orcashiki - Tumblr blog

[orcashiki]

One thing to keep in mind when writing dialogue is the age of the character. A common issue I see in stories written by adults is that children below a certain age will all sound like toddlers and above a certain age will all sound like adults, with nothing in between.

Your characters don't need to use hyper-contemporary slang, especially if you're writing something other than a contemporary story, but they should in some way reflect their age in the way they speak, whether it's through vocabulary, syntax, content, vulgarity, confidence, or any other aspects of dialogue.

If the reader can't tell the difference between the speaking styles of a 12-year-old, a 20-year-old, and a 50-year-old, your dialogue probably needs another look.

[orcashiki]

Blind people must save a lot on electricity.

[orcashiki]

Wandering in Ikebukuro

In which I go to Ikebukuro on a day trip and visit not one, but TWO cat cafes.

It was raining.

The weather app said it would stop raining in the next hour, so I figured I should eat breakfast and talk to my brother while I wait.

Then it was 3 hours later, and it was still raining. The weather app still believed it would stop raining in the next hour, but I had no more faith.

I looked up the cafe I was going to go to and found out there would be a meal time in about an hour, where all the cats would go to the center of the cafe to eat! So I left in a hurry in hopes I would get there in time.

Of course, I went on the wrong train. Thankfully it was the right line, just the wrong direction, so I was able to get back on track after two stations. Google Maps may be helpful, and at times a lifeline, but I learned I should still check signs instead of blindly following the numbers shown on the screen.

Since I was set back by quite a bit of time, I looked up the directions for the other cat cafe that was closer to the station. This chain, called MOCHA cat lounge, has two locations just in Ikebukuro, one right outside the west side of the station and another a couple blocks away from the east side. My new destination was now the west cat cafe.

I got off the train... and promptly got lost again. It's really confusing keeping track of all the numbered exits and which way to go to them. I would move in the direction of exit 7, then only see signs for exits 1-5. I left at a random exit that seemed relatively close to the cafe, and came out to a downpour. The rain got stronger while I was on the train.

I ran around in the rain for a bit, running in circles on the same intersection, before I finally found a small entrance with a sign on the side pointing to the cat cafe. It was on a specific floor of a tiny building, completely different from the storefront I was expecting. The entrance was very nice, though, and I was able to get in without much trouble. While I missed the first half of meal time, I was still able to see many cats running around. The cat cafe had an impressive lineup of manga, and I longed to stay, but I had more places to be.

Next stop was the 7-11 right next to the cat cafe. I grabbed an umbrella since it was still raining really hard. Then I walked to an animate store. The entire building was animate, so it had a giant screen billboard on the front and the animate logo.

It was fun browsing through all the manga and novels. Since it is the homeland of these series, they have all the books in stock as well. I wish I had space to put such gorgeous books, but for now I will stick to bookwalker and amazon.

I also wandered through some of the merch floors, which were understandably full of tourists on a weekend. There were six rows dedicated to enstars alone... enstars is truly very powerful here. I managed to grab some gifts for friends before I left. There was also a gigantic Gojou statue in the middle of one of the floors.

The next place I went to is called eyemirror, it's a glasses store that stocks anime-inspired glasses frames. The interior was very classy, and I grabbed two frames, Lucifer from Granblue Fantasy and EVA-0. My prescription is a little complicated so they will take a little while to arrive, but I look forward to having them!

After all the walking, I decided to go to the original cat cafe on the east side of Ikebukuro. This cafe has a lot more tables, so there's more working space, and they also have an impressive selection of manga. I spent 100 yen on a snack gachapon, and an especially food-motivated cat jumped on my ipad and batted at the gachapon before I could even get it open. So cute... They left the second I showed them that I had no more snacks, though.

I needed to work on something for Ari's birthday, so I stayed at the cat cafe for two hours, taking breaks every so often to stare at cats and try out the various drinks at the drink bar. The tea was nice, but what really caught my eye was the option to get corn potage... as a drink. I've always had corn potage as a meal so it was funny to see it on a drink vending machine. I ordered it out of curiosity, and it was just as watery and processed as I remember. It definitely qualifies as a drink.

There was a cat that was really interested in the vending machine. When you order a drink, the vending machine puts it in a little slot, and you open a door to the slot to take the drink cup. When I opened the door, this cat stuck its head in and almost spilled my drink. It kept its head in even after I took out the drink, and a staff member had to come over to shoo the cat away.

The last stop of the day is Akihabara, a la the very corner of it. I had a reservation for dinner at Eorzea Cafe. On my way out of the station, though, I got distracted by a large screen taller than me showing one of Ryuseitai's dance videos from enstars. Apparently there's an official merch store for enstars here. I should've expected it but it still caught me by surprise. The entire building belongs to Gamers, another big chain, so I wandered around the other floors for a bit to browse and look at new manga. The books floor had copies of comic drafts on the walls, and two specific pages caught my eye with how gorgeous they were. They belonged to a manga called "False Marigold", which I highly recommend if you like clean art and toxic yuri.

They also had a huge poster board dedicated to Nightcord since the new album is coming out!

I got lost in the store and was getting increasingly claustrophobic with the amount of people and narrow aisles, but I managed to exit the store and head towards my original destination. The staircase leading to Eorzea cafe had stickers of minions and made me even more excited than before. As many places do when things get busy here, Eorzea cafe runs on 90 minute slots with reservations required. We were brought to our seats starting 15 minutes before the reservation started to allow for enough time to eat.

It was an emotional experience to say the least. I felt like I was in a guild, and the cafe people were very nice and accommodating to english speakers. There was a cactpot lottery event in the beginning, and the food was really good. The free drink I got with the reservation was the dark knight drink, which tasted like yogurt and something else. I also got susanoo's chicken don and an amaurot-inspired non-alcoholic mojito. And finally, even though I felt super full, I managed to finish the leylines tiramisu. I was really silly and teared up when the overhead announcement said we needed to logout 40 minutes after the last order time. Something about loving this game too much...

There were so many things it was hard to decide what to get. I will probably come here many more times in the future... It's expensive in Japan since it's a collaboration cafe, but compared to where I used to live it's about the normal price for eating out.

I bought some more gifts for friends and treated myself to an amaurot laptop case. I hope my retail therapy stops with this first time.

The train ride home was smooth and uneventful. I think I will sleep well tonight.

If you've gotten all the way here, thank you for reading about my adventure! Unfortunately tumblr only allows for 10 photos per post so I really had to pick and choose which photos I wanted to put out of the 150 pictures I took, hahaha.

Until next time, I hope you stay happy, healthy, and safe.

Taiari!

[orcashiki]

rattling the bars of my cage screaming for bread

[orcashiki]

Good news, fellow artists! Nightshade has finally been released by the UChicago team! If you aren't aware of what Nightshade is, it's a tool that helps poison AI datasets so that the model "sees" something different from what an image actually depicts. It's the same team that released Glaze, which helps protect art against style mimicry (aka those finetuned models that try to rip off a specific artist). As they show in their paper, even a hundred poisoned concepts make a huge difference.

(Reminder that glazing your art is more important than nighshading it, as they mention in their tweets above, so when you're uploading your art, try to glaze it at the very least.)

[orcashiki]

how much fun are we having in this timeline folks?

[orcashiki]

I think it’s time for us to all collectively return to the library. Get a card, go to a club meeting, volunteer on an off day, rent some equipment. You don’t even have to read a book. But since the digital world is rapidly becoming a subscription-only hellscape requiring a criminal amount of private personal information to use even CASUALLY, the library has become our last safe haven to just exist with information present and not have our labour or information exploited for money.

[orcashiki]

Food log

Pictures and musings of the food I ate for the past week.

On Tuesday, I went to this Indian curry place. Apparently a colleague judges how good the place is not by their curry, but by how big their naan is... And the naan at this place was huge. It was really fluffy, too. My only regret was that I couldn't finish it.

For dinner, I went to a tempura place with more colleagues. There was a bar where chefs would put freshly fried tempura on your plate, but we sat at a table as the bar was full. They gave us a salt plate and a pot with tentsuyu to accompany the tempura, as well as some miso soup and rice. Unfortunately I had a terrible headache from jet lag, so I couldn't stay long. I'd like to go again.

On Wednesday, I started eating in the cafeteria. There's a lot of variety but it doesn't change too much from day to day. I had tonkatsu and rice today. It's really funny, but I think my favorite part of the cafeteria is the drink machine. It has options for water, barley tea, and something else that I can't remember. You can pick hot or cold as well. Maybe I'm biased towards barley tea...

There was a company event for dinner, so I wasn't able to grab any pictures. There was so many people, the introvert in me died inside a little bit. It was mostly catering, so there wasn't much that was interesting. I still had a headache, but I tried my best to stay and social network until the end. I really felt like an adult, working hard at that salary-man life hahaha...haha...

Breakfast on Thursday was an orange jelly cup! I was really excited for this, since for some reason the American version tastes a little different. This one tastes just as processed and canned as I remember. It's perfect.

Obviously the jelly wasn't enough for breakfast (although I really wanted it to be), so I got a sandwich later when the convenience store opened. This one was actually three triangle sandwiches put into one bag, so I ate them separately. I feel like the ones I had in Taiwan were more like three-tiered sandwiches, where it's just one sandwich with 3 layers of stuff and 4 things of bread. I wonder if it's different now.

Lunch was soba. I realized too late that I didn't have enough money in my prepaid card, so I got the cheapest possible thing... and still ended up paying with my foreign credit card. It looks like if I'm in a pinch, I can maybe fallback on foreign cards, but of course the best case is to just charge the prepaid card and spare myself all the anxiety. That aside, the soba was good! It was very barebones, but something about the little tray underneath it makes it so much better.

I truly am living that salary-man life. I got conbini bento for dinner the first chance I could. This one is char siu rice with fried chicken and shioyaki soba. The microwave here looks more like a TV with all the buttons on it, but it has a preset for conbini bento which seems pretty... conbini... :^)

I'm sorry.

Friday breakfast was strawberry jam and margarine bread with milk. Apparently margarine doesn't taste like anything. I'm pretty sure I've had margarine before, but this tasted like bread with strawberry jam, even though I could clearly see something that looked like butter. I'm very confused.

Friday lunch was saba... mackerel I believe? With tofu and some greens. I'm surprised it took me this long to grab a small plate of greens, considering it's basically my life blood. That and rice, I guess. A meal is not a meal until I've had starch, and when in doubt I will definitely go for rice. Or noodles, if it's cold.

Friday dinner was yet another conbini bento, demi-glazed omurice. Conbini bento is actually really good for what it is. If you think about it, it's basically a TV dinner. I've had family size TV dinners in America and still felt hungry, but the conbini bento's have been very filling. Whether they're actually nutritious is another thing.

Saturday breakfast was Tuna mayo onigiri with houjicha. I missed you, conbini onigiri... It's so good, and so cheap...

Saturday lunch (and dinner) was a mackerel bento that had a surprise half croquette and a piece of tamagoyaki in it too. The vegetable side was gobou... which... I personally don't really classify as a vegetable. It doesn't feel like a vegetable dish. I don't feel like I'm eating vegetables. It feels more like a root, like... I dunno, carrot with more fiber.

I was also very curious, so I bought this juice box of vegetable juice. I hated it. I am also pretty confident that I've bought and tried the same thing out of curiosity before, but my brain must have deleted that memory. There are ways to make vegetables taste good, and vegetable juice is not it. Tomato juice is fine on its own, but when you mix grass (not even spinach or some type of leafy green, but GRASS.) and raw carrot in, it is not a good experience. I finished it, because I missed vegetables and I didn't want to waste it, but I hope I actually remember this time so I don't get it again.

If you've read this far, congratulations! Thank you for reading my ramblings about food. I had an eventful Sunday, so I'll write about it in a separate post. As a sneak peek of what happened, I charged my phone twice and my earbuds three times.

I hope you stay happy, healthy, and safe.

[orcashiki]

The reason why I hate the idea of growing up, I guess, is subconsciously because I want to remain a child and be sheltered from accepting the responsibility of things. I also shy away from making decisions and thinking about what I'm good for — which I am convinced, isn't much.

Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Ann Davidow-Goodman c. January 1951

[orcashiki]

Day 0

I don't like airports. I don't like traveling. And yet, I find myself, once again, in the airport to go to another country.

I'm always really stressed about the trip until I'm past security and the plane is in the air. Then it's a magical void unbothered by time and space where I dive into the world of games, or in this case, draw a million things and then some.

Despite being a mostly empty flight, somehow I scored a window seat with another passenger next to me. He asked to be moved to the row in front so we could each have a whole row to ourselves, though.

I took Japan Airlines for the first time, and their food is okay. Apparently you can get miso soup as well, but I declined each time in anxiety. I'd like to try it when I fly back. I've always wondered if airplane food being bland in general is due to the altitude. Something about higher altitude requiring more salt? Don't quote me on that, though. It's pure conjecture on my part.

I've decided I prefer window seats now. I used to grab middle seats because I didn't really need to leave my seat, and I wanted to avoid getting up to let people out. Then a couple flights ago, two people of larger stature sandwiched me into half of my seat. Thankfully it was a domestic flight, so it was only 6 hours, but ever since I've tried to get window seats instead. If the person next to me decides to spread and take my space again, there's a bit more space at the window. The view is also very pretty.

At baggage claim, the security dog beelined to my backpack. They asked me if I had any fruit or meat products, and I told them there was only a breakfast blueberry muffin from the airport... When I took off my mask later at the hotel, I got hit by a wall of blueberry. The blueberry muffin must have had some really strong stuff, since my backpack still smells like it.

On the plane I was using English, but I told myself to talk to people in Japanese starting from customs. The customs people all spoke very clearly, as did the airport train clerk. I managed to get to my station without too much trouble, although as always I was very scared that I might've gotten on the wrong train.

When I reached the hotel, the doors were closed. I called front desk over the intercom, and a man picked up and said... something.

My mind blanked.

I defaulted to English, "Hi, I have a reservation..."

There was a pause, before the man said, "check in?" in a heavy Japanese accent.

And I was in. He went to find an employee who spoke English, and that person was very polite while walking me through everything. He also answered all of my strange foreigner questions as I looked around the apartment with wide eyes. The appliances still look a bit like black magic to me, but I'm sure I'll get familiar with them eventually.

[orcashiki]

It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals

[orcashiki]

I've often heard that it's not okay to put any sort of worldbuilding info(dump) in a prologue. But what are the parameters in which it would work well? I know Avatar has done it and it was fairly brief but I'm just curious as to how far one can go with "infodumping" in a prologue without it becoming boring to the reader. Also if it does get to the point where it is too much or not necessary then what are some ways you can explain worldbuilding in the story when every character is usually in the know of how the magic system works or whatever?

Info-Dumping, Prologues, and Weaving In Details

First, it's important not to confuse "info-dumping" with providing information in your story. Info-dumping is specifically when you use exposition to "dump" a whole bunch of information into the story at once, rather than weaving those details into the narrative through a balance of exposition, action, and dialogue. In The Hunger Games, for example, details about Katniss's life and the oppressive world she lives in are doled out between exposition (her first-person thoughts), dialogue (with Gale), and action (walking through District 12, hunting outside the electric fence, the Reaping.) If it had been info-dumped, the entire first chapter would just be Katniss "telling" the reader all of those things rather than the reader getting to experience some of them through action and dialogue.

Prologues have a very specific use, are rarely needed, and are often misused--which is why writers are typically told to avoid them all together. Prologues aren't there to be used as an expository introduction to your story's world, characters, back story, or situation so that the reader is up and running in chapter one. Prologues are meant to house a scene (or small group of scenes) that take place before the main timeline of your story but which provide critical information and details the reader must know going into the story. Just as with any other scene or chapter, prologues need to be a balance of exposition (explaining), action (things happening), and dialogue. A good example is the prologue at the beginning of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones. The scene takes place north of the wall and features some Night's Watch rangers encountering a White Walker. This scene is important because it sets up the hidden conflict at the heart of the story--the battle between humanity and the magical undead ice beings from beyond the wall. While we do certainly get some expository information in the way of world building, character details, and back story, it isn't dumped on the reader. Some of it is expository, but the rest is woven into the action and dialogue as these characters range beyond the wall and encounter the White Walker.

Even when your characters are "in the know" about the details of your story, that doesn't mean they can't think about them, interact with them, or talk about them. In the real world, we may not do that a lot, but books are not the real world. Books are a storytelling device which requires you to transcend some everyday realities in order to keep the audience informed of what's going on. Part of that means finding ways for your characters to think about, interact with, or talk about things that will help deliver the necessary details to your reader. For example, in The Hunger Games, we get a lot of world building details and Hunger Games set up through action and dialogue while Katniss walking through District 12 to meet Gale, and then hunting with him in the meadow. The entire scene exists solely to introduce the reader to Katniss, her world, the people who are important to her, her internal conflict, and the story's external conflict.

Have a look at my post Weaving Details into the Story for more help. Happy writing!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

Learn more about WQA

Visit my Master List of Top Posts

Go to ko-fi.com/wqa to buy me coffee or see my commissions

[orcashiki]

Hi! I’m super curious about The Doll Witch but so far I haven’t seen any details about it. Is there anything you can share currently?

DFSLHG REALLY!!!?? T____T YOU'RE INTERESTED!?? CRIES

I've mostly been working on the manuscript rather than art, so I don't have a key visual to show (and I'm bad at writing synopses so I also don't have a proper one, but i'll throw smth together below lol)

But I /can/ show the two main characters! The girl is Alouette and the suit of armor is Guyot.

Title: The Doll Witch

Format/length: light novel (a novel with illustrations). Atm it has 25 chapters planned and is sizing up to be 300+ pages. It's a completely self-contained story that has no connection with MO (except some subtle references hehe)

Genre: fantasy/mystery. romance hinted but not major. im going for a "dark fairytale"!!!

Summary:

Several years since the genocidal Witch Hunt War, witches and humans have forged a strict semblance of peace. Meanwhile, Alouette awakens in a hidden forest cottage attended to by ditsy but loyal rag dolls. Laden with severe post-war injuries and amnesia, she realizes her identity as the Doll Witch. But the dolls won't answer her questions. An enchanted suit of armor rots away in a forgotten battlefield, wishing not for salvation. The reluctant yet enduring kindness of a late mapmaker turns the tide of tragedy.

I'm really excited for when I can finally start uploading chapters!! This will be free to read online, by the way!!

I feel like my MO stuff is a bit janky because I'm working off my younger self's (sometimes bad lol) ideas. But since this is a new project, it feels like I can apply all my experience so far :D

[orcashiki]

hi, do you have tips/do’s & don’ts of killing off characters/ death scenes? (i was sure you wrote an answer to something like this but i couldn’t find anything on your masterlist, so sorry if you did)

30 Tips for Killing Characters in Your Story

Every decision you make in telling your story should be made in the best interest of the story, which means you need to understand what impact it has on the story, why that's important, and how best to go about it. Here are some tips to help you with that process.

Character Deaths Should...

Serve a purpose beyond creating drama or gut-punching the reader.

Serve a purpose beyond furthering another character’s development

Illustrate something important about the plot or setting (e.g., that your character lives in a bleak, dangerous society; that the war they’re fighting is brutal, or that the terrain they’re crossing is perilous.)

Add deeper meaning to the story by reflecting or illustrating story themes or pointing to universal truths that can be drawn from the story’s events.

Be somewhere between expected and unexpected. You don’t want the reader to know what’s coming, but you want them to be able to look back and understand why it happened.

Good Reasons to Kill a Character

to set off a chain of events or reveal an important clue or information

to motivate other characters or help them grow (just not this alone)

to illustrate a universal truth in relation to your story

to illustrate, subvert, or underline a continuing theme

because it’s the only logical way to complete the character’s arc

Bad Reasons to Kill a Character

for shock value

to liven things up

solely for the development of another character

because you don’t know what else to do with them

because you don’t like them

Create Impact by “Showing the Math” for the Reader

Use foreshadowing to create a subtle sense of doom for the reader in relation to the character that’s going to die.

Spend time building up the bond/relationships between the character who dies and the characters who need to be emotionally impacted by that death.

Give the reader reasons to care about the character and what happens to them. Get them emotionally invested in the relationships they have with the other characters.

Establish the stakes surrounding this character’s death so that the reader knows the answer to “what’s the worst that can happen if this character dies?”

Making sure the other characters are aware of those stakes and will feel some impact from the character’s death beyond just an emotional one. (In other words, what else do they lose besides the friendship? A great navigator? A protector? Important clues that died with them?)

Don’t Forget the Aftermath

You previously illustrated the stakes of the character’s death (the “worst that could happen” if they died.) Don’t forget to show “the worst that could happen” actually happening as well as how that impacts the other characters and how they cope with it.

Be sure to show the emotional effects of this loss on the other characters.

Be sure to show the psychological effects of this loss on the other characters. (Is one character afraid to use magic now? Is another character now convinced their journey is a mistake?)

Show how this character’s physical loss is felt... like, if they were the best archer in the group, show another character’s struggle with being the new best archer in the group. Do they feel like they can never be as good as the dead character? Do the other characters trust this person as much? Are they as good? How do they cope with falling short if they do?

Don’t let your characters forget the dead character completely. All too often, a dead character is quickly forgotten and never brought up again. Make sure that loss is felt--emotionally, psychologically, and physically--throughout the story and especially during the climax (if they died before that) and during the end.

Other Things to Remember

Character deaths can kick off a series of important events, just be cautious of using the death of a female character as the catalyst for a male character’s story. (See “fridging” for more information here...)

Make sure the character’s manner of death feels like a natural result of what’s happening in the story. In other words, your character is crushed by a boulder after using magic to move it off a mountain pass your characters need to get through, versus they’re walking through the village one day and are randomly crushed by a falling boulder.

Every once in a while, a random, harsh, meaningless character death may be necessary. It’s up to you to decide whether that’s the case with this character or whether you’re defaulting to one of the “bad reasons to kill a character.”

You’re in control of your own writing. If your “muse” tells you a character needs to die but you genuinely feel it’s not in the best interest of the story, don’t do it. It’s as simple as that.

If you’re not sure about a character’s death, write it out. Follow it to its logical conclusion in summary. If it’s not the right call, you should be able to tell if it’s not going to work.

Good luck with your story!!!

————————————————————————————————-

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

[orcashiki]

I really think the woods are just as lovely in winter as in summer. They're so white and still, as if they were asleep and dreaming pretty dreams.

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

[orcashiki]

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

[orcashiki]

I have … a tip.

If you’re writing something that involves an aspect of life that you have not experienced, you obviously have to do research on it. You have to find other examples of it in order to accurately incorporate it into your story realistically.

But don’t just look at professional write ups. Don’t stop at wikepedia or webMD. Look up first person accounts.

I wrote a fic once where a character has frequent seizures. Naturally, I was all over the wikipedia page for seizures, the related pages, other medical websites, etc.

But I also looked at Yahoo asks where people where asking more obscure questions, sometimes asked by people who were experiencing seizures, sometimes answered by people who have had seizures.

I looked to YouTube. Found a few individual videos of people detailing how their seizures usually played out. So found a few channels that were mostly dedicated to displaying the daily habits of someone who was epileptic.

I looked at blogs and articles written by people who have had seizures regularly for as long as they can remember. But I also read the frantic posts from people who were newly diagnosed or had only had one and were worried about another.

When I wrote that fic, I got a comment from someone saying that I had touched upon aspects of movement disorders that they had never seen portrayed in media and that they had found representation in my art that they just never had before. And I think it’s because of the details. The little things.

The wiki page for seizures tells you the technicalities of it all, the terminology. It tells you what can cause them and what the symptoms are. It tells you how to deal with them, how to prevent them.

But it doesn’t tell you how some people with seizures are wary of holding sharp objects or hot liquids. It doesn’t tell you how epileptics feel when they’ve just found out that they’re prone to fits. It doesn’t tell you how their friends and family react to the news.

This applies to any and all writing. And any and all subjects. Disabilities. Sexualities. Ethnicities. Cultures. Professions. Hobbies. Traumas. If you haven’t experienced something first hand, talk to people that have. Listen to people that have. Don’t stop at the scholarly sources. They don’t always have all that you need.