesn’t love a good story?)

but the people reading your essay won’t be there to just enjoy your story; what they really want you to do is to tell them what you learned from your experience. they want to know whether you’re teachable and willing to grow both as a student and as a young adult. so make sure to take note of the life lessons you learned, experience you gained, character you built, etc.

minor tip on ending your essay: if you’re telling a story that happened in the past, then close with what you learned and how you can apply that to your life moving forward. if you’re telling a story that has no definite end yet (like a passion or dream you have), you probably don’t have everything figured out (and you can say that in your essay!), so it might be better to close with your hopes for the future.

tip #4: ask your family for help.

peer-editing is one of the most effective ways to detect errors and inconsistencies in your writing, because, after staring at your essay for so long, you might gloss over glaring contradictions. for all of my essays, i printed them out and asked my parents to help me revise them. we’d meet every other night (or every night, depending on how much time was left) to review and discuss improvements.

i actually kept some of those printed drafts (only the first and the final ones for comparison), and let me tell you from experience—you’re probably going to have a lot of drafts (i think the most i did was seven? but you don’t need to go that far!). this part of the process does take some time, so remember to be patient and kind to yourself :) these essays won’t happen overnight!

enlisting the help of others also helps keep you accountable. one of the struggles many seniors face while writing essays is just... setting aside time to do them. and even though the constant reminders from your parents will definitely get repetitive and a bit stress-inducing, i can tell you from personal experience that i’m so glad they did; otherwise, i don’t think i’d have my essays done in time :’)

while writing college essays is challenging, your family will be there supporting you each step of the way. chances are that they’ll have their own pointers to pass on to you, since they probably remember doing this process themselves! and, out of everyone in your life, they probably remember the most about you (because you probably don’t remember much when you were four or five), so they might have a couple starter ideas for topics when brainstorming. you can rely on them for their advice and their experience.

tip #5: self-editing.

here’s the part that takes the longest time.

use action words. this is probably something you’ve heard all throughout elementary school where they didn’t like you to say “said” because it was “boring”… but honestly, the difference between “doing my own version” and “infusing it with my personality” could go a long way. also, use words that you would actually use in an essay—then it’ll have your own special flair, and not sound like it’s taken from some stuffy 80s textbook!

here are some of the words i used (once again, you shouldn’t use these words if they don’t sound like something you’d write/say): potential, overlay, wrestle, launch, analogous, weave, infuse, experiment, outlet, revel, fascinate, satisfaction, pursue, expand, distinction, capture, range, archive, engage, beyond, build, adversity, cultivate, preserve, commit, explore, convey, naturally

also, be on the lookout for repeated words. i once wrote an essay without noticing that i used “hope” three times in the same paragraph. don’t do that! use synonyms :) personally, i tended to run short on synonyms, so i always kept a tab or two open on my computer reserved for searching up new words.

side note: unfortunately, during my search for synonyms, i discovered that thesaurus.com just didn’t give me what i was looking for. i highly recommend using wordhippo instead; it has so many more options and they’re grouped by the different definitions of your word! i found the synonyms i needed really quickly and it was very satisfying!

avoid the passive voice! my teacher gave me this tip for theses or any other college-level writing. here’s an example of the passive voice: “there was a large part of me that wanted to turn back.” that’s twelve words taking up precious space in your word count! instead, say something like, “i considered turning back.” you’ve just freed up eight words :)

tip #6: final revisions.

this is the step where you fine-tune your essays. meet that word count.

read your writing out loud. does it sound like you? it should. every writer has a different voice, and you need to ensure that yours is pervasive throughout your essay. feel free to use contractions—not only do they reduce your word count (this was a good thing for me, since i had a problem with getting under 350 words), but they also give a more casual tone to your essay, as if you’re telling a story to someone in the room.

next, pretend to be an admissions officer and have someone else read your essay to you. do you get excited hearing about this student who shares your name? if you do, there’s a good chance the real admissions officers will love your essays, too. this also gives you a chance to review to your essay as a whole. pay attention to the overall flow. is there a clear beginning and end? do you resolve the issues and overcome the trials you brought up? listen to it as if it’s a story, and take this time to enjoy what you’ve written. you worked hard!

final thoughts / encouragements.

oh my goodness, did we make it to the end? honestly if you did, thank you so much 🥺

okay but despite my relatively optimistic tone throughout this post, i’m still going to be honest with you—the college essay writing process is difficult. it requires you to look inside yourself and analyze the “why” behind some of the things that you love, and that isn’t easy to do at all. it’s intellectually and emotionally challenging, because not only do you need to use so much energy writing, but you also have to dig deeper to understand yourself, and that’s not easy, either.

but i wanted to encourage you, too. no matter what you may think of yourself at 12am, 2am, 4am writing these essays, believe you have a personality that others love and will love when they meet you. you are an interesting person with unique experiences who deserves to share your thoughts with others. you have so many people behind you, supporting you during these next few months. and when you find that you can’t write any more, remember to take time to care for yourself. have a warm shower. go to bed early. i could go on and on about why sleep is good for your brain but i’ll spare you the details in this post 😉

one last thing: keep the bigger picture in focus. remember, by december or january, you will be finished with most of the application process. that’s no small accomplishment. you can do it. 💝

i really hope you found tips that you were looking for, and that they’re applicable to your own PIQs and other essays !! if you have any other questions, feel free to send in another ask (i promise my response won’t be this lengthy LOL) 💘💓

oh, and if you feel comfortable enough reaching out about anything in particular, i’m only a DM away 💕 i wish you the best of luck on writing your essays and i hope you enjoy your final year of high school !! 💗🌸💟💖

[natsspammityspamspamham]

Anime That Deserve Another Season

Category One: Anime That Supposedly Deserve Another Season Even though the title says “deserve”,  I will be listing some anime that I do not think deserve another season. They’re just here because people are loud about not getting another season. These are mostly series I just didn’t enjoy watching. 

Category Two: Anime That Can Get Another Season They’re fine without another season as there are no cliffhangers to close and no questions that are really unanswered. These anime will not keep you up at night asking for an answer. 

Category Three: Anime That Need Another Season While it’s not mandatory that these anime have another season to be enjoyed, they’d sure benefit immensely with it. Whether it’s because there’s too many cliffhangers, things end abruptly, or there is just too much good source material that was left untouched, they’ll end up here. Even if I didn’t really enjoy the anime, some anime may end up here anyway.

Bonus Category: Anime Need a Reboot Not all adaptations are created equal, and even if the anime can be enjoyed on its own, sometimes it’d benefit from actually looking at the source material and going, “Oh, it was written that way for a reason!” Some anime just need the Brotherhood treatment. From pacing to anime-exclusive storylines, anime in this category stray so much that you might as well just start from the ground up.

*Please note that if an anime isn’t here, it might be because I haven’t watched it (or I bypassed it in my listing journey)

*Categories Two and One are listed from “Bottom Tier” to “Top Tier” in terms of how much I think it needs a sequel/continuation

*I almost never read the manga. These are mostly speculations/me spoiling the series for myself by reading the last chapter of the manga after finishing the anime.

*The bottom half of category three really rips my soul out when people say that there’s no chance of another season.

Category One: Anime That Supposedly Deserve Another Season

Aoharu x Machinegun

The manga is still on-going, but I wasn’t interested enough to really pay any mind. It would benefit from another season due to it ending on a point that made sense, but you could tell there was way more behind the curtain.

Btooom

Remember when they joked about this gross anime getting another season? Hahaha! There’s a story behind it, apparently. Anyway, it leaves off unfinished, but I don’t need any more of whatever this show was. This show is garbage, questionable garbage at that.

Ao Haru Ride

This anime made me kinda bored. The characters were kind of bland. The world was kind of bland. This anime left as much of an impression on me as white-coloured pencils did in grade school. I’m sure it’d benefit from another season, but whether that’d actually make me like the series is another question.

Code: Breaker

This series was pretty bad. I enjoyed it at the time, but it was pretty bad. I don’t recommend this show to anyone. It technically has a ton of manga material left (I think it was a 100+ chapters?)

Classroom of the Elite

I actually strongly disliked this show and wanted it to be over, but people said it got good. I stuck it out. I didn’t like any of the characters. I couldn’t find a reason to enjoy this show, and maybe it’d benefit by having some more story content to it, but if you can’t make me enjoy any of the cast after 12 episodes, you’re not getting any more of my time.

No Game No Life

Admit it, 90% of the people who want another season of this just want to see more fanservice.

Category Two: Anime That Can Get Another Season

Kyoukai no Rinne

This series is very repetitive. I’m surprised it survived three seasons. I still really liked it, but it is counted as one of Takahashi’s weakest works (not sure why though). I would mind seeing it receiving the rest of its adaptation.

Hai to Gensou no Grimgar

While it ended well, it probably has a lot more story to tell. This is an earlier isekai, and it’s hard to say whether it’d do better in today’s isekai market. This anime is what Sword Art Online should’ve been. This show takes it slow. Its action isn’t as over-the-top, and while it has fanservice, the show still feels far more real than SAO markets itself to be (but it does it on purpose)

Hinamatsuri

This anime made me laugh too hard for me not to want a continuation. They also had a character they didn’t have time to touch base on.

Runway de Waratte

There’s quite a lot of manga material to go on. I feel like we haven’t seen the characters develop to their max, and the protagonist hasn’t even gotten his full shot yet. This anime is an underdog, no matter how you look at it, it’s a shounen series about runway fashion, but I’m rooting for it!

Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo

I hear the manga goes downhill, and honestly, you could’ve just let it end right where season one ended, and I would’ve gone, “Wow, that was pretty good!” It did come back and “overstay its welcome” according to manga readers, but those final chapters make up for that.

Gakkougurashi

I respect the way that this anime decided to end, but there’s a lot of potential to take it elsewhere. It has a lot of material too. I feel like not a lot of the backstories of even the main cast were revealed.

Category Three: Anime That Need Another Season

Kimi to Boku

I had a hard time determining which category this anime should go under, but I think this category fits it best. The manga does pause sometimes. There are a lot of loose ends romance-wise, but it could’ve easily gone into the previous category.

D-Frag

This is a romance anime that didn’t really get to any of its romance. It hinted, it tried, but it stuck to the comedy route (which I respect). However, there is a lot of potential if this anime ever did want to return.

Hataraku Maou-Sama

This series really needs a season two. It was an isekai before its time, and it has a lot of comedy that made me laugh. There are romance ends that are left up, and the underlying background plot went virtually nowhere. It ended, and it makes the audience go, “That was good and enjoyable”, but it leaves nothing else.

Mob Psycho 100

I’m pretty sure this anime will get another season, but it will take some time. This series does have the popularity, and since it was quite recent, I think it’s just a matter of time. Studio Bones is far too thirsty to leave their man alone. Let’s be real.

Ranma ½

I think what bothers me the most about this one is the fact that they had the right number of episodes to finish the series, but because the manga was still publishing at the time, they had to use a lot of filler which ultimately took away from a lot of the series. The Ranma manga ending had about as closed of an ending that you can have for a series like Ranma. There are some arcs in there that I think would boost the story after a lot of those OVAs left an unsatisfied taste in people’s mouths. I didn’t even bother watching those.

Nisekoi

I’m not sure if I would want an adaptation if it were to happen because I don’t like the ending anyway. There is material there though if they wanted to, and I do think it’s a bit annoying if you focus so heavily on romance and harem then just don’t end it conclusively.

Grand Blue

According to someone I know, the manga gets good. This anime was really funny during some of the parts, so I really wouldn’t mind a continuation.

Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun

This manga actually did end, and I feel like it’s really missing out by not finishing itself. Shoujo manga and other romance manga do rely on having the characters graduate, get together, etc. Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun didn’t get that chance, and since the manga has a more conclusive ending, I think the anime should too.

Tsurezure Children

This anime focuses on everything so ends up with little progression in the long run. A lot of this is puppy love, but we never really move beyond that stage with the countless couples. I think this anime would greatly benefit with a continuation because it got so little done than series that focused on one couple. Focusing on multiple couples is part of this series’ charms though.

Yuri on Ice

I personally don’t feel a strong need for a season two, but I’m sure a lot of people would enjoy it because it has a large audience that are attached to these characters. They weren’t at their final stage yet.

Edit: They just announced a continuation called “Yuri!!! on Ice The Movie: Ice Adolescence”

Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun

The manga just hit a really pivotal point at the time that I’m writing this post, but the manga usually publishes monthly leaving it little room for successive seasons. Regardless, I feel that the series has more than enough popularity to carry it, and despite some of the real big corners that were cut during the making of the first season, people are still invested. I actually read the manga and can say that it has enough material for a second season.

Wotakoi

I actually read the manga for this series sometimes, and let me tell you, this series REALLY SHOULD GET a continuation. Sure, it’s sweet that you know who ends up with who, but this series is about “mature romance” (i.e. beyond high school). 12 episodes isn’t enough for this series. There’s so much awesome stuff that’s happened and is happening in the manga. 

Deadman Wonderland

This anime isn’t great by any means. It’s a gore fest. However, a lot of its plot holes and questions could’ve been answered if it went further in its source material. I’m not sure how much it would’ve made it make sense, but this anime is one of the ones here that really suffered from their lack of time to adapt the manga. Without some of the explanations, this series may little sense. I don’t really want another season simply because I didn’t really enjoy this anime, but I think I put it up here just because of how much it would benefit from a continuation. 

Ouran High School Host Club

Legend has it that every April Fool’s Day, someone goes on Twitter and announces season two. As much as we’d want that, Studio Bones is busy doing something to do with Bungou Stray Dogs or My Hero Academia. I already had to debunk a fake Ouran Season Two post for someone on Discord. I didn’t really enjoy the romance in Ouran (stayed for the comedy), so it would probably benefit from a continuation, even if it is a reboot. I mostly put this one here because of how much fans want it. Personally, I’d still be able to rest in peace either way. Regardless, it woudl still benefit immensely if they were to continue what they started.

Kekkaishi

This anime actually left 200+ chapters of manga untouched when it was adapting. I’m not sure of timelines and whether it was because of the manga publishing at the time that the anime was airing. Now that it’s a finished series in terms of manga, it can always get a reboot. It’s definitely worth it since it just finished on one arc.

Akatsuki no Yona

To me, Akatsuki no Yona was okay, but it could’ve been great... if they didn’t end on literally what the entire series was building up to. As a result of that, the anime really feels like a long manga advertisement going, “Wow, you sure are stupid for not reading the manga like the rest of us nerds!” The only reason why this series isn’t even higher on the list is because the other series did a better job cementing itself into a place in my heart. Akatsuki no Yona could’ve done that if they were given enough time, but alas, this series really suffers from a lack of anime adaptation.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

It is such a shame that this anime doesn’t have another season. The OVAs are great, but if this had another season or two, they would be legendary. The voice actors really added to the comedy (the manga is still funny, but it’s didn’t make me laugh as much as the anime). The quirky soundtrack really adds to the atmosphere, and there’s so much development that’s gone down since its first season run. I really, really, really want another season. But this anime can be enjoyed even if it doesn’t.

Gin no Saji

This anime is incredibly enjoyable even if it doesn’t have a third season, but with the manga tying up all the loose ends with Hiromu Arakawa’s incredible storytelling, I find it really disappointing that they couldn’t get another season for this. Its characters were so likeable. I watched this anime with my mom who keeps nattering about a season three. If only such a thing were to exist.

Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic

As with a lot of shounen anime, this ended on one arc. However, this still had well over 100+ chapters that could’ve been adapted in series to come. The seiyuu events were hilarious, and this anime really hit its stride, but it left us all hanging. Now that the manga’s finished, I feel that it would be really great if we were to get another season. There were some arcs that I read that were so good. This was the first anime I watched, and it always holds a special place in my soul. I do hear the manga goes downhill majorly towards the end, but I’m sure that even that stuff would still be watched by people like me (heck, people waited for Black Clover to get good, come on!)

This also includes the Sinbad spinoff that felt more like a trailer rather than a full series. It wasn’t given nearly enough time.

Noragami

Noragami is extremely popular, and I think one of the reasons that it didn’t get the rest adapted is because the manga went on hiatus for about a year. However, I feel that it still had more than enough material to make some more way. Studio Bones is still busy with Bungou Stray Dogs and My Hero Academia, but Noragami would benefit by cleaning up some of the cliffhangers left behind. The future arcs are also really good, so the source material at least maintains some quality.

SKET Dance

I finished this series (both anime and manga) a couple of days ago, and I want to write a post about it. It was so good. It made me read 100 chapters in two days or something. But if this were to get adapted, this would give the series a MAJOR CHANCE to fix up the ending. Unfortunately, the manga ending disappointed a lot of people (including me), so being able to maybe just give the people what they want (I don’t care if it’s cheesy). They left a good chunk of great, hilarious, and touching arcs that would be able to keep toe-to-toe with the fantastic series they’ve done up to this point. I think it might’ve stopped due to the anime catching up, but come on, I just want this anime to get equal treatment to Gintama!!! It gets compared so often anyway!!! Series like these make me think, “If I was Jeff Bezos, I would just throw my money into making another season of this.” The seiyuu of this anime made the lines so funny too. I will be thinking and talking about this series for a while. 

Anime that Deserve a Reboot

Soul Eater

They really just dropped the source material in the last half. 

No. 6

The pacing kind of sucked in comparison to other materials, apparently.

Kids on the Slope

The pacing for this also really sucked and didn’t give a conclusive ending either way.

[catflowerqueen]

Still not quite finished with Gates, but I’m nearing the finish line for the main game? I think? So I have some more structured thoughts below. 

(Apologies for the length, but... well, that’s part of why I’m putting it under the cut)

Most of the mechanics I think are an improvement on Explorers—and definitely on Rescue Team, since Explorers introduced a lot of improvements (like the way healing items are handled—in Rescue team you had to throw them at your allies, and only the hero could eat them directly from the bag). I like how Gates handles experience for allies left at home, and the way that you can level up individual moves and share them among everyone rather than using a ginseng on a single move for a single pokemon (that I don’t think retains that level up if you forget it but then go and remember it again? I can’t recall that part), and some of the team skills are useful… but the problem is that they are really luck-based in terms of actually acquiring them. I’ve only gotten two so far. Comparatively, IQ skills were very much based on the individual, but also a lot easier to get, allowing for a sort of customization aspect? It allowed more care and a better sense of victory, at least.

The V-wave thing is pretty cool, though, especially when paired with how exp works, even as annoying as I find Victini.

Getting rid of the hunger mechanic is I think positive overall? It does free up some inventory space, which is nice, but it also removes a bit of the puzzle and challenge for some of the longer dungeons—and I can’t help but wonder if the reason they did so is just because of how many dungeon layouts in Gates were comprised of many, many sprawling hallways with tons of intersections and small, unnecessary turns and corners, but only, like, three rooms—meaning that everyone would starve to death if the hunger system was involved. I know Explorers had some of those, too, but those were mainly for later stage dungeons, where bigger challenges were expected. It also makes a lot of the dungeons… really boring and repetitive? Like, the graphics are great, but there isn’t really too much variety of the non-plot dungeons beyond differences in color schemes? And while the puzzles involved are excellent, there aren’t really a lot of them, and so far Inflora Forest is the only one where the puzzle is still relevant after making it through the first time—the other ones seem to keep the bridges and stairs you make the first time around, leaving those sections rather superfluous.

And while I like how Companion mode lets me have more of a casual sort of playstyle, and I can build up Paradise and do mini-games without interference from the plot… It kind of makes Post Town really unnecessary beyond specified plot scenes? Like… I don’t have to wait to open any Treasure boxes. Once a dungeon ends I get instant gratification of finding out what’s in them (assuming I have enough money). Same thing with the gold bars. And since Quagsire operates as a shop as well, there is really no need for Kecleon (in Post Town—the ones in the dungeon are still extremely useful) beyond maybe him having some rarer items on occasion—but even then, getting certain shops in Paradise also makes him even more redundant.

 (Though, speaking of Paradise shops: Elite boutique—not worth it. Maybe if all shops operated that way—were only around for a specific period of time before inevitably closing—it would be less grating… but there was no warning that that shop would only be run for a few days before closing forever, in addition to the fact that I have to watch Gurdurr’s sad face and laments about destroying the place [after a big part of his backstory involved someone deliberately destroying his work, mind you!] when they could have easily solved it as running more like the travelling salesmon in post town—you never know who or when someone will show up, or how long they’ll stay, but the possibility is at least there that someone will show up again.)

I also don’t like how you can’t stack missions—it really takes the emphasis off of the actual “exploring dungeons” part of the game, and puts it more on trying to build up Paradise. Which is fine, but it just doesn’t feel like traditional gameplay for a PMD game, you know?

As far as characterizations goes… It’s honestly kind of a mixed bag for me in comparison with some of the other games? Like… I do think that, overall, your immediate team and allies had better characterization visible in story, following the plot. As in, they came right out and showed you in the cutscenes, and didn’t depend on you going and talking to them individually in town, reading their diaries, and playing special episodes. I don’t think that the partner is the absolute best-characterized one writing-wise, but they were very, very well-done and do show good growth throughout (Rescue Team is the worst, mostly because of how bland they actually are—especially in the Post Game, where they are completely optional, and no longer follow you around or really talk to you at all like an individual character, rather than just another pokemon you recruit from dungeons [and on that note—I’m kind of sad that Gates got rid of the feature that actually let you talk to your team in the dungeons themselves. Sure, most of what got said was the same ten or so bland lines for everyone, but… I still liked having that option to just turn around and discuss things, especially since at some points it was unique based on where in the plot you were!)

But at the same time… that does take a little mystery out of it? Like… it makes your own (the actual, physical player’s) relationship with them a bit… less rewarding? You aren’t actually working at forming them, this way, the way you would be if you were exploring the town, happened across someone from the guild, and then decided to talk with them. That way, learning all these cool little hints and quirks was almost like a puzzle itself, something you had to work for, something that really embraced the idea of exploring and immersion.

Which is also kind of why I’m of two minds about the fact that the hero does actually have scripted lines, beyond just their thoughts and the little “running motion” indicative of things being said, but not actually described. There aren’t as many dialogue trees, you don’t really get to make that many choices, and the lack of space left up to the imagination… well, it doesn’t make me resonate with the hero as much as in other cases? I don’t really feel like they’re “me,” or could be “me,” so while they do feel in-character for the “character” of the hero… it just doesn’t feel like I’m actually the hero. It doesn’t leave space for that option the way that the other games do.

As for other characters… honestly, it’s kind of hit and miss for them as far as characterization goes, and I think a lot of that has to do with my earlier remarks about how unnecessary Post Town feels most of the time. I feel like they were really over-ambitious with their ensemble cast? Because, sure, some of them like Leaveanny, Swadloon, Lillipup, and Herdier I thought were well done… most of the others were rather forgettable? There were some travelers like Trubbish, Mienfoo and Dwebble that I really like, but I think that most of the others just don’t get enough characterization. Sure, it’s nice that a lot of them care about the player and greet them as their own individual, clearly trying to convey that relationships are being formed… but I just don’t care that much for the town as a whole? The others don’t really grab me, or add that much to the plot at all? Especially since half the time bigger plot discussions only really happen with the group in Paradise?

Like… Explorers had a lot of people, but the fact that they did travel in and out of town, and would sometimes go missing for days, but clearly had their own little stories and plots they were following was really interesting! Same with Rescue Team—the Pokémon Square was small, but it actually felt like a lived-in town? And I’m pretty sure the main towns of PSMD that you were actually using as a hub had that too—Serene Village definitely did. But Gates… I just don’t really see it. They were too ambitious, and they fell flat. I feel like maybe they could have fixed this if you were allowed to visit it in Companion Mode, too—or if they just didn’t let you visit any non-Paradise shops and only allowed Quagsire to edit your party—or if they shrunk it down so that the only thing there was Swanna’s place and the hill, and had the individual characters visit on a basis similar to Explorers, but… yeah.

As far as plot/story goes… well, some of that is hard to determine, just because of how much is involved in a good story. Characterization, like I said, is fine overall, but the story does seem really… low stakes? For the most part? Especially when compared to Rescue Team or Explorers. I think it has good progression over all—especially when compared to the mess that was PSMD!—but there isn’t quite as much of an overall… driving force? I think?

Like… okay, I know I’ve said before that it is a little weird that the hero in Explorers—and I guess also in Rescue Team—spends so much time focusing on other stuff rather than figuring out exactly what happened to them, why they turned into a pokemon, why they have amnesia, etc. (especially since that is part of their stated reason for joining the Guild in Explorers), but in all fairness… what else are they really supposed to do? They have amnesia, they have no clues as to a starting place to even look, it makes sense that they would want and need a safe place and routine figured out so that they can even start looking. And there are some hints pretty early on about their backstory/the state of the world (in dreams and dimensional screams). But the Gates hero… well they actually do have something of a starting place, and they have far more reason to really care about figuring all that out. For one thing, they do not have amnesia. The game makes that pretty clear, and the partner even makes comments on that—asking about friends and family, etc.

So why aren’t they making more of an effort to figure out how to get back home so they can actually reunite with those loved ones?? Or at least commenting on why they might not be concerned about that?? And since the hero doesn’t have amnesia, they also clearly remember the fact that they were called to the pokemon world specifically because someone was asking them for help—and they had a visual description of who they assumed that someone to be. They have a starting point. Why are they not asking around about that?? Why did they wait for more dreams to happen first? And, while it did get brough up in game a little bit, with them commenting on how maybe it wasn’t the greatest idea for them to be taking one of the spots on that initial Great Glacier Expedition because they do, actually, have some responsibility they’re supposed to fulfill, and they don’t know if they’ll have more dreams on the way… they still go on that expedition! Without bringing any of that up verbally, or to the partner who has by that point already agreed that they will go with the hero to save that pokemon as soon as their dreams clear up more.

But… like… they shouldn’t just be being so passive about this??? There are things they could all be doing to prepare! And maybe that is getting into some different facets of the partner’s personality, and showing how really dependent they are on the player—like, having their reluctance to do more be because of how much they really don’t want them to leave after (which does get brought up a little bit)… but I don’t think that’s quite what the game was going for—and if it was, then that needed to be made clearer.

So I guess over all… I think that Explorers is a better game to play if you do want something more story/plot driven, and want to, well, explore things a bit, while Gates is better for a more casual sort of play. Like… the actual plot almost seems like the side story or Special Episode in the face of building up Paradise.

Though, that probably does say more about an individual’s playstyle over the game itself, huh?

I guess… if you’re more into direct characterization via cutscenes, Gates is better (though there are times I wish it showed more of the visuals—like for some of the party scenes, or the housebuilding scene). But if you want a more integrated plot, Explorers is better—or Rescue Team, but it doesn’t have as good of a post-game).

And PSMD… well, I still stand by my earlier statements that I think the first part of the game was great, and the partner was the best-explored/characterized of them all… but it quickly lost plot cohesion and most of the adult characters are terrible people who should not be allowed around children—and the player character really got screwed over by basically everyone and never got closure for any it.

(Also, I can’t actually say anything about DX, since I don’t have a Switch, but from what I’ve seen it’s basically just Rescue Team with some improvements to gameplay mechanics? The story seemed to be pretty much the same from what little I saw.

Oh, and also Ekans’ sprite looks very, very weird.)

...I think that’s everything I had to say for now.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Other Kinds of Writing than “Pantsing” improvisation or “plotting” Outlining

So, usually people set up a false binary, because why not Europe the world and make everything a binary... so I’ll give other options of how Writers write. (From my vast reading of author notes and interviews and pros and cons of each...) ‘cause whatever you are doing might not be working the best for you, so why not try other ways?

How the Story is written

Improvisation

This means just start somewhere and let your subconscious take over the plot. The downside is if the readers figure this out (which there are markers for it), then they can guess ahead of you by figuring out the best gut punch for the time. The markers for it--though people don’t believe me... are excessive set up at the beginning of scenes, larger plot holes and repetition of plot points which were not caught during editing. I can tell you wrote the story this way when you keep trying to remind yourself of previous plot points in the text. Slash those when you edit. Look specifically for plot holes because your subconscious is likely to change their mind about certain things and you need to track them separately. Famously, Jack Kerouac was known to do everything on impulse and thought it was the highest form of writing. He didn’t want a single word edited. Advantages: Being impulsive can lead to some crazy ideas which can feel new. This is particularly good for character impulsive decisions. Or characters who go by their gut. The characters also tend to be a lot more willful, but it also means you need to keep them occupied with interesting events. Suspense and Thriller tend to benefit for such writing. Writing is fast, editing is slow.

Disadvantages: OMG, the editing is a nightmare. You have to write down every plot point on a separate piece of paper and then make sure you didn’t screw it up. It’s terrible for High Concept plots and where things have to come together neatly in a certain order to make sense. (Which is why Agatha Christie didn’t use it for And There Was None and it tortured her for a year since she was used to improvising everything. She explicitly said she’d write it like everyone did it and then drop the final clues to make it click at the end, which is a sign of an improviser or at most a milestone type.)

(Strict) Outlining (Separate sheet of paper)

Means you write down the plot points one by one. Sometimes writers use a spreadsheet so they can visually see what is happening at the same time. She whose name shall not be spoken, does it this way.

Sometimes it’s just a list of bullet points. The markers for it: It tends to be much neater in plotting. Things interlock neatly. If you have a large complex plot, this is one of the ways to do it. The markers for this are more spotting the way the plot comes together and also often unfortunately marked by flat characters because the event chain was thought of without the characters.

Tolkien from everything I’ve read of the man, mostly outlined his stories. I have a flagging suspicion on one story--which is my favorite, which is a bit more impulse-written because it’s much more introspective and philosophical--two things that don’t do well with outlining. Most epics, for this reason in the modern sense are done with outlines. Some, but not all mysteries are outlined.

Advantages: Having a large interlocking plot suddenly come together can be satisfying. All those desperate parts seem like it’s great. The events come back together. Less editing is always good.

Disadvantages: Flat token characters who don’t have to be there and have cursory agency merely to move the plot along. For Newbies, the plot twists aren’t that interesting and don’t interweave properly with the character’s set ups or choices. The events, then, feel like what the writer wanted to happen, rather than what would have naturally happened. (You can fix this, though, by thinking through the character and how they change and be willing to rework your outline every time the character makes a different choice than expected--don’t fall in love with the event chain--fall in love with the character agency to make change.)

Also, if you screw up one event because of lack of research, it can send your entire book into a tailspin since the point of outlining is to neatly get everything to come together.

Don’t forget to put in some “God events” on purpose. You can throw people off and make them guess it wasn’t heavily plotted by putting a few seemingly random events at the beginning that click or are red herrings which lead to dead ends.

Versioning

NK Jemisin did this... It combines a bit of the outlining with improvisation, but it tries different versions of the same events. I have a suspicion that Patrick Rothfuss also does a bit of this with his claim he also outlines... but I’m not 100% sure on that. This might explain why the books take so long to write. (Versioning and outlining don’t marry too well for speed. If you’re backing up, and then having to rework the outline based on backing up, that’s a total slow down every time.) Markers: There are very few markers. Sometimes people may spot dead end plots, but if you did a good job editing, you took those out.

Advantages: If you edit well, then no one will notice the difference. And you are 100% sure this is the best sequence of events for this character. Also helps when the character is extra bit willful for reasons you can’t crack.

Disadvantages: Time--it takes so much more time to edit the draft. Plus there are versions you have to, by nature of the project throw out no one will get to see. (Wasted paper and energy). Plus it’s super hard to edit because you have to choose which of the many paths you will take and justify it to yourself before making final drafts. How do you know you’re not doing it because you’re enamored of the idea, but it’s not the best version after all? Bad for indecision.

One sentence at a time

Chuck Palahniuk does this. One sentence, perfects it, then moves to the next.

Advantages: You are sure that sentence is perfect and therefore, the whole book doesn’t need editing by the end of it.

Disadvantages: The amount of time it takes to write the book is slow. The wording might also feel pretentious or overworked.

Milestones

I used to play this game called “Mille Bornes” which means milestone. A milestone in a person’s like are things like they were born, married, died, had children, etc. So the idea of this is that you set out things that the character has to hit in order to get to the next set of events. In order for cause A, they need to hit this event first. Because the outline is looser, it still allows them to act within the framework with agency. Also because it’s not a huge outline one has to rework every time, it allows the writer to bounce around more because they already know what their character is going to do to react to said event.

Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey all said they used this method. Markers: The plot doesn’t always have that neat clicking sound feel to it. But the character seems to hit important events in regular well-paced order despite that. You can trick the reader by spacing the events and word count for those events differently. Usually these people pick out the ending ahead of time to make sure it doesn’t wander too much. But the ending can also feel a bit flat if one isn’t careful. If you don’t trim your events, side plots can overtake your story where there is no meaning to the overarching plot. Slash those. Newbies who use this method often end up deviating hard from the main point and that’s how one catches them.

Advantages: Takes the advantages of outlining and makes it looser. Takes the advantages of Improvising and gives it structure. Disadvantages: Editing still is a chore. Pacing might also be harder if you aren’t able to predict word count well. People can get too married to their event structure without regard to how the character has changed. They can box the character in. For the reader it feels half directed, and half not. It’s a bit harder to predict, but if you run out of event chains, and the reader guesses your tastes, they will be able to plot the entire book ahead of you and then you’re dead in the water. So plot against your preferences and towards your preferences too. Flat characters for this method are your worst enemy. The events you don’t find exciting, you might skimp out on. Make sure to rework the “boring” events. And cut as many side plots as you possibly can.

Order the story is written:

Linear Forwards- Plot from beginning, start there until you get to the end. Most writers tend to rely on this method and can’t think otherwise. Mercedes Lackey in her notes, beyond making notes about scenes she’d like to include, Anne McCaffrey, Agatha Christie (from how she said she writes), Sir Conan Doyle (Who, BTW, outlined a fair bit, though not completely--you can feel a bit of his impulsiveness peak through), Jane Austen (from reports of her manuscripts etc) and the bulk to writers stick to this method.

Linear Backwards- Know the ending you need and figure out the events that led there--mysteries do this a fair bit. Also some Japanese authors play with this quite a bit.

Skip around- Usually better for thematic or tone plotting. Or High concept. When you want a certain feel for the book, sometimes it’s better to choose on themes and events, write them quickly, then edit. Editing is a pain when done this way because places and seasons can shift by accident. Watch for plot holes. Diana Gabaldon skips around by using a bit of research and then making a scene out of it, and then stringing it together later.

Mixed- Bounce around between the methods... super messy. Lots of editing. And also sometimes lots of skimping on the “boring” bits, which isn’t a good idea.

Try ALL of them in different types and orders. Find which one suits you best and which one you struggle the most with. Get good at the one you like, then try to defeat them all and find out how people react to the story being written that way and what you need to delete and edit per way you wrote it. If there are more ways people write books... then try those methods too.

[just-jordie-things]

your writing is so so good do u have any tips? hope u have a great day! ^^

i’ve never been asked this before! i had to think about it!

a biggie take your time finding your style- as you can see on my masterlist i have a looot of shit on there from years of writing fanfic and experimenting. getting out of my comfort zone can be kinda hard for me personally, but with writing it was so worth it bc you can really see a metamorphosis there of when i was writing just to write and when i was writing with a drive.

don’t be afraid to ignore the rules of grammar. run on sentences are beautiful. i’ve found that especially so when the plot is driven by someone’s stream of consciousness as though they’re narrating it. thoughts are messy, they’re long and sometimes awkward and there’s no such thing as grammar in your mind !! of course spelling and punctuation are important and i’d recommend editing tho (idk her 😳) but get creative with it!!

thesaurus.com is my bestie 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 i often find myself using a lot of the same words and i don’t want to bore readers with repetitiveness! and also it’s just an easy way to expand my vocabulary too. (in person i stammer and have the reach of a fourth grader lmfao so i always want my writing to be concise and make the reader feel exactly what i want them to with my language)

also something i’ve started doing recently !! when i’m away from my wip and daydream about it, i write it down right away! in my notes app or on sticky notes or even my hand hehe. sure if it’s a significant enough plot point i’ll probably remember… but there’s no time like the present!! i want A to look at B a little differently in that one quick scene? i want to make them eat something different for foreshadowing? little details like that can be huge in your writing !! something a reader might gloss over but then realize later it was all a part of a greater scheme?? yes. so take note of those thoughts and daydreams you have !! even if you don’t end up adding it to your work, it’s better than having a profound, fic changing idea that you forget before you get the chance to write it!

this one is simple but a biggie- think about what you would want to read. i’ve been trying to keep this in mind as of late, especially when writing longer pieces where i want to make y’all suffer. find new ways to build the tension in your plot. give us different points of view, give us an untrustworthy narrator that thinks they’ve got it all figured out. throw in extra conflict. fanfiction is the melting pot of whatever the fuck you want !! so go stupid go crazy and make it something you love, and you should be good to go!! not to be cheesy but as long as you love it then you’re solid. doing something you love over and over will naturally lead you through growth and finding your style. don’t be wrapped up in notes right away (yes it can be a bit of an issue on this app- but none of has have control over how people enjoy your work- so you might as well focus on enjoying it for yourself) because as long as you’re doing something you’re passionate about and sharing it with us, more people will soon flock to enjoy it with you <3

lastly i just enjoy making mini playlists for whatever i’m currently working on. they don’t have to correlate completely with your plot. sometimes the sound of a beat is good enough for me to throw it on. if it gets me excited and planning out scenes i haven’t gotten to yet then it’s good enough for me!! i will listen to the same song on repeat in the name of ✨vibes✨ even if the words themselves have nothing to do with the plot i’m writing. that’s probably lazy basic advice but it works well for me and i love listening to music so !!

i hope this helps, and i wish you all kinds of luck as you explore this hobby for yourself !! it can be so freeing to get lost in your own work, and tbh sometimes i feel a little cringe about writing fanfiction but… i just adore it. it’s my favorite thing to do and when i think like that i stomp it down bc i’m proud of my work! i’m proud of how far i’ve come and i’m eager to see what i can push myself towards next!!!

happy writing, happy reading, and if you ever need more help i’m happy to do the best i can for ya! this goes for anyone, please always feel free to reach out even if you just want to talk brainrot. making friends thru this hobby is amazing bc like-interests are 💞🩷

xoxo ~ jordie

[writingquestionsanswered]

What to feel when a friend with who you shared your writing rewrites what you sent in their style, as if fixing what's wrong with your writing, and then send it back to you like that saying you can replace your writing with theirs? I feel like someone slapped me backhanded and lost all my motivation. It felt like they were showing how much better they are, how much I suck, and I don't know what to do. I would have preferred an outright critic that at least told me more than all my writing is bad

Guide: Negative Feedback

I’m going to answer your question, but I want to take this opportunity to do a little guide on negative feedback and what to do with it.

Negative Feedback Doesn’t Mean Your Writing is Bad

I want to start here, because this is a common misconception among newer writers–that only positive feedback is good and negative feedback means you’ve failed, and that’s just simply not true. Negative feedback is an important part of the feedback process. In fact, it’s the most important part of the feedback process, because while it’s nice to hear that your description is good and your characters are strong, you can’t do anything with that. You can’t make your story better with that feedback, and that’s the whole point of seeking feedback in the first place–to learn what people like and don’t like so you can make your story better.

Even the Best Authors Get Negative Feedback

There’s no such thing as a story that everyone loves. It’s not possible to please everyone. So even the best, most highly acclaimed authors receive negative feedback. These are actual snippets of one-star reviews on Amazon:

Emma by Jane Austen

“I don’t like Jane’s writing.”

“This story was quite boring to me.”

“There was no plot.”

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“It’s an awful and depressing story with no redeeming qualities.”

“Why is this a classic?”

“Waste of time. Predictable and boring.”

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

“This is a tedious and repetitive read.”“Simple, silly story with forgettable characters.”“Doesn’t even deserve one star.”

So, Don’t Take Negative Feedback to Heart

Any type of feedback is just one person’s opinion, and just because they have that opinion doesn’t mean they’re right. And opinion can be affected by everything from personal tastes and experiences, to personality and mood. That’s why it’s so important not to take it personally or let it destroy your motivation.

What to Discard and What to Take Seriously

First and foremost, the weight of any bit of feedback should depend on how many people you’re getting feedback from. If you only have two people giving you feedback and one person tells you, “the main character is annoying,” that’s 50% of your audience at that point. Which is why it’s super helpful to get feedback from as many people as possible. But, also, if you have at total of ten beta readers and three people think your main character is boring, that’s only 30%, so you probably don’t need to worry about it too much. The majority didn’t seem to have that problem. I personally tend to disregard any feedback not shared by at least 30% of the people giving me feedback.

And, just because one person says, “I think your protagonist is an unlikable jerk,” doesn’t mean anyone else would feel that way. Again, that’s why it’s important to weigh that opinion against what others say. If most of your other readers seemed to like the protagonist, you probably don’t need to worry.

When multiple people have the same complaint, however, it’s definitely worth taking seriously and finding a way to fix the issue.

Unspecified Feedback Sucks–Its Ok to Ask for Clarification!

If a bit of feedback really gets under your skin, whether it’s from one person or several, but it’s really broad or completely unspecified, like “I hated some of your characters!” or “I hated all of your characters!” PLEASE know that it’s okay to ask for clarification. You obviously don’t want to needle your beta readers with questions, but if something they said really strikes you as important but you’re not sure what they mean or what they’re specifically referring to, just ask.

Also, when inviting people to give you feedback, whether an alpha reader, critique partner, or beta readers, it’s often helpful to let them know what you’re looking for in feedback, including asking them to be specific.

When You Get a Rewrite Instead of Feedback

It’s one thing when someone offers a rewording of a particularly tricky sentence or paragraph–I’ve had people do that for me occasionally and have done it for others–but when someone does this habitually and ends up rewriting huge chunks of your story, that’s just not okay. That’s not what you were asking for, and it’s important for you to know the problem lies with them, not you. First and foremost, just discard that crap. This is your story, not theirs. If they want to write a story, they’re welcome to, but they shouldn’t try to commandeer your work.

But also, take their beta experience into account, because it’s possible they just haven’t beta read before or haven’t done it a lot and genuinely didn’t know what else to do. This is another reason why it’s helpful to let people know what you expect from them when inviting them to give you feedback. Sometimes people just don’t know what you’re looking for, so they do something totally unexpected like rewrite half your story. And there are also people who confuse beta reading with editing, though even editors shouldn’t be completely rewriting your story like that.

You may decide to not work with that particular person again. Or, if you do, next time you invite them to give you feedback, just say something like, “I’m just looking for overall impressions and general feedback, not any sort of editing or revision. Thanks!”

No matter what, just don’t take that kind of thing to heart. Because I could hand twenty people the first chapter of any critically acclaimed book and they could all find ways to put their own spin on it. That isn’t a statement about the writer. It’s just a testament to the versatility of storytelling. No sweat! It doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer. :) <3

————————————————————————————————-Have a question? My inbox is always open, but make sure to check through my FAQ and post master lists first to see if I’ve already answered a similar question. :)

[darkpoisonouslove]

I retaliate/reward you with writer asks 2, 3, 4, 12, 22, 24, 36, 37, 39 and 42 ;D

Sounds good to me. XD

Okay, let's break these down. (I've crammed things that should be separated in different paragraphs in the same paragraph because of the structure of the ask. I just think it is easier to navigate it that way even if more paragraphs would make more sense. That way every opinion is constricted in one paragraph and you can tell which point it refers to easier. (At least imo.))

(I can't put a read more link rn as I'm on mobile. Sorry.)

2. Don't use adverbs

I cannot begin to describe to you how much I LOATHE this. It is, by far, some of the stupidest writing advice I have ever read. No, I don't care Stephen King supports this. Stephen King writes mostly horror and in horror you need to maintain suspense so short and to the point is definitely better and cutting adverbs is certainly a way to do that. However, I don't think this applies to all writing. I think this isn't really a genre thing as much as it is a specific case by case thing. And in most instances I think this advice is bullshit. Think about it. Language was created to allow us to express ourselves. Cut all adverbs out of it and that narrows down your way to express yourself. It's kinda like "Oh, hey, my leading hand serves more purpose. I should probably cut off the other one because it's not that effective." Congrats, you just crippled yourself. It's the same with language. Why would you deny yourself the help of an entire group of "tools" to express yourself? I just don't understand it. I suppose you've seen the posts going around about "good" and "bad" adverbs so I won't go into that as I agree that an adverb is a good idea when it adds some meaning to the word that wasn't there before (eg. "cried happily"). Sometimes it can actually make things faster to just "tell" them rather than show them through the context. I think adverbs are as neat as any other part of language and deserve their place in writing.

3. Write what you know

Yes, you should know what the hell you're writing about. Whether it was something that you were familiar with before you started writing or you did your research on the matter. I might be a little biased on this because I kinda hate doing research so I can be swayed towards write only what you are completely familiar with but that would just make things boring. So I think you can write about stuff that isn't quite your area of expertise as long as you put the effort to research it to the proper level depending on what you need it for. If it's more of a mention, you don't need that much knowledge about it but if you intend to make it the subject of your writing, please make sure you understand what you're going to be talking about in the entirety of your story. I am begging you because when you don't, we end up with stuff like 50 Shades of Grey (and I'm not just talking about the sex parts since this book is full of poorly researched stuff that, shockingly, ends up being unbelievable at best, potentially harmful at worst). However, I think that applies to a greater degree to published fiction rather than to fanfiction but let's not get into that debate since it's a completely different topic and I already veered off course.

4. Avoid repetition

This I mostly agree with but it depends on the purpose of the repetition. If it is done in order to establish a theme or motif or to emphasize a point (without overdoing it, of course), I fully support it. (I do that a lot in my personal writing and it shouldn't be that hard to find examples of it when looking at my fics ("What Is the One Thing That Can Never Break?" is the best example of this but I have done it countless times in most of my fics if not all of them since this is one of my fave techniques).) However, there is a thin line between establishing a theme and making dead herrings aka something that is brought up repeatedly without any point to it other than boosting the word count since it doesn't lead to anything and it was already discussed at a prior point (which I might have done a few times myself in some of my longest fics). If you're bringing another angle to an issue you've already looked at or are furthering the point, you should be fine but this is indeed a thin line to tread so it demands a bit of caution. I do believe repetition can be a valuable technique in specific circumstances, though, so it all depends on how it is used.

12 is already answered here

22. Do not use semicolons

My personal opinion on this isn't very applicable to anything else because I am not really quite sure how to properly use semicolons so I avoid them. I also don't really like them in other people's writings. I'm sure they have their uses but I think a lot of authors also overuse them to make those horrendously long sentences that I hate (but have started becoming guilty of as well even though I think that if you can't remember how the sentence started at the end of it, it is too long and needs to be split in some way). It is why I haven't bothered to learn how to operate them. XD But I think that my point about adverbs should be applied here as well. It is another tool you can use and I am sure it can be helpful. So I am not necessarily against it and wouldn't tell someone to stop using them. Only, maybe try using full stops as well? And I'll try to do the same because, like I said, I have started becoming guilty of paragraph long sentences as well. (Just to be clear, sometimes longer sentences are okay. But not when literally every sentence is over 150 words. You need to break them down, spice it up with shorter sentences thrown in the mix.) Also, I think this is an instance of the trap of "bigger is better" for a lot of writers except that here it is "longer is better". It really isn't. And I can tell you why. My scenes have started getting thousands of words long and if I were to write novel, I could hit 50k words with about ten scenes. Most novels are up to 120k words total. Those would be 24 scenes in my numbers but don't you feel like a novel will need more than 24 scenes? Consice writing is definitely a good idea and it is much harder to cut things rather than to add (at least for me). Fanfiction gives more room with the word count but I still think that it is important to be able to convey your point in as little words as possible. (Btw, this is a tangent but long sentences and semicolons appear a lot in academic writing and I hate it even more there because it makes it more incomprehensible than it needs to be (and in a lot of cases it already is written to be as incomprehensible as possible). Just... start another sentence, I am begging you. This one already is a page long, for the love of everything in the world.)

24. Don't edit as you write

A complicated one. Mostly because I have done this. I used to do it a few years back. I (mostly) don't do it anymore. I might stop to edit a typo or change a sentence that just doesn't read right but nothing bigger than that. And you should, arguably, not do that either. Why? Because you may end up deleting the entire paragraph, page, chapter and all that perfecting will have been for naught. It has happened to me when I spent a ton of time perfecting the first chapters of several of my works and some of them I will never finish while others actually need to start from a different point in time so the whole chapter needs to go. Along with all of my efforts. I would say this is mostly for longer and chaptered projects since the structure of a one shot (depending on the length) is easier to figure out and you probably won't need to rearrange parts of it. And if something is really poking your eyes out, you can fix it real quick. But once you have the whole thing, it will be easier to see what needs to stay, what needs to go and what needs to be changed. Sometimes the temptation is hard to resist and it's fine if you give in as long as you're doing it with the knowledge that "yes, this may be all for nothing but I can't look at it like that for another second". Sometimes I would say that you need to go back and see where everything derailed if you can't move on. There was good advice that if you're stuck, the problem is probably a few paragraphs before the point where you hit a wall and it has helped me get over a block a time or two. However, if you can move on without touching anything, you probably should. That can also save you from deleting something that is actually good. I have felt like the whole thing I was writing was terrible but holding back from deleting or even altering anything and, instead, giving it some time to breathe has saved a few fics along the way from being completely butchered. So I think this is, generally, good advice because of the reasons I listed but just like any other rule, it can be bent and broken. (I would say fixing typos is a form of bending it which I allow myself all the time. Spelling is just really important to me.)

36. Never use a verb other than 'said' to tag dialogue

I hate this specific phrasing of it a lot. Never start any rule with never. Of course, you need to use other verbs as well since they were created to express the wide range in which a person may speak their chosen words. My problem with this is the reason that is usually given for it and that is that it distracts the reader. It has never distracted ME. Not a single time. And while I agree that using said most of the time works since people usually speak in a calm, even, steady manner which to describe as simply "said" works well enough, I think that other dialogue tags have their places too. Because people don't always say things. Sometimes they scream them, sometimes they whisper them, sometimes they hiss them, sometimes they snap and so on. Here I think a better phrasing would be to use Syndrome's lesson again that "when everyone is super, no one will be". Dialogue tags different from said are supposed to direct your attention to the change in tone. They're supposed to stand out. If everything stands out, nothing will. (This philosophy is so applicable to so many things and I think we have to take a minute to appreciate how valuable the lesson of "The Incredibles" is.) So as with every other writing tool, if used accordingly, dialogue tags (all of them, not just "said") can only be of help and will not hinder you in any way. Just don't put more frosting on the cake than there is cake, you know?

37. Do not start a sentence with a conjunction

FUCK THIS RULE so much. This one you have to keep to only in academic writing. The moment you step through the threshold of creative writing this rule should be crushed under your soles. I often start sentences with "and" or "but" because I am looking to emphasize whether this sentence agrees with the previous one or not. Think about it. When you say "I liked him. But I didn't trust him.", it reads very different from "I liked him but I didn't trust him.". It focuses your attention on that contrast and makes you pay more attention to the objection to the first sentence that comes in the second. That can be incredibly valuable and help emphasize what you're saying in a more subtle way than repetition would. This is one of my favorite techniques of focusing the attention on where I want it to be and I will never give it up. Sue me if you want. And see if I care.

39. If there's a story you want to read but it hasn't been written yet, you must write it

Must is too strong a verb. You are not obliged to write anything. I couldn't possibly write everything I want to see written in a single lifetime. Calm down there. I think what people need to understand here is more that "if you want the story done the exact way that you would do it, you will have to do it yourself because no one else will do it the very same way". Doesn't mean that someone can't come close enough (I had that luck once) but it is unlikely that they'll do it in a way that you won't have any complaints about. So, really, "if you want something done right, do it yourself". But this can also mean "you have something fresh that the world needs because no one else has done it yet" (or at least not the same way you would do it). Which is cool but you really don't owe anyone anything. If that story is what you want to read and write (emphasis on that because writing is hard and takes a lot of energy, guys), then great! Go right ahead. But if you don't feel like doing that, you can leave it alone. Someone else might do it in time but with that we loop back to my previous point. I think that you should write whatever you want to write whether no one has written it before or it has been done hundreds and thousands of times.

42. Write your first draft by hand

Very mixed feelings here. I used to do that. The main reason for that is that I didn't trust myself to edit quite as sufficiently if I wrote it directly in a document as I would if I had to transcribe it from paper to the computer. For me personally, it is easier to change sentences when there is only blank space after that sentence since I don't have to worry whether the next sentence I have will still make sense once I'm done rewriting the current one. It was just easier to change things. A way to deal with that is to just press enter a few times before you start editing the sentence so that it looks like there is nothing after it and you're free to change it as you please. However, writing directly in a document is definitely faster and since I was having a lot of things to do in a limited time, I started doing that. It helped get over the fear of a blank page to a degree. It is faster. And I don't think I have noticed a change in the quality of my fics. Not a negative one at least. I just know that if I had had to write the 10k+-word ones by��hand before typing them on the computer, I would've lost it. It would've taken way more time and patience than I was willing to give these ideas. Writing the words by hand sometimes helps me feel them better, though, (if that makes sense) and I wouldn't completely give up on it. I like to go with my intuition when deciding whether to write it by hand or type it directly in a document and it has worked out well enough for me so far.

[shinylitwick94]

Finished “The Way of Kings”, by Brandon Sanderson, first in the Stormlight Archive.

I liked it, but the things that annoy me about the way Sanderson writes didn’t magically stop annoying me. Go figure.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the whole book! And very long post!

Dislikes:

1. This book is far, far too long.

It’s 1000 pages long and...not much happens. It’s mainly worldbuilding and setup for future books. A few things do happen, of course, but they’re mostly concentrated at the end of the book. Almost nothing happens in the entire middle portion.

It depends on the POV characters of course, but really, you could remove almost half of it and have a better book. Dalinar’s story is the only one where I feel you wouldn’t have to cut out much. Shallan could easily be 1/3 shorter. And in Kaladin’s case you could (and IMHO opinion should) remove half of it.

Kaladin’s story in particular I found was repetitive and dragged down the pace of the book. You could remove or condense half of those small incidents and still keep the story. Same for his flashbacks. You could have had 1 flashback or maybe 2, and still keep the same elements, instead of what felt like 20.

I’ve had this complaint about a lot of other fantasy books (Wheel of Time, Malazan, Memory, Sorrow, Thorn, even ASOIAF...), but the fact is that the genre is far too willing to tolerate barely edited 500+ page monstrosities. Yes, sometimes it’s justified, but most of the time it’s really not. This didn’t bother me as much when I was a 12 year old with nothing else to do, but as an adult, having to push through 500 pages of fluff to get to a story pisses me off.

To contrast, as usual when I complain about this, the entirety of LOTR is also roughly a thousand pages long. Frodo went to Mordor and back in the time it took Kaladin to get out of Sadeas’ warcamp.

2. I have multiple issues with Sanderson’s writing.

Two major problems here: repetitiveness and action scenes too detailed for my taste.

Sometimes both at the same time.

By which I mean stuff like this:

“Ten heartbeats after the passing of the guards, Szeth Lashed himself to the wall. That direction became down for him, and he was able to run up the side of the stone fortification. As he reached the top, he leaped forward, then briefly Lashed himself backward. He spun over the top of the wall in a tucked flip, then Lashed himself back to the wall again. He came down with feet planted on the stones, facing the ground. He ran and Lashed himself downward again, dropping the last few feet”

(quote thing not working, so italics it is)

This sort of paragraph makes my eyes bleed. And Sanderson’s action scenes are unfortunately always full of this stuff. This was the primary thing that made me decide not to continue with Mistborn and was also the thing that made me drop this book the first time, because the first chapter is like this.

Basically what happens here is that Sanderson really likes his worldbuilding and his magic. So he feels the need to beat you over the head with them again and again and again and again.

It’s most noticeable in action scenes like this, and granted I’m not super fond of action in the first place and tend to skim it,  but it also happens in regular prose, since he also apparently thinks his readers have the attention span of a goldfish and so repeatedly explains something he already explained three chapters ago.

In the first ten chapters I felt like he taught me how spheres worked a good 4-5 times.

It just makes me feel like I’m going through a forced tutorial and being treated like a child. FFS trust that your readers can pick up on stuff on their own.

From what I’ve seen a lot of people actually like this overexplaining BS, so it’s clearly a matter of taste, but it sure as hell isn’t to my taste.

Things I’m neutral on:

Characters

The characters land themselves in neutral because while there are some very good ones (hi Dalinar!), most of them are just kind of meh.

Looking at our POV characters, I’d class both Shallan and Kaladin as meh. They’re interesting enough, but not really captivating to read. Just very standard archetypal characters. Nothing wrong with them, but also nothing stands out.

Dalinar and maybe Szeth are the only POV that I really enjoyed as characters on their own.

The secondary cast is fine, with some characters I really liked (Navani, Jasnah, Sadeas - yes, I know, I’ll get to that in a second) and a lot of others that were just ok.

Bridge Four for me falls into this last category. I mentioned in an earlier post that this part of the plot brings to mind Spartacus, Gladiator and now that I think about it even prison movies. Essentially things where an heroic main character is dumped in with a group of dispirited hopeless men and tries to do something with them, which is Kaladin’s whole story here. More importantly, the characters in Bridge Four also largely follow the archetypes for this kind of setting - you have the Gentle Big Guy, the Clever Guy, the Guy Who Does Not Trust The Hero, The Unexpectedly Cultured Guy, The Old Veteran, etc.

Which at the end of the day meant I had trouble connecting to bridge four because I couldn’t look past the archetypes.

To get back to Sadeas - he’s introduced as such an obviously evil character that I really hoped he’d turn out to be something else up until the very end. It would have been far more interesting to have him be a genuine if rahter unscrupulous rival than a very boring, very predictable traitor. This hope is what made me like him so much at first. Alas, it was not to be.

Things I liked:

1. Worldbuilding

Of course.This is what Sanderson is best at and it really shines through here.

Roshar is massively detailed at every level and Sanderson makes sure his big choices regarding the world’s setup are reflected in both the natural world and the societies he creates.

I loved the focus on the natural world, in particular. It’s an aspect that most other fantasy authors don’t usually devote a lot of time to, but Sanderson clearly loves it.

Forget adaptations - I’d kill for an Attenborough-esque documentary on Roshar’s fauna and flora!

The worldbuilding feels a little bit shallower when it comes to peoples and societies, but really this is just nitpicking on my part, it’s great overall.

2. Plot

The plot itself is pretty interesting, even if the pacing could use some improvement.

I particularly liked Dalinar’s part, and Shallan’s once it actually picks up speed.

The ending was also very intense and a lot of fun to read, with what I felt was a good mix of action and big reveals.

Honestly, regardless of my complaining above, I enjoyed this book and had a great time reading it. It’s fun, it just takes a while to get there. And I will be picking up the rest of the series eventually.

For me it’s a solid 4 stars.

As for recommending this, I’d say it’s good for people who already enjoy fantasy a bit, are looking for something completely different and don’t mind a slow start. Oh, and people who want a series that is ongoing but very likely to be finished in a timely manner. Sanderson delivers when it comes to his writing. No Martin/Rothfuss surprises here.

[early-sxnsets]

Just Tell Me Why

Archive Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15957728

Word Count: 3016

Summary: Simon's got a regular coming in looking a little worse for wear on a rainy afternoon. Despite their seemingly mutual distaste for one another, they come together over sweet treats and dried tears. (Coffee Shop AU)

Notes: thank you to @jessethejoyful for going over this super quick! i basically got the idea for this, wrote it, got it edited, then published it all within 6 hours so big thanks to her for help! also, there’s a spotify playlist to go with about half the fic’s background music. this is Simon’s Nightshift playlist!

The rain patters outside, a repetitive tapping against the long, paper-covered windows. Adverts, local band posters, cram-session times and business cards close off the shop from most of the outside world, leaving a multicolored, softened haze of light to filter in. Each lamp, each overhead light buzzes in this world, closing us off from the stampering around outside as students rush to one place or another.

I hear the chime of the doorbell and the soft shuffling of feet against the straw welcome mat before the steps approach the front. The soft mutter of “Shit” and the droplets of water from a flicked head land on me, turning my attention away from the case as I refill the cookie plates.

Oh. It’s him. “Basilton,” I hiss with my most forced smile, which only falters as I notice his eyes. Blood red. Oh. His cheeks aren’t wet from the rain, they’re red on their own terms. Great, this bloody prick somehow made me feel bad for him (even if it is in the slightest).

He sneers down at me, shaking another hand through his hair as he clearly tries to keep composure. “The usual, will you?”

“Yeah, fine. Anything else?”

He drags his eyes over the restocked case and I watch him fix his cuffed sleeves. The ends are damp in spots, as if they were moping something up rather than hit by drops. “Unless there’s toffee bars in the back.”

If he didn’t come in looking as depressing as he does, I would’ve just said no and left it at that, but I know for a fact that there’s some that are still cooling (even though they’re not set enough to really sell). I hesitate, looking up to meet his eyes. They tear away from mine. “Yeah, actually, there are. One or two?”

“Tw—one. One.”

“Riiigghhhttt… I’ll grab two.”

He sends a glare over my way, but straightens himself out again. “Fine.” His hand reaches into the inside breast of his jacket, digging in for his wallet as I raise a hand, grabbing my own out of my back pocket.

“I’ve got it,” I say sternly, not leaving wiggle room for him to protest.

He simply clears his throat, head turning away as his throat clears. I’m sure he won’t give me a thank you, but his off-turned nod is quite enough before he heads off to take a seat in the far corner, opening his messenger bag and pulling out a laptop.

The harsh blue of the screen illuminates his face. The only other light near him is a table-lamp on the other side of the sofa, and it’s the dimmest one in the whole shop.

Sometimes, whenever Penny comes in to sit at the bar and bother me, she comments on how he looks like this.

“He’s so angular,” she’d whisper, narrowing eyes as she stared blatantly. He didn’t seem to notice. “Looks like Dracula’s nephew.” This is, though, after I’d blabbered to her for at least an hour or two the night before about how I catch him staring at me. She thinks I’m being ridiculous about all this. “He stares at me, Penny, like without moving his head and just lifting his eyes oh dear god he’s plotting some shit, and I saw the way he watches Agatha whenever she’d come in and we’d steal a kiss on my break and Christ, Penny, he’s going to pull some shit have you seen how ridiculously handsome he is fuck him.”

Two things were decided that night. 1) How much wine is too much wine for me, and 2) We have a “Baz-cap”, or a cap to how much we talk about Mr. Coffee-Shop.

That was, of course, until we saw him off taking Agatha’s hand right before an exam, talking to her by a bathroom carve-out.

That cut it. Agatha broke it--the whole relationship thing--off with me, and I went from having a bitter spat with him each time he’d come in to barely dealing with him, if I can help it.

Except now, I suppose.

He looks down at his laptop screen, lips drawn to a tight line as he clacks away. I take notice that in pauses between words, his fingers hesitate and tremble in the slightest. He swallows sharply, blinking so much that he can’t not be crying.

Well, shit. I put together his frankly overly sweet order of some latte with six pumps of butterscotch, pushing through the swinging door to the back and getting a plate together of two toffee-bars (throwing on a vanilla bean cake-pop because, for some reason, I briefly care).

Swiftly, I take hold of his drink and bring it over to him with a slight yet genuine smile.

There’s a gentle clink of the plate hitting the plastic bowl on the table as I set it down, followed by the gentle swishing sound of his egregiously pre-diabetic drink as I rest it beside his food. He glances up at me, then down to the plate before dragging his eyes back to mine. “You seemed to have left something extra there.”

“I know I did. Seemed like you needed it.”

He scoffs quietly, the sound dragging through the back of his throat. “Is this why people gravitate towards you, Snow?” he grumbles half-heartedly, picking up one of the bars and a napkin. It dips a bit in the middle, still obviously a little too fresh. He doesn’t seem to mind. “Your hero complex?”

“I don’t have a hero complex. I just like being nice, you should try it.”

He makes the sound again, biting into the treat. I watch as he chews slowly, dragging his eyes up to mine. He swallows all showily. “Should I? I’ve gotten far enough without it.”

“Yeah, you should. It’ll get you your own girlfriend instead of havin’ to creep up on someone else’s,” I mumble back, leaning down to clean the discarded dishes beside him and giving it a good once over with my rag. He stares at me, and I swear I can hear him laughing.

Scratch that, he is laughing, somewhat a bitter twinge to his voice. I force my head up, eyebrows knit together in frustration. “Oh fuck yo—“

“You think I want your girlfriend, Snow?”

“You can already have her, tosser.”

“I don’t want her.”

I stare at him, and I catch him staring back. His laugh has far gone and disappeared into a slightly lowering brow and drawn in lips. His eyes scan around my face, the space between us all static-y. “Alright…” I draw, completely unconvinced. “Then what the hell happened last year?”

“She came onto me, Snow,” he says flatly. “It’s not my fault your girlfriend likes me better.”

Something inside stops me from spitting on him and calling him a prick. It’s the same part of me that actually cared that this arse came in crying. “Ex. She’s my ex, now.”

His brow arches, like it usually does when I tell him off, but it doesn’t have the energy of me about to be punched in the face. Instead, he’s inquisitive. “Oh. Ex?”

“Ex,” I sigh, pausing for a second. “Why don’t you want her? Everyone wants her.”

“Not my type,” he replies, a little too quickly.

I think he notices this too, because for the first time in minutes he drags his gaze back to his computer screen, finishing his thoughts as he types. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not after her, Snow. Don’t let me stop you from your… fantasy world, hero.”

The way he punctuates the end makes me bite my tongue again, holding the words trying to urge out as I clean the surrounding tables and take back the cups.

The clock ticks on as I fill the dishes into the sink. The café’s closed in four hours, and each time I peer out, it seems to still be dead silent. I stop, occasionally, to serve a customer.

The outside world darkens, drawing into a sunset before sinking back into a world only illuminated by yellowed streetlights. Most people leave, the rain having let up for about 15 minutes and setting a cue for the dining area to clear out.

Only a few stay, one of whom is Baz.

I chew on my bottom lip, hand floating over the Spotify playlist for the shop. It’s been on “Rainy Day” since before my shift started, so I just scroll down and pick “Simon’s Nightshift” and hit shuffle. It starts echoing out as I turn to keep cleaning and just standing for a time, taking out a book to try to read. It doesn’t last, and I clean around as mostly everyone trickles out of the shop slowly.

As the rain fully picks back up to a roll, it’s just Baz and I left inside.

After nearly 10 minutes on internal conflict, I grab the last few scones in the case (the other batch in the oven) and take a seat in the plush, leather armchair adjacent to him.

Slowly, his head rises and he gives me a bored look. The redness in his eyes has all but gone, but he still seems overall unsteady. It half stops me from even saying anything, but I push through the bubble and let it pop in my hands. “Do you have someone to talk to?”

He cocks his brow at me again, pursing his lips and clearly thinking over his words (or maybe mine). “Are you asking if I would wish to speak to you about my problems?” he draws, and the way he puts it makes me feel like I’m back as a toddler when the teachers would ask me if I understood English because I was so quiet.

The pit of my stomach churns as I forcefully stuff half the scone in my mouth. My stomach doesn’t want it to go down. I force it down anyway. “Yeah, I guess.”

He exhales exasperatedly. “What are you, a shrink?”

My shoulders shrug up, then sag. “I’m just someone who’s bored at work with nothing better to do. Least I could do is pester you.”

The clacking of his keys halts as Baz stares down at his knuckles. They wrap in, then extend once more. I watch as he drums against the surface of the keyboard before shutting the lid. “Okay. Fine. Do you truly want to know?”

I nod more encouragingly than I mean. Or, maybe I do mean it and I just don’t really want to admit it, even to myself. That’s what Penny thinks I do, at least; hide stuff from myself.

I listen to him sigh as my eyes flicker down to the rest of the scone I’m stuffing in my mouth.

Baz rubs his index finger and thumb against his temple as the exhale lengthens. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this of all people,” he mutters under his breath before straightening out and looking me in the eyes. I feel his next exhale. “My mother died years back and while looking through an old textbook of hers for a course, a picture of her and I fell out. It had a message from her on it, and it got to me. There. Happy?”

I blink a little, noticing that I still haven’t swallowed yet. I do that before continuing. “Baz…”

“Don’t start with the pitying shit, Snow. I don’t want to hear it,” he snaps, looking at his hands deliberately. “I’ve heard it quite enough before.”

“No, Baz, I—“

“I said to shut it,” he says, voice as hard as an edge as he shoves his backpack into the large pocket of his bag. “Just… forget it.”

“Baz?”

He sucks in a breath as I lay a hand on his knee, my plate setting on the table as he stares. His eyes transfix on each and every part of my hand, seeming to follow the veins and the scars scattering my weathered knuckles. It takes a moment before his eyes close and I’m nearly positive he’s on the brink of tears. It takes a moment of his mouth flying open before I cut him off this time.

“Why did you come here of all places?”

There’s a hesitation in his movements, but he keeps his knee in place as his waist shifts to face me more before opening his eyes. “What does it matter to you? This is very atypical of you, either way, not telling me to piss off.”

“Christ, Baz, I’m not heartless, especially when someone’s crying.” My voice lowers as I shift, the leather of my seat squeaking. “Plus, if you’re not swooping in to snag my girlfriend—or ex, but that doesn’t matter—fuck it, why did you go along with the fighting?”

He seems taken aback by my conversation shift, but his knee draws in and sends my hand back to my lap. “Does it matter?”

I shrug, hands laying together in my lap and playing a bit with twiddling thumbs and an anxious tug at my heart. Why does it matter so much? “Guess not. I just… I dunno, don’t like the fighting?”

“So you suggest we forgo the bitterness?”

“I mean, that’s what we’re doing right now, innit?”

He glances to meet my eyes and takes a second. “I suppose we are.”

I smile a little, sitting up straighter with a growing grin. “Good, glad that’s settled.” I pause before saying what else is on my mind, but the timer for the oven beeps and I launch myself up and run over to pull everything out.

By the way Baz was packing, I expect the couch to be empty by the time I return, but instead he’s sitting there with his phone by his face, thumbs in a pattern of scrolling. I bite my lip, hesitating before leaning over the counter and giving him a smile. “Oi,” I whisper, a twinkle in my eyes as he glances up to me, hair falling in soft waves against the sharp angles of his face. It makes my heart race a little more than I’d care to admit. “You want something absolutely amazing?”

“Is this a friendly offer?”

“This is a peace treaty, now, will you take it?”

“I suppose,” he mulls, the click of his iPhone sounding over the soft thump of the music. “What is it?”

“Fresh scones.”

He blinks. “What’s so amazing about them?”

I pout a little, taking one over and sitting directly next to him this time. “Just… taste it. It’s so much better like this; fresh from the oven.” I pry open his hand, pressing one onto his palm and watching him happily. I nearly swear I see him smile. “Well then? Go on, eat it.”

His hand slowly raises to his lips, taking a bite and chewing slowly. “I swear, you’re trying to fatten me up tonight,” he grumbles before swallowing, but I don’t see him complain as he goes for another bite.

A soft, pleased sigh lets out of my nose as I sit back against the armrest, grinning. I wait until he finishes before letting myself finish my thought from before I broke the moment. “Why the hell do you stare at me?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Because you’re a trainwreck, and I can never look away,” he quips, but any malicious intent slides right past him.

“Is that really it?” I dare, pressing him further. “Because I wouldn’t come right here if my I found my mum’s left note.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have a dead mum, do you?”

“I don’t know,” I say flatly, shrugging. “I don’t know my mum. I grew up in the system.”

He blinks, narrowing his eyebrows for a moment before letting it slip off. “Interesting.”

I stop myself from making any comment beyond that, chewing on my lip. “I want to know, though,” I say quieter than before, “why you’d come here. Why you came here so much even though we had a big tiff. Why you stare at me.”

Baz’s eyes don’t look up as he chews on his last bite of scone, staring right through the chairs across the room. “Move past that, Snow.”

“Why?”

“You don’t want the answer.”

“Maybe I do.”

He pauses mid chew, freezing for seconds before swallowing and turning his head to look at me, sitting all curled up to myself and pressed up against the arm. He looks so unsure; fuck, no, he looks scared. He starts shifting in his seat, glancing around like a cornered animal trying to find an exit. “Snow…”

Something about the tremble in his hand floors me and, honestly, I can’t give an explanation for what follows. It’s like my brain shuts off between then and now, with my lips pressed up against Baz’s.

My hand’s wrapped tightly around the previously shaking hand, trying to steady them as my lips press a tad forcefully against his and I can swear he’ll recoil and slam a fist into my nose, but something in him softens for a split second as I decide to pull back. His eyes, moments before open, are now shut, and mouth open in the slightest.

Oh, fuck it.

I lean my head back in, and this time, his hand flies up to brush against my cheek as he finally kisses back and my heart is pounding against my ribcage, telling me that this, this is the answer I was looking for.

He tastes like all the sweets he packs into himself; he tastes like the sour cherry scone I’d forced onto him. He tastes like everything I’ve wanted from him.

After every bit I take from his mouth, after minutes that feel like an eternity, he lets back and watches me through heavily lidded eyes and breathes through parted, shining lips. “How long ‘til closing?”

My eyes dart up to the clock, but something in my chest tugs. I bet Ebb wouldn’t mind if I closed a tad early because the weather… “Fuck it, right now,” I whisper back, going in for another kiss.

[canadian-riddler]

How to Improve as a Writer When You Can’t Get Feedback

(or how I do it, anyway)

1a) Read stuff by people you look up to

Chances are when you look up to someone else as a writer, you have a general idea of what it is about them that you like so much.  You really like the way they build sentences, you admire their vocabulary, they’re really good at plot twists.  Surprise!  You can do all that too.  Take note of what they do and how they do it and then put your own spin on it.  If you DON’T know what it is, put some time to figuring it out.

1b) Read stuff you absolutely hate

Now why on earth would I tell you to torture yourself like that?  Simple: it teaches you how to identify mistakes.  Go through stuff you don’t like, think about why you don’t like it, and then do the exact opposite.

2) Stop posting stuff when you know it’s not ready

I’ve done it, you’ve done it, we’ve all done it.  You’ve got a story or a chapter or whathaveyou and you KNOW it’s not done.  And you know exactly WHERE it’s not done and you know exactly WHY, but you can’t be bothered to fix it.  You’re done, you’ve been working on it way too long, and you’re sick of it and just want to dump it so you can move on.  Stop doing that.  Grinding through the boring stuff is part of life.  Buff it until it shines even if buffing it takes you eighteen months.  Unless you’re going pro, the time it takes doesn’t really matter.  It’s done when it’s done.

3) Avoid using the same word multiple times in the same paragraph, or even on the same page if at all possible

This is a little bit of a stylistic rule I have, which I invented so that when I reread my own stuff fifteen thousand times I won’t feel like I’m having deja vu.  However.  Following this as a rule means that you MUST expand your vocabulary.  It forces you to stop using basic words and to start looking into creating nuance.  It also makes you sound smarter, which is always a bonus.  Use a thesaurus.  That’s what they’re for.

4) Create a dialogue with other writers

What I see a lot is people getting sad about people not talking to them about their stuff... but they never talk to anyone ELSE about THEIR stuff.  This happens SO OFTEN.  We’re all in the same boat here.  Stop getting salty over who’s getting to use the oars.  Chances are that person is someone who engages with their readers and other writers a lot more than you do.  You’re right, sometimes it doesn’t work.  But guess what?  While you’re attempting this step, you’re completing step 1) at the same time!  Net win for you!

5) Write characters how they are, not how you wish they were (that comes later)

There are a lot of posts on Tumblr telling you to project your heart out and make your favs do whatever the heck you want just because you want them to.  And if that’s your gig, then you do that.  But it won’t really make you better at writing, because you’re just writing yourself.  You know how you think and you know how you work.  As a writer your job is to tell the audience how someone ELSE thinks and how someone ELSE works.  Will there be some overlap between your fav and you?  Possibly.  But having them react to things in ways that you would or ways that you think would be good for drama isn’t you writing them.  It’s you writing a version of them you wish they were.  You can GET them to that place, but you have to build the bridge first, and the foundations of that bridge are the core character traits.

6) You need to have characters do things that you don’t like or don’t want them to do

It’s tempting, very tempting, to have your characters cry at all the right times or make up the next day after a blowout fight or do the morally right thing because it’ll give you a feelgood ending.  And you can write like that if you want to.  But it’s retracing a path you already know.  To become better at writing you need to brush aside that initial inclination to do something really obvious or cliche or angsty and think of some other direction you can go with it.  And then possibly do that again a few more times until you come up with something really special.  If you’re just going for one-and-done, banging out a whatever, go with whatever you think of first.  But if you want to improve you cannot take your first thought.  That’s the easy thought.  You don’t want that.  You think you do, but you don’t.

7) Tropes are not your friends (but they are also not your enemies)

Tropes are fun.  Tropes are easy.  Tropes sometimes get you a lot of pageviews really fast.  Because people know them, they’re familiar with them.  They know what to expect out of them.  Tropes are also a route a thousand people have already taken before you.  They don’t teach you anything.  Now, you might think I’m leading into ‘if you must use a trope, subvert expectations a la Episode VIII’.  I’m not.  There are so many tropes nowadays it’s hard to avoid them all, and subverting them all can be almost as bad as just plain using them.  So use them, but be mindful about it.  Resist writing them because they’re easy, but also resist subverting them as a convenient plot twist.

8) Read a little bit of everything

I don’t mean fiction.  I mean just plain articles.  Read a little bit about basketball, read a little bit about the Prime Minster of Australia, read a little bit about the greenhouses in Iceland.  You can do videos too or podcasts, but reading articles is generally a lot faster.  This creates a cache of knowledge that you can use later.  If you’re a writer who only writes about things they know very well, your stuff is going to end up very narrow in scope.  If you write a lot, it’s going to end up very repetitive.  You don’t need to become an expert, but if you only put pencils in your pencil case all you can draw with are pencils.  It’s good to have fineliners and oil pastels and copics when you need them, even if you only know how to use them a little bit.

9) Make personality psychology your new best friend

Personality psychology is a massive key to understanding how people work and, subsequently, a roadmap to strong characterisation.  Get familiar with the Big Five personality traits.  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is also a good thing to keep in mind for character arcs, especially long ones.  There are several different classifications for personality (Myers-Briggs is another popular one, for example) but I like to use the Big Five (which is honestly really the Big Ten because each trait includes the opposite) because I find it easier to understand and remember.

10) Don’t take advice you don’t like as a personal insult

It’s not a personal insult.  Get mad over it if you want, but then think about WHY you got upset.  It’s probably because it pointed out something you already knew you were weak on.  Getting mad helps nothing, but doing something about what made you mad does.  And no, I don’t mean writing a really long rant about how the person who said something you didn’t like is stupid and doesn’t know what they’re talking about.  I won’t pretend I’ve never done it, but I also won’t pretend doing that accomplished anything other than making me look really bad.

11) Pay close attention to your character voice

A mistake you see a lot, especially from younger writers, is characters that all sound like exactly the same person.  Usually that person is the writer.  They only really know how to write in their own voice, with a bit of flavour from whatever characters they’re trying to do.  If you write some lines of dialogue without indicators (pronouns, names, epithets, etc) and the reader cannot tell who is supposed to be talking, your writing lacks character voice.  And the solution is NOT (ABSOLUTELY NOT) to give characters accents/overemphasise accents they already have.  That does NOT solve the character voice problem, it just hides it.  And that does not help you improve at all.  If you have five characters in your story you should be able to write them all a plain dialogue cycle and the reader should be able to figure out who is who without having to count the order of who was talking in the beginning.  You should also be able to lift one character from a story and transplant them in another where they have never been mentioned and the reader should still be able to follow who they are because of their distinct character voice.  This gets a lot harder in stories with large quantities of characters.  Struggle with it anyway.  It’s important.

12) You’re going to have to write more, probably way more than you ever wanted to

Yeah.  Getting better as a writer involves a metric ton of actual writing.  Sucks eh?  Staring at the keyboard doesn’t count.  Neither does refreshing your fav website eighty-nine times or staring out the window waiting for a spark of inspiration.  Just get to it.  The theory goes that if you want to get good at something, you have to spend at least ten thousand hours doing it.  That’s a lot of hours.  More hours than anybody really wants to comprehend or put themselves through.  But you’re going to have to do it and the best time to get started is now.

13) Remember who you’re writing for...

... and that person is yourself!  Writing for your readers?  Often an exercise in futility.  They love you, but they’re too shy to tell you so.  Sometimes too shy to let you know they even exist.  So you have to love yourself twice as much.  I mean your writing.  Love your writing twice as much.  It’s gonna be on your computer forever, after all.  Make sure you put as much love and care into it as possible so that when you accidentally open one of your documents five years from now, you can read it without cringing and ‘accidentally’ flinging your computer out the window.

14) Don’t skip editing (and editing once is not enough)

There are so many stories out there with an author’s note that includes something along the lines of ‘oh yeah I just wrote all this in an hour and didn’t read it lol’.  Dude.  If you didn’t care enough to make sure your story made sense WHY on EARTH would you expect your READER to care about it?  Have a little respect for your audience and for your own stuff.  And judicious editing is important.  You have to actually LOOK for mistakes.  You can’t just read through it without actually getting any words through your eyeballs and declare your mission a success.  I promise you those mistakes are there.  They’re still gonna be there after your ninth edit.  Should you really edit nine times?  Of course you should.  Step 2) says so.

15) Stop selling yourself short

Go ahead and look up to other writers and wish you knew how to write like them.  But stop telling yourself you’ll never get there.  That thought right there is your biggest hurdle to doing it.  You’re good at some things and bad at others.  Wonderful.  Praise yourself for the former and work on the later.  You don’t have to be all ‘tortured writer’ and shrug off compliments because someone else does something slightly better than you.  Give yourself a thumbs up and remember all the stuff you do right.  The stuff you come up short in will join it eventually.