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Something that's been knocking around in my head for a while: I think a lot of new writers get thrown off by their assumption that writing will be anything like reading. Reading is a dreamy, passive experience--scenes, dialogue, and description flow over you as you are taken under the writer's spell. Writing, on the other hand (with the exception, sometimes, of the first draft), is the laborious, almost mechanical-like task of putting narrative elements together so that the reader can lose themselves in your story. In short, reading and writing are very different experiences, and the assumption that they will be, or even should be, the same, is cause for much angst among new and experienced writers alike. It's a frustrating thing, because a love of reading is usually what gets people interested in writing in the first place. I've been writing for several decades and I still feel confounded by this clash--it's part of why I don't read much when I'm deep into my writing, and vice versa. And when I am writing, I constantly have to remind myself: Writing is not watching a magic show. Writing is figuring out how to smuggle the rabbit into the hat.

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I assigned Suavegothe a random French surname for the limited time she has in this story but now all I can think of is

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Mmmmjupeter

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Speaking of ship wars, I don't know if you're on twitter, but the genshin/hsr fandom over there is vicious with this stuff

Me whenever anyone approaches me with even a whiff of shipping wank

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:(

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You, a heroic paladin have successfully slain a fearsome dragon. But the dragon warns you that death is but a door, and dragons don’t die, they reincarnate. You paid it no mind….until your son was born with golden, slitted eyes.

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Honestly? My main piece of advice for writing well-rounded characters is to make them a little bit lame. No real living person is 100% cool and suave 100% of the time. Everyone's a little awkward sometimes, or gets too excited about something goofy, or has a silly fear, or laughs about stupid things. Being a bit of a loser is an incurable part of the human condition. Utilize that in your writing.

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dunno where this line is going but it's going somewhere

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LeBlanc Coffee and Curry Honolulu, Hawaii 

Jimmy Tanaka’s Japanese was godawful, but he had grandparents that lived in Okinawa so Sojiro made an effort to help him practice. He had done so much evil in his life that a handful of good deeds would do little to cleanse his soul, but Sojiro hoped that the occasional act of kindness would at least earn him a kinder form of damnation. 

Jimmy spoke Japanese with all the hallmarks of a young man alienated from his parents’ culture, drawing out the u in Sojiro’s last name until it sounded like he was saying “Sah-KOO-rah” despite his gentle admonishments. Still, he was a breath of fresh air among the aging Japanese expats and locals that typically flooded his cafe. They would cluster around the front stoop, grousing about tourists and playing cards while they smoked and waited for their orders to arrive.  It wasn’t too popular; Sojiro never made it a point to advertise. Advertising invited unwanted attention, which Sojiro had avoided successfully for years. 

Hiding in a bustling tourist city on American soil offered him more protection than hunkering down in a bolt-hole somewhere in Japan. S.E.E.S. might be bold enough to march armed into hell, but not bold enough to provoke a response from the United States. The rather liberal Yankee gun-policy meant that Sojiro could reliably stow a weapon under his register without too many eyebrows being raised. He had never been a field operative and would likely die in any fair gunfight. But he kept it meticulously oiled and loaded and never far from reach. The other shoe was going to drop someday, and Sojiro would be ready for it when it finally did. 

Until then, he had work to do; at home, and at the restaurant slinging plates of warm curry and hot coffee. 

“Jimmy, order for Table 2!” Sojiro called in Japanese, sliding two katsu curry plates onto a tray and ringing the doorbell. 

“Table…” The young man’s brow furrowed, trying to remember his Japanese. “Ah, naruhodo!” 

Do you really? Sojiro thought, watching the young man walk to Tables 3, 4, and 5 before finally remembering what the Japanese word for two was. Then again Sojiro’s English was only adequate after nearly a decade abroad. Between the two of them, they had enough English and Japanese experience to carry on a full conversation in two broken languages. 

“You get the overseas news, Sa-ku-ra-san?” Jimmy asked as he returned behind the counter. 

“Nah…been busy,” Sojiro grunted in English, cracking open a glass coke bottle and taking a sip. Synthesizing baalsulfuric aether with components outside the Metaverse was impossible, so naturally it took a whole week of sleepless nights to figure out how to do it. “Anything interesting?” 

“Some hella yabai stuff going on,” Jimmy whistled. “Bunch of…uh… thieves?” 

“Thieves?” Sojiro snorted. “What did they steal?” 

“Nothing yet; they’re like crazy, uh… hacker thieves,” Jimmy said after a moment of fumbling with the pronunciation. “Took over a radio station or something I guess; started making threats to the police and a bunch of famous people.” 

“That so?” Sojiro chuckled. Everyone is a drama queen these days. 

“They got a couple of babes with them though,” Jimmy said, scrolling through his phone and pulling up an image clipped from one of the broadcasts. “Check out the blonde in the catsuit.” 

Sojiro sighed, leaning over to look at Jimmy’s phone for a moment before turning back to the stove. “She’s a bit young for me, but I guess she’s up your- wait! ” 

Panic raced through Sojiro as he suddenly reached out and grabbed Jimmy’s phone before he could tuck it away. “Let me see that again.” 

Jimmy’s smirk spread as he passed Sojiro the phone. “Told ya she was hot…though the chick in the biker gear has some nice legs too.” 

Sojiro was half listening, eyes tracing the lines of glowing energy that snaked under the thieves’ masks in disbelief. “H-How long have they been robbing people?! Have they appeared in public or just on the news?! When did they show up?!” 

“Uh…” Jimmy blinked, struggling with the flood of Japanese. “I don’t really know…maybe a few weeks, or so ago? The forums are all buzzing with gossip but- hey!” 

“Watch the shop!” Sojiro called over his shoulder, grabbing his pistol and tucking it into the waistband of his slacks. “And send me that link!” 

Sojiro heard his protegee call something back to him but couldn’t hear what over the pounding in his own ears. The afternoon sun cast long shadows on the sidewalk as he made it towards his car parked in a side-alley. He whipped out a pocket mirror, carefully inspecting the undercarriage for misplaced wiring or lumpy blocks of C4 before sliding into the driver’s seat and tearing out onto the main road. 

Traffic was infuriatingly dense on the way back to his unassuming white house tucked away in the corner of an unassuming neighborhood. The money from his previous career could have furnished beachfront property, yet the small, overgrown home far away from the tourist spots had been perfect. Neighbors were friendly, but old, blind, and hard of hearing; if the gadget in the basement blew up, it would only kill those who had lived full lives already. Heavy iron bars rattled on the front door as Sojiro’s hands shook trying to open it, the eye of a single security camera following him into the house as he slammed and bolted the door behind him. 

"Hey!" Sojiro called into the house. "Get up here; you need to see this!" 

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Start from the Beginning

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ursula k le guin was right

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I'm just saying...if Three Houses did the kid from the future shit like Awakening and Fates did...this would be Claude's kid

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As an FYI please do not reproduce my fics on other sites or in physical form. There seems to be a wave of people discussing binding fics (I think it's a TikTok thing?) and I feel kinda iffy about that.

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Changeling:The Lost book covers in order.

Core (2007)  Aileen E. Miles   As far as I can tell along with Victorian Lost.

Autumn Nightmares (2007) Targete Along with the other 3 seasons and ER)

Winter Masques (2007)

Rites of Spring (2008)

Lords of Summer (2008)

Equinox Road (2008)

Night Horrors: Grim Fears (2008) Michel Koch

Dancers in the Dusk (2008)  Stephanie Pui-Mun Law along with SaD

Swords at Dawn (2008)

Goblin Markets (2008) Justin Norman

Victorian Lost (2012)

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Alright, to ao3's soon to be arriving Wattpad Refugees, a basic guide to general user culture:

1.) Unlike Wattpads vote system that let's you like each chapter, the ao3 equivalent kudos only allows one per work. Everyone is generally quietly annoyed about this. To engage with each chapter, you're heavily encouraged to comment. Trust me, it makes people's day.

2.) Ao3 has no algorithm. By default it's latest updated work first. You can find things to your taste through searches, filters and tags.

3.) 'No archive warnings apply' and 'user has chosen not to use archive warnings' mean two very different things. No archives warnings means the work is free from any content that could require a warning tag (character death, graphic depictions of violence, non-con, etc). User has chosen not to use archive warnings means it could contain any of the warning content, be it hasn't been explicitly tagged. Treat it like an allergen. No archive warnings apply is allergen free. User has chosen not to use archive warnings, may contain traces or whole chunks of the allergen. If you're likely to have a bad reaction, maybe don't take the risk.

4.) Speaking of warnings, ao3 has very few restrictions on the type of work that's allowed. Whatever your personal thoughts or feelings on that are, thats how the site is. You're likely to run across some dark subject matters and a lot of people are uncomfortable with reading that. You're well within your rights not like these works and have your opinion on whether they should be allowed, but harassing the authors of such works (or any works) is more likely to come back on you than them. Ao3 operates on a strong policy of 'don't like, don't read'. Use the tagging system to your full advantage to only engage with the kind of works you want to see.

We look forward to welcoming you all and seeing the fantastic works you create. Happy writing!

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actually that ao3 post about calculating kudos-to-hits ratios to decide if a fic is worth reading has me so pissed off. someone put real time and energy into something they are SHARING WITH YOU FOR FREE on a site where you can quite literally filter and search by anything you want and you're STILL trying to find a foolproof method to find stuff that's "good enough to read"???

YOU ARE NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE FOR EVERYTHING

you don't have to like or read everything in a given fandom or tag, but you also don't have to be a cunt about it and imply that it's not worth reading. this is the kind of shit that moves people to stop creating altogether, and to see people agreeing in the tags is so disheartening. absolutely unserious behavior.