#I have complicated feelings about that. Mostly that Big Finish would do more story arcs but like. Do them Better jsdlkfj.

[being-of-rain]

pretty covers!

[seyaryminamoto]

hey hopefully these aren’t too many questions but im asking mostly because I forgot if you had said so, how is our favourite couple currently where you’re writing & how far ahead are you compared to where the readers are at? and finally how many parts will Gladiator be? I’m sure you have said it already but Im sure I have forgotten!!

Well, they're a fair amount of questions, haha, but that's fine :D

I'm still around 50 chapters ahead, but I've had to invest most of my time into art exclusively over the past weeks, it's why I haven't been able to write as much as I usually do. I was at a 60~ish chapter advantage, I'm not doing double updates atm so that the gap won't get too big to be manageable anymore. I'm pretty sure we all want to keep the update rate steady and constant all across Part 3... so the more chapters I write in advance, the better.

And Part 3 is the final part of the story, worth mentioning. The way I structure Gladiator, each part has its own particular identity as the status quo shifts in some way (Part 1: will-they-won't-they, Part 2: when will they get caught?, Part 3: all hell breaks loose), and each of them have certain storytelling climaxes that basically mark the conclusion of each part, so to speak. For Part 1, the climax was also very literal as it's when Azula and Sokka finally go all the way :'D for Part 2, the climax is the Combustion Man fight, and for Part 3... can't tell you that but I'm expecting you can guess at it pretty easily, haha. After each of these climaxes, we've had some more story to cover before switching to the next bit... Part 3 will feature the longest post-climax chunk of story since we have a lot of loose ends to tie and I would hate myself if I finished everything too quickly. Hopefully all that I just said makes sense? :'D

Also, not sure if you wanted to know this exactly but as things stand, I've posted 7 out of 33 arcs for Part 3... and I'm due to start writing arc 20 :'D Part 3 has a LOT of arcs but they're generally shorter than they were before, I feel? Definitely shorter than in Part 1, where they were the longest in the story altogether, I believe.

As for your other, spoilery question...

Currently, Sokka and Azula are in complicated territory. Which I'm sure comes as no surprise considering what's been happening in the story as of late...

Azula's position is extremely precarious even in what stability she has found, and she has far too many complicated motivations pulling at her from all sides, too many people to protect, all of which comes into conflict with the position she's stuck in for the time being. Sokka continues his full dedication to waging war, but while he's doing well at it, the enemy's upping the challenge in what's coming, and as much as he's trying not to be rash and to make his decisions carefully, he has nooo idea how uphill things are going to get for his push in the near future.

It's worth noting that Sokka and Azula have been able to communicate through their spiritual bond a few more times, as well as having multiple chances of noticing something's wrong (or occasionally, right) with the other, even at a distance. Their communication hasn't always been effective in informing them about what the other is doing... but they're learning about each other's movements through other sources now, too. As expected from our chaotic and beloved pair... neither one is to happy about the other's position atm. Which makes it really interesting to me that in all their frustrations about what's going on, the faith they have in each other really doesn't waver.

I don't think I should say much more than that, but I will say I'm looming closer and closer to their fateful reunion, it will still take some time but not a lot, all in all. I only have two big battles left to write before we get to what we're all waiting for... so I really, REALLY want to finish all the art so I can get to that ASAP XD

[todaydreambelieversfic]

Author Spotlight: Heartsmadeofbooks Day 2

Author: @heartsmadeofbooks​ 

Share one of your strengths.

I like to think I'm good at writing angst. At least it feels like I'm at my best when I'm writing it.

Share one of your weaknesses.

The language, probably. It's gotten better with time, but at first it was so difficult to write in English, as it's not my first language. I'm very lucky to have a wonderful beta who hasn't yet killed me when I make the silliest of mistakes over and over again. So shout out to Christine for that.

Which fic has been the hardest to write?

There are two, I think, if not three. Syrup and Honey, because it was one of the first, when I felt like I was at the worst when trying to use the language to craft something decent; Quicksand, because  it deals with some personal stuff at some points and it was really hard to get it out; and Hidden in the Deep, because that first chapter sat in my drafts FOREVER, and I hated it every time I went back to it, but I was determined to write that story even if it felt so different from anything I had written before.

Which fic has been the easiest to write?

Flowers in the Window, I think. It was like going back home after a very, very long time away, and the whole story was written in a month and a half (probably because of quarantine, but also because I just wanted to do nothing but write all day every day) despite being a rather long and complicated story.

Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?

I think it's a bit of both. For most of my life I wanted to be a writer, but I never fall in love with any of my original stuff. I think I still haven't found that one idea that makes everything fall into place, the way I feel about writing fanfiction. But hey, why can't writing fanfiction be my passion, as well?

Is there an episode or character or arc above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?

Most of my stories are AU, so I don't focus much on episodes, but I do love writing blangst. I'm so sorry, because Blaine Anderson is nothing but sunshine and rainbows and he certainly deserves all of the good things in the world, but there's something about seeing him broken that makes my inspiration flow like a damn river.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Don't stress about every word being perfect right away. Just make sure you pour it all on the page, and you can always come back and fix it later. It's really liberating.

What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Write about what you know. I'm sure it works perfectly for others, but in my case, it would make for extremely boring stories.

If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

I'm pretty sure most people would say Syrup and Honey (and wouldn't that be a dream come true?), but I've always really loved Sitting, Waiting, Wishing. It would make for a great rom-com, I think.

What’s your process? Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order? Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines? What are the perfect writing conditions for you?

I start with an idea and I make a doc with all the details and an outline of chapters and characters. Sometimes that initial doc has a fragment of a scene that will later be included in the story, if that scene was a big part of why I wanted to start writing the story in the first place. Then I write the story from start to finish. I can't do it out of order, I just make a mess of things and get constantly lost.

My perfect writing conditions include silence, preferably, but I can work with some music on, mostly instrumental or in some way related to the story. Otherwise, it's distracting. A cup of tea is always nice, if it's cold weather season, or even a glass of wine. If I plan a long writing session, I usually have a candle or flowers on my desk, too.

However, if I really, REALLY want to write and none of those things are available (not even the silence), I can write anywhere. I've written at work and on my phone in a crowded train, and in the middle of the night after waking up from a particularly inspiring dream.

***

Check out Heartsmadeofbooks’s Fics!

The Awakening -  Kurt Hummel has put his perfect life together carefully, making sure all the pieces fit exactly how he wanted them to. But all it takes is one name from his past to make all his hard work go to waste - Blaine Anderson.

Flowers in the Window -  This is the story of four men - Cooper and Blaine; Burt and Kurt. This is a story of heartbreak and loyalty, of pain and hope, of loneliness and family. This is the story of how, even when the sun stops shining, love finds a way to bloom.

Solid Gold -  Ten years after breaking his engagement to Blaine, Kurt's life isn't the fairy tale he once hoped for. Forced to leave New York, he goes looking for a second chance, not expecting to find it in the town he always wanted to run away from, or with the man whose heart he shattered.

[starcookiechu]

ROTT Review

SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE. You have been warned.

FYI: I just finished the movie. So my opinions may change a bit but here I am writing a full review.

Before I talk about the movie, I have to say this movie has fantastic animation. The music is as good as usual.

Ok now the story. Let’s start with the our Trollhunters.

Fair Lady Claire. My girlie Claire really brought her all into this. I’m really proud of the young woman she has grown up into. However for the sake of the plot and story they make her run out of magic juice quite a bit. But my girl is still the best and gives it her all.

Wingman Domzalski. I will be perfectly honest. Toby is kind of the annoying best friend at times and bothers me as a plus size person. (They really push the over eating thing to the point that it’s his biggest factor.) Toby is a very eager kid who is ready to get in the action. Never being negative to his friend but the best emotional support who will always be at his side. Sure Toby was used a bit as comedic relief in the movie but when push comes to shove, Toby will always be there to do the right thing.

Blinky is amazing as always. One of the best father figures out there.

Aarrrgh was there. Was great for the scenes he was in, but all together didn’t do much that altered the story.

Our Trollhunter, Jim Lake Jr. Someone I admire and basically see as my little brother/child. Kiddo really did it. I know everyone is upset that Jim’s arc was redone when we had the “Unbecoming” episode. If I could come to a peaceful middle ground, I saw we all need to blame Merlin. He really rocked Jim’s world and self worth. When the creator of the object you need to save the world with tells you “You’re not enough”, it really can be a great setback. But once we past that, Jim really pulled through. Amulet or not, he is our Trollhunter.

Mommy Dr. Lake was there. Barbara was mostly there for our emotions.

Dilf Strickler. I felt that he was changed a bit since we last saw him, but he had a new purpose. He was more cautious and happy because he had a chance at a happy life with Barbara. Which makes what happens to him more upsetting. 

Nomura my sweet. This movie did not deserve you. At least she was with Draal.

And Not-Enrique (seriously why didn’t they ever give him an actual name) just wasn’t in the movie.

How about some CreepSlayers?

BABY ELI PEPPERJACK CAME BACK LOOKING SO CUTE. So proud.

Bumbling knight oaf Steve the Palchuckian was great as usual.

I will say though. The whole pregnancy plot was just a way to get Eli and Steve out of the way. I could feel that the writers maybe didn’t like Steve so much since Wizards. But Steve was once again someone to laugh at. Pregnant and out of the way.

How about some Akiridions?

Aja my darling girl, oh how you’ve grown. I understand some think she has changed. However I must say that her preparing a plan B on the side was smart. She isn’t just a princess on earth anymore. She is a queen on a distant planet. So if she thought evacuation was best, it would ensure that everyone would live. And avoid losing more valuable people from her life. So no, I can’t blame her.

DJ Kleb was there. He was kinda doin his own thing and messing with Steve. Brother-in-law stuff.

It was good to see Varvatos Vex.

Stu was the man in the background working on the busy important things like working on the amulet. Personally I feel like the series REALLY underutilizes Stu A LOT so I was so happy to see him being a part of something huge.

And finally some Wizards.

Douxie my love, you were amazing as usual. His powers have grown greatly and have contributed to the adventure. But god the writers really do love to take everything away from him don’t they. It’s unfair.

Archie was kinda just there and just... I understand leaving Douxie but that doesn’t mean I like it.

Nari the sweetest. I can only imagine the guilt she felt to end Nomura. Her self sacrifice was probably the one in the movie most called for.

Alright now I’ll talk about the movie.

I can whole heartedly say this movie was rushed. To be honest I feel like the original writers weren’t completely in this. At least it felt kind of not so much Trollhunters or 3Below vibes but more Wizards, if that makes sense whatsoever. Something is off.

I just want to blame Merlin for everything. To hell with that guy.

The beginning sequence was great. A car chase to a moving train. Which ends up with Toby of course screwing up and breaking the brakes. Of course. The train falling off the tracks which ultimately ends up with Nari gone. Oh yeah, and video recordings of Magic, trolls and being taken in by the police. Great.

WHY TF WAS TOBY TELLING THEIR STORY TO THE POLICE. YOU DON’T MIX THE POLICE IN STORIES UNLESS YOU KNOW THE COP PERSONALLY. CUZ IT’S A MESS AND THE POLICE GET IN THE WAY. GDI TOBY.

Our heroes go back to base on the new and improved Camelot. Where we discover that Barbara and Strickler are now engaged. Happy news and would secure that Jim has another Father figure in his life and his mother’s happiness. Which explains Strickler’s “stay behind” advice. Now he has a family to watch over. He must be careful and warns that Jim’s actions could cost so much that he might not be able to afford.

Enters our Majesty Aja and the new stud on the block, Eli. Dang I wish puberty hit me like that.Truck-kun strikes again. And also enters... the pregnancy thing. I will say, I didn’t mind it too much... at first. But there are complications. Steve is too young to be a father and dang 7 kisses?? I can’t help but feel like Aja should have mentioned that or it was a last minute plan to write out Steve and Eli. (Which it was.) It was funny sure cuz omegaverse and ALIENS but all together it’s really iffy.

They really had Douxie preform a body-swap spell only so it would be undone. And undoing the spell only hurt them both?? C’mon. C’mon.

And they mention the Krohnisfere. We’ll get back to it. Jim gets a brand new amulet infused with Akaridion tech. However theres an issue. It was created by Merlin right? Who is a wizard right? Who uses MAGIC. Shame Douxie wasn’t there to help make it. Ya know. 1/2 of the original creator of the AMULET. So it’s missing a huge part and for the sake of the plot, Jim doesn’t test the Amulet which is out of character personally.

Toby makes a silly big deal over a penny. I was actually hoping they would make it a silly Chekhov's gun later on. But no, it’s just Toby being loud and comedic relief.

The titans are released and we visit a very pregnant Steve. Ok so it’s a rushed kind of thing. ok.

Aja suggests evacuation. You can say it’s out of character but we need context. When Aja helped in the Doomsday Battle, she was ensured a way out but if she let the people of Arcadia perish. She decided to stay and help. But now the Trollhunter himself can’t help. So to ensure the survival of everyone, evacuation. A best chance for everyone to survive. Plus she is now a Queen. She rules over a whole planet which must change her thinking.

Now our characters are split into 3 teams:

Blinky, Archie, Archie’s dad and Claire for the Krohnisfere.

Jim, Aja, Toby, Strickler and Barbara for the Glacial Titan.

Nomura, Douxie and Aarrgh for the Earth Titan.

Now here is where I have problems. WHY. DID. THEY. SEND. TROLLS. TO. BRAZIL. IN. THE. DAY. Nomura dying was just so out of pocket. Unnecessary. I couldn’t even grieve properly I didn’t have a chance to process. The best thought I could think was “At least she’s with Draal now.” 10 seconds later, Strickler makes the choice to sacrifice himself. Because of Jim’s heroic’s, Strickler decided to try to save the most important people in his life. The person who was always dishonest finally had a chance to live a happy life with his family. The one who played it safe now had to make the final impulsive move. And unfortunately, his death was in vain. These deaths were just so forced. It wasn’t in any way good. And Strickler being one of the best written characters just going in such a way was just off. He died for nothing. He could have turned back and fought another battle but... no.

(BTW Barbara was just there... for Strickler’s death.)

We move to Babara and Jim having a heart to heart. I’m glad she didn’t blame Jim but a small moment of anger. Something a little more real for me but no I guess. Barbara will always just be Jim’s mom. She mention’s Jim’s father and it passed so quickly I missed it on my initial viewing. I’m happy that Jim’s father is never revealed or made a bigger part in his story. This is good representation for those of us who did have our fathers walk out on us. That we can grow despite our parents failing us.

And finally team Krohnisfere. Archie just leaves. He’s gone. Poor Douxie. A mentor and now his closest companion.

Our heroes meet up to go against the Volcanic Titan. In comes Varvatos Vex on a Gun Robot. Nice to see some good ol Gundam with a character mentioned throughout the entire trilogy. However it doesn’t last. BTW for the sake of survival, Aja leaves Jim and Toby. Iffy.

Douxie pulls a “Jason stop. This isn’t you.” thing with Nari and is reunited with his friend.(+ points for the shippers. It’s kinda winning me over?) Also, Claire now has the power to teleport a Titan. I know she’s much stronger than she was for the Trollhunters Sn 2 finale, but cmon. You can’t just say she’s out of magic juice and then pull this. C’mon.

(btw did the titan make a War of the Worlds tripod sound? No? Just me?)

Nari sacrifices herself and takes the other god with her. Which takes away Douxie’s other companion. Mr. Stark I don’t feel so good. Why does this movie hate Douxie so much. (I am so sorry shippers. Angst.)

BLINKY DIDN’T SEE A PAGE? ADDRESSING IT IN THE SHOW DOESN’T GIVE YOU A PASS. I forgot the word but this irony isn’t greatttt.

Jim now has to pull out the legendary sword Excalibur. But he can’t cuz he hasn’t harnessed the power of friendship.

And Steve is giving birth. At the worst time. What is this a zombie movie??? C’mon.

Jim says “Magic is friendship” And Stu is finally being used for one grand act. Seriously Stu is just so unappreciated. So he fixes the amulet with magic.

Basically everyone who went on top of the Volcanic titan falls off at some point. Except Jim cuz of course some 1v1. 

ONCE AGAIN Claire is out of magic juice. Because... reasons.

Toby makes the choice to race to Jim’s side with the technology to cancel out magic. (Wait how does science stop magic again)

BTW, For the Good of all doesn’t hit as well BUT it’s not mentioning any glory towards stinky Merlin so I am happy with the change.

JIM HAS A NEW TRANSFORMATION. MY BOY. MY SON. I’M SO PROUD.

Toby races to Jim and his helmet falls off the taco truck. That honestly should have been a huge warning sign. I was worried he didn’t have armor but we know how this goes.

Jim defeats the final titan and everyone is happy. The fight is finally over.

STEVE HAS 7 KIDS. OUCH. 

Seeing Jim run to Toby was heartbreaking. Now this is the one scene where the movie really let out actually process a character’s death. How on earth can you process your best friend, your most faithful companion dying. Jim goes through too much I swear to god.

Now let’s discuss the time travel plot. I honestly feel like they pulled some kind of Attack on Titan ending. The main character burdened with knowing the future and what could have been. And if everything is meant to be how it will be, destiny will reconnect them again. (Jlaire reincarnation AU???)

I’m actually ok with this ending. I understand people would want the time stone to return only a few minutes. But even then, the kiddos still have police records, so many people dead at the titan’s hands (or feet) and now the world knows about the existence of trolls thanks to the internet. In New York no less. And people are still dead.

We return the the beginning of everything, reflecting the “Unbecoming” episode.

(NGL I’m bothered that they didn’t do anything to stop Steve from bullying Eli, but Jim can’t do it. He’s saving it for Toby.)

And now finally, let’s discuss Toby becoming the Trollhunter. From the beginning, Toby never considered himself good enough to be the main star. Always the wingman, the 2nd best. Support. Now it was Toby’s turn to climb the ranks and be the Hero he’s always wanted to be. It’s Jim’s turn to live an easier high school life. I don’t doubt that he won’t follow Toby. But now he knows what to avoid and how to make the story process more smoothly.

I understand some are unsatisfied with this ending, which is kinda trademarked with Dreamwork’s shows. I get it. But honestly as of right now, I think I like the ending.

The amulet didn’t choose Jim because this Jim is not the same Jim as in Sn 1 Ep 1. He is a new man. And I think we all can agree that it’s his turn to be happy.

---

I still love this series so much. It is my favorite cartoon. Of course it has it’s flaws, but this ending is at least satisfactory and not heartbreaking. Now it’s up to us to either continue the story or contribute our ideas in fanfiction. I look forward to everyone’s creations.

Don’t think. Become.

[princip1914]

A few thoughts on writing longfic

I’ve had this post brewing for a while and I figured since today is a Friday I might as well let it out into the wild. 

First off, this is not writing advice. I don’t feel qualified to give writing advice. This is a few observations I’ve made over the course of trying to write something that feels, well, long. Fandom is full of excellent authors writing long chaptered fic, but I don’t see a lot of people talking about how they go about producing such fics. I remember feeling like long fic was really out of reach for me when I started writing again in the summer of 2019 after not writing for years and years and I wanted to talk a bit about how that changed for me. Of course, this post comes with all the caveats that there is no need to ever write long fic if you’re not feeling it. Some of my favorite authors write mostly or only oneshots! But, if you are interested, here’s my lengthy, self indulgent, and entirely personal take on ~the longfic process~ below the cut. 

First, to get this out of the way: long fic is anything that feels long or complicated to you, the author. “I’m working on my long fic” can mean that you’re branching out from microfiction to write something that’s 2k long, or it can mean you’ve got a multi-part 800k epic. There’s no objective measure of if something is “long fic,” Your own personal definitions can also change as you grow in confidence or change your focus as a writer (a little over a year ago when I finished Doubt Thou the Stars are Fire topping out at 31k, that felt very very long to me. Now it feels….still long, but not very very long.) 

Here are a few specific things that helped me write something long. I don’t know if they will be interesting for anyone else, but at the very least writing these down has been a fun way for me to reflect on my own process. 

Practice exercises. Ok, this is going to sound exceedingly obvious, but writing one shots prepares you for writing chaptered fic. Here’s what I mean more specifically: if you know you want to write (as a totally hypothetical example) a chaptered fic set in America in the summer that relies heavily on a nature metaphors, is written out of chronological order, and features a melancholy tone--it helps to write a few one shots like that before you embark on the Big Fic. Just like artists tend to do sketches before starting a big piece, it’s very helpful to write something small that gives you a feel for the ~vibe~ of what you’re trying to do in the long fic. It’s helpful for all the usual reasons--you get to know a specific version of the characters which helps plan out a character driven plot for the long fic--but it’s also helpful because you will learn if the tone and mood of the fic has enough staying power to capture your interest for the long haul. For instance, I have a few unfinished chaptered fics that have a humorous tone. I wish I had done more short humorous fics before starting them, because I would have realized that I don’t currently have the mental stamina to hold up a humorous tone for the length of a chaptered fic (hopefully that will change and I will finish Last Days some time this century!). 

Plan it out ahead of time. I used google sheets for The False and the Fair. I do not think God intended google sheets to be used for fiction, but that was not going to stop me. On a more serious note, I think the best tool for planning fiction is the one you’re the most comfortable with--the notes app in your phone, handwriting, word, google drive, sheets, chalk board, summoning circle, the blood of your enemies, etc. The reason I chose to use sheets is that I knew from the very beginning that I wanted certain things to happen at specific places in the story--for instance, I wanted the first kiss to happen at the end of the first third of the story and I wanted the “reveal” about the mine accident to happen at the end of the second third of the story. But, I didn’t know what was supposed to go in between those elements. A traditional outline for a story at this point in development might have looked like: 

Meet cute

Kiss

Reveal 

Ending 

But, what my brain needed was to preserve the blank spaces in between these story elements, and specifically to preserve the right amount of blank space between these story elements so that it didn’t end up, for instance, that the first kiss was halfway through rather than a third of the way through. In this way, I found google sheets an invaluable tool for pacing in the early parts of the planning process. I simply made 30 rows assuming 30 chapters, and started plugging in the elements I knew I wanted in the locations I wanted them. Then I filled in the blank spaces by asking myself “how do we get from X plot element to Y plot element in Z amount of chapters.” I’m not a mountain climber, but I’ve often thought about the first things that go into the spreadsheet in terms of mountain climbing terminology.  In climbing, a crux move, which can be anywhere along the route, is the most difficult move of the route: if you can’t do it, you can’t do the route. I think of the first things that go into the planning spreadsheet as the crux moves of the story, the most important pieces around which everything else turns. It was not an accident that those were also all the first scenes of the fic that I wrote; if I couldn’t do those scenes, I couldn’t do the story the way I planned it so I wanted to know early on if I needed to make changes.

Make changes if you have to: even though it helps to have things planned in advance, don’t resist the story if it tries to change on you while you’re writing it. Usually the feeling that you have to make changes stems from having a plot that is not entirely character driven. As you write the story, the characters reveal themselves and sometimes the plot has to change to change with the characters’ motivations. Here’s an area where fanfic writers have a leg up on everyone else: if you write fic, you already know the characters really well. That means, (in my experience anyway) it’s less likely that you’ll have a surprise character development which leads to a rethinking of the whole plot. Less likely, but not completely unlikely, unfortunately.

Lie to yourself: The False and the Fair was supposed to be 90k words. I thought that sounded reasonable, a little less than 3x the longest fic I had ever written. Now it's 161k and will probably top out a little over 170k. Ooops. But I never would have set out to write something that long. I wouldn’t have thought I could do it, even though anyone more experienced looking at my plans for the fic probably would have laughed at the idea I could cover all those plot points in 90k. Ignorance is bliss. Protect your ignorance.

Scrivener: Long fic for me means “fic that is long enough you can’t hold all the parts of it in your head at once.” That’s where Scrivener comes in (or another app if you’d rather, but I really like Scrivener for the ability to see the project either linearly or as condensed notecards). You can put together an organizational scaffold in Scrivener that allows you to move back and forth between the forest and the trees. So, for instance, you might be going for a jog and come up with the perfect line of dialogue for chapter 27 when you’re only up to chapter 5 in terms of writing progress. With Scrivener, you can go home, and put that dialogue in the “bucket”/index card/whatever for chapter 27 without compromising your ability to see chapter 5 clearly or muddying up your google doc. You can then use the fact that you’ve started writing bits and pieces of the later chapters in conjunction with the tool of lying to yourself that, actually, you’ve written a lot more of the fic than you realize and that when you get to chapter 27 it won’t be as hard as chapter 5 because you’ve put in the groundwork already. In my experience, this lie turns out to be true about 50% of the time, which is better than 0% of the time.

Digestible mini arcs: The False and the Fair was originally broken up into thirds. I thought it would be 90k and 30k was the longest I had written, so thirds seemed to make sense. Also, 3 is a nice, time honored storytelling number. I think it’s good to give yourself seemingly achievable milestones along the way to completion. These milestones (for me anyway) lined up well with the “crux moments” I’ve described. If you’re someone who likes to write out of order, writing your way to an already written milestone can feel like sailing to an island where you get to rest for a bit from the stormy seas before setting out for the next island in the archipelago.

“It's all part of the process”: I’m categorically incapable of describing things without resorting to running metaphors, and so I apologize in advance, but I am now going to do the insufferable thing of comparing writing a long fic to running a marathon. Here’s the thing with a marathon. You are not going to feel good every step of the way. We all know this. It’s a marathon, it’s supposed to hurt a little bit, especially at the end. In the same way you literally cannot write something novel length or even novella or long short story length without, at least at some point, feeling bad about yourself and your writing. But you also can’t run a marathon if the whole thing is agony, and for most people, it’s not--your meat sack shuffling along the course is subjected to the slings and arrows of all sorts of weird body chemistry that only happens when you push it to its limits. So, you’ll be in agony and then the endorphins will kick in for a while and you’ll be thinking “this isn’t nearly as bad as everyone said,” and then you’ll drink some water at a rest stop and feel like a God for half a mile before you crash and you’re in agony again until that one perfect song comes up on the playlist...and you get the idea. Writing something long, for me at least, is a bit like that. There are massive ups and downs. The key for me is to just understand it’s all part of the process, a necessary step on the way to the finish line. If the fic is 10 chapters long, at some point you have to write chapter 5. Just like you have to write chapter 5, at some point you also have to go through a bit of despair before reaching the end. It is unfortunately non-optional. In fact, despairing is something you can check off your list each time you’ve done it. Cut dialogue tags, check. Feel awful about my writing for thirty minutes, check. Write ending section, check. Often I feel that the stress and shame and fear that come with bad emotions while writing are worse than the bad emotions themselves. It really helps me to remember these emotions are all part of the process and nothing to worry about. If I didn’t have them, then I would worry! 

I certainly have plenty more to say about writing, but this ramble has gone on long enough. If you’re interested in any of this stuff, please feel free to send me an ask. 

I would also love to know more about everyone else’s writing processes, so feel free to pop into my ask box to talk about your own approach too! I am very interested in this stuff! 

[ae0nx]

FRUITS BASKET S3 EPISODE 8 RECAP AKA THE KYORU CHRONICLES PART 2 (plus a quick recap of eps 3-7)

aaaaaaAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! I gotta get it out of me otherwise I won't be able to concentrate on work and I will be scrolling through the tag till the day I die. Everything from episode 3 of Season 3 literally hit me like an avalanche - literally cos I marathoned 3-7 over the weekend which I wouldn't advise unless you want an accelerated heartbeat - and I'm starting to realise... maybe I just wasn't ready for season 3. Despite asking for it, haha. Not gonna put as many screencaps for this one cos tumblr editing bay be trippin and I just don't have time nor emotional energy to be fighting with the picture uploads, sorry lol

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Episodes 3 - 7

I spoke before about how (despite my feelings about the characters) the English dub VAs for Akito and Shigure pair up really well audibly. And I think I feel the same way about both Yuki and Machi's English VAs! They both have the same soft spoken yet scratchy element to their voices almost like they are holding slightly back. Although, I'd argue that Yuki has been losing the element of slightly holding back as the anime has gone on which I wonder if the same would be included for Machi's performance?

I really like the presentation of Machi's trauma through her family's expectations to be perfect and how physical it is? How Yuki kind of encourages her to let it out in a healthy way? (Btw the whole chalk breaking scene in the meeting was SO FUCKING SMOOTH. YUKI IS A NERD BUT HE IS SO EFFORTLESSLY COOL A LOT OF THE TIME)

The age gap between Isuzu and Haru for sure isn't the worst age gap in this anime/manga but it's still a bit... hmm...

Episode 4:

In all seriousness, I know Akito deserves some sympathy but it doesn't change the fact that I still see her as a villain. Hurt people hurt people but it doesn't mean they should get away with it, I was honestly pleased Haru got that big confrontation with Akito to tell her WHAT'S WHAT but it was also somewhat... merciful?

Hiro's growth has been so beautiful to see, him realising there are bigger things than him from the event with Rin to his relationship with Kisa to then the birth of his little sister.

Kureno choosing to get his hands a little dirtier and paying the ultimate price for it (as far as we know so far in the anime lol) was great, he is the moon side of Tohru's sunshine.

Shigure... I still don't really get him and Akito's relationship. It's clear he's waiting for Akito to grow the fuck up but at the same time he's not creating an environment for her to grow and develop. He's decided to go with the 'tough love' route which I'm still deciding whether I like it or not tbh. Sometimes it feels necessary, at other times it feels shitty. I respect that he knows he's a scumbag and I don't deny that there are people out there who take revelry in the fact that they are awful but at the same time, him remaining unchanging despite everything feels... unrealistic. But considering throughout this story he doesn't seem affected by trauma, it's understandable, I guess?

Also... that scene where Shigure ponders about whether he should've been with Tohru is THE creepiest creeper shit he's EVER done in this series. No. 🙅🏾‍♀️

Momiji is best bunny boi regardless of how tall and 'manly' he becomes. 🐰His scene with Akito was so authentically him and he really did that shit. We love him. <3

I love the way that the curse breaking should (on surface) be a happy event considering all the trauma the zodiac went through because of it but it's presented mostly as loss as well as happiness. It's the realness of getting out of a bad relationship

Shigure basically laying it out to Tohru how Kyo means nothing in a very taunting way was an excellently painful scene and I choose violence. It was heartbreaking seeing how worthless they all saw Kyo compared to how Tohru saw him but... by this point I was just living in the pain so 🤷🏾‍♀️

The story visually showing how Isuzu is more willing to be soft after her whole ordeal through her fashion choices (e.g. the pastels, the cardigans) was really nice. And Haru being happy about Isuzu making friends with Tohru was cute!

It was nice we saw that Kazuma was still wary about whether Tohru loved Kyo for the right reasons, you'd assume after everything Kazuma would love Tohru as a match for Kyo but he's so emotionally intelligent and also just a protective Dad! Yay, good parenting!

Tohru's confession to loving Kyo was amazing however I still adore Kyo's confession a little bit more. Just a bit. Lol. However, if you add the moment later in episode 8 it trumps it completely. Ethereal goddess.

Kyo and Tohru's grandfather having a scene together was great and nice

Now that I think about it, I wish there was more a visual link in the story between Tohru adapting her speech to imitate her Dad and Momiji adopting his Mum's German accent. Albeit for slightly different reasons, it just adds to the unique connection Tohru and Momiji have. In short, I'm seeing this ship with my third eye now. I get it lol

I don't wanna screencap the scene where Kyo is haunted by both his deceased mother and deceased Kyoko and potentially deceased Tohru because it's the stuff of nightmares. But, it was a wonderfully done scene. You definitely understand fully and clearly why Kyo buried all of that trauma under his hatred for Yuki (I CAN'T WAIT FOR EPISODE 9, YOU GUISE!)

If Akito is a villain, Ren is the final boss. Although, with her type of villainy... I feel like I can kind of enjoy a bit more. She reminds me of a Greek God in the ways she master manipulates people and her desperation for control and power (I just read 'Mythos' by Stephen Fry, it's a great read lol)

It lowkey feels like every female character who's comfortable in expressing their sexuality in this story is punished in some way for it... this is an incomplete thought

Shigure as a child feeling like they should all be pitied is so... mature... I feel like I need more of an explanation for why Shigure is the way he is

Akito's ego death with Kureno? Amazing. I loved that she was at least aware enough to realise how Kureno had been coddling her all this time but again... doesn't excuse her crimes

But anyways...

EPISODE 8

Honestly? I really don't have much to say about this episode besides 3-5 points I wanna get out of my head. It's not a bad thing at all, it's just that there's still a lot left to play out from this 'arc' and this season in general that I wanna complete my thoughts on.

But I'll start with this:

Lol, isn't it funny?! Isn't it heart-wrenchingly funny how the relationship between Kyo and Tohru has kinda reverted back to how they were at the start of the series? The coldness of Kyo at the beginning of this episode (and throughout) was a bit of a gut punch considering all the light and fluffy moments that we've gotten between the two since the True Form arc.

Talking about the True Form arc, I feel like this episode is somewhat a repeat of the same emotions, same trials of the True Form arc. Kyo still 'runs away like he always has' but this time we get him being the most honest and confrontational with his own emotions and trauma than he ever has been during the course of this whole story. While trusting someone (Tohru specifically) for the first time with the whole truth of his story! He always seems to move one step forward and then three steps backwards and while it's a tad bit frustrating, it feels very... real. I'll probably complete my feelings how this arc reflects the True Form arc when we finish this section of the story in future episode(s).

Considering the fact that 80% of this episode is Jerry Jewell monologuing as Kyo and I never got bored really just sells his performance. Kyo was being incredibly cold this episode and yet the range of emotions through his performance made it feel understandable enough for you to empathise with it.

BrattyKid!Kyo to lighten the mood 😹I still wish he and Hiro had more of a relationship, I feel like they could have taught each other a lot. Well... mostly Kyo teaching Hiro tbh

Kyo rejecting Kyoka for her honesty and kindness and then later rejecting Tohru? Oh... kid...

Wow, I felt so good about that whole episode of Kid!Yuki helping Kid!Tohru get home and then it's slightly soured knowing KID!KYO was running about the streets alllll night into the morning?!?! I really did feel Kyo's frustration at not getting that win to actually do something right. And the irony of that being linked to him being unable to save Kyoka from the oncoming car?

Honestly, I don't know what my feelings are on Kyo being unable to save Kyoka. I don't even know what my feelings are on Tohru pretty much pushing that aside in favour of her feelings for Kyo. It's... complicated and I've been mulling it over in my head for the last 10+ years hahah However, if I was in Tohru's position I think I'd eventually come to a point where it feels like it's too late to really do anything about how bad I'd feel about it. Kyo's intentions weren't horrid, if anything he was just being a scared kid and he's allowed to be that. I just wish Tohru had a bit more time to evaluate it but considering she knew her mother well and assumes that wouldn't have been the full scope of what she had said, I don't have much of a problem with it in general

Lol, I love when Tohru gets a 'FUCK YOU, I LOVE YOU' moment with Kyo. 😂Another reflected scene from the True Form arc... only thing is that this time... it doesn't quite work. 😕

(Again, I love how all of these reflections are resolved in later occurences in response to the duality but I'll get to it next week when it shows hopefully)

Laura Bailey only had a few sentences in this episode but she killed it as always. Comparing her performance in 2001 to now is just... growth!

Ok, so Yuki automatically gets Best Boi in this episode for meddling and chasing after KYO of all people. Showing how he's personally done with hating Kyo. Realising Kyo is pretty much the only person who'll make his mother happy. I think he also lowkey wants to understand Kyo? But, we'll get to that next week.

....Oh yeah, Akito is there.

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In total, I liked this episode even though it has me anxious for the next one. We finally get the full picture of why Kyo is the way he is! Ahhhh - a weight off all our chests, I'm sure. I kinda don't like that they put the ending theme at the end of these episodes - the joyfulness doesn't really match up with the intense theme? But, that's just a minor gripe. And hey, maybe they just want the audience to know... it's all gonna be okay :)

See you next week!!!

[aotopmha]

Attack on Titan Series Thoughts

I've been mulling over Attack on Titan's ending and how I'd rate the whole story from all kinds of angles and I've reached the conclusion that above all else, the ending is really fucking annoying.

A great or a terrible ending would help me make my mind up much more easily.

If it's great, it's great. If it's terrible it's a good story with a terrible ending.

But instead, it is a mixed bag: there are things about it I like a lot and things about it I don't like.

It is a very common belief that the ending is paramount to a story's quality, but I've found that this is not really true for me. My favourite anime ever pretty much doesn't even have a proper ending. My needs for an ending basically encompass some sort of sense of closure and that's about it.

Especially longer-running series often either make the journey worth it just by being as long as they are (so a pretty generic ending is okay) or fall off in quality long before they are done. But AoT is neither of these for me.

AoT in this sense is complicated for me because I can't decide whether the ending impacted the quality of the story or not depending on which aspect of the ending I focus on.

Some details make it immensely satisfying to me and some details sour it a little bit.

I think right now the good and bad things balance out so in general nothing changes about how I view the story overall.

In basics, I really like the emotional core of Attack on Titan, but I've always found it flawed on the technical level.

I'd give the story a 10 just for how much it emotionally engaged me and made me care. This story is the reason why I started this blog and I became active talking about media in the first place.

For a time I was losing the sense of fun of being a fan: people just became really hostile when discussing stuff.

But this past week or so has been incredible in my inbox, reminding me of the highs of being a fan, with so many wonderful messages.

Other stories have made me more angry, made me cry more or laugh more, but AoT made me feel the biggest spectrum of feelings.

No other story has made me do this, at most I only became a member of various forums as a random member; I didn't create a blog with the aim to talk about one.

From a technical level, I would give it a 6-7 depending on the section of the story.

The foreshadowing for various twists is pretty loose from start to finish, there is a bunch of redundant scenes all over the story and the pacing can be really uneven. It is not nearly as *well-crafted* of a story in my eyes as I see people praise it to be.

The art is a pretty huge mess at points, too.

I think sometimes the fact that this is the author's very first actual long-running story very much shines through. I think only a beginner would dare to employ historical imagery as bluntly as Isayama did, too, for example.

But to me the emotional core is magical.

The average of these two aspects, emotional and technical, would be around 8-8.5.

But at the same time, when I finished that last chapter I felt like I couldn't rate it and this has rarely happened to me.

I've kind of slowly distanced myself from number ratings in general because consuming media is a very emotional and personal thing and exploring it via positives and negatives feels much more apt.

From that perspective, I think the story is incredibly emotionally intelligent and understands humanity really well.

Stemming from that in turn, I think themes are the strongest aspect of the story next to characters. While I think the story faltered in a some instances when it came to characters, I think the themes mostly stood tall all the way through.

I think it ended up giving answers to and looping back to ideas it started with: seeing the good in the cruel world, facing humanity's unending desire for conflict and need to survive, living without regrets, learning to see the world in more complex shades of gray rather than black and whites and learning to do the right thing when needed.

As a mystery box, it does answer pretty much all of the big mysteries of the story and I think I don't really take issue with any of the big answers except maybe one very specific one. The numerous twists throughout the story range from absolutely genius to fairly typical. Again, the foreshadowing gets a lot of praise when it comes to this story, but I think a lot of the story actually isn't planned. Isayama just uses some details in clever ways to make it seem like it was planned.

I think that is a skill in itself that never gets nearly enough credit, but in the end, I think that is the weakest part of the story along with the world itself.

I like the walls themselves and I really like some of the Titan designs, but other than that I never had much interest in the world of AoT on its own. It always has to be connected to characters or themes for me to care. The crystal cave, time sand dunes and certain Titan skeleton are the most interesting settings in the story for me in that sense.

I think it does also fall in the pit of some pretty frustrating dark fantasy tropes, most specifically with a certain blonde female character who had one of the best character arcs in the story that was kind of just thrown under the bus.

It can't quite escape the pitfalls of that genre and it just so happens to be my favourite genre of story, so I constantly see excessive shock value rape, forced pregnancy and gay erasure happen in stories that I think are great otherwise. It's frustrating.

I hoped AoT would be better than that because for so long it was, but it didn't end up being as such.

But at the same time, I think most of its female cast still ended up being pretty great and did some pretty fun archetype-defying stuff. It's a pretty strange dichotomy. It is actually much better than most dark fantasy, but not quite there yet.

This is actually true for the male cast, too, I think. It does some fun playing around with all of the character archetypes.

The story's action scenes are thrilling and some of the action setpieces are really memorable. The final arc really shines in that sense to me. As a horror spectacle it is especially excellent.

Despite sometimes coming across as narmy/unintentionally funny, it still somehow manages to make the Titans a credible threat and this is true throughout the entire story, for different, evolving reasons.

I think the Titans have become iconic for a reason and never lost the luster throughout any of the story.

Along with that, my final point is that it is one of the few stories that sets up a kill 'em all setting that actually kills major characters with substantial focus and commits to it. It also doesn't kill too many characters where no character ever gets to actually develop.

So, considering all of what I listed above, what would my general thoughts be?

I think it still is a story worth checking out.

Personally I obviously love the story as a whole.

But I think any fan of dark fantasy/sci-fi could get a bunch of entertainment out of it: above all I think it is an extremely digestable series.

It's sometimes a very dense read, but I never felt it was a "hard" read. It's a very dark story with a lot of horrible things happening, but I never felt it was difficult to get through even in its darkest of moments.

My favourite characters ended up being Gabi, Reiner, Eren, Pieck, Armin and Annie. Zeke and Hange get a shoutout, too.

My favourite chapters ended up being 71, 82, 100, 122, 131 and 137.

Who are you guys' favourite characters and what are your favourite chapters and why?

Send me an ask explaining why for fun! (Or ask me for my reasonings?)

[popculturebuffet]

Uncle Scrooge by Don Rosa:  The Isle at the Edge of Time (Thank You Comission For Rosie Isla)

Hello all you happy people! Today’s review is a bit special as it’s the result of another review. See I had trouble finding a translation of the subject of last weeks’ mother’s day special, Family Ties. 

No not that one. I have Paramount+. I can watch all the Family Ties I want and that’s a fact that i’m pleased as punch about. 

No it was the story 80 is Prachtig, called Family Ties in the copy used, Della’s first major comics appearance and one that explains what happened to her in the classic continuity, one that clearly served as the foundation for her far more fleshed out 2017 versions personality and backstory. It also had Pinocchio in it for some reason, and spent most of it’s large run time on a meta comedy plot that had nothing to do with the reason anyone wanted to read this story in the first place.

But despite being a vitally important story, it never got an english translation, something that baffled me till I read the story and found cameos of the racist indigenous stereotypes from Peter Pan. In 2014. You may commence booing. Even with how weird the story was I simply couldn’t find the story googling it and the Della tag is too vast and deep to go spelunking in.

So what’s all this have to do? Simple I put out a post last month when neither I nor Kev, who wanted to comission it as part of Moons, Millionares and Mothers, my coverage of all three season 2 Ducktales story arcs, could find a copy and offered a review to whoever found it.  Weeks passed I got nothing.. then in the 11th hour I got a break as the lovely @rosieisla​ found a translation that was on this very site, one she seemed to have helped with. As a result I could do the review and as a man of my word, offered it up despite her clearly having not seen that part of the post and simply having done this to be nice. Still she gladly took up the offer and offered me my pick of two stories: The Carl Barks Story Back to Long Ago or this one. 

As for WHY I picked this one Back To Long Ago didn’t seem bad, i’m just not a fan of “The Cast is put in the past as their own ancestors” type deals. Or in some cases put the cast as people from that time period. It’s just not for me and is most often done in TV where it can get really goofy, Beverly Hills 90210 being a prime example of this, though Girl Meets World was no slouch in being embarassing... that being said I really need to finish that show and miss it. 

So yeah when put up against a story with two intresting hooks and FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD, even if i’ts not the version that’s my boy, it was no contest. So what are these hooks you ask? Well join me under the cut and find out. 

We open with a weird stylistic choice: This story has a narrator complete with caption boxes. Now for those of you familiar with comics or pastiches of comics in tv and film, this probably dosen’t seem like a big deal. It was a common thing in comics from their inception to 90′s to have caption boxes, big boxes of text narrating the action to help move things along faster. It did start to fade out by the 80′s and was gone by the end of the 90′s for the most part, replaced instead with first person narration. It’s the kind of thing you’d see most often in the Golden and Silver Ages, with stuff like tihs

It’s not a BAD device, it’s good old cheesy and bombastic fun and some writers did get clever with it.. like that time Chris Claremont used the narration to yell at a greiving cyclops after he lost a teammate early in his long and storied run on the uncanny x-men. 

This is a objectively weird scene that’s still somehow effective by the by. On the one hand it does come off as Chris Claremont essentally bullying Cyclops who already feels guilty for a death that was not in fact his fault as Thunderbird was told the plane he was attacking with fleeing villian Count Nefaria was about to explode and refused to listen.. and that they needed to get rid of either him or Wolverine as both served the same purpose and chose the non-white guy. 

On the other htough it comes off just as much as Scott beating himself up in his grief and anger over the event and his perceived failings as a leader. It’s good stuff and shows why this run caught on as this was only three issues in. Also the rest of the issue features the X-Men fighting a giant cyclopian demon that Cyclops accidently freed in his rage by destroying the stone thing keeping him imprisoned. No really here’s the cover

Huh so tha’ts what Nifty’s dad looks like. Neat. Also I REALLY hope we get the X-Men fighting aliens or demons in the MCU. Unlike the XCU the MCU isn’t alergic to getting batshit.. and for the record Deadpool and New Mutants are the exception, not the rule.

My point that I swear I do have is that this was common practice for most comics.. but never really for Disney Duck comics. It popped up ocasionally, like with Scrooge’s introduction, but Barks and those after him never really used them that much. Sure they’d have caption boxes for flasbacks and what not but Barks and Co geninely only used this sort of thing to set up a story. The most i’ve seen it in a duck comic is life and times and even then i’ts usually only used for gags or to set up the passage of time, as the story IS covering decades and thus often needed to have montages to show time passing, and in the case of chapter 11, had to cover decades in the span of a single chapter, so it’s not like they had many other options. So even Rosa as a personal quirk didn’t really use these often. 

Rosa used this specifically because he felt the plot was complicated by the use of the international date line. As for what it is, it’s essentially a line marking calender dates from one side of the hemisphere to the others. To use the offical defentition from the National Ocean Service I found via a quick google:

“The International Date Line, established in 1884, passes through the mid-Pacific Ocean and roughly follows a 180 degrees longitude north-south line on the Earth. It is located halfway round the world from the prime meridian—the zero degrees longitude established in Greenwich, England, in 1852.

The International Date Line functions as a “line of demarcation” separating two consecutive calendar dates. When you cross the date line, you become a time traveler of sorts! Cross to the west and it’s one day later; cross back and you’ve “gone back in time."

Despite its name, the International Date Line has no legal international status and countries are free to choose the dates that they observe. While the date line generally runs north to south from pole to pole, it zigzags around political borders such as eastern Russia and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.”

Rosa felt this made the story complicated.... and that... really isn’t remotely true. The narration is mostly used for gagas and really dosen’t clarify anything. it’s mostly used well in the opening.. but the actual explinations for the date line are clear enough in the story that even if I hadn’t looked the thing up, I still would’ve got it and i’m sure a kid would’ve too. It just feels like a weird thing to ruminate on, especially because he’s got actual things to make up for: while to his credit the native american characters he cribbed from carl barks are sympathetic, their culture respected and treated decently and used for a green aseop, their dialouge is stitled and sterotypical something he dosen’t even comment on (And these trades ewren’t THAT long ago) 

And of course it dosen’t help that he dosen’t even comment on using a common device in american superhero boooks.. in the same volume where he ONCE again makes an unwanted and outdated diatribe about superhero comics. I’ll probably cover the Super Snooper Strikes again so I can throughly tear this apart but higlights include: Calling superhero comics “Unwanted” just because he dosen’t like them personally, when people like me would disagree and they’ve lasted through a LOT of highs and lows, outdately saying they took over the American market as the only suitable comics which while true for a TIME,but by 2015 when this book was printed is laughably out of date, as non superhero works like The Walking Dead, Saga, and Scott Pilgrim were massively popular, one of my faviorite comics that is entirely slice of life and would go on to bea huge hit, Giant Days, re-debuted that very year. He also has the fucking gal to insult The Uncanny X-Men by name and I swear to god I did not know this when I made those references earlier, but as you probably guessed REALLY god me livid. 

And this is just on his COMMENTS on the story I can’t imagine just how bad the content itself is and having read the first few pages which come off as Rosa using Donald to essentially do an “old man yells at cloud rant” about superhero comics, I really don’t want to. Might make htis a patreon exclusive or again would do it on comissoin. You all make the call.... the point is I don’t likes his elitist bullshit about superhero comics, and this is clearly something that gets my hackles up as I just spent a good two paragraphs of an entirely unrealted review yelling at the guy for it. I don’t like when he does this and this authors notes entirley felt like an excuse. I GET the dark age of comics were bad, they REALLY were that bad, but I will NEVER accept painting an enitre genre as bad just because one work in it is bad. And I wont accept it from someone who himself writes about an often throughly unlikeable anti-hero for a living.  Scrooge may not have a gun on his gun on his gun or get to stabbing or have pouches, but he DOES finacially abuse his nephew, scoff at people’s personal troubles, and often refuse to use his wealth to help others in general. So yeah in conclusion Rosa really needs to say less about this subject. 

Okay so where were we.. right the story hadn’t even started yet. Jesus. 

Okay so our story begins with the narrator. Whose going on about time and what not. The main point of this speech about time is that it’s night in Duckburg and Scrooge is going to bed as, even being the workhorse that he is, he can’t keep going 24 hours. While he’s snoozing though something major happens and it’s the hook that made me pick this story along with the international dateline one.. an island rises thanks to volcanic erruption.. and the lava is GOLD. That’s just pure unabashed classic Duck Stuff: a mysterious treasure or phenominon of gold bound to bring scrooge in. 

But Scrooge isn’t stupid: the sun comes up and the world still spins while he sleeps, so he set up a satalite to monitor for this sort of thing. The thing naturally goes nuts.. and even more naturally breaks down becasue Scrooge bought cheap parts. A nice gag and a fully in character way to bring our antagonist into the picture, as the Satellite of Loaded falls in the middle of South Africa... right on the property of my boy Flintheart Glomgold. 

This is something Rosa brought up in his commentary for the story i’d never thought about. It turns out Glomgold being a citzen of Duckburg WASN’T an invention of the original Ducktales but the comics: some overseas had understandably moved him from his home country of South Africa. Him bieing in the same town as Scrooge instead of half a world away allows for easier setups and more intresting ones.

Rosa however being obdient to Barks Version of things, ketp Glomgold in South Africa like barks did, which was an .. ifffy decision given Apartheid had JUST ended at the time of this story. Not so much in the reboot as not only had apartheid been long gone by the time of the reboot, but that’s more fair. Still we do get some gorgeous vistas as a result as Glomgold’s minon goes to look at it and finds it’s from McDuck Mining company... Glomgold’s reaction is obvious. 

So on that note we cut to Scrooge rushing to Donalds house and forcing him awake and not telling him anything at first. Look his Ducktales Counterpart straight up kidnapped his donald in my last review, I’d call this a win. He also tries to dress Donald while explaning both his panic to find the crashed satlitle and what it found: the golden island. The end result of him dressing donald is worth a chuckle

So after Donald puts his shirt and little hat on our heroes get rollin rollin rollin what keep rollin rollin rollin who to Manilla. On the plane we get the scene I mentioned: The boys make a quip about Scrooge having lost a day and the group go over the international date line. It’s a fun little scene especially Donald trying to get paid early at the end. Classic scrooge and donald stuff without the abusive undertones some of their classic stuff has. 

Meanwhile Glomgold works out the data and finds out about the gold island, and his excitement accidently wakes a giraffe outside.. welll it was nice knowing him, Giraffes are the deadliest species known to man.. here’s an educational video t back that up....

So at Manilla Airport, Scrooge finds out abotu the south african crash, figuring he’ll get a laugh out of glomgold being there ... only for Donald to spot the Jet. Scrooge figures this can’t be anything good... now come on man maybe he’s just promoting his energy drink. 

As super sayin god super sayian as my witness, I will never get tired of Ultra Instinct Glomgold here. 

Scrooge isn’t so nice about that though and figures he better find out if Glomgold knows about the island and bribes one of the fueling crew for his uniform. He sucesssfully eavesdrops on Glomgold talking to his pilot, finding out from him exactly WHERE the island is. He ends up hilariously botching the mission though: when getting ready to leave Glomgold complains abotu the price of gas and that naturally causes Scrooge, just as cheap, to join in... and Glomgold to find out it’s Scrooge. The two wrestle outside the plane but before this can progress to a game of Naked Robber an airport security guy comes up and Scrooge cleverly claims that Glomgold’s plane has an infestiation, requring it to be quanrantined and allowing Scrooge to jet on.. thoguh not with an actual jet. With Glomgold seemingly dispatched, he can afford to save some money and take his time with a seaplane and I know just the man for the job. 

Oh nope looks like he’s busy. So one time related rambles later we meet Keoki, their asian pilot from the tiny island of Wookawooka.. and no that’s not a real place i checked... and no Fozzy dosen’t own it his check bounced. That being said it is a very well done represntation of someone from a smaller country: he’s doing this job to try and bring money back home, but being a seaplane captain just isn’t enough and his island is dying. Scrooge naturally is about as sympathetic as you’d expect, having apparently never even heard of the idea of a bonus when Huey, Dewey or Louie suggests it. 

Even less suprising is that Glomgold streaks by in his Jet:turns out Manilla was already overun with the bugs Scrooge claimed and Donald rubs it in that had Scrooge got a JET this wouldn’t of been an issue. 

So Glomgold easily beats them there, and to add insult and actualy injury to a cash based one, our heroes get blasted by golden lava on the way in and crash. Should’ve gotten launchpad... got the crashing professional. Keoki is dispondent as this means his people are doomed. He also dosen’t know waht staking a claim is when Scrooge mentions it and the boys bring him up to speed with the poor guy saying he wish he could for WookaWooka. Donald also makes a valid point about how greedy and heartlress scrooge can be.. and really billiionares in general.

No no YOUR the Grouch who refuses to have one drop of emapthy. Donald’s just pissed at your general selfish and terrible behavior. 

Glomgold glomgloats and has seemingly won... but naturally that rant that seemed extranious at the time about the date line comes into play: turns out the Island is on it, and since glomgold put his marker int he west, Scrooge simply puts his in the east which is a whole day before. Now GRANTED there’s nor eal legal prescendice for the intetaoinal date line itself , as noted above... but there’s enough witnesses in Scrooge’s favor that it simply does not matter anyway. Scrooge SEEMINGLY wins.

But Huey, Dewey Or Louie instead backs another claim: Keoki’s from earlier. While it was made in gest, he and the others along with Donald back it as witnsses instad. WookaWooka is saved and SCrogoe ends the story yelling at the narrator.

Final Thoughts: Don Rosa.. did not like this story, feeling it wasn’t one of his best and apologizing for it. I however.. really loved it. It’s not PERFECT: the narration feels not entirely necessary and the gag isn’t as funny as he thinks, though the payoff of scrooge saying “it’s time for this story to end” is fucking hilarous. I also feel it’s a bit too compressed: the story is only 16 pages and was only THAT long because Rosa added a few for exposition, a worthy addition. This feels like one of his 30 page adventure stories but slightly crammed into half the length. I also feel the golden island bit was BADLY underused as it’s such a cool setting but barely shows up in the story. 

But despite that.. it’s still a fun story: as is standard for Rosa the art is gorgeous and the humor is great. And unlike some stories where Rosa casually ignores how terrible scrooge is, here it’s his own greed and hubris that do him in: had he actually agreed to help Keoki, the boys likey would’ve let him keep the island but his own cold refusual to be a human being does him in, just as his cheapness nearly did. Flintheart is also decent here.. not the deepest foe but frankly most classical duck antagonists really aren’t all that fleshed out, and we still get some good bits with him. The dateline bit, while telegraphing that it will be important, as I said REALLY isn’t that hard to understand. All in all while i’ll agree with Rosa this isn’t his BEST, it’s still a really damn good story and one he shoudln’t be ashamed of. 

Tommorow: Green Eggs and ham is back for some train shenanigans! Kay. 

Saturday: The Tom Retrospective returns for it’s last detour! Eclipsa and Moon team up to stop meteora but grapple with diffrent wants: One to save her daughter.. the other to stop waht she clearly sees as an out of control monster. The result.. will only lead to tragedy and a hell of a two parter. 

If you liked this review consider joining my patreon, patroen.com/popculturebuffet. At as low as 2 bucks a month you get accesss to my patreon discord, exclusive reviews, and to pick a short when I do one of my shortstragavanzas, a marthon of theatrical shorts honoring a characters birthday. And given Donald’s is next month, now’s the time to get on board. 

But if you go up to 5 you get a guaranteed review of whatever you want every month, and will get me to my next milestone, which will give everyone including yourself a monthly public darkwing duck review, reviews of the two Ducktales minis’ I haven’t covered (Time is Money and SuperDuckTales) and a reivew of the Danny Phantom film the Ultimate Enemy. So please join today and if you cannot, like this review, subscribe and give me your opinions on it bellow. Or even if you can feedback is always appricated and I will see you at the next rainbow. 

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 19 of 26

Title: A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2) (2016)

Author: Becky Chambers

Genre/Tags: Science Fiction, Third-Person, Female Protagonists

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 7/25/2021

Date Finished: 8/5/2021

“Lovelace” is an AI system aboard the Wayfarer, a wormhole tunneling ship. Following a critical error, she awakens as a fresh installation, overwriting the beloved version everyone knew and loved. Faced with a distraught crew, she accepts a strange offer: upload her consciousness to a humanlike “body kit” and live with an independent tech on Port Coriol. She renames herself Sidra and moves in with Pepper and her partner Blue. Despite their support, Sidra struggles to figure out who she really is, and the type of person she wants to be. To complicate matters, her existence as an AI in a body kit is strictly illegal… and discovery means certain death. 

Pepper has her own shaky past. Once “Jane 23”, a genetically engineered slave from a fringe colony, she escapes from a scrap processing factory. Amid the continent-spanning junk heap, she discovers a trapped, functional AI named Owl. Owl saves her life and teaches her about the galaxy beyond. As Jane struggles to survive in a harsh and desolate wasteland, she resolves to fix Owl’s broken ship and escape the planet together. But such a feat is easier said than done. 

“Just because someone goes away doesn’t mean you stop loving them.”

Content warnings and minor spoilers below the cut.  

Content warnings for the book: Slavery, child abuse, child death, animal death. Depictions of PTSD/panic attacks. Traumatic injury and severe malnutrition. Recreational drug use. 

I enjoyed A Closed and Common Orbit much more than The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. From what I understand, all the books in the Wayfarers series are standalones, but this one does have a direct connection to the previous story. It stars two minor characters from the last book— Pepper, a genetically engineered technician who escaped from slavery on a fringe colony, and Sidra (i.e. Lovelace), an AI installed in an illegal, humanlike body. While A Closed and Common Orbit can be read on its own, the last book is helpful for some context and worldbuilding.

Official descriptions for the book don’t do it justice. Common Orbit follows two narrative threads. There’s a “current” story that follows Sidra as she adjusts to her new body and learns how to be a person. This storyline doesn’t  contain much action, but there is some tension with Sidra hiding her true identity. With Pepper and her partner Blue’s help, Sidra gradually accepts/overcomes her unique abilities, challenges, and limitations. Sidra’s story functions as a scifi flavored coming-of-age story. It’s not all fluffy and heartwarming, containing realistic interpersonal conflicts and a rocky friendship with an Aeluon tattoo artist named Tak (who is awesome—a genderfluid character whose pronouns change throughout the book, and no one sees it as weird or a big deal. Hell yeah). I like seeing fictional friendships that take work to develop, but become genuine as both characters grow.

But in my opinion, the meat of the narrative lies in the “past” thread, which serves as Pepper’s origin story. It details her childhood as a slave called “Jane 23”, her escape into a continent-sized scrapyard, and her chance meeting with Owl, an abandoned AI trapped in a junk ship. Owl takes on the role of a parent and does her best to raise Jane. This story is excellent for many reasons. It’s a parallel coming-of-age story. Like Sidra, Jane learns to become a person, but hers are bleak circumstances; isolated from other humans, eking out an existence hunting feral dogs, and slowly patching up the shuttle. Jane struggles with PTSD and the grim reality of survival in a world that wants her dead. This culminates when she resolves to repair Owl’s ship and escape the planet. The simplistic, childish language in the early chapters gives way to more nuanced prose as Jane learns more about the galaxy. There’s a heavy focus on the close, familial relationship between her and Owl. As the story progresses, the reader naturally questions what happened to Owl, and why she’s absent in the Sidra storyline. Both stories converge in the third act to resolve this. 

One thing that’s really nice about parallel narratives is when they complement and add context to each other. It’s such a basic thing, but I love when writers do it well, and Chambers is no exception. Pepper’s “past” story provides the context for her motivation to help Sidra. Pepper sees AIs as fully sapient and deserving of the same rights, treatment, and dignity as any other person. Owl saved Pepper’s life and raised her because it was the right thing to do… so Pepper fulfills a similar role for Sidra. Another great detail is Pepper’s obsession with a children’s media franchise, Big Bug. Initially it comes of as geeky and a little silly. But when we see the reason for her attachment in the Jane storyline, it hits like a gutpunch. There’s lots of other similarities between the stories, but we’d be here all day if I went into them. 

In general, many of my complaints about the last book don’t apply to this one. I think fewer leads helps, as there is more focus on individual character arcs. To me, many of the characters in the last book felt tacked on, to the point I didn’t feel any investment in them. But here, the focus on Sidra and Pepper feels deeper and more intimate. I’m apprehensive about the next two books, as they both have broad ensemble casts. I hope they avoid the problems present in The Long Way, but I’ll be optimistic. Common Orbit also has lasting conflict and consequence, something severely lacking in the last book. It’s nice to see that characters who like each other and consider each other family still have arguments and conflicting motivations. This sounds basic, but again, it’s something the last book either didn’t convey or resolved right away. 

While I enjoyed this book, I have a few criticisms. Several key scenes are missing, to the story’s detriment. A big one is Owl’s “introduction” to Sidra’s storyline. As I mentioned earlier, it’s clear that Pepper’s motivation to help Sidra stems from her relationship with Owl. When Owl suddenly becomes relevant, it’s hand-waved that Pepper told Sidra about her at some point. Yet we never actually see Pepper do this. Considering the narrative setup between these characters, it seems like a huge missed opportunity to skip a critical scene that ties the three together. I also wanted to see more development with Blue; while I like him, he doesn’t have much narrative impact. He’s present in both stories but mostly serves as a passive, emotional support character. It would have been nice to see him take an active role at some point. 

I gave this book the benefit of the doubt, and it paid off. I have to say I’m impressed with the level of improvement between The Long Way and Common Orbit. While I am nervous to see what the last two books hold, I hope I like them. As mentioned, each book is a standalone story. I’m reading them in order, but from what I can tell, you can start with any of them. I certainly recommend this one!

[bloodyshadow1]

just finished Alanna’s route and I gotta say, I’d give it a C, it wasn’t bad, but I didn’t see a lot of good either.  There was so much crammed in as much as possible between the Society (that we barely get to see anything of), Time travel (which is fine but done pretty poorly with little buildup or fanfare or explanation), Immortals (like time travel, a decent story enough on it’s own, but only mentioned in the final 3rd of the story and barely talked about afterward), and Magic power stones (pretty vague power system that no one seems interested in telling the MC about) it feels like they accidently threw 4 darts at the idea board this time and never bothered to throw again.  It’s such a mess that the MC has to take on faith without ever being given a real reason to side with the Circle over anyone else other than her ex girlfriend is part of it and they hate her dad.  It’s so quick and it doesn’t ever feel like the right decision at least to me since you spend so little time with the Circle even as background characters to Alanna’s story.

Alanna as a character is kind of meh for me overall.  Physically her design is fine, seems cute more than hot or sexy, but sort of bland and generic.  there are other cute love interests that never felt this generic, she feels like she should be the sister or best friend character instead of the love interest of the MC.  It doesn’t help that by making her the MC’s ex returned, we know little to nothing about her, so much of a romance arc is missing because even if the MC knows, we the player don’t know what’s so great about Alanna.  All of Alanna’s character feels told instead of shown, the MC seems to worship the ground she walks on, but the actual story leaves much to be desired because we don’t really see her do anything super charming or amazingly skilled.  She’s pretty, but she’s not even the most beautiful woman in her route much less London or the world. I could understand why the MC would love her since she’s still hung up on her, so I could believe it if I took the story with a grain of salt, but the fact that her personality seems to be she’s so charming and everyone loves her without every truly delivering on such claims makes her whole route fall even flatter than it’s plot led to. The fact that the MC slept with her right away as a ‘palette cleanser’ was sort of interesting, but it still felt like being told about her, nothing about what she and the MC had gone through felt like she was so irresistible that the MC would need to get her out of her system, because we don’t know anything really about her relationship with Alanna.  And that’s a big problem to her selling points as a love interest

  We don’t know all the stories the MC has with Alanna, especially if they only dated for 2 months, the audience/player/readers, need to understand why the MC is in love with their love interest besides the route being named after them, by making their entire relationship when they first fell in love we miss all of that and are left with empty feelings and gestures between the two of them. The little back and forths between them about their past are okay to start with, but nothing about Alanna as a character from her 12 chapters makes me believe that she’s so lovely the MC can overlook her massive flaws and go along with her very unpersuasive desire to have the MC join them to help the world.  Her depression and feelings of helplessness after 200 years was interesting, but it felt like it came too late.  I’m actually really glad the MC called her out on her bullshit, by the end of her first chapter, I get a bit of where she’s coming from, but what Alanna did to the MC was fucked up and she doesn’t get to just pretend it never happened.

Plot wise, the story is a mess, like Alanna, so much of the story is told to the MC and she’s supposed to take it on faith that the Circle is somehow more morally right than the rest of the Society.  It fails because the Circle has barely any real character, they have interesting traits that if they were around more to make me care about them as something other than the vehicle to do the time travel and nothing more.  In so many routes, you’re introduced to all your love interests at the same time and they’re already a group, while you spend the most time with your love interest, you get to know most of the characters as people outside of their routes, but the rest of the Circle is pretty bland.  Not to mention that the Society is built up as this big maybe evil maybe just powerful and in the wrong hands thing..., but you barely interact with them at all.  The only people tell  the MC and her brother that the Society is bad is the Circle who are actively members of it and nothing about what they say or do makes me feel like they’re any more trust worthy than the rest of the society except most of them are going to be future love interests.  In Alanna’s route, the only member of the Society not in the Circle that has a unique character portrait is Arabella and she’s kind of a more interesting character with a more sympathetic story than the Circle. We hear about how corrupt and morally bankrupt the higher ups in the Society are, and we know the MC hates her dad, who seems to be considered the worst, but aside from being a bit stuff and arrogant, (much like the wealthy elite of our world) we don’t see much evil, and it confuses me if the Circle wants to bring down the Society or try and take control of it for the greater good without much of a reason to trust them.

The Immortal plot point fell flat to me, like the story basically skipped over the time travel plot device by making it literally a this happens and barely talk about it, but adding the Immortality plot felt unneeded in a narrative that needed a lot more structure, not irons in the fire.  I feel like if Alanna/your love interest was the only one of the Circle that was immortal other than the Elites of the Society it would have made a better route to go.  Having an immortal character in your romantic story is fertile ground, they could be a tragic figure, a figure who is hedonistic and loving their immortality, etc, there are plenty of ways to go, an immortal character with a bunch of their pals who are already incredibly powerful and have a vague sense of goodness about them, makes it feel far from a curse or whatever they’re trying to portray it here.  It could have also been introduced better to the MC by say meeting Arabella in the present day and being shocked by seeing her and needing confirmation from the Circle or Alanna, instead of Alanna dropping it in a mood to the MC.  

Overall, it felt to complicated of a story to tell with all the moving pieces that didn’t deliver on any of them sadly.  the whole story felt like it was a mix between Queen of Thieves and Astoria Fates Kiss, without the charms of either the story or the characters, replacing Greek Mythology with time travel.  I will also say, it the plot made me kind of uncomfortable with how a bunch of mostly white young adults have decided to be judge and jury throughout time with the first antagonist being a powerful black lesbian in london 200 years ago, and we only have their word that something is afoot.  I know that she actually was doing bad stuff, but the Circle is just a vigilante group with no actual authority and using time travel as their own means of policing people and if it wasn’t a simplistic romance story disguised as a scifi fantasy story, I feel like more nuance would have saved it.

The good parts: Alanna’s route for Immortal Hearts Society wasn’t all bad, I  I will admit I am probably overly harsh since I just finished it.  I actually really enjoyed the both the Female and Male MC character designs, they both were surprisingly interesting compared to a lot of MC’s.  I really did enjoy the MC for the most part and I liked her relationship with her brother, most of the time I’ve seen sibling relationships in Lovestruck they’re fine but don’t tend to have much actual conflict, just superficial.  But I like that the MC loves her brother, but burned her bridges with him to keep him safe, she regrets what she had to do but not what happened which is a pretty interesting take.  Alanna was enjoyable as a love interest in the beginning, but as the story got more and more convoluted, it felt like she didn’t have much actual character.  I do have a soft spot for the Circle characters, except for the two current love interests, I’m more annoyed that we didn’t get to see and interact with them more, especially since it looks like they’ll be future love interests if the pattern holds.  It was a fine story and I know I’m being overly harsh, but it just felt underdone instead of bad, which tends to make it worse in my mind because the lost potential is frustrating. 

 I wouldn’t mind continuing if the writing got tighter next season, I’ll still give it a try.  I would very much like an Arabella route before anyone else, she has such a gorgeous design and despite not seeing a huge amount of her character being a warm genuinely kind person stuck between a rock and a hard place for her family was an interesting take instead of making her one of the many false sweethearts in Queen of Thieves that stab you in the back.  I also think that if she still is around in modern day she would have fit the story as a love interest better than Alanna. 

Not sure if anyone is going to bother to read this but it feels good to get it out.  Maybe you think I’m full of shit and I’m fine with that, maybe you love Alanna and she’s your favorite love interest.  I’m sorry you read this because I don’t want anyone to feel bad, this is simply how I feel after reading the first chapter

[philcoulsonismyhero]

Fic Writer Interview

I got tagged by the excellent @astriiformes Ages ago to do this fic writer interview thing, and I’m finally getting around it! So here goes...

Name:

Mairi (sounds like 'marry'), Kamemor over on AO3 (after a particularly cool Romulan politician in a Star Trek novel, if you were wondering)

Fandoms:

Currently, I'm writing a lot of RWBY fic and that's unlikely to change because I'm deep in Special Interest Hell with no signs of coming up for air. In the past, I've also written a bunch of stuff for Criminal Minds and The Flash/DCTV. I've got a lot of other fandoms, but those are the main ones I've written for.

Two-shot:

Assuming this is asking if I've ever written one, technically no. But I do have a series (Just Hold On, a RWBY fix-it) that currently consists of two fics which could stand alone as they are, although I have plans to continue that one for quite a few more fics if I can find the motivation and time. And I guess I also have a couple of fics that I could have split into two chapters because they switch from one POV to another about halfway through. I like to stick to third person limited POV, and that means I often have section breaks when I want to switch from one character's perspective to another's, and for a two-person scene that usually means two sections. But I like the oneshot structure, and usually I don't feel like what I'm writing is long enough to split into chapters.

Most popular multi-chapter:

I only have one true multi-chapter fic, and it's Moving Forward, a Flash fic based on the idea of Reverse Flash being taken prisoner at the end of s1 rather than being wiped from existence. It's technically still unfinished, but I got a lot of lovely comments on that one a few years back when I was posting it, including a few folks that went through and commented on each chapter and really made my day. Maybe one day I'll actually finish it...

The only other thing I have that’s multi-chapter is a collection of missing scene ficlets, also Flash fic, but that doesn’t really count.

Actual worst part of writing:

My brain tends to be very visual when I'm writing fanfic for a TV show, and few things are as annoying as knowing exactly the facial expression someone is pulling and having No Idea how to describe it in words. Same with tones of voice. Also, I tend to jump straight into writing the bits of scenes that are most interesting to me, and going back and adding in the context that you need to make something actually readable for someone that isn't you can be a bit tiresome.

How you choose your titles:

It depends, tbh. A lot of my older fics are titled with short verb phrases that are pretty straightforward (like 'Moving Forward' or 'Breaking the Cycle'), but recently I've rather enjoyed using song lyrics. Most of my RWBY fics have lyric titles either from songs from the show itself or songs that I've got on my extensive Ironwood character playlist or otherwise just quite like and feel like they fit. I don't tend to find titles all that difficult, and I've got a fair few WIPs that have them already.

Do you outline:

Again, depends on the fic. With longer ones, yes, usually as a list of bullet points describing what happens. But shorter missing scene fics or things that I bashed out in only one or two sessions and only follow a single conversation tend not to be outlined because they just flow as I write them. I've got some more extensive outlines for a few of the fix-it AUs I've been playing with, but even then they're just bullet point lists or mostly held in my own head.

Ideas I probably won't get around to but wouldn't it be nice:

I have. So many. Most of them are RWBY fix-it fic, which is fun to write at the moment of divergence but then A Huge Endeavour to follow any further than that. I’ve planned out a bunch of different shapes for where the three different versions I’ve already written and posted would go, but there’s only one of them that I’m really continuing (aforementioned two fic series). Although I have a dilemma there, because the climax of the story arc that I figured out for that ‘verse would work even better in the other one that focuses more on Penny & Ironwood. But it’s not as simple as just throwing the idea into continuity with that one, because there’s a Major difference between the two in that in one of them, Qrow was the one who got through to Ironwood, and in the other they kinda hate each other over the whole ‘I blame you (and also me but mostly you) for Clover’s death’ thing, so I’d have to plot out a completely different relationship arc there which would have a knock-on impact on how well Ironwood is dealing with everything else. Canon divergence fic! it’s a good time.

I’ve also got So Much other RWBY fic in bits and pieces in various Google docs, it’s ridiculous. (Including a superhero AU that I’m rather fond of conceptually, but don’t really have a solid arc plot for.) A lot of it would be nice to get into a publishable state, but I probably won’t ever be bothered to.

On the not-RWBY front, I've also got a big Criminal Minds/Silent Witness crossover that I've planned out all the beats of, but actually writing it means coming up with the specific details of the murders and the autopsy scenes and a whole lot of technical stuff that I'm not comfortable just winging based on what I've seen on TV. But I also don't like researching real life crime stuff even though I love a good crime drama, so you see my dilemma. I like casefic in theory, but in practice I'm probably not going to write much of it. 

Callouts @ me:

Just because you’re an insomniac who mostly writes fic at night rather than sleeping doesn’t mean that every conversation fic has to happen as a result of one or both characters being unable to sleep, my dude. There are Other circumstances in which people talk to each other.

Best writing traits:

I’m good at character voice, although that’s a pretty standard thing to be good at. I also really like unconventional crossovers, I’ve gotten pretty good at playing around with conversations between characters who never met or aren’t even from the same universe and coming up with a believable dynamic for them. I also like to think that I’m good at getting into the heads of awkward characters and figuring out which bits to poke at in order to get them to do things they didn’t do in canon. (And figuring out how they rationalised the things they did actually do.) That’s a big reason why I liked writing Reverse Flash, the complicated bastard, and it’s why I’m having so much fun with Ironwood now. You’ve really got to work at him to get him to change direction, great big stubborn disaster that he is, and I think I’ve rather gotten the hang of that.

Spicy tangential opinion:

People should write more longfic focused on gen relationships. Some of the most fascinating relationships in stories, at least to me, are the ones between people you’d never expect to be friends, or between adults and the kids they feel responsible for who also feel kinda responsible for them, and that makes for a (imho) much more interesting story than most ships. I Live for a good complicated mentor/mentee relationship, but I hate looking for fic about them because then I have to deal with the fact that a lot of people ship those relationships and it squicks me out. Give me the longfics about types of relationships I actually care about!

(This whole thing is a good 40% of the reason that I’ve ended up get absorbed in planning out a RWBY Vol8 re-write where the parallels and the newly complicated relationship between Ruby and Ironwood is The Main Agenda. (The other 60% of the reason being ‘[x character] deserved better’.) There’s some Really Good Stuff there and I want to play with it in more of a longform situation than my usual oneshots.)

No pressure tagging:

@squireofgeekdom , @catgirlalchemist , and anyone else who wants to give it a go! Feel free to say I tagged you :D

[seyaryminamoto]

Sokka/Ursa interaction headcanons? I reckon he has a few bones to pick with how she raised his soon-to-be wife

:’D more than a few, really. There’s actually another fun surprise I’ve been sitting on for ages, coming up in two arcs, not 100% related to what you’re asking... but still slightly related to what you’re asking about :’D It won’t be a genuine Sokka-Ursa interaction, but it’s something I was pondering at random one day and there was no better moment to implement that random idea than that arc... I really hope you guys will enjoy it :’D

Now then, on with the real answer:

Canon-wise, my interpretation of Sokka wouldn’t be 100% sold on Ursa, not even before starting a relationship with Azula, considering what her canon storyline was. It’s not that she isn’t tragic, or that he wouldn’t feel bad over her hardships, but this guy had a mother who outright gave her life for her children, whereas Ursa gave up her children to have a life. Out of sympathy and empathy for Zuko and Azula, I don’t think Sokka would ever jump on the Ursa!woobifying bandwagon and would always be more or less wary of her. He’d likely interact little with her, and he’d mostly try to help Azula, once they’re involved, with letting go of her resentments towards Ursa for Azula’s own sake and peace of mind, rather than anything else.

The Reason, my first serious story, was built with the premise of Ursa being dead or just completely beyond help, which meant Sokka was very receptive and as helpful as he could be with Azula once she confessed several truths about her relationship with her mother. The other stories I’ve written, long after The Search was finished, don’t focus at all on Ursa because I was so underwhelmed by the comics I didn’t want to give her any attention... but Sokka mostly focuses on Azula and on helping her understand she’s more than whatever she thinks her mother sees her as. He wouldn’t be particularly keen on making Azula get along with Ursa, he’d just leave that be whatever it is, because he can tell Ursa and Kya are whole worlds apart, and Azula’s experience with her mother has nothing to do with Sokka’s experience with his own.

Ursa, in turn, probably would perceive canon!Sokka as a good influence on her daughter and, going by what she’s prove to be like, she probably would hope he helps her get along better with Azula :’D And Sokka would outright shut that down because if Ursa wants to fix things, she’d better find her own way to do it rather than ask others to intercede for her and fix her very personal problems with Azula for her.

Is it clear my perception of canon Ursa is pretty awful? No? Hmmm...

But as you said “soon-to-be wife”, then... you weren’t asking about canon :’) you wanted to know what Sokka and Ursa’s dynamics would be like, Gladiator-wise?

My friend... I mostly don’t want to say because of a very obvious, blatant reason:

GLADIATOR SPOILERS

Read on at your own risk :’)

Sokka and Ursa will actually have a very, very interesting dynamic going forward in this story. It’s funny because no one has ever even asked about this before, but damn... I have PLANS. BIG PLANS. I’VE HAD THEM FOR AGES!

There’s a lot of stuff Sokka will want to say to Ursa. Seeing as he’s the person who loves Azula the most by far, who knows her and treasures her more than anyone, he can’t ever understand why Ursa caused her so much grief as a child, and such profound traumas that even as an adult Azula still had a mild breakdown over their relationship, back in Ember Island. He has been doing his best to help Azula make her peace with Ursa’s memory, often reassuring her that her perception of her mother isn’t nececessarily wrong, but also helping her understand maybe her own feelings about Ursa are far more complicated than Azula has ever wanted to acknowledge, to the point where his words give Azula the courage to send out a lantern with her mother’s name on Memorial Day.

But here’s the thing: Sokka is helping Azula as best he can for Azula’s sake. His opinion of Ursa isn’t fully formed because he hasn’t met her so far, and he’s not entirely sure he’s going to like what he finds if he ever does meet her. Because if Azula is wrong, and Ursa did care about her, it means Ursa fucked up massively in showing it. If Azula isn’t wrong, then it means Ursa is a failure of a mother, for if a guy like Sokka, who went through SO MUCH with and because of Azula, could see her true worth and help her understand she could be a better person, and that there was a better path for her to choose in life, it means her mother absolutely could have done the same for Azula since she was a child and she merely didn’t care to. And that... that doesn’t sit well with our resident #1 Azula stan.

In short, Sokka doesn’t think there’s any way Ursa will sit well with him, because whatever the truth may be, Azula didn’t know what love was until she discovered it with Sokka, and he does hold Ursa responsible for it because she apparently did love Zuko. Ergo, if she could love someone (whereas Ozai, as far as Sokka is concerned, can’t love anyone because in Sokka’s eyes the man is the absolute WORST), why wouldn’t she be able to love Azula as well...?

So. 

With all this being said...

What WILL happen, once Sokka and Ursa meet, face-to-face?

Well... for starters, I won’t disclose how that will happen because that’s another of my biggest secrets and I ain’t giving it away just like that (?) but it will happen in time, and when it does, Ursa will play a REALLY IMPORTANT PART in pushing forward a specific element of the story. That is also very important to keep in mind :’D

Anyways, Sokka won’t even know who Ursa is at first. Does that sound weird, since I’ve spent the whole story saying she looks like Azula? Why, maybe it does, but I’m not gonna tell you why it’s so hard to recognize her these days (?) again, my secret (?) But after the truth is revealed, Sokka will be pretty cold and mostly unwilling to interact with her. It’s up to Ursa to seek him out, especially once she finds out certain ~things~ about who he is and what he means for her daughter, and then you could say the reckoning will happen.

The kicker is that this reckoning may not have the outcome a lot of people expect. Because, ya’ see, my Ursa isn’t canon!Ursa. She hasn’t been chilling for 20 years while her children go through hell on earth, and she isn’t quite as meek and lukewarm as to give a half-assed “I’m sorry I didn’t love you enough” apology to either Zuko or Azula once she meets them. This Ursa has a thousand regrets or more, her emotions are a MESS, and she has some really serious conflicts going on in her soul that... damn, I’ll touch upon them very briefly in chapters I’ve already written, but I’m sure nobody will truly understand what’s happening until Part 3 comes along. Point and case being, Ursa hasn’t been having the time of her life, and while I’ll never negate Azula’s experiences, perceptions and sorrows regarding her mother, I do intend to show that Azula was a child who couldn’t understand absolutely everything about her mother back in those days. Paired with this? Ursa is no longer the same person she was in the flashbacks we’ve seen so far. You guys don’t really know what she’s been up to yet, and I think once you do you’ll, hopefully, be pretty surprised by what’s up with her right now...

All those changes and circumstances have really affected Ursa, and that means that, while Sokka is ready for the showdown of the century once he meets her, the outcome won’t be exactly what he was expecting. 

... And frankly, I really don’t think I can speak thoroughly about what their dynamics will be after this x’D I’d give away waaaaay too much about the upcoming developments, and I enjoy being an evil puppeteer a little more than I should (?) so I hope confirmation that these two will meet face-to-face, and that there IS going to be a reckoning will suffice... and of course, that Ursa’s side of the story remains intriguing too (?)

[writing-frenzy]

Hollow Knight AU Idea- Other side of the Mirror

okay, so, I like the drabbler I am, saw this post by @catanutella and suddenly I got an amazing, if awful AU idea :D

Let’s set up first.

For the Radiant Children to be born, I imagine a world where, for a certain reason, the Pale King and Radiance actually have to work together. Like, maybe there is a big bad cult, and because I like the subversion of everything in Hollow Knight, maybe it is against a god/goddess of Healing or ‘Purity’. The Radiance has been fighting against them for a long time, but she never seems to be anything but on the defense with them, their planing and power able to outmatch her own. At least, until the Pale King comes into being.

Now, the Pale King has seen the future, he can see the path that can branch if he picks one road or the other, and in the end, the cult has ideas and thoughts he can never agree with. He can see that he would never be able to take them on alone, so with the aid of Unn and the White Lady, he meets with the Radiance and with terms laid down, they all work together to defeat the enemy god. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Once the other is cast out, things get a bit complicated... but they are eventually ironed out, if a bit tense at time with some relations. In the end, the Pale King is able to give minds to the bugs all around them, the Radiance is able to give them all dreams, but in the end, it is up to the bugs themselves to decide who they wish to follow in the end. Hollownest is built and most of the Moths still choose the Radiance, with some going over to the Pale King. This of course causes tension, but it was agreed to let the bugs choose, so there is that. 

So yeah, this is the world that the Radiant Children are born into. 

Now, i’m going to say this; I think Wyrms have very low birth rates, one of the reasons their species went extinct. The White Lady, being of earth and fertility in my headcannon, is able to still give him a lot of kids. (With no desperate plans and void to enter into the egg) they have a few children, I’m thinking between like 30-50.

So yeah, here is the set up for this idea; of course there will be drama, with fae like gods and court politics and all these still very morally grey characters still being themselves. (I want feral Child Hornet to be born, so maybe it was a term set down in the beginning to get Deepnest’s cooperation, the desire for a strong brood in the future or maybe one or two of the Radiant children gets saved by Herrah, who thinks ‘what about a life for a life? and boom, Hornet gets to exist and her mom won’t be a damn dreamer here.)

Now, here we get to where I want to be.

So, if we were in a comic or story, this would probably follow after a few arcs with subtle and not so subtle foreshadowing. The Cult is making a comeback, they are preparing, and now they are ready.

They have a special weapon with them this time, a mirror called the All-Seer’s Glass, said to show possibilities for what can be, as well as able to power up those who know how to use it. They also are able to somehow trick Grimm, making it to where the Nightmare King can only watch what is to happen, much to his distaste. (He does not care to be commanded or ordered around; the Cult was at least smart enough to not ask him to fight on their side, just that he watch and judge, and not interfere.)

So, i’m going to say a lot of the Radiant Children were kidnapped, from Arlo the oldest to young little Chi. With the Glass, they are all trapped in this mirror like world, where the gods are weakened and the Healing/Pure Cult is mostly in control. Grimm is forced to watch from the side, though through some sneaky antics, he is able to at least help out the kids break their bindings and get out of enemy hands, but is unable to help outside of that.

All the kids are scared; from the strange shadows they see outside their vision in the mirrored walls, to all the fighting, hiding behind their guards or Mother as the Radiance and their Father, along with other strong warriors, fight the monsters before them.

-

But they are getting worn down; within the mirror realm, they are weakened, and with the Cult able to constantly heal themselves, it seems like no progress is actually being made.

Chi watched on, as their father, who always stood so strong, so tall is beaten back by the enemies, who laugh and sneer in the face of his power. Can’t help but cry out as he see a nasty blow hit Father in one of his wings, the guard protecting the little one stopping them from reaching out.

‘Anyone...’ Chi thinks, tears falling onto their chitin as they watch this terrible battle so different from the stories they read, ‘Anyone, just anyone... please! Please help us...’ those tears ever so slightly blurring their vision, but doing nothing to quiet the cries of their family and friends, from the battle screeching of those fighting.

‘Help my Father..’ 

Chi can’t help but cry out, jostled as they are by their guard suddenly jumping, trying to get away from one of the Cultist trying to take their precious ward. Hears the louder cries of his siblings, sobs reaching out, distractions on the battlefield that work rather well.

‘Help my brother and sisters!’

(All the while the guard is fighting, forced to put the little one behind them, shadows start to form in the mirrored wall behind little Chi, a form that starts to become clear and clearer as the fight goes on.)

‘Please...’

Chi looks up into those cold, dark eyes of the bug who killed his guard, their nail still stained from their kill as they walk ever so arrogantly forward, the youth easily able to smell how pleased they are. They raise their nail once more, their actions obvious in what they are about to do to stain their nail even further.

‘Help.’  

Chi closes their eyes, not able to watch how that deadly nail reaches for them, to end them. 

This means their wide eyes flash open when they hear the counter.

Hearing the clashing of nails loud in the sudden silence they seem to be surrounded by, Chi looks up from the ground, watching as a small, grey cloaked bug easily goes toe to toe with the enemy. They are amazingly talented with a nail, performing nail arts Chi has only read about in books. They are even able to perform spells, judging by the soul energy that finally finishes off the foe. It is in this still moment that Chi is able to actually get a good look at the other bug, as they turn to him...

And kinda wishes he didn’t.

From those very familiar horns, the indents inside the tip of them, to the white of their chitin, a pale glow just barely able to be seen, it reminded Chi of one of their sister’s drawings, without any color and unfinished, no life given to it yet.

And yet... it seemed to be living right in front of them, a mirror image of their self in body, if the glass was black and grey that is.

Chi can only watch as this... other tilts their head at the for a bit, the darkness that can only seem to stare at them from their eye holes seeming to deepen the longer they look. Chi can’t help but feel a little relived when the other nods, turning away before they are off into the fight, easily moving within the chaos and madness of it all.

Like they are used to it, at home with it as it were.

-

So yeah, Little Ghost joins the fight, and the tide is turned greatly. Ghost is a tireless, restless fighting machine who only gets more power with every hit they get. To say that the home team are surprised is a very big understament, as one; this looks like one of the children, and two; why do they feel like death and void??!! Pale King does not like this, White Lady is disturbed, and the Radiance is very uneasy.

Grimm is admittedly stunned as well when a little Grimmchild helps Ghost get a few stubborn enemies, the nightmare fire unaffected in this mirrored realm (almost a bit stronger in fact, hence why they tricked Grimm in the first place).

Ghost is very much giving off the Uncanny Valley vibe, and with me imagining this is a fully looped Ghost (every ending has happened, but because of Ghost’s special ability, he just ends up starting over every time) he gives off an even more creepy pasta child feeling.

Not to mention just how OP he is.

When the fight is won and all is said and done, Ghost can go back home anytime as long as he can get to the abyss... but come on, this is Ghost.

Of course he is going to explore first chance he gets.

(And thus, we now have Ghost running wild in this nice little au. :D oh what havoc he will rein.)

[explosionshark]

Thanks for recommending Gideon the Ninth! It was so good! Do you have a book rec tag I could check out? :)

honestly i should, huh? i’ve read more books than probably ever before this year and i’ve talked about ‘em intermittently, but not with a consistent tag. i’ll recommend some right now, though, with a healthy dose of recency bias!

sf/f

the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon - a truly epic fantasy novel with one of the most beautiful, satisfying f/f romances i’ve ever read. the novel takes account nearly everything i hate about fantasy as a genre (overwhelmingly straight, white, and male centric, bland medieval European settings, tired tropes) and subverts them. incredible world-building, diverse fantasy cultures, really cool arthrurian legend influence. one of my favorite books i’ve ever read tbh.

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir - which you’ve read, obviously, but for posterity’s sake i’m keeping it here! sci-fi + murder mystery + gothic horror. genuinely funny while still having a super strong emotional core and more than enough gnarly necromantic to satisfy the horror nerd in me. makes use of some of my favorite tropes in fiction, namely the slowburn childhood enemies to reluctant allies to friends to ??? progression between gideon and harrow. absolutely frothing at the mouth for a sequel.

the broken earth trilogy by nk jemisin - really the first book that helped me realize i don’t hate fantasy, i just hate the mainstream ‘medieval europe but with magic’ version of fantasy that dominates the genre. EXTREMELY cool worldbuilding. i’ve definitely described it as like, a GOOD version of what the mage-vs-templar conflict in dragon age could have been, with a storyline particularly reminiscent of “what if someone got Anders right?”

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar and max gladstone - i’m not usually big on epistolary novels, but this one really worked for me. spy vs spy but it’s gay and takes place between time traveling agents of two opposing sides of a war. the letter writing format really plays to el-mohtar’s strengths as a poet, the unfolding love story is weird and beautiful. it’s a really quick read, too, if you’re short on time or attention.

empress of forever  by max gladstone - i just finished this one this week! if you’re in the mood for a space opera, look no further. imagine if steve jobs was an asian lesbian and also like not a shitty person. this is where you start with vivian liao. you get the classic putting-the-band-together arc with beings from all across the universe, your romances and enemies-turned-friends and uneasy alliances all over the place. really satisfying character development and some extremely cool twists along the way. it’s just a fun good time.

the luminous dead by caitlin starling - this one rides the line of horror so it’s closest to that part of the list. it reminds me of the most inventive low budget horror/sci-fi films i’ve loved in the best way possible because it makes use of the barest narrative resources. it’s a book that takes place in one primary setting, featuring interactions between two characters that only meet each other face-to-face for the briefest period. the tension between the two characters is the most compelling part of the story, with competing and increasingly unreliable narratives and an eerie backdrop to ratchet things up even higher. the author described it as “queer trust kink” at one point which is, uh, super apt actually and totally my jam. the relationship at the center of the book is complicated to say the least, outright combative at points, but super compelling. plus there’s lost of gnarly sci-fi spelunking if you like stories about people wandering around in caves.

horror

the ballad of black tom by victor lavalle - we all agree that while lovecraft introduced/popularized some cool elements into horror and kind of defined what cosmic horror would come to mean, he was a racist sack of shit. which is why my favorite type of ‘lovecraftian horror’ is the type that openly challenges his abhorrent views. the ballad of black tom is a retelling of the horror at redhook that flips the narrative by centering the action around a black protagonist. 

lovecraft country by matt ruff - more of what i just described. again, lovecraftian themes centered around black protagonists. this one’s especially cool because it’s a series of interconnected short stories following related characters. it’s getting a tv adaptation i believe, but the book is definitely not to be missed

rolling in the deep / into the drowning deep by mira grant - mermaids are real and they’re the ultimate deep sea predators! that’s really the whole premise. if for some reason that’s not enough for you, let me add this: diverse cast, a romance between a bi woman who’s not afraid to use the word and an autistic lesbian, really cool speculative science tangents about mermaid biology and myth. 

the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson - it’s halloween month so i’m thinking about hill house again. one of the greatest american ghost stories ever written. especially worth the read if you follow it up w the 1964 film adaptation (the haunting) and then the 2018 netflix series.

the hunger by alma katsu - i’ve always been fascinated by the donner party even though we now know the popular narrative is largely falsehoods. still, this highly fictionalized version of events scratched an itch for me and ended up surprising me with its resistance from the most expected and toxic racist tropes associated with donner party myth.

wounds / north american lake monsters by nathan ballingrud - nathan ballingrud is my favorite horror writer of all time. one of my favorite writers period regardless of genre. in ballingrud’s work the horror is right in front of you. you can look directly at it, it’s right there. but what permeates it, what draws your attention instead, what makes it hurt is the brutally honest emotional core of everything surrounding the horror. the human tragedy that’s’ reflected by the more fantastic horror elements is the heart of his work. it’s always deeply, profoundly moving for me. both of these collections are technically short stories, but they’re in the horror section of the recs because delineations are totally arbitrary and made solely at my discretion. 

short stories

her body and other parties by carmen maria machado - tbh i almost put this in w horror but there’s enough weird fiction here for me to be willing to straddle the line. it was really refreshing to read horror that centered queer women’s perspectives. the stories in this collection are really diverse and super powerful. there’s an incredible weird fiction piece that’s like prompt-based law and order svu micro fiction (go with me here) that ends up going to some incredible places. there’s the husband stitch, a story that devastated me in ways i’m still unraveling. the final story reminded me of a more contemporary haunting of hill house in the best way possible. machado is a writer i’m really excited about.

vampires in the lemon grove by karen russell - my friend zach recommended this to me when we were swapping book recs earlier this year and i went wild for it! mostly weird fiction, but i’m not really interested in getting hung up on genres. i don’t know what to say about this really other than i really loved it and it got me excited about reading in a way i haven’t been in a while. 

the tenth of december by george saunders - i really like saunders’ work and i feel like the tenth of december is a great place to start reading him. quirky without being cloying, weird without being unrelatable.

misc

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid - there’s something really compelling to me about the glamour of old hollywood. this story is framed as a young journalist interviewing a famously reclusive former starlet at the end of her life. the story of how evelyn hugo goes from being the dirt-poor daughter of cuban immigrants to one of the biggest names in hollywood to an old woman facing the end of her life alone is by turns beautiful, inspiring, infuriating and desperately sad. by far the heart of the book is in evelyn finally coming out as bisexual, detailing her decades-long on/off relationship with celia st. james, another actress. evelyn’s life was turbulent, fraught with abuse and the kind of exploitation you can expect from the hollywood machine, but the story is compelling and engaging and i loved reading it.

smoke gets in your eyes by caitlin doughty - a memoir by caitlin doughty, the woman behind the popular ‘ask a mortician’ youtube series. it was a super insightful look into the american death industry and its many flaws as well as an interesting, often moving look at the human relationship with death through the eyes of someone touched by it early and deeply.

love and rockets by los bros hernandez (jaime and gilbert and mario) - this was a big alt comic in the 80s with some series within running on and off through the present. i’m not current, but this book was so important for me as a kid. in particular the locas series, which centered around two queer latina girls coming up in the punk scene in a fictional california town. the beginning starts of a little sci-fi-ish but over time becomes more concerned with slice-of-life personal dramas. 

[darkpoisonouslove]

Here are “some” fic writer asks for you: 1, 5, 6, 9, 10, 20, 32 (I know you’re pro smut, but I’d love to hear why), 34 😁😆

1. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

Angst, angst, angst. XD While that is true, I will try to give you more than that because I am sure that you already know that part. A typical me fic has two characters (that is law), three max. I like exploring stuff in more depth and with larger casts of characters that becomes harder because there are way more PoVs to figure out and juggle while you also try to keep it somewhat in check when it comes to length and opportunities to shine that you give the characters. So I prefer to work with smaller casts. Besides, it happens naturally in my stories because the focus of the story is usually the relationship between two people so there’s no need to put anyone else in there. I also love writing about established relationships without using the word in a romantic context. I just love it when the characters have years upon years of interaction behind them and know each other so well, yet there are still things to figure out and explore between them because human nature is just so complicated. I like to have some fantasy elements or better yet fantasy characters in a non-magical/fantasy setting. That is one of my favorite things and something that I blame mostly OUAT for but not only (I have always liked that kind of thing). Oh, yes, how could I forget (smh)? Love is always present in one form or another. What kind of hopeless romantic would I be if I missed to include that? XD Also, I usually like to write more relaxed things in terms of action. Not that I don’t love me a good action adventure story but mainstream media usually plays harder into those because they’re more “exciting” so there is an abundance of that already while the emotional aspects of the situations usually get glossed over and I like exploring those exactly. So most of my fics are the characters conversing and killing each other with words. I’m sure there’s more but I can’t think of it rn.

5. Share one of your strengths.

I don’t wanna say dialogue again because that is always my answer to this question but what other strengths do I have???? (You’ll have to forgive me for this but I am going through a fun bout of doubt over here that is about personal matters but I see it has affected everything else as well.) Okay, if we count the whole writing process and not just the actual writing parts, I’d say that I am very good with connecting the dots. It’s why my plots click together and all the details piece like they were just a puzzle waiting to be put in the right place. Finding the bonds between separate elements and exploring those bonds and the way they function has always been of special interest to me not just in writing, but in anything I do. I want to know how things work and why they work like that, why event A causes reaction B from character C. I think that has helped immensely with building cohesive and (hopefully) comprehensive character arcs to base my stories on.

6. Share one of your weaknesses.

Now that I have to point out an actual weakness, I am stuck again because the doubt decided to fail me now (or is it my pride? or perhaps my analytical skills?). Anyway. One of my weaknesses is just powering through the details that I can’t figure out at the moment. I can’t do that and it really slows down the writing process a lot sometimes because I am stuck on the little things. However, I’d say that with me the little things very often influence the big things if not even take over them which explains why my process is like that. However, that doesn’t change the fact that I should just write the word I can think of even if it isn’t the right one instead of losing the rest of the sentence while I try to remember what is the word that I know will be perfect in that sentence. Or just put a placeholder for someone’s outfit and finish my damn outline instead of halting work on it for two months (yes, that is a specific example about a specific thing that has been annoying me).

9. Which fic has been the hardest to write?

Hardest to write are definitely the ones that are still unfinished. XD But from the complete ones, I’d say that hardest was The End of Never because it dealt with so many things that I know nothing about, emotionally speaking. It definitely required a lot of empathy and thinking and rethinking and overthinking... which is why it took so long to write (a year and 3 weeks).

10. Which fic has been the easiest to write?

I’d say that Heartless and A (Plot) Bunny Is Never Lonely were the two fics that were easiest to write. Heartless practically wrote itself while A (Plot) Bunny Is Never Lonely was supposed to be a joke, then a drabble, yet it kept growing until it was a full fic of its own. There definitely wasn’t a lot (or any) struggling with those two.

20. Describe your perfect writing conditions.

I don’t really have any. But my requirements are usually a table with a chair or a bed, some music for background and my concentration to be present (like it hasn’t been recently which is why I gave writing a rest for a while). Oh, yes, and sleep usually helps even though it is not an essential condition.

32. How do you feel about smut?

I love smut if it is written the “right” way (I am saying that completely subjectively). For me a perfect smut scene is something that involves the characters in their wholeness as people, not just the physical aspects and not just the romantic ones either. Smut is actually something that can be so personal I love it when it influences the characters on a level that reaches outside of the sex scene and even outside of their relationship with each other, when it affects the way that they perceive themselves and each other, even the world around them. It has to be a profound experience that means something outside of physical pleasure, a connection of the souls. The way I see it, sex is something very intimate and a scene that is set during it can and should bring out something about who the character is, about how their current actions during the smut are influenced by their whole life, by the previous experiences they’ve had with lovers and not only. A sex scene can be very raw with what it says about a character and how they’ve been treated by life and it is made even more interesting by the fact that that happens in such a vulnerable moment. It is the perfect opportunity to explore trust or the lack of such, thereof. And not just trust but blockages the characters have that seemingly have nothing to do with sex. (Can you tell it’s the psychology talking? XD)

34. What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?

I actually like reading both non-con and dub-con if there is a point to it and it is not written only for shock value. Following my thoughts on smut, non-con and dub-con give an opportunity to explore the reactions of the characters to having their whole belief system violated and that can really show what a character is made of. I am not sure I can articulate this well but it’s about the defiance and strength that a character relies on to get through a situation like that, about the recovery that speaks volumes about their will to live and not let what was taken from them hold them back, about the fact that even when you move on, that remains a part of you and even the acceptance of that fact is forced on you because you have to accept it in order to be able to live without being ruled by it. I don’t think I understand my own feelings on it well enough in order to be able to explain better.

Send me fic writer asks

[sailormoonsub]

chasingspacerabbits submitted to sailormoonsub:

Sorry for submitting this giant wall of words especially since you finished Princess Tutu like, a While ago but I really need to rant about Mytho’s character arc because I DO think he had one, it just wasn’t well executed. And that’s a real shame because there’s some good stuff there!! Like I just realized the reason he keeps saving helpless things even when he has no heart is just because that’s his role in the story, the Prince Who Loves Everyone. And the story is still in effect, it’s why he’s heartless in the first place, so he can’t NOT throw himself out of a window to save a bird, for instance.

And then there’s the raven’s blood thing… and the show mostly plays that as him being taken over by Something Else, but I think you could absolutely make the argument that all the raven’s blood is doing is making him selfish and cruel, but what he’s selfish about comes from him. Like there’s the “love only me, hate everyone else” thing, and this that I wrote down while I was watching the show: 

“I’ve been thinking… Raven Mytho keeps saying things like “people only want love because they want to be loved” and I wonder… if that was sort of his experience as a prince. Or maybe I’m just getting this mixed up with Utena lol. But it does seem like a genuine issue he has as opposed to just something he says to manipulate people. Hm.” (and there’s an episode opening that pretty much confirms this)

And he says all this stuff to other people mostly, BUT he keeps talking about it even when he’s alone, which is what really makes it seem like its his own issues. Like he got the ability to be selfish and just started yelling “MAYBE I DESERVE TO HAVE SOMETHING FOR MYSELF FOR ONCE!!!” which he does! But not like that. The raven’s blood does push him more into being actually cruel about it.

But I think it’s really important that his heart isn’t purged of the raven’s blood in the end. It’s still there. And as long as he doesn’t let it make him cruel, that bit of selfishness is what allows him to love Rue in more than a vague, impersonal “prince-who-loves-everyone” sort of way. And his big moment in the climax of the story is saving Just Rue, while Ahiru saves everyone else. The resolution of his story is that he doesn’t have to be the sole hero who sacrifices himself over and over again to save everyone, and he’s allowed to love just one person The Most.

And I think that’s really interesting!! And it adds a really interesting dimension to Princess Tutu’s commentary on stories and character archetypes!! And I really wish they would have made it clearer in the actual show, instead of me having to Pepe Silvia this whole thing while I was in the shower.

I totally relate to the experience of “this idea is actually really interesting, but only in my head where I can explore the concepts in depth and not at face value as presented in the material itself”. And I am always down to talk Tutu!! 

When you’re watching the series from the beginning, Mytho doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I think that’s because his behavior is explained only when you consider the context of the Drosselmeyer reveal later on. 

At the beginning of the show, Mytho performs the action of saving without the emotional attachment to the saved, like a robot “programmed” by his author to fill the prince role. He performs the task with no intention behind it. As he gains the ability to feel, he begins to ask questions like “Why do we save?” (With a few minor tweaks this could be an extremely successful science fiction story about artificial intelligence.)

Mytho, as a prince, comes to the conclusion that we save because we want to gain the love of the people. But, with the corruptive influence of the raven’s blood, that desire to love and be loved (a desire that everyone has!) becomes a desire to possess. It’s a sideways look at the same thing. The raven’s blood doesn’t inspire anything in Mytho that wasn’t already there. 

Maybe Mytho’s arc was just a journey to find the balance between total selfishness and total sacrifice. Somewhere between villain and messiah. And in the end, that complicated relationship with his own wishes is what makes him a person rather than an archetype.