#I live in OneNote

[readerattheend]

Because I like organizing things, here's the cache where I keep track of what I've read/watched ^^

Does anyone else organize their entertainment like this?

I find that, since I have a pretty quick reading speed, I'll lose track of what I've read or watched if I don't do things like this to remember.

Maybe this is excessive, but I have to admit that it's satisfying to see the "Completed" sections grow.

Feel free to see this as my list of recommendations, too, if you're looking for any.

**I made the amazing mistake of posting this to an Alien Stage community rather than my personal blog earlier today, so that's a little embarrassing ^^

[cowboygenders]

just came in from sitting outside for nearly 2 hrs. I feel ALIVE.

[ghostdnfie]

goddd i really wish i knew how to share the sub streams but i'm super paranoid about accidentally doxxing myself or somehow just casually flashing my fanfic wips to the world by mistake 💀 i really am a golo im just like george

[rip-aizawa]

what would have happened in leviathan

actually, i may as well type this up now, since if i say "eh i'll do it later" it'll probably never happen at this point, so.

like i've said in many posts, i don't know a lot of what would have Specifically Happened in leviathan. i started writing it with no plan, and only decided to come up with concrete things as time went on. most of what i wrote down has been lost to time and digital decay; i no longer have access to the high school onenotes and sketchbooks i planned a lot in. but i still remember some things, even now. so let's discuss.

THE DEAL WITH BIT: bit was "retro's kid". he'd been kidnapped at a young age to be used as a living battery for retro's inventions, which he would use for, well, villainous purposes. bit had discovered an ability to override inventions he was powering. retro had wanted bit back to see his full capabilities. literally... i think the next chapter of the fic would have been shigaraki settling debts, and sending kurogiri to kidnap bit. izuku would have jumped through the portal after him, getting both of them captured. kurogiri, in a hurry and frustrated, would have ended up giving them both over to retro, then leaving. the subsequent sequence would have involved izuku panicking and accidentally revealing to bit that he was the leviathan. bit would have said that he'd known, or at least suspected. they'd then later team up to take down retro, with izuku forced to re-awaken the parts of the leviathan he'd been surpressing. bit would have served as... something of an anchor for the rest of the story. the only person who knew, but bizarrely (to izuku), didn't blame him for any of it. this would have been a point of contention between them, at times.

sometime after this, blade (who lost an arm to the leviathan) would have been released from the hospital. he would have gone to the league of villains to share his discovery that izuku was the leviathan, startling them. all for one would have found this incredibly interesting and decidede to observe izuku closely going forward before making a move. (shigaraki and kurogiri are pissed. they JUST HAD HIM. and they gave him to RETRO, who FUCKED IT UP.)

UA SPORTS FESTIVAL

really the only thing i remember about this was that izuku was effectively immune to shinsou's quirk. his constant mental battle made him essentially a psychological brick wall; he could shrug shinsou off like it was nothing, to shinsou's frustration.

he would have allowed shinsou to mind control him during the actual SF fight round, losing early on. he'd never really properly explain why to shinsou, frustrating him. i think shinsou ends up being the one to fight todoroki and them having A Moment? because izuku is really not the one for like. the evil quirk conversation, ha. todoroki comes to some revelations about his quirk and his personhood, but still lets shinsou win to stick it to his dad. this is... kind of bad for shinsou's plan of not showing people how his quirk works, but he's 14 and riding that attention high for all it's worth.

INTERNSHIPS / VS STAIN ARC

don't remember like. most of this. but izuku would have interned with ryuko tatsuma (the dragon shapeshifter lady) in hopes that her quirk worked a little like his, but would have come up empty. he would have been in hosu for the attacks, and joined iida and todoroki in taking down stain. that fight would have been pretty brutal, with stain fascinated by izuku. he'd give his whole who deserves to be a hero spiel, which izuku would have torn to shreds, ending with the lines,

"but above all, there's on reason i know that your method of choosing who deserves to be a hero is wrong." "and why is that?" "you chose me."

^ taken from ye olden discord beta chat.

FOREST TRAINING ARC

i think this was where the mall sequence was? regardless, at the mall, shinsou is approached by shigaraki, who would grin at him and say some incomprehensible things about him being a "god tamer" and "friend to the most powerful monster in the world". he'd mention this later to midoriya, which sends him into a paranoia spiral.

and then there's all the forest training stuff, izuku is incredibly off-kilter the whole time and kind of manic, and of couuuurse he would have been the one targeted by the league of villains and kidnapped out from under everyone's noses. they panic.

after getting everyone (that they have) home, and contacting authorities (including my lovely naomasa <3 miss you baby) they would have gotten a video call from an unknown number. all for one would have spoken to them all directly, before cutting to a video feed of izuku in an enormous cell, where he would have been forced to activate his quirk, revealing him to be the leviathan to UA staff and some authorities. all for one would have thanked the heroes kindly for holding him for a while, and said that he'll take it from here.

all for one would then have taken the leviathan quirk from izuku. however, when he'd attempt to use it himself, he'd find it only a mild shapeshifting quirk; the ability to turn a little lizard-y and cough some sparks, but nothing more. out of fascination, he'd give the quirk back to izuku, and find the usual monster awaiting. he'd take and give izuku various different quirks, and find all of them effectively superpowered out of control. fascinated, he'd leave izuku with the leviathan quirk and send his scientists in to do some tests.

the following revelation would be twofold. all for one's scientists would discover that izuku's body was constantly maintaining a high density of [insert chemical here]-- the same active ingredient in the drug trigger. inko midoriya would also reveal to someone (maybe an undercover operative?) that she'd been a victim of the trigger attacks (from BNHA Vigilantes, which I loved at the time, ha) while she was pregnant with izuku. the effects of trigger on a pregnant person had never been even considered, let alone documented. the result was a child with a permanently trigger-ified quirk that went out of control the second it manifested. they tell izuku this and he's like ...oh.

HIDEOUT RAID ARC

the heroes are obviously assembling to raid afo's hideout POSTHASTE, with the heavy awareness of Just How Badly This Could Go hanging heavy over their heads. like canon, the kids also decide to go help and rescue izuku, joined by bit! who is laughingly Extremely Wary about the whole thing, and kind of vaguely implying that they should be ready for something bad. they yell at him for being a pessimist. he stays quiet.

i don't remember exactly how this went in canon but the opening at least would be similar enough to that. Big Fight, kids manage to rescue izuku, whatever. then they look up, and afo is kind of mopping all might.

izuku would have tried to run back into the fray. shinsou would gone after him to stop him, but izuku would have shaken him off, revealed himself to be the leviathan (with the air of a goodbye), and gone full-transformation. this would have revealed his identity to shinsou and his other ua friends, with bit there to explain a little bit to try and calm them down.

izuku, working together with the leviathan for the first time and thus able to actually kind of control himself, would have been able to work together with all might to just fucking smash afo. battle of the gods, in a way. all for one would have died here (at all might's hands. no more grief for the kiddo.) and izuku ends a fight conscious and in control of himself, for once.

after everything, izuku is taken into custody (bit is VOCALLY against this but overridden) and placed in a holding cell with quirk suppressants (which is weirdly nice! it shouldn't be! but it is!) where he talks to naomasa. he comes clean about everything, including what he's learned about the permanent trigger enhancement. naomasa is APPALLED, and is like, sorry? you've been on trigger constantly since you were four? and izuku's like yyyeaahhh haha. and naomasa is ... frankly horrified, by all of it, but promises to get him help.

and they do! izuku goes on quirk suppressants, since there's no real... trigger suppressant in existence, yet (they have to play with the dosage a bit). they also kind of realize "the leviathan" (the one in izuku's head) is... basically how his brain has learned to conceptualize what's happening to him. and even then, the leviathan isn't evil; it's just overwhelmed, in pain, and scared. izuku comes to terms with all of this, which combined with the medication, makes it possible for him to comfortable control his quirk for the first time in his life.

he tells his mom everything, she's horrified, they cry about it. he tells his friends everything, they forgive him. he talks to bit. he even talks to blade in jail, i think. but he goes forward with an actual support system, and does end up being the underground hero he always wanted to be, with a focus on kids and people with "out of control" quirks who people want to write off.

misc emotional beats:

shinsou would have assumed izuku's repression of the leviathan (post USJ) to be an attempt to stop reminding them about the leviathan; he would have told izuku off for beating himself up for having a "villanous quirk", said some flowery stuff about self-perception, and told him that he was nothing like the leviathan. ouch.

while the story would have been gen, izuku and shinsou would have gotten a lot closer. i was (and honestly? still am!) a big shindeku fan and think they have a fun dynamic, in canon and aus. this would have been interesting, because it would have led to a lot of miscommunication irt izuku trying to hold shinsou at arm's length because of his leviathan guilt, and shinsou not understanding why. maybe they could have had a big fight about it right before izuku gets kidnapped during the training camp arc.

izuku would have gotten closer with iida and uraraka as well, explored some of their issues/ todoroki.... maybe? i'm not sure. i have terminal "gets annoyed by the most popular ship in a fandom" disease, so i was never a huge tododeku guy. but they probably could have had something interesting.

i think izuku and naomasa were also supposed to talk a little more? since naomasa was one of the people present at OG leviathan incident, their relationship was meaningful. also i just really like naomasa, as people may remember.

i legit have no idea what would have happened with bakugou. i didn't really... care about him, then? and i don't really now (though i'm much more ambivalent than i used to be lol). he might have gotten some occasional beats of self-reflection, but i wasn't ever really that interested in giving him a Big Coming Around Arc. i do in retrospect think I could have; putting him in 1-B set up an interesting situation for him to be with the """"lesser"""" crowd and learn to see them as people, and himself as one, too.

mirio gets all for one, most likely. or kirishima, or something. maybe he offers it to izuku, but izuku is like HELL NOOOO. sorry. no thank you.

and... that's that. it's weird to write all this out. this is actually the first time i've ever seen it all laid out. there's probably some stuff i'm forgetting, and maybe i'll come back and update later, but this is fine for now.

this story... was never meant to be about anything, really. i just started writing it because i wanted to write a bnha fanfic, and i liked quirk!izuku aus. all impulse, all just vibes. i still think it's not necessarily a Big Meaningful Message. but i was talking to people the other night about stuff, and realized something, kind of. when i was writing all of this, I had no idea. but in the time since, i've been diagnosed with a mild-ish form of psychosis and OCD.

so... make of that what you will.

thank you everyone, as ever, for reading, and i hope this brings you... closure? that sounds so much more important than it is, ha! the answer to a mystery, maybe. and maybe some day i'll find the motivation to actually write it as it would have been.

[vaya-writes]

WIP Folder Game

Rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous and tag as many people as you have WIPs. People send an ask with the title that most intrigues them, then you post a snippet or tell them something about it!

Tagged by @snowkissedmonsters. Thank you for the tag, delighted to talk about my stuff as per usual, when i can remember to get around to it.

Current WIP series:

Serving the Serpent

Infernal Assistance (Option Four)

Not Quite A Life Debt

The Onahole Establishment (on A03)

Girl Meets Prince (unshared as of yet)

The Adventures at Larlimen House (not writing format)

Current WIP oneshots and drabbles:

Slack In the Leash, part Two

Unnamed (living armour x museum curator, requested)

Unwritten Ideas:

Wrath Soulmate AU

Fic Idea Telepath x Concubus

Abandoned or on haitus:

Darkest Dungeon roleplay

The Maia Dales lemon

I'm not opening the onenote document from highschool days. Don't make me.

So. Not too many thankfully. I try really hard to finish what I come up with before starting new projects. Because I know myself. I know what I could become. And I don't allow room for it, lol. Though it tends to result in me not writing for months at a time.

But please ask me about any of these I'd be happy to elaborate or just share written snipets from any of the familiar WIPs.

It looks like most my fave monsterfucker blogs were tagged at the same time as me, but I'll branch out and tag a few other peeps. How about @lilkrissmuffet, @butterbabyflapjack, @thesightstoshowyou, @amoebaforce, and @ajarofpickledtears.

[wordarttmn]

Omori observations 38

Come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing any hallucinations of Hero on the previous day.

On the flip side, Sunny isn’t seeing any more hallucinations of headspace characters

Hey kid

Need any help today?

I did that the summer before preparatory school. They didn’t even ever look at my work. I feel for you, kid

I for one think you should get to do that for multiple days. Multiple months, even.

Now I feel really really bad for that kid

This is reasonably difficult

Well it would be if Brent was not literally 10

Well I could probably have solved that at 10 actually

Could I? I don’t know

I have a very confused relationship with what math you’re supposed to know at what age, because I’ve alternated between teachers that would do 4 years’ worth of math in less than a year, and teachers with whom I learnt absolutely 0 new math.

i’m not sure i remember how to do that

But at least this time i’ve catched the question

Onenote help me

Well I hate myself

Of course I didn’t take notes.

Besides I am offline in a train

Word help me?

Nah

Onenote help me again?

43+47+53+39+40+60=282

282/6=47

Excel help me?

Excel has two formulas and they don’t give the same result

Respectively 8,173126697

And 7,461009762

Okay so the z score i’m pretty sure is the number of standard deviations

100-47=53

53/8,173126697=6,484666391

53/7,461009762=7,10359612

One of these is a proposed answer

Thank you microsoft office (except word. Boo word)

I didn’t get an achievement

that’s worrying

Aw you too

She really thought I said no

Maybe I am not an irredeemable person after all

How old is she

How old was she when I knew her name (if i ever did)

Oh, for once Kel isn’t slacking

i’m even less of a native speaker than her, how on earth would I know that

Now that I’m back online I looked this up and there are two correct answers

I guess i’m gonna have to add Omori to the search terms

No achievement again

I better not have made mistakes

I hope neither of them is the one who still lives there

Does it show that much

Well you don’t

But we’re gonna refrain from telling you in what way

Well it’s not hopeless look at me (Sunny)! I haven’t left my room in years and yet there I am

(also, doesn’t your son eat in this very kitchen? On the small table?)

Nice to see you two outside

Brows is just senselessly running around. As usual.

Because if you couldn’t tell, Brows is Brent and Joy is Happy.

Hey kitty what am I even supposed to do with that

Welp

Hey man thanks a lot for this! I really needed one!

Damn

Damn

Well kel at least we know who did the graffiti this morning

Well at least I am mysterious

The ink bleeding through is a really nice touch though. Looks like those old draft notebooks that we had to use in elementary school.

that’s not a lot Angel. May I suggest adding some lore? MY foe facts book has tons of pointless lore. This is because I am better at worldbuilding than you.

Quitting the game for now we’re soon in Dacs

[thepiedcurrawong]

could I possibly learn the plushie lore

ok so basically some context first

All plushie events occured during years 5 and 6, when my friend and i were aged 11-12. We each had plushies who were involved in these stuff, and basically made up stuff with them each day at lunch.

The setting basically was that my friend (named Orion for these purposes) and I each owned secret underground labs where our plushies lived in and jazz like that. These were massive, had crazy advanced technology, and also all of our plushies had so-called "Respawn Chips", allowing us to kill our plushies in-universe willy-nilly without any consequences.

Now, here is our main cast of characters. For my plushies we had:

Creepy, a minecraft creeper plushie

Porky, a minecraft pig plush

Tango, a velociraptor

I also had an Eye of Cthulu named Icy, a bat named Batty, a Pikachu named.... Pikachu, and later on (halfway thru year six) a cave spider named Lucas and a dragon named Luna.

Orion's plushies were:

Croccy, a crocodile

Spiny, a spinosaurus

Sharky, a shark

Spot, a turtle obsessed with spatulas

I'm pretty sure there were more, but I forgot :(

Anyway, most major events in the plushie lore were wars. Our plushies, Orion, and I would each lead armies to fight against a single one of our plushies, who was usually just being evil for some reason. Shit was crazy. Each war lasted

The very first war was known as The Creeper War. Essentially, Croccy and Spiny teamed up to kill all creepers in existence. I don't know why this started, but it did. I believe it was around November 2018. They started bombing popular creeper cities.

Creepy and Sharky started organising evacuation efforts. A bunch of creepers evacuated to a big place called Creep Tower.

At this point, I had a OneNote document filled with a bunch of Creepy's relatives because yknow.

Anyway, Croccy's forces bombed Creep Tower, exploding it and killing all creepers in there. Creepy's mother, father, and cousin were killed in said explosion.

Orion and I got panicked, and we started working on creating a pocket dimension to evacuate all the creepers into.

By this point, the pocket dimension was completed. We evacuated all the surviving creepers into the P.O., meaning Croccy was (so we fought) defeated.

However, Croccy thought of a work-around: collecting all six infinity stones to snap every creeper out of existence.

We also heard about this, and from then on it was a race. Multiple battles were fought over these.

By this point, Spiny was getting major regrets. He betrayed Croccy and stole some of his infinity stones. Croccy tracked him down, killed him (remember the respawn chips) and took back the stones.

With this, he also managed to collect the final stones, and killed every single creeper. This meant that Creepy canonically permanently died.

Having now won, Croccy began a company that produced films. What a way to retire.

Literally two days later we retconned this. Croccy got bored of having zero creepers and so reversed the snap. Then he had a fireworks show celebrating all of creepers.

Croccy went on to produce two dramatisations of the Creeper War with his film company; The Creeper War, covering the first part, and Fall and Rise, documenting the creeper's road back to normalcy. Each one was ten hours long.

This is not the only war that occured. There were much more. I'll get to work on writing them down over the weekend.

[coralhoneyrose]

71!

71. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

Ooh what a fun question! The program I use for writing long fics is scrivener, and it has some really nice features that lend themselves well to larger projects. Among those is the ability to rearrange scenes freely, as well as built in sections for your notes, reference images, character sketches and setting sketches. I’ve included an example of what the character sketch format looks like and how I filled it out as a reference (though warning that it contains spoilers for PtLY).

I tend to keep my outline in the notes section in scrivener, but then have a separate section of the document where I sort of throw down random ideas that I haven’t figured out a place for yet. I also have a passage graveyard, where sections of scenes that I cut go to live on the off chance I may wind up wanting to pull something from them later on.

Outside of that, I alternate between using OneNote and a physical notebook and pen for things like figuring out the timelines of events or the relative positioning of objects and characters in a scene. Means that I wind up with some gems like this drawing I did for chapter 16 of Half Orange when I was trying to figure out if it was feasible for Robin to see Frederick, Chrom and Gaius’s shadows on the side of the tent without being seen herself LOL

As you can see, I am an artist™️

[salazariesalome]

BSD READING CHALLENGE

So I will say, it's been a while since I read it, so my memory is kinda foggy on the deatails.

The first time I read it, I came prepare with a OneNote page dedicated solely to this book in my attempt to outsmarting Christie. I haven't read any mystery books except the ones my school force me to read, but I watch a loooott of police shows like The Mentalist, Law & Order, Criminal Minds, etc. I was determined to figure this one out.

And I failed....horribly. I never even suspected him.

I blamed that on it being a good singn that this book is, in fact, a mystery/detective masterpiece. But Something just...didn't feel right.

I ended up cheking reviews...and well, I would have to read it again (mostly cause I erase the OneNote page, my bad) but those reviews, alongside what I do remember...yeah, I think the book doesn't give the reader enough information for us to be able to solve the mystery.

In any case, I do live the story, the thriller was on point. I have some questions about the order of the killings...I don't think Vera should have been the last (or the 9th death, depending on your perspective) I think that sould have been Lombard or Armstrong. Anthony too, dying first....I guess it was an accident, but the way he didn't care about...anyone, mmmmmm.

7.6/10

[west-hills]

.

Feeling so disillusioned by sports and it's (social) media. Not that I ever thought the latter was all that great. For me the way they work in combination just feels like it's draining hours of peoples lives for nothing. It all feels so pointless. I completely agree people need distractions and to have interests/hobbies but there's a point where it's just ridiculous, especially in fandom. It's a bunch of very rich men playing for even richer men and we spend all this time following them or obsessing over them. Defending them. Applying our internal experiences to them. Expecting them to have some kind of moral standard they do not owe to any of us. They do not care about you at all. 99% of them would leave you on the side of the road for dead and so many people on here would thank them for that life experience should they happen to live.

I feel it most for hockey and part of me thinks it's time to move on. The obsession got me through the pandemic, but looking back, lmao wtf! I am not saying it wasn't a good time (there were very very bad times), but it was a lot of time and money spent for something that, honestly, no one gives a fuck about now. I am grateful for the experiences, some where pretty great, but I still feel exceedingly stupid overall. I could have used that time more effectively, to actually learn something or get qualified in something? I still had work during the pandemic, but the hours after that (okay and during) were spent listening to hockey pods or scrolling Twitter to see if Auston Matthews was playing that night, in a game and season I can no longer recall. Posting it here and freaking out with whoever. And I watched every single game for like 5 seasons, because there was "nothing" better to do and then I had fomo once the pandemic cooled off. And that fomo is the reason I gained weight, because instead of going out to the gym every night like I did before the pandemic, I stayed home to watch fit rich men skate around on my computer!! Oh, I better gif them too! I have since changed that, and lost like almost 18lb, which is great, but it has only made me more infuriated about how much time I spent sitting on my ass watching them.

I'll still buy my game package for the Senators, because I do still like hockey. I am not going out of my way to buy merch anymore, if anything I still want to have less. And as I have stated before about them, I don't feel the need to post the Sens that much on here. I tried, it's just not a thing for me. I still want to follow Dubas, I still very much like him, but I'll probably just keep a OneNote of articles and things for myself. Other than the odd gifset, the time and effort of putting things up here isn't really worth it like it was with the Leafs.

I really can't be bothered with the Penguins fandom at this point. I didn't enjoy it in the early 2010's and it's no better now. Penguins fandom 2 for 2 on killing hockey interest it seems. There are a handful of people I enjoy but the rest of it is so, needlessly attention seeking. It's so different from the Leafs fandom of the pandemic, it's insane that it's for the same sport. It's also just getting sad watching people do what I did and post, argue, and freak out about the team the entire day.

I have some regrets about baseball, similar to hockey, but not to the same extent. I've watched a single game of baseball this summer, listened to another. I don't really miss it so far.

I am posting a lot of F1 though, which is funny, because I wouldn't say I have been following it that well. I have technically watched every race this season, although a lot of them were "watched" 3 weeks late and in the background of my work from home day. I feel the least to almost no regret about F1, but I haven't been as in it for a number of years now and didn't spend the money on the race this year. I think there being fewer races (still too many) than MLB/NHL games helps. It did take up a lot of space in my life for a while, but I don't feel grossed out about it.

I am not going to delete my Tumblr, it's still the easiest way to follow things I do like. But I feel so done with social media. I only have Tumblr and Youtube, and then the Reddit home page, because I don't have an account, that I check too much. I am so tired of being on it. I am tired of checking it. Of scrolling it. Watching it. Of seeing whatever people have to say about this team or player, it literally doesn't matter. Most of it's made up for clicks or likes. The vague post about an internet issue that does not exist outside the internet, like please go outside. It's the same stuff over and over again. When I go on my trip, I am not using it. Almost 20ish days. It will be the longest I've gone without to for easily 17 years. I can't fucking wait. Please let it fix me, I beg.

I am not trying to be like, "better then you" with this post, it's just that priorities are shifting and I soooooo wish they had done so sooner. Because I legitimately feel stupid, people know so much, and read and study, and I know a lot about the 2018-2023 Toronto Maple Leafs. 🙃

[carolynschwab]

ART-322 Midterm

For my digital project, I used OneNote, an app I use for note taking. I started by choosing colors I had in person so I could try to get the most accurate color recreation in the physical drawing. I love drawing swirls because of how detailed and chaotic it can look at the same time. I wanted to add in some thick lines to give the piece more depth. When digitally creating, I appreciated how easy it was to create specific colors. However I definitely felt most in control when using my hands. I think this is because I’m left handed. I’ve always had an issue controlling the screen (even when I take my online notes) because my left hand drifts across and moves something. Drawing something in a sketchbook allows me to control how smooth I want my lines. It also allows me to create dots better. I did however like when drawing digitally how I could zoom in and out of the frame to get more detail in. I also felt it was hard to transfer the proportions over to the rectangular canvas when my digital drawing was smaller and more square. Overall for both pieces I chose bright colors to create a lively feel to the piece. I want viewers to look at my drawings and feel positive emotions.

[player1064]

i’d be interested to hear about your planning process for your neville fic… how did you think about what would be included in each chapter? do you have a general timeline youre working on that you fragmentes and rearranged? i really love the fic and would like to know more about how you’re going about it!!

oooooooh good question.... short answer I DID have a plan but I'm in too deep now and we're mostly going on vibes

okay I started writing out the long answer and it's getting VERY long (sorry guys for being passionate about my silly rpf fic writing process) so I'm putting it under the cut

I was actually working on this fic for AGES before I started posting it, it started out I'd just write sections as I thought of them but then I got Very Deep into timelines and stuff so it's like

I've got a list that's got basic details of Gary & Becks' actual careers going by year so that's got like:

debuts for club/england

retirements for club/england

trophies won by manchester united between 1993-2013

personal awards/honours won

when Becks moved to different clubs

post-football career stuff like start/finish of coaching jobs, tv stuff, salford, miami, etc

Personal life stuff - breakups, meeting real life partners, weddings etc

Salford stuff e.g. promotions and trophies from 2014-present

(here's a screenshot actually kdghdfkjfsda... turns out I Love talking about this)

THEN as an aside to that list I've got notes of the key things that have to change for the AU to work - and specific dates of scenes that I could potentially write (still basic stuff e.g. for the chapter that's just gone up I had '2000 - bad season', '2023 - fight about documentary', '2021 - collapses at the euros', '2020 - weird pandemic conversation with carra')

I also have a page filled with random dialogue I've written without the full like Written Out Section bc I'm someone who thinks in conversations so I like having somewhere to dump all the conversations I'm imagining happening at various points in the fic... they don't all make it in for example here's part of the original valencia conversation gary & becks were going to have:

Then I've got a list that goes year by year which is less focused on Events and more on like their emotional journeys and what their relationship situation is at any given point.... trying to see if there's anything on that list that wouldn't give spoilers i THINK this one has mostly all been covered at this point:

yes there is still more to come. SORRY this is so insanely detailed but this fic has consuming my every waking thought for months. so.

so before I started posting it, like I said I was just writing sections as they came to me. I keep them in onenote rather than word bc then they're separate pages which is easier to navigate quickly and find what I want as I'm going.

I actually wasn't sure if I was gonna do the mixed up timeline or go straight chronological order but I think going chronilogically would be difficult bc there are some parts of their lives that get a lot more weight and attention than others and some that get skipped over just bc they're not super relevant to the story. so instead they're organised kind of by theme.

SO how I decide what's going in each chapter is like I had a vague outline of what I want the sort of Journey through the fic to look like, which is basically (again no spoilers so JUST for what's posted so far):

(ALSO actually reading through my notes on this I've gone slightly off course lately bc these things sort of get away from me. so this is a good reminder to myself that I did at one point have a plan that I was quite happy with and I should try keep it in mind)

1: establish the main things that have changed in this universe (not being sold to madrid and getting together when they're very young)

2: this bit is harder to explain but it's like. part of it is sort of highlighting different points where their paths diverged from real life and part is just like they're happy and in love but the outside world keeps creeping in - Becks getting more and more famous, Gary feeling like he can't keep up, the difficultes of being a gay footballer.

3: Jamie's coming in and starting to mess things up

4: issues they're having with their careers sort of seeping into their relationship and making everything a lot harder than it needs to be.

again I've not read through these notes recently and now I'm thinking I probably should have - I've just been going with the vibes which sometimes u need to do it's not a bad thing BUT anyway I just saw this note I made and I really really like it I think it's a good summary of the fic as a whole kfdhjgkdfs

GUESS WHAT I'm still not done. Yes this is insanely intricately planned out yes like I said the last couple of chapters I've mostly just been going by vibes rather than the actual plan I actually had. For example turns out I had never intended to write that second jamie interlude. oops!

SO like I said I keep all the sections as individual pages in a section of a onenote notebook and those I keep in chronological order for easy navigating. Then I use notion's board view and I've got the date of each section as a card that I can easily drag and drop between columns representing chapters so that I can organise how I want them to flow and I can reorder things until I'm happy with them:

and then after obsessively researching every single section for historical accuracy I just kind of. throw it all together and post it and hope for the best........

THANK U FOR THIS ASK btw!!!!!!!!! it was really really fun trying to explain all of this and I'm sure it looks like a complete mess (this isn't even including all my random scribbles in notebooks omg) but yeah. I really really love writing this fic I love this universe I love imagining them happy and in love I wish I didn't have to give them so many problems but as I'm always saying I LOVE pain and suffering!!!!

[myridewaslongtoo]

actually wait. alright. the comparative analysis engine is starting to rumble. i'm feeling the intellect simmer. impromptu dracula and frankenstein analysis NOW

so the exploration of both stories is, inherently, the exploration of what it means for a human's mind to witness inhumanity right. what that inhumanity actually *means* as something to write about, to explore. this has naturally been tackled before, repeatedly, but these are sort of closer-to-modernity iterations of exploring these subjects

dracula is evil. i mean, he's pitiable in his horribleness, but he's very much onenote as an object of malice. a distortion of the human frame in that he (and vampirism in general) reflects the worst, the impulse, the excess. though intelligent the novel repeats the idea of him having a "child brain," unable to cope or ascertain reality without physical experience. his powers are used without logic, a kind of ceaseless hunger

just look at renfield, for example. he exerts a kind of philosophy about vampirism, the attribution of lives collected in something higher yet higher on the food chain, until one is finally most "superior." the implication inherent is that there will be nothing to eat besides, one day, a man. and all the spiders and birds and cats and dogs churning in his essence. it's a kind of primal attitude. the basic, the rustic, the fleshly. the closest thing dracula's protagonists get to true superstition is the power of their religion, something one could perhaps see as more "civilized" and reasonable, goodhearted.

so dracula, the vampires of dracula, are most strongly feared for their weakness. they have these powers beyond humanity, but they're not ever used for innovation in any true sense. dracula is a thing that can be feared for his ingenuity, how he has broken the stagnancy of his cold dead mind, but he is very intentionally a mask of life over a corpse. all that he is is want. this is a reading a little informed by nosferatu (2024) but the original novel still spells out these themes pretty strikingly i'd say

vampires, in dracula, are red-eyed mirrors, corrupted yet desirable, something heinous but undoubtedly *wanted* by some little part of you. the morals of the story, then, are to trust in purer and more reasonable things, understanding the power that the coming century gives human beings. the light that gives them meaning. to be a vampire is to have your beauty ripped away for the sake of fragile and pathetic immortality, desirous impulse

then there's frankenstein. but this is about the monster, isn't it, and those two *do* so often get confused. there's a deeper conceptual lining for that, i think. let me explain

the monster in frankenstein is tragic. he's wretched, feeling, and alive. he's alive when he shouldn't be, as an assimilation of death and decay. but his nature, inherently, isn't one of death. he feels anew, he feels real. just before frankenstein creates his monster, he muses to himself on the fact that there may be something to miss in the purity of a *lack* of knowledge. this gets into original sin and all, but regardless the conception of a world without language, connection, and the hardship that exists with it. an understanding of the world without what we feel always burdens us, destroys us, depresses us.

but it's just a thought, for the doctor.

the monster is a funhouse mirror, a warped depiction of a human. we look at him and are nauseated by his unnatural features, his grotesque mockery. he is abandoned, tormented, and outcast. he is a man, men, made a creature. to be so hatefully rejected when this is the world that brought you into it

but this is about how people relate to inhumanity. so how does the doctor relate to the monster? he takes responsibility, of course, in a twisted sense. he refuses all real paternal obligation, is sickened by it, but the monster is still something placed upon his back. again and again its murders, made to torment him, are something he bears upon his back. he quite literally calls them his own machinations, his own borne fruit, which does eventually end up *imprisoning him.* it starts with the blame of others (resulting in their legal death) for the monster's crimes, then frankenstein, then it finally comes all around

the monster and the doctor do, at the end of the day, have a bond. it is compared by both to a master and a slave. the doctor thinks himself enslaved by the threats and murders of the monster, shackled by his own creation, bound inexorably into a vortex of grief and ruination. the monster thinks himself one now truly, a wretched creature bound by his own desire for retribution against a world that loathes him, enslaved to the impulse of revenging upon his doctor, his master, his creator. they become meaningless, the same, and as what animates the monster is revenge against his creator, the doctor only lives for revenge against his creation.

when one shuts their eyes, when one cannot see, they do not loathe the monster. they hear his words, reasonable and astoundingly articulate, and they only know him for this. it is only when it is seen, all the imperfections of one man's attempts to assume godhood, all the horror of seeing a man for how powerful and animalistic he might really be, that the monster is flung out.

there is something essentially beastly about frankenstein's monster, and about count dracula. they have powers beyond men, strength beyond them. they represent a kind of fear of what might lie inside us, the curdled forms of our now spoiled milk. where dracula informs us so totally of our virtue and how we might defend it from the night's instinctual depredations, however, the monster dwells. it wonders if there is kindness in crudity. to ask us: if to be introduced to civilization, humanity, and all it is traumatizes a creature so deeply, crushes its innocent bliss, what does that really say about us? if we can create so damnable a criminal, so lonely a being?

dracula ends with the count being slain, a footnote in the broader story. for a moment, there is peace in his foul expression. there is freedom, and then there is nothing. the world is purified, again, of a taint that nearly overtook it. there is more ahead for nearly all those that faced against him, and even those that perished are remembered for their nobility. victory

frankenstein ends with the destruction of the doctor and the monster. the doctor claims spirits aid him through his travel, his pursuit of the monster, giving him meals, giving him rejuvenating rain. yet all that listens to him is his creation, the only one joyous at his oath of revenge is his creature. when he is dead, the monster mourns. and he goes, then, to die, burnt alive at some far northern pole. and no more will anyone remember them, not either

(i should probably read dr jekyll and mr hyde)

[ruelknudson]

Thinking about A Tale of Two Cities.

Writers are readers. As a writer, I find it best not to stick too closely to any specific genre, author, theme, or literary era. I try to dance between fiction by modern authors, non-fiction, comics, and classic literature. I love the range and diversity in approaches. But there is something magical about classic literature that I think other authors should consider: the sheer complexity of the stories.

We live in an age where there are more tools for crafting a good story than ever before. We have tools like World Anvil, Scrivener, and Grammarly to help organize and edit writing outside of basic word processing software like Word, Office Online, and Google Docs. Personally, I use OneNote to organize all my disparate elements during my pre-writing phase. Then we use armies of ARC readers, beta readers, proofreaders, and editors to give us feedback and help us massage our creations into well-formed pieces of art. But for classic literature giants like Poe, Dickens, or Austen, these tools did not exist. They wrote by hand under lantern light, candlelight, or sunlight; and their stories are vivid, dramatic, with layered characters, and surprising twists and turns properly set up with subtle elements woven deftly into their narratives.

Take, for instance, "A Tale of Two Cities." I recently reread this book and was reminded of Dickens' mastery of the craft with two elements that seemed so pointless when you first come across them. If you haven't read the story, please do. I know some classics can be tough to read. Even I have trouble remaining focused on them from time to time. My last reading of it was an audiobook, and I definitely recommend this approach if you struggle with the language used in such classics.

If you have read it and come back to this blog, you will definitely remember Madame Defarge. She often sits in the corners of some scenes in the book. However, by the end, she is the embodiment of the antagonistic forces arrayed against our heroes. She is, on the surface, a very flat character whose only role is to represent the horrors of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.

The second character that always surprises me is one of the first characters introduced in the story: Jerry Cruncher. Jerry is a minor character who pops in and out of the story from time to time. He is a porter at the bank but supplements his income at night as a resurrection man who steals newly deceased bodies and sells them to medical schools. In one part of the story, his young son follows him to one of these nightly excursions where he decides that he wants to be a resurrection man when he grows up.

What I admire most about the approach Dickens employs to both these characters is how unimportant they are throughout most of the story. And yet, not a word is wasted on them. Once their great contributions to the narrative are exposed towards the end, the reader is left with this sudden understanding of how complexly these two were woven into the story from the beginning.

Madame Defarge’s initial appearances could be ignored if not for Dickens' insistence that we know she is there knitting, knitting. She is only remarkable by the repetition of the word “knitting” as though Dickens is whispering to the reader, “pay attention to this woman.” But she is not the important character in those scenes, until we find out later, when the revolution is in full swing, who she is, and what she has been doing.

Defarge was a victim of the aristocracy. We learn that we have been told throughout the story how she was victimized, what was done to her, and the people she wants vengeance on. We learn that as she knitted in the wine shop, she stitches the names of the victims who will succumb to her justice. By the end of the story, we learn that Dickens was telling us her story (and the story surrounding the greater conflict between the rich, the poor, the aristocracy, and the revolution) the entire time, while using Manette, Lucie, Darnay, and Carton as the main characters driving the plot through their various trials and tribulations.

Then there is our minor character, Jerry Cruncher, a character who pops in at some very important pieces of the story, but we don’t understand how important until the very end, when his knowledge of a fake burial is used to blackmail Barsad, which allows for Carton to sacrifice himself for Darnay. Every single appearance of Jerry is notable in that he is part of some key points in the story but is essentially a giant lever, forcing the plot of the story to end in the only way it could. He is a seemingly minor character in scope but has an outsized influence on the outcome of the story. Throughout my reading of the story, I often find myself wondering why this guy matters at all, until he finally does. And then, when he does matter, you learn that he always did, just not in any way you might expect.

All the complexity and artistry aside, we know that Dickens is one of the literary world’s greatest writers. That makes it easy to dismiss the mastery on display in this novel. But I want to argue a very specific point. Dickens published 45 chapters, nearly 140 thousand words, in 31 weekly installments. He wrote the novel by hand, and then released it in pieces. I don’t know how he organized the story before he put down the ink. It doesn’t matter. The story is dense, packed with subtle scenes, breadcrumbs galore, and subtle little twists and turns. Seeds are planted in early pages to bud or bear fruit after chapters that leave the reader wondering not how he did it, but how did he do it without us noticing. No one, not in the past 165 years since its creation, regardless of the advancements in literary craft or technology, has anyone come close to doing what Dickens has done in A Tale of Two Cities.

As readers and authors, we often find ourselves hyper-focusing on the current literary trends, with the latest and greatest masters of the craft, and digging into the commercial and artistic tone setters of today’s best books. Best sellers and independent diamonds pile up in mounds of new content begging for our attention. A rare few catch our eye and our interest, and we devour them while we look at our own stories and wonder how they would fit in the current landscape. We wonder at the commercial value of our book series and hope to the literary gods that someone might touch one of our books and think they belong on their shelves next to Harry Potter and whatever tomorrow’s version of A Song of Ice and Fire will be. And those of us who write to tell stories, regardless of profit, still hope those stories will be read, when there is so much reading left to do.

And we forget that among those books stand giants holding classics that make all of us modern wordsmiths look like amateur children who have just learned to play at making stories. They laugh at our careful planning and our complex narratives so carefully organized with the best machines built for thinking that man has made accessible to us.

For many readers, there is no greater treasure than to find a classic masterpiece and realize how wonderful they are. For others, they will never come to those stories. They will read many things throughout their lives. Their lives will be richer after having read them. But I can’t help but feel a little sad knowing what they are really missing.

Speaking of readers finding new stuff to read:

I am an independent author looking for more readers to read my stories. Check out my books on my website via the link below.

[zebublack]

9 People You’d Like To Get To Know Better

Tagged by @jessica-drewz (A thing! I got tagged in a thing! c: )

Favorite color: Black (big shocker), and purple (closer to "plum" if you want to get technical).

Sweet/spicy/savoury: If there's a gun to my head and I can only pick one... savory.

Relationship status: The pile of theology books strewn across the right side of my bed.

Last song: Sunshine Boysclub - Patience

Last movie: Monster High: The Movie (Yes, the live-action one 💀)

Last thing I googled: "onenote hide spellcheck"

Currently watching: In the middle of the "Pita Ten" series. It's such a lovely gem of the late 90s / early 00s anime wave.

Currently reading: "The Way of Hermes: New Translations of the Corpus Hermeticum" by Clement Salaman

Current obsession: Syrian/Aramean archeology and anthropology (I have a side blog for it! : @tsalmu )

Tagging: @arzeron - @julie-wardh - @akhenhedrixe - ...and that's pretty much all the semi-regular folks I know of here.

[wordarttmn]

Omori observations 21 bis

Full screen, no lights. OneNote set to dark mode.

Kel was pretty lonely but I’m helping him with that.

He may have his eyes closed but I still think his smile is super genuine.

it’s a good thing this happened, it would have been worse had we not been there, even though we did make mistakes.

I really don’t think Sunny was always mute.

Genuinely I the player can’t wait

Now I think Sunny starts worrying about this, but i’ll elaborate on that much later.

Good thing I have my nightmares awake so I can have my sweet dreams asleep

Incredibly unnerving noises, loud murmurs, and a large quantity of boxes that should not be there. Or that are not in the right place.

And lack of boxes or furniture where they should be some.

I went back to my earlier living room screenshot, and guess what,

I should not be able to stand there.

A spider jumped me and successfully startled me.

None of this furniture is real.

This was almost worse

can’t cut that.

There are red hands outside waiting for me.

Wtf. Wtf. Wtf.

that’s not even a box. I don’t know what it is. But not a box.

What is this stuff

Poor kid

he’s trembling

The spider bite animation is deeply unnerving. I am unnerved.

He saw something and turned away. And folded.

Every single thing startled me. I am startled. didn’t get to check whether we were in the real upstairs, but I can guess we aren’t.

Just understood what I was looking at. And this is super fucked up.

Focus is a great skill though. it’s incredibly powerful for the real world.

I think I missed a mirror jumpscare. The sound effect played, alone.

Well why are YOU staring at me like that?

I saw Mari for a split second behind the fridge too. I knew something could happen but not this.

And then I got legit jumpscared by Hellmari. I’m turning the lights back on! Forever!

I fell asleep and saw Mari’s ghost like never before. I’ve always seen her at that point, but never so visibly.

Origin cutscene. The track has notes of White Space, but sounds almost like those extremely slowed down windows startup sounds.

Is this happening now? Or then? Both would make sense.

Every cutscene put back to back creates a sequence of events that, connected, could either happen every time Sunny falls asleep, or only on that fateful day.

White Space. Now piano. And it sounds like a child playing piano, distinctly irregular.

And I saw Mari, in white space. I want to overthink that.

it’s like she has entered my life, and my mind, as herself again, at some point during today. Of course she won’t be able to talk to me right away.

I can stab whenever I want. But I doubt I will right now.

And now, Aubrey is openly flirting with Omori.

I have things to say about this, but I’m keeping them for a bit later.

Blocking the one way we could go through.

Hero’s fear of spiders had not been mentioned until now.

However i did overthink it earlier and will be talking about it too.

This hurts even more now

By Your Side of course doesn’t help.

And here Kel mentions more interests of Basil than the usual ones. We don’t ever hear him talk about art, I believe.

Mari… Basil wishes he was like you because you’re an actual optimist. We definitely shouldn’t aspire to be like him with issues like that. that’d be a terrible idea.

With Hero’s fear of spiders, there’s always an undertone that he’s not supposed or allowed to be afraid, that he has to get over it or at least to maintain a façade. He thinks he can’t afford one phobia, and puts himself under a lot of pressure because of that. Yet, unlike Omori, he never actually gets over it.

that’ll be it for tonight! I hope I get to continue tomorrow