seperis

[seperis]

Hi! Hope you're doimg well! I wanted to ask, what do you do when you get stuck when writing? Like, I know I want to go from point A to point B, but I'm stuck at point A and not sure how to get to point B.

nonny i am busting in here all excitedly like the koolaid man at four in the god o’clock of the morning to answer this, because I ACTUALLY KNOW THIS ONE: 

the solution to this issue is, in fact, square brackets. like this: [???]

what? you say. how works this? you say. READ ON I WILL TELL YOU

so right now in the scene i’m trying to pull together/make into prose, from tattered drafts/sentences/allcaps/bullet points/etc., i have three things that need to happen: 1) police will search a suspect’s house, 2) one of them has to find something incriminating, 3) the suspect’s son has to burst in and cause a lot of trouble. those are my B points. but right now, i’m stuck at point A: shen yi and he rongyue are sitting in the car talking about feelings when they need to get out and go do their damn jobs. how do i get them to move. why aren’t they moving. why are they still sitting there talking, this isn’t brunch goddammit.

at this point as a writer, you get to make a decision: EITHER a) your idea about what needs to happen in this scene was all wrong, and the reason you’re “stuck” at point A is that maybe point A is actually a very interesting place for your characters to linger inside, and maybe they really need to be there a while longer, in case they have things to say or do. and point B maybe isn’t the point B you thought it was going to be, but it’s going to be something different (maybe shen yi and he rongyue realize they need backup, or they decide they’re going someplace else to do something different, instead).

OR: square brackets. it works like this. (and by the way i learned this from @seperis because she is literally a genius, thank you sep darling you should know saved my whole entire life.) here is some of my draft to illustrate:

[shen yi and he rongyue saying a bunch of words about feelings and things not related to the case they’re supposed to be investigating]

“I wonder,” said Shen Yi thoughtfully, “what would happen if you just asked her to go for a walk with you?”

[TK]

Shen Yi stopped in front of the painting and looked at it, at first out of habit, and then more closely, as he instinctively stepped back the correct distance to see both the whole canvas at once as well as its technique. From the other room, he could hear He Rongyue and [Name of Her Assistant] doing [something something something]. He still had on nitrile gloves, so he came closer again, to touch the varnish, feel along the grooves of the brushwork. He frowned. This wasn’t a reproduction—this was a genuine [name of painter redacted bc it’s a plot point and a surprise].

[TK]

“What the fuck are you people doing in my house?” came an aggrieved voice from the landing. Everyone turned to look up at the young man standing there, keys in one hand, a cup of iced coffee in the other. He was, Shen Yi realized, Huang Wei, and that was neither unexpected nor a particular problem, but the person with him was probably going to be a very particular problem indeed.

you can see how i gestured towards three different parts of this scene, even though i didn’t finish any of them here and have no idea what the connective tissue will be between them. and i did this by skipping huge wads of prose and just tossing in “[TK]” for now. ”TK” by the way is an abbreviation i learned while working for newspapers/magazines; journalists use it to mean “to come,” as in, “something important is missing here so i promise i will make a bunch of phone calls and get that detail/fact shoved in there before we go to press.” We use TK instead of TC because you can word-search TK and that letter combination isn’t in any english words (or at least very few; anyway i can’t think of any).

at some point, of course, you will have to fill in “[TK]” or rather, i will, here with all the stuff that’s missing—dialogue, action, and description, mostly; i tend not to summarize or use exposition much, but usually default to telling a story in-scene (a time-honored tradition in fanfic). but the beauty of TK and above all, the square brackets, is that you don’t bog down. you don’t go down a research rabbit hole because you can’t remember the name of He Rongyue’s assistant (Xiao something? Feng?) and you don’t wind yourself into knots figuring out how to get them out of the car and into the house. you keep moving, like a shark.

so if you’re stuck getting from A to B? stop trying to get from A to B. just SKIP there, skip to where you want to be. throw in “[something goes here]” so you remember to go back and add it later. if you have a general idea of what goes there, put that instead: “[somehow they get out of the car still talking and head inside. oh wait how do they break the door down. is jiang xue with them?]”—like that.

the trick with any piece of fic longer than, say, 7-8k, is NOT to get bogged down. anything with multiple scenes, really—even if you have, say, five scenes planned for your oneshot, you will find one really easy to write and then you’ll stare at the next one, which SHOULD be easy to write, for eleventy hours, sweating like that gif of jordan peele. don’t do that. just put “[this is the scene where chen fei throws a chair and ruan nanzhu says something cutting and walks out, and that’s the moment chen fei knows he actually likes the bastard.]” then skip! skip, skip. skip to the moment where you know the next thing that will happen! write that part instead! “it’s two years later and chen fei is furious, because he has to see that lovesick look on ruan nanzhu’s face whenever he thinks qiushi isn’t paying attention. the worst part is that lin qiushi is genuinely loveable, so chen fei can’t even hate him. he starts hiding in his room.” etc.

the thing about writing ANYTHING is not to lose momentum, not to get stuck in what novelist robert pirsig called “a gumption trap.” or, as alec baldwin’s character says in glengarry glen ross: always be closing. keep moving! don’t sit in one place too long or you really will get stuck. if you find yourself fussing with a paragraph, or adding more to a scene when you didn’t mean to add more instead of stopping and moving on, or pacing around the house irritated with yourself, drink a lot of very cold water and then SKIP.

skip to the part where you know what happens. if you don’t know what happens, either go for a long walk and think about what exactly Han Juwon or Naruto or Bob the Builder or Taylor Swift or Viktor Nikiforov or Wang Meng or whomstthefuckever would do/say in this situation. after about 15-20 minutes i’m usually either turning around to go home and write it down, or giving myself complicate mnemonics based on trees and street signs, so i have a chance of remembering what i just realized absolutely has to happen next in the story.

in conclusion:

1. [TK!] [square brackets are your friends!] [you can use them!] [to skip ahead!] [and leave a stuck spot BYYYYYEEEE hit da bricks] [and just go to a more pleasant spot where there’s a shady tree and some soft green grass to lie on]

2. …and then later when you take another pass through the document, on some day when you’re mentally fresher and maybe you haven’t read it for a couple days, you’ll find yourself adding a few sentences. or one sentence. or some words. it’s fine. it’s all fine. look we can’t all be out here writing a million words a year. some people do, sure. as writer annie dillard says, some people eat cars. but if you want to write something with some bite to it, some texture and grit and heft, you’re gonna endure some tortuous slowness and a lot of [TK]. so best start getting real comfortable with that now. if you wanted an easy hobby i have some difficult news for you, you picked the wrong fucking one.

3. the reward for your patience with yourself and your writing process will be all those times when you’re driving, showering, cooking, and/or DMing with bestie, and suddenly What's About To Happen Next will hit you like a bolt of lightning and nearly scalp you in the process. holy shit, you’ll say to yourself, stunned. i now know exactly who’s coming through the door with huang wei and it’s not at all who i thought it was. (this jolt of electricity is why people are pantsers, by the way. we suffer through our own cluelessness for an eternity, just to have that one shocking moment of godlike clarity. the crash usually sucks but the high is unbelievable.) (and i say this, but i always have an outline. i just usually mostly ignore it, because apparently my continued survival is predicated on the fact that imaginary people talk in my head and i just write down what they say.)

4. finally i have ABSOLUTELY written fics of every length just to get to One Particular Scene which i wrote first. i wrote the ending of my current long wip really early on, and everything leading up to it has just been me trying to figure out: okay, so what’s it going to take to get them there? in the words of george w. bush, whom i am not much given to quoting, you are the decider. you can decide to write your fic backwards if you want to! write C first and then go back and add B and at the very end A! no one will ever know, it’s between you and your drafts. then you can do what i do, and write an excessively long nervous a/n about it all, when you post.

this got long but tldr just remember: [tk]. love you have fun writing!!! <3 <3

[seperis]

[seperis]

Hello, fellow DTA lovers. I've created a document with every reoccurring theme in the series that I could find (fuck yourself, I win, birth to death, etc). It also has an Obscure Characters page (not finished) with summaries on, mostly, the Romans. I'm also currently adding a favorite quotes/scenes tab, which is mostly for me, but I figure some of yours may be on there as well. While I won't be adding other people's favorites to it, if I missed any themes or scenes that should be within them, please let me know - in a comment on the doc, as I likely won't see comments here. In the future, I may also be adding tabs for all the plot lines, but that's not certain. Please read the note in the first tab before perusing as it has some important information. Thank you and I greatly hope you enjoy ❤️

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U3ZQzGVE6IL8NQtgVo3wUlyxsU4eXipKC95v_HedsNA/edit?usp=drivesdk

[seperis]

On the topic of humans being everyone’s favorite Intergalactic versions  of Gonzo the Great: Come on you guys, I’ve seen all the hilarious additions to my “humans are the friendly ones” post. We’re basically Steve Irwin meets Gonzo from the Muppets at this point. I love it. 

But what if certain species of aliens have Rules for dealing with humans?

Don’t eat their food. If human food passes your lips/beak/membrane/other way of ingesting nutrients, you will never be satisfied with your ration bars again.

Don’t tell them your name. Humans can find you again once they know your name and this can be either life-saving or the absolute worst thing that could happen to you, depending on whether or not they favor you. Better to be on the safe side.

Winning a human’s favor will ensure that a great deal of luck is on your side, but if you anger them, they are wholly capable of wiping out everything you ever cared about. Do not anger them.

If you must anger them, carry a cage of X’arvizian bloodflies with you, for they resemble Earth mo-skee-toes and the human will avoid them.

This does not always work. Have a last will and testament ready.

Do not let them take you anywhere on your planet that you cannot fly a ship from. Beings who are spirited away to the human kingdom of Aria Fiv-Ti Won rarely return, and those that do are never quite the same.

Basically, humans are like the Fair Folk to some aliens and half of them are scared to death and the others are like alien teenagers who are like “I dare you to ask a human to take you to Earth”.

[seperis]

[This idea has been rattling in my brain and I had to share it.]

I know we all love the ‘humans are space orcs’ concept… but imagine, onboard the new ship they’ve been assigned to, the human meets an actual space orc. A massive monster… fangs and tusks and scars and a battle-hardened stare, looming over all the other life forms on the ship in its thick indestructible armour it refuses to remove. It barely drinks, it doesn’t need sleep, its massive shoulders are heavy with the terrible things it has experienced. Compared to the squishy & delicate human body, this thing is a walking tank.

… Except instead of hating/ignoring one another, the human and the monster start bonding over both coming from death planets. The human is excited to find a life form who doesn’t quiver with fear at the vague description of a jellyfish and the monster is ecstatic to meet someone who understands the feeling of being bitten by a qua’lem (cats are pretty close). They sit together and compare dangerous animals and locations as the other aliens look on in confusion and fear… oh, you also have dense jungles of deadly hidden predators, boiling acid lakes, tamed predatory killers, and areas with horrendously high and low temperatures? Sick!! 

It doesn’t take long before the two of them become totally inseparable. The human loves not feeling like some kind of crazy outsider and the monster is overjoyed they’ve finally found an equal in this unkillable marshmallow.

Monster: When I was a youngling, a grol-lik stung straight through my armour. The pain lasted for approximately 16 human hours. Human: Oh yeah man, I get that. As a kid I got a wasp stuck in my shirt. It stung me like four times, it was awful, and all my cousins just laughed at me… Monster: [using their arm screen to research human courting methods] I see.

[seperis]

Humans are awesome

[seperis]

It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.

I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.

How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?

Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.

[seperis]

You've heard of Earth is space australia now get ready for: Earth is the space Amazon Rainforest. Aliens land on Earth and they are losing their goddamn minds because every square inch of the ground is absolutely PACKED with life like there are hundreds of species just in this one site, there are winged animals flying through the sky and multiple colonies of sophisticated social insects just in the shadow of their ship, this ONE ROCK is covered in MULTIPLE SPECIES OF ORGANISMS that are themselves MULTIPLE ORGANISMS LIVING SYMBIOTICALLY, the tall, woody autotrophs look so different from each other because they're...holy shit that's like 5, 6, 7???? different species on this one site???

they start talking to a human and the human is like "haha yeah that's a crow!" and the alien researcher is like "you called it a 'bird' earlier, is that a different name?" and the human is like "oh a crow is just one species of bird, there's like, 10 others out there"

"On this planet?"

"No, in the back yard right now."

[seperis]

Sequel to You'll Get There in the End (It Just Takes a While). The Federation and the Romulan Empire have been on the verge of war for what sometimes feels like forever; this is the place where what passes for peace might end.

Podfic of "War Games" by @seperis

[seperis]

I'm forever a Dean defender and that's why I stand by the concept that Game of God hits the hardest in terms of phycological consequences of the space and time displacement of Dean Winchester.

When the lines between Dean in hell (aka Alistair), Endverse Dean and Dean actually begin to blurry in Dean's mind after the daycare fight— and what happened to Grant.

A bit later (a few days after that tragedy I think) he went to explore the Sisters of Mercy's church with Cas and completely forgot that he wasn't there before that night in Kansas City. He goes "if we had known the sisters where here"— but he could not known, he didn't appear in the Endverse until three days before the Kansas City attempt to kill Lucifer.

It keeps building and by the time we reach Game of God, the circumstances make everything worse than it could possibly be. His displaced guilt and his inability to forgive himself for things beyond his possibilities (what happened in hell, what the other Dean did) sets him on a very familiar cycle of self-destruction.

What Dean learned in hell was to broke himself more than anything else. Alistair destroyed him from within and left the enemy inside him, so that Dean would continue to torture himself even after he was out of hell.

What I mean it's that Dean has to deal with two totally different versions of himself that he could not prevent from happening. He is paying for sins old (time) and sins he didn't even commit (space).

Even if he's been months on the Endverse, you're asking Dean to carry the burden of three different lives. It's insane. He tries so hard not to break and the only other person who knows what he's going through is Cas.

Give that poor man a rest 😩😩

[seperis]

Dean feeling inferior to Endverse Dean because Endverse Dean founded like 6 different hunter camps and got offered a bunch of territory by a really powerful boss woman with physic powers and therefore got an army.

Just for Dean to then go to Ichabod and charm a powerful boss woman with physic powers to convince an entire trade alliance at the end of the world to give him territory and people to create another hunter base for his for his army. Under his first year in that world, I must say.

Captain of being oblivious to his own influence AND trying to win competitions against dead versions of himself.

[seperis]

no because you only have to watch 7 seasons of the cw show supernatural and just a cursory understanding of roman history is all you need and yes it’s a million words long but don’t worry it’s a wip and one day there will be more-

- me pitching down to agincourt to my book club

[seperis]

i will not lie i do fantasize about the universe in which the dta illuminated manuscript exists

[seperis]

emojikitchen said sheepapus rights

[seperis]

Hey, y'all, this is a reminder for anyone that has student loans that they are defaulted on or in collections for:

Apply for Fresh Start NOW if you haven't already done so. Like right now. Do it right this very second do not put it off any longer.

If you don't know, applying for Fresh Start will move your loan status from "Default" to "Current," you will no longer have to deal with collections calls! You won't have your wages garnished or your tax refunds taken by the Education Department! The default gets removed from your credit and you become eligible for federal mortgage programs! You become eligible for Income Driven Repayment (IDR) programs that can reduce your monthly payment in a huge way (from $400/month to $50/month for me!) and you get IDR credit for the three years you were in default during the pandemic freeze!

It only has upsides!

I mean it, it can make a huge difference! You can even submit both Fresh Start and an IDR application at the same time. It takes literal seconds. I had my name legally changed and I'm still eligible! I clicked like 3 buttons, checked a couple boxes, and boom. I sent off the application August 22nd and I got the letter yesterday (Sept 20th), but that letter was dated Sept 1st and was only to inform me that my loan was no longer in default would be transferred to a new loan servicer by the end of the month. It took a week and a half to process.

I also became eligible and received a refund check for money taken from me during the starting stages of the pandemic.

The best time to do it is now. Period.

Do. It. Right. Now.

[seperis]

I am not joking when I say I would kill to see that googledoc. I don't think I've seen an analysis like that one.

AMA (Down to Agincourt addition) I am once again bored, so here are some more (aka many) questions. As that anon from last year who asked for the elevator pitch, I am so glad I did and gave DtA another shot!!! When did you first start reading it?

When did you first realize how hooked you where with DtA? Was it from moment one? Was there a spesific scene?

Fav of the original side characters?

Fav the original main characters?

Coolest concept that DtA introduced into the SPN world?

If there could be a in-depth prequel written for any of the characters, who's past would you be the most interested in exploring?

If you had to, what would you ranking be of the books?

How many times have you read it all the way through?

What bit of foreshadowing (if any) did you miss the first time around that really jumped out at you on a reread?

Did reading DtA help inspire your own The End fic?

What of the many burning questions currently unanswered do you want answered first?

What's the most interesting non-SPN related fact that DtA taught you?

If normal SPN team free will read/watch/found out about the DtA what do you think their reactions would be?

What's a scene/interaction that still scratches the brain itch?

Have you read The Forever King spin-off series? If so, what are your thoughts?

Yes!! Muahahahaha. Changing the order a bit.

Coolest concept that DtA introduced into the SPN world?

The Winchester House, everything about it, and its entire relationship to Nate. 

The complex rules and magical constraints/potential of metaphysical contamination.

Honorable mention: Lucifer’s plans with the Gods.

But also actually: The Winchester House.

What bit of foreshadowing (if any) did you miss the first time around that really jumped out at you on a reread?

(spoilers) 

The set up for the church paradox. 

Cas, post fall, fever dream, almost dying locked in that cabin bedroom, the unnamed goddess calling him in spirit yet somehow physically into that Church.

Dean, post infection, fever dream, almost dying locked in that cabin bedroom, Cas accidentally calling him in spirit yet somehow physically into that Church. 

All of time and space converging. Dean is the impossible, he was never supposed to be in this universe, Cas accidentally binding them together with those sigils, allowing Cas to connect with Dean in the first place, and also making Dean invisible to Lucifer while he’s physically in that cabin, which he technically is, thus allowing him to shield Lia and thus her able to get him into that church where he and Cas manage to do something and erase the kids' (and both of their) minds. 

There is so much meat there, and every time you re-read there is more. There is so much cool foreshadowing with ALL the players involved, and I literally put together another thread in that during EVERY read-through. 

Someone once asked me my thoughts on what we know happened in the church and it got to 19 pages in google before I had to cut it off pending another re-read of book 4. 

Fav of the original side characters?

I can not separate Nate and the Winchester House, so--

Fav the original main characters?

Vera by a slim margin over Joe.

When did you first start reading it?

It’s hard to remember just because the last three years are a fuzzy mess, but I’m pretty sure I started reading it late 2021/early 2022. I am a fast reader so I demolished it VERY fast. 

When did you first realize how hooked you where with DtA? Was it from moment one? Was there a specific scene? 

After Cas and Dean started properly working together in book 1 I was pretty on board, but once they told Chuck and started their trips into Kansas City, that was when it really settled in and I knew I was about to read the entire thing.

If there could be a in-depth prequel written for any of the characters, who's past would you be the most interested in exploring?

Joe or Teresa. Honestly though I’d really like to see the case Dean worked down by the border. 

If you had to, what would you ranking be of the books?

This is a slim AF margin too, because they’re all so good. But I think it’d be 3,1,4,2 So “A Thousand Lights in Space” “Map of the World” “Game of God” “It’s the Stars That Lie” But it's real neck and neck for the last three.

How many times have you read it all the way through?

Books one and two I have read cover to cover 6 or 7 times, three I probably read a couple more. Book four I’ve actually only read completely cover to cover once, but I have read a lot of it out of order a couple more times. I’m trying to get my fics to a bit more of a stable point so I can re-read it again in case I go off the rails hyper-fixation on it again. I’ll probably read it twice in a row when I read it this next time.

Did reading DtA help inspire your own The End fic?

No, it hindered it greatly. The world building in DtA is very contrary to the plot I have for my endverse fic, and it took a while for my brain to reset and be like “Nope, this is what I’m doing, put that out of your mind.” If I hadn’t read DtA, you’d already have my Endverse fic, because I started writing it before reading that, and had to stop work for straight up like a year. 

What of the many burning questions currently unanswered do you want answered first?

WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED INSIDE THE DAMN CHURCH!?!?!?

What's the most interesting non-SPN related fact that DtA taught you?

Graphene and everything about it.

If normal SPN team free will read/watch/found out about the DtA what do you think their reactions would be?

I think none of them would have any idea what to do with it. Cas would therefore not have much outward expression, Sam would be incredibly awkward and only a little insulted he isn’t in it, and Dean would be 10/10 defensive AF. 

What's a scene/interaction that still scratches the brain itch?

The Winchester Hou- Cas accidentally calling Dean when he’s using Allison as a conduit for the kids in Ichabod, and subsequently their interactions after Cas figures out what happened. 

Close seconds are Cas and Dean’s interaction after Dean gets bit in the courtyard, Cas searching Kansas City with his mind after Dean touched The Ick™. 

And yes actually the retelling of Nate’s interactions with The Winchester House.

Have you read The Forever King spin-off series? If so, what are your thoughts?

I have not read it yet, I must at some point. I know I’ll like it.

-

Also I'm glad my pitch worked and you ended up giving it another go!!

[seperis]

Mugs for a certain Athenian student who was refused study in the Library of Alexandria

(mug 1, mug 2)