halfbakedcat

[halfbakedcat]

The author's poorly disguised fetish

The author's proudly displayed fetish

The author's fetish you're pretty sure they don't realise they have

The author's fetish which they're firmly convinced everyone has and is just pretending otherwise

The author's non-sexual special interest which just sounds like a fetish because of their habitually unfortunate phrasing

The fetish the author is making a well-meaning effort to cater to in spite of clearly not understanding it themselves

The author's fetish that never quite makes it into the text because they keep getting sidetracked by the requisite worldbuilding

The author's utterly pedestrian sexual preference which the text treats like a bizarre fetish because they've got shit to work through

The author's seemingly innocuous recurring trope they're going to have a personal revelation about ten years down the road

The author's fetish you missed on a first reading because it's so far out of pocket, it never occurred to you that you could sexualise that

[halfbakedcat]

Merry Christmas!

I know it is the wrong season, but since this is Youjo Senki Appreciators, I figured you all would appreciate some Tanya art!

Every single character in these images is a Tanya from a fanfic, except for the nutcrackers.

[halfbakedcat]

Color to the blind

This is a classic thought experiment of how to describe something to someone that is incapable of experiencing it. How would you go about describing something like color which is so tied into sight to someone without sight. Or merely to the color blind.

There is no correct answer and I’m not going to pretend that I have an answer, but exploring the question and attempting to answer it is a good practice for writers. Especially fantasy authors attempting to explain what their music system feels like to the magi that use it as the audience cannot perceive magic and would have no way to understand the feelings involved.

So, this is my attempt to answer the question of how would I describe color to the blind. I would start not with an actual color, according to some people, but white, black, and gray.

White is what I would explain first. It is everything. Everything all at once. It is the feel of your clothes on your skin, the whispered and spoken conversations happening around you. It is the heat and cold. It is your senses screaming as they are overloaded. It is your mind going haywire in thoughts as it tries to process all of existence all at once. It is everything everything everything. It does not stop it goes and goes goes and goes. It is everything and all.

Black is nothing. It is not empty as empty implies a vessel that could hold something. It just isn’t. It is not floating in a void as floating implies something to float in. Black is Void of all.

Gray is the gradients in between these two. It is and isn’t. It is all the variants of is and isn’t in between the all of is and the lack of isn’t. Gray is where we exist. Sometimes we are closer to the bright white of everything. Sometimes we are closer to the deep dark of black. Regardless of where we are at any moment, there is and there isn’t and the is and isn’t combines into the gray.

From there, I would pull out the different is from the gray and white to explain the different colors. The passions and excitements of the reds, the calms and detachments of blues into beige, and on and on, but I would start at the most extreme point of the blacks, whites, and greys.

So, how about you? How would you tackle trying to explain something that another cannot comprehend?

[halfbakedcat]

If that lightsaber was purple, it would be a match for my fic. Since I'm still the only Youjo Senki fanfic author to have written a human Tanya as a Jedi. There is a Mandalorian, a Sith, an Imperial, several alien, a couple clone trooper, but this is still the first and only human Tanya Jedi fic. And the first Star Wars Crossover. Note: I know this is not fanart of my fanfic, it is just a coincident.

Today's Daily Degurechaff is… ill be honest, ive never seen star wars

[halfbakedcat]

The start

Every story must start somewhere. For me, the start is deciding to write a book.

That, I think, is the most important step towards writing a book. To decide this is a thing I'm going to do.

The next step is a lot harder, what to write about.

For me and this story, I do have an idea. Partially built upon vibes of a setting idea I like and media I enjoy. The setting idea I like is to take a fantastic world, a truly high fantasy world with all the towers, elves, wizards, witches, and all that junk and give them modern tech. Cell phones, TVs, food delivery services. It still looks like fantasy on the surface, but underneath is modernity. Kiki's Delivery Service isn't exactly the right comparison, but it is not too far off either.

But writing a story in such a world would lead to rather mundane conflicts without ruining the careful balance of the setting, but if I take it a step forwards and add in a bit of science fiction into the mix... then I can really start cooking and not worry too much about balancing all the elements because I have a whole lot of space for the consequences of someone with planet destroying powers to dissipate.

So my plan for this story is to, in the elevator pitch scenario, to have it be described as "Firefly meets Dungeon and Dragons".

For those of you who don't know what Firefly is, it is a space western show from the early 2000s that got one season and a movie and was amazing. Go give it a watch if you haven't because it is a show that still holds up today and still feels very fresh.

For those of you who don't know what Dungeon and Dragons is, it is the most well known tabletop RPG in the world and you should probably get out more, meet some people, make friends, maybe go to a gaming store and try it out.

For those who don't know what Kiki's Delivery Service is, it is a classic anime movie about a young witch striking out on her own and is a deeply moving work of art that deals with a girl's coming of age story as well as themes of depression, work related burnout, and creative motivation. It is my favorite Ghibli film.

[halfbakedcat]

Purpose

Decided to make a tumblr blog to chronicle my journey in writing an original story. Hopefully I will be able to get this story published, but first I have to write it.

For those that do not know me, I am a fanfic author that goes by Half_Baked_Cat on Scribblehub, Fanfic.net, SpaceBattles, and AO3. I have written several books worth of content already, including having finished 'books' of two of my stories (though the stories are ongoing).

But I am not satisfied in just playing in someone else's playbox and using another person's toys to create my stories. I want to create my own stories in my own setting. This blog will track my journey.