#I probably used too many adverbs here but this entire thing's a bit of a mess anyway so who cares about the details

[killingsboys]

20, 40, 59, 60, 72, 74! have a whole load!

omg hi bestie!!!! thank you sm for asking omg 💛💛

20. Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

oh boy SO many patterns. i have a habit of rereading my own fics almost obsessively after posting them to try and think like what could be better, what do i wanna use again, etc and i pick up on a lot of things i almost wish i didn't </3 i write a LOT about craving intimacy but shying away from it, even fighting it, so that's cool. i also seem to describe directions three times. like "down, down, down" or "away, away, away." absolutely no idea what that is about but i can't stop.

40. If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

oooooooh this is such a good question. maybe the face painting scene from you can handle me! although honestly if anyone ever made a fanwork of any scene from anything i've written, ever, i would probably cry forever and ever

59. Does anyone in your personal life know you write fic? if not, would you tell anyone?

no they do not! i probably wouldn't tell anyone honestly because i keep fandom very separate from my personal life i guess? which for the record has very little to do with fandom in general and much more to do with me not liking people to know things about me

60. Have you had a writer you admire comment on your fic? What was that like?

well yes of course, you comment on my fics and it always makes me smile!! like genuinely makes my whole entire week <3 you are always so kind and you always manage to pick out a line i was really proud of :')

72. What order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

in a oneshot i will write chronologically but in a multi-chapter it's.... very different. like for deep end i wrote the first chapter and then a lot of the later scenes and now i'm going back in and zero drafting (mostly) chronologically now that i know vaguely where i'm going. when i get a scene idea for later though i write it immediately or else i WILL forget and i will be sooooo angry with myself. once i get to work on the first/second draft though i will only go in chronological order so that i can start really ironing out continuity errors/metaphors/motifs etc.

74. You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?

i honestly think coco would be able to guess just based off straight vibes. as for anyone else..... see this is a hard one because i do think i have a vaguely distinct style of writing but it's hard to actually describe it, and a lot of the things i associate with my own writing (excessive em dash usage, too many commas, an alarming amount of adverbs) are really not that unique, especially not in fic. i don't mean this in a self-deprecating way btw i do actually like my style of writing but it's not what i would consider particularly Unique. maybe i would give myself away because i seem to be completely incapable of not making jokes about murder in my exr fics? that's genuinely all that comes to mind which is a bit alarming but here we are <3

get to know your fic writer!

[nonwal]

I’ve seen some meta talking about whether various characters’ judgements of Artagan are unfounded (or subconsciously influenced by what their players know from c1) and...hm. Yes, he’s been extremely supportive of Jester and she’s consistently told the M9 that he’s her best friend and he’s super cool you guys. But that doesn’t mean that these characters’ suspicion towards him is unfounded, just that they’re founded on those characters’ personalities and previous life experiences, rather than anything Artagan has done or Jester has directly told them about him.

this is pretty long and based off of my own initial impressions of the most current episode (which I missed parts of,) so YMMV below the cut

First off. Caduceus. Let’s be frank, he’s sitting back and quietly judging everyone. I love him for it, but this isn’t news. I’d be surprised if he were 100% on board with any of this. Out of all the player characters, he’s always been the least in tune with who Jester actually is as a person.

Fjord. Remember when he ended up stuck in a pact with a pseudo-god, too scared to break away from it because he didn’t like who he was without his powers? That’s absolutely coloring the way he views Jester and Artagan’s interactions. I don’t necessarily agree with how he’s handled it (Jester doesn’t need to be coddled or protected, she’s not a child, just talk to her about your concerns, fucking hell,) but his judgement is based on very real fears. Right up until the end Fjord was telling everyone that he had the Ukutoa situation handled--he didn’t tell anyone when he lost his powers, he never voiced any of his doubts about his usefulness, he just let everyone assume things were fine. So it makes sense that he doesn’t entirely trust Jester telling him that Artagan’s her friend and she’s fine, especially considering that Fjord has become increasingly aware that (with his abysmal insight/wisdom score) he doesn’t actually know what’s going on behind the scenes most of the time.

Beau...well. Remember how her family had history with a mysterious figure granting them boons and then surprise, that figure turned out to be an evil fey being bent on causing misery? Remember what her initial relationship with Molly was like? Is anyone surprised that she doesn’t like Artagan, certified archfey bullshitter? Even ignoring her background, the same traits that make her a good investigator/expositor make her bad at trusting and letting go. She doesn’t expect things to go well, she assumes people are lying about their intentions, she gets suspicious and stubborn and defensive. Again, I don’t necessarily like how she handled this situation, but it absolutely makes sense considering who she is as a character and the biases she has.

Caleb’s harder to read. We know that A) he speaks sylvan and therefore presumably understands what to expect from a fey more than the others and B) he has some deeply fucked-up experiences with being manipulated by a powerful authority figure. He initially seemed to show wariness re:the Traveler, but he also did the same thing with Jester’s mom (and many other people besides.) After watching Artagan interact with Jester more, he seems to have relaxed somewhat and trusted that she has a handle on it, even if he might not trust Artagan himself. It’s also possible that he feels like he'd recognize manipulative behavior based on his own experiences and doesn’t think that’s the case here, or that he feels like he isn’t allowed to judge other people’s choices because of his own self-loathing. It’s hard to say the exact reason for it, but he has stepped back into a supportive role and is less suspicious than some of the others.

Yasha hasn’t said a ton about what she actually thinks of Artagan from what I recall, and I think a lot of people are interpreting her silence as strong disapproval when that may not necessarily be the case. She’s got the whole Obann thing she’s still working through, but that involved literal mind control and she doesn’t necessarily seem to be projecting her own issues onto Jester’s situation. Again, hard to read--she’s been a bit reserved in her support, but she’s also just reserved in general.

Veth has arguably handled this the best, and I do think part of that is because, as someone who blows stuff up and permanently glues dicks to people’s hands, she’s more in tune with Jester than the rest of the group. However, I also think it’s easiest for her to trust that Jester can have an equal relationship with Artagan because she doesn’t have the baggage that so many of the others do. The bad things that have happened to her weren’t due to trusted authority figures using their power to abuse her. She’s aware that dangerous power imbalances can happen, but that isn’t the lens that she fundamentally filters the world through, and so it’s easier for her to accept when that’s not the case.

Last but not least, Jester has...inadvertently exacerbated a lot of this by repeatedly introducing the Traveler as a super-powerful god that people should worship because he’s awesome, and defending his godhood whenever someone doubted it. If she’d mostly focused on their long friendship and less on the powerful deity thing, I wonder if it would’ve triggered everyone’s Mistrust of Authority™ alarms to the same degree or made the not-a-god reveal as troubling. Also, from the outside it’s easy to assume that the Traveler was asking her to recruit more followers instead of that being her own idea--and almost impossible to imagine that the Traveler being a god was also her idea. The rest of the Nein never heard Artagan’s own explanation for why he started a cult (that it was mostly Jester’s influence and he kinda got swept away by it,) so it’s easy to assume he’d been stringing her and everyone else along as a fun power trip. They also didn’t see him go “I don’t know wtf I’m doing, help,” so Jester helping him organize Travelercon probably seems like she’d been ordered to clean up his mess when he got bored of it, rather than a friend asking for advice because he’s in over his head. The Nein have mostly interacted with Artagan with Jester as an intermediary, and she’s been vague in many of her explanations because she’s trying to defend her friend. I don’t blame her for the resulting misinterpretation of events, but I can definitely understand why it happened.

as a final note--it’s easy to forget that Fjord and Beau are, frankly, very new to having real friends. They have excellent people skills in specific contexts, but both of them struggle with close interpersonal relationships because they don’t actually have a lot of experience with how those should work. I don’t think that not trusting Jester’s judgement and trying to shield her from her own (perceived) naivety is a good idea. I do think that that’s something they will eventually figure out, assuming they continue to put effort into self-improvement as they’ve pretty consistently done this entire campaign.

as a final final note--this is an improv game and people are allowed to play imperfect characters! that is what makes it interesting and fun! I like complicated relationships and this is not an attack on you or the players! please do not crucify me because my armchair interpretation of character motivations clashes with your own headcanon/your favorite ship/something a cast member said in some tweet I haven’t read/the moonweaver being in retrograde!

[geekygoddesss]

B.F.F (Part 4)

Summary: Journey through the life of a girl whose heart belongs to her best friend, but he doesn’t feel the same way.

Words: 8k

Taglist: @dreamer-loves-lyrics​​  @5sosfanfix​​ @calssunflower​​ @madformichael​ 

As planned, the dynamic duo managed to spend the entire day away from the other. No phone calls, no texting, no contact, no nothing. They were both summoned on their own activities, making everything right and doing their thing. No contact was needed, at least not at that time. The no communication line kept on pretty solid, to the point she thought she would not be hearing of the man until the next day, but just as it tends to happen, halfway through dinner time she got a message, a message that gave her the green light to come to his place whenever she could. 

She couldn't say no to that. She was expecting it anyways. 

For the whole day, babysitting her brother had been her one and only task. After dropping her best friend, she had fully dedicated her time to Joe, and like it usually happens, she starting by taking him to the baseball field, threw balls at him until their arms were tired enough and then went back home for lunch, where a big, warm and cozy pizza box was waiting for them. That’s how their whole day rolled, just another day where the two siblings were by themselves and just relaxing. Nap time came in and after the longest videogame battle she has ever been in with Joe, once they were going through those leftover pizza, Luke texted and as usual, she responded. 

It only took her about twenty minutes and a bit of traffic to get to his place, but she got there, and now it was only about time until Joe grew accustomed to this new ambient. 

She knew this place like the back of her hand, after all, she would come here almost everyday if she was bored. Most of the time, she would be hanging around the house with her friend, socializing a little and sharing with her favourite person, but in writing days, it was a little different, and now that she was with Joe, they had to deal with this new routine together. 

There was so many people in the room it was overwhelming, however, finding a distraction wasn’t the hardest thing, because Joe would walk around the place and explore everything he could. This new place wasn’t completely familiar to him, but still he wasn’t a stranger to this ambient. He would often get distracted with things like getting caught by any of the guys and be asked questions, looking at the different actions figures around, play with the dog, curious around with instruments; she would almost dare to think this could be too much of a distraction for some people, but he was having fun, thought, she liked that. 

Like it is usual on writing sessions, they tried to sit in the back, watching everything happen while she said nothing and saw everyone do their job with extreme concentration, and Joe would walk around and explored everything, discovering the world of music producing by himself and in first row. It was both interesting and boring, and surely after a good while, after listening them argue and make little pieces of tracks over and over, she ended up in one of this situations: drinking alone in Luke’s kitchen. 

Some may say it is inappropriate for her to drink while she was babysitting, she said, a beer wouldn’t hurt anyone, so that’s exactly what she did. 

While Joe seemed busy enough and established some sort of conversation with someone she didn’t know, she managed to sneak back and out of the studio room and walked herself to the kitchen, where all the good stuff was kept. It was only couple minutes she needed, it was just one of those times where disconnecting was needed; grabbing a drink before going back there was just too perfect. 

She knew this place to well, it was only a matter of less than a minute for her to find the kitchen, where she decided she was completely feeling a shot of some hard liquor, something to level up her energy and drive her through the night, but still enough to not get her too crazy. She went for the fancy cabinet, grabbed on that mint liquor Luke always hid from her (in a very terrible way) and served herself a shot. 

It was a quick drink. She held on the shot glass between her fingers and sat on the kitchen counter, staring at the green syrupy liquid on her fingers; she hasn’t drinked in a while, so it would be valid to say this felt meaningful. 

Swallowing the liquid was pure relief; it was refreshing, but that burning sensation she loved so much still made a good presence, in her tongue it left a sweet taste and somehow a bit trippy. Her favorite flavour in an alcoholic beverage, she thought it was a gift from god, she would always be thankful for that, but she was even more thankful that Luke kept it stored on purpose. This was all the relax she needed. She closed her eyes in pleasure, breathed and exhaled. 

She could use one more of those, but no-

“Why are you sitting on the counter? People eat here”

A loud voice said behind her, making her jump in surprise and almost drop the glass in her hands. She thought she was alone, everyone seemed too busy to come up there. Who dared to interrupt her peace?.

She could only wish this was not happening, because on her only moment of relaxation, the one person she disliked the most came to disturb. How pretty. “Hi to you too, asshole” she cynically smiled to Ashton, as she grabbed the cup steadily in her hand and left it aside. 

Sometimes she just wished to know what was the trick for evicting him successfully every time they happened to be on the same place, which was pretty often, and that somehow she always seemed to fail, only to end up with a bitter taste in her mouth and the memory of sharing another moment with the most embittered person she has ever known. She knew very well he didn’t like her either, and the feeling was mutual, nothing has ever happened to them but it was just how it was, she had to live with it until destiny said it was enough. 

Although, she didn’t feel like arguing today, all she wanted was for him to leave fast and leave her be, after all, she has been having a good day and didn’t wish to ruin it. 

 “How's the writing going?” She asked, trying to be friendly and not seeming like she was going to start a fight. 

Not that they ever start up fights, but pretty despicable and nasty comments were exchange in almost every encounter they had, that’s how much they despised each other. 

It was probably a surprise for him that she even dared to speak to him without putting some kind of offensive adverb in the way, or maybe, he just felt caught by surprise with such a question, but once she left the words off her mouth, she saw his eyebrows being lifted up, glanced at her from the corner of his eye and made his way to the fridge, almost as if he only wanted to get what he needed done as soon as he could.  "Why do you care? Shouldn't you look after your kid or something?” He asked in a dry tone, putting his empty glass against the ice dispenser and getting some cubes out. 

She gasped, this was just what always started their arguments, he just couldn’t for a second be nice, he always had to get some kind of sarcastic and mean comment out of his mouth. “Excuse me, he's not my kid, what are you saying?” she glanced at him, rolling her eyes “He’s my brother”

He let out one very dry laugh, shaking his head at her innocence. "I meant that you-” he started, but just before he could complete his phrase, he stopped, grabbed a can of cola and rolled his eyes “ugh whatever you wouldn't get it anyway."

Suddenly, she already felt tired of this. “Oh okay..” She shrugged, not feeling so much getting in much detail “I guess I tried to be nice but you're just one piece of an asshole”

Now that was just the kind of comment he was waiting for, because once she let it out, asides from the extreme relief she felt for letting that out of his chest, he gave her one sarcastic smile, already being done with the situation. 

“thank you for reminding me, I didn't know that” he rolled his eyes, poured the content of the can on his glass and throwing the can away. 

Her interest for maintaining a conversation with the man was more than minimal, she just opted for sitting where she was, lay back and wait for him to leave so she could have a second shot in peace, without him making some sort of comment. However, when  she thought the situation couldn’t indeed go to any bad place, she heard how in a small groan his lips mumbled something under his breath, tried to mask it with sigh and drank of his cup, acting like he hasn’t said anything, but she thought he said something, something that was directed to her. She would ignore it but she couldn’t let that pass, he was technically laughing at her. “What did you just call me?” She frowned, glancing at his direction directly. He gulped, his eyes widened in fake surprise as he said “I didn’t call you anything”. A fake laugh left her lips in disbelief “I think you did but ‘I wouldn’t get it’” she said, mocking his sarcastic tone and going back on her feet, taking one step on his direction, she challenged him “say again, loud and clear” “It’s whatever” he rolled his eyes, putting his cup aside and turning to face her “I’m just saying, if you’re bringing a kid to a writing session then at least go control him, if you’re going to be on the way like this then at least try not to bother-” “You’re the devil in Levi’s, Joe is hardly bothering any of you, he’s playing with Petunia and Calum decided to join him because he’s tired and you’ve been at this for hours” she immediately argued, not even letting him finish his sentence, half of his words were clear exaggeration. “And we still have work to do, now if you excuse me, I would be doing my job if you weren’t in my way” he raised his eyebrows, motioned her to move aside and continued his way out. She buffed. “You’re a rude fuck” she said, as he left, not being surprised in the slightest bit when he turned at her words. “Am I?” he laughed sarcastically. “Control your kid” he spat, glaring her with pure despise. “Jesus, you have zero heart over a kid” she said with anger in her voice “he likes being around, why do you always have to be so-” she struggled finding the right words to express herself “mean”. 

He opted for responding, but the minute he opened his mouth, he closed it immediately. She wondered what was stopping him, but when she felt two hands grabbing her shoulders and making her jump in surprise for the second time of the day, she knew, she didn’t even need to turn around. “Oh uh, bad timing” Luke said from behind her, trying to act like nothing was happening and walking past her “There’s still beer, right?”

She hated to say it, but right now, he was her hero. “Yeah, same spot” she nodded and pointed at the fridge. 

Luke made his way to the fridge, completely ignoring the situation while Ashton apparently couldn’t seem to stop looking at her, transmitting such a weird feeling to her she felt creeped out. A deep and tense silence took place in the room, and as Luke moved around his own kitchen and picked stuff around, none of them chose to say anything, they just wanted one of them to be the first to leave. 

Luke appeared at her side with a smile on his face, acting like everything was completely fine and sliding his around her shoulder in a brotherly protective move. 

She shivered with his touch. “One for you, one for me” he announced, sliding a beer swiftly into her hand, even when she didn’t ask for one, but she still took it. “Andy finished some stuff, he wants to save them, if you want to give a final verdict” He announced, looking at Ashton as he drank of the beer in his hand. 

Now, that was Ashton’s call to leave, she was glad. “Okay” Ashton nooded, looking at both his friend and his nemesis as he walked backwards and left the room. 

She felt very calmed from all sudden, watching him have no other choice than to leave was very satisfying and she would never get tired of that picture. That was what he got for being a douche, he deserves it. As Ashton left it was almost embarrassing how that very loud silence was maintained in the room. She watched him, walking out as if nothing happened and opening the door to that lead to the basement, his mood being more serious but at the same time, not so different from his regular self. He has acting like this because of her, but she couldn’t say she cared at all, he was an asshole and she didn’t have respect for assholes. 

“You have a long face” Luke mentioned, clicking the top of his bottle against hers before taking a drink from it. 

She just rolled her eyes, even when she thought she shouldn’t, it was a childish gesture she liked to avoid, but in these cases it was sort of a thing that came out naturally out of her. “I hate Ashton” she admitted “I just wish I knew why, why does he have to be so rude with me? I don’t get it” she groaned “I’m a good person, aren’t I?”

That question came out of her in a tone of real frustration of not knowing if the person she was to others was the same as she thought was the good kind of person. Maybe she was an asshole as well. 

Luke looked at her like she was crazy.

“You’re the best” he said with a hint emotion in his voice. “And am I annoying? Am I actually in the way right now?” she kept asking “Wait, am I actually so annoying that even my presence bothers you?”

Even when she was being a little paranoid, he keep up his posture and showed her a smile that seemed comforting and real, it was real. He left his drink on the counter top of the kitchen, rested both hands on her shoulders and squeezed ever so slightly, a quiet sign for her to stop and relax.

“No” he murmured “I love having you around, it’s the best part of my day”

Looking up at him and trying to see honesty in his eyes was almost a stupid thing to do, because no matter what he’d always be honest with her and she knew that, he was not just saying things to make her feel better and let this be, he meant everything he said. 

“Luke” she called his name, almost in a whine “I don’t know, I try to be likeable and he makes me feel like I’m just the worst, the fakest, the most-“ “That’s just him” he assured her, waving it off  “Ashton has a bit of a hard time with trusting people and all, don’t worry about it, he’s a good person though, I promise”

That was just the excuse he gave all of the time, he didn’t love seeing two of his best friends disliking each other this way, but that was the way things rolled, unfortunately; it’s been already around five or six years since she’d know them and he always despised her for no reason, that’s why Luke always made his best to not make anything worst and lead these situation with peace and calm, to a happy place that for them was totally unreal. “Yeah I know” she mumbled. It was needless to say this whole thing make her feel awkward. “And I love you, that makes up for the lack of appreciation on his behalf, right?” He smiled even more on her way. She looked up, grinned back and nodded. “Great!” he cheered, leaning in to kiss her forehead very softly. 

That small gesture of him spiked her senses up to levels she could tone down, it was hard, but she did her best to mask how nervous it made her that he was so sweet with her out of nothing, he was just so charming, she couldn’t not love it. 

Her right hand moved to hold her left wrist that carried the drink, to cover how shaky her hand was; she didn’t want him to see how nervous she has gotten in just a few seconds. Her best move to move out of this conversation without looking like a fool was very simple; she looked up at him, showed him a smile and moved in to him one quick hug, showing him that ‘she was alright and there was nothing to worry about’. 

Only god knew how intense he would be if he even suspect she was somehow affected, and not precisely by Ashton’s situation. “I should probably get back to Joe before Petunia cracks his head” she announced, taking a step back from her best friend and showing him a small smile. 

Luke gasped in fake outrage, acting as if it was anything new that his dog made someone fall over somewhere by chasing them. “Pet would never” he said, following her with his gaze as she moved around. 

She nodded, went to step back and walk away, but right before she could leave the room, he grabbed her wrist, made her turn around and looked at him, his face now looking a bit more serious. 

 “Are you staying the night?” he asked, now in more seriousness, looking for a real answer. For some reason, she blushed. “Can I?”

He rolled his eyes at her, a shameless move she would make sure to remind him later. It was childish and rude. “Is the sky blue?” he asked sarcastically, giving her wrist a soft squeeze “It’s rude to answer questions with questions, you fuck” she said in fake annoyance, rolling her eyes as well  “I am not sure, I drove all the way here in your car” she now answered with more seriousness, giving him a slight shrug. He nodded. “If you don’t want to stay I could give you a ride, maybe Michael, you’re on the way there” He offered, a kind smile spreading on his face. 

One side of her said yes, but the other side was completely different, she wanted to maintain some distance between them and keep her from doing a stupid move she would regret, after all, she was at the very verge of going crazy, or that’s what she thought. 

After getting that spot with the therapist for such a dumb reason, she was really questioning if it was worth being so close with him when she was having these kind of thoughts; if it was healthy for her to keep him around and let him be so touchy, being only one step away to take everything farther than ever and change it all. She didn’t know what to do, she didn’t want him away, but she didn’t want to torture herself either. She wished to move on. “I don’t know, I’ll think about it” she shrugged, giving him a small smile in response. “Alright” he mumbled, taking a small step, leaving a kiss on her forehead and walking past her way “just let me know before I finish this, just so I know if I should have a second one or not” That really made her laugh.

“You’re so responsable”

He laughed as well, him taking precautions just in case he had to drive her home was a step forward. 

“Hey, I learn from the best, I have that little whisperer who tells me when I’m doing bad, I’m really starting to learn shit” he says, winking her way as he reached for the door that lead to his basement “I have to go back but, see you” he waved.

She waved back awkwardly “see you”.

And then he disappeared from her sight, leaving her, once again, alone. 

She decided to one way or another distance herself from the situation, trying her very best to not think much about anything and focus on the present, because in some way, she felt like that would be the cure for her pain. She called her brother in and moved to another room of the house, somewhere where they could be alone without bothering anyone and just chill, until everyone decided to go and she felt better. Sometimes when she overworked her mind about Luke, a break would do exactly what she needed to get her mind working again.

So after a long while of isolating themselves in the giant house and laying down in Luke’s mancave, she felt like watching Joe play with Luke’s dog over and over again was starting to become sort of healing for her. She only sat there and watched, making sure her little brother wouldn’t get hurt while playing, but she had fun at it, and after a while of seeing the same picture happening in front of her eyes, she just... forgot about everything.

“Is she prwegnant?” Joe asked, rubbing Petunia’s belly back and forth, once she was finally laid down after running around for a while. “No, she’s just chubby” she answered “if she was pregnant she would be tired all the time, don’t you think?” she asked, trying to encourage the kid into thinking a little more. 

He looks at the big dog, puts his little hand on her belly again and rubbing, reflecting on his answer as he petted the dog. “I think she’s pwregnant” he stated, laying on the floor beside her and looking at the ceiling “Can we have a puppy?” She laughed. 

 “We already have a puppy, silly” she said, poking his side. 

She wasn’t lying though, they did had a dog in their house, a little French bulldog that was already too old but far too active for her age. She loved her. “But she’s old and I don’t think she can last much in the jungle, Stella is always sleepy” Joe argued, a frown starting to form on his forehead. She frowned too, not being sure if she even heard him right. 

“Jungle?” she asked, looking over at the kid.  He shrugged. “I want to live in the jungle”

She thought about questioning him for a second, but after all he was just a kid daydreaming. He did this a lot, think about something overly random and telling her to see what she thought, with a little bit of luck they might make it happen, but in most cases, everything was too unreal to even think about. He was just a kid, so she let him reflect on that himself, discover that the world was a little bit more complex than he thought.

“Joe, you can’t live in the jungle, only animals live in the jungle” she told him, just to put it out there, let him figure out that his wish was impossible.

“Says who?” he asks sassily, rolling his eyes at her. 

She gasped. 

Where did he even learn to do that? 

“Everyone!” she exclaimed, squishing his tummy with her hand playfully and watching him squirm around. “Since when do you even want to live there?” 

He laughed loudly, moved around trying to escape her tickles and give her some in return, but he was failing. He got up on his feet, making Petunia do that as well and start to get hyper. She was expecting him to start running and completely ignore her question, instead, he stood up in front of her, arms crossed over himself and looking completely outraged. 

“I can live in the jungle” he said, completely serious “I watched this movie, there was a guy that lived there and he fought with monkeys and he lived on a tree and he- and he-“

He was suddenly cut off, by the big dog sniffing on his feet and starting to sniff him all over, moving over to try jumping over him and play. 

“Stop, Pet” he laughed, taking a step back, but just giving up at the end and laying on the floor. Giving in to Petunia to mess with him. 

She thought it was hilarious. A giant dog being her brother's best playmate at the moment, licking his face all over as he squirmed around, and getting even more excited as she kept going. She grabbed Petunia and move her aside a little, keeping her from squishing Joe, part of her almost expected him to be already whining at the heavy load that just went over him, but instead, she found the biggest smile on his face, and she laughed too, because watching her little brother smile was the best thing she could ask for. 

“She kissed-attacked you” she giggled, offering Joe a hand and helping him get up. “You okay, bud? Do you want to watch a movie? I think we should” she suggested, knowing it was almost past his bedtime and he should be getting tired by now. 

Joe sighed and nodded his head. She got up from the floor and grabbed his hand, making their way to Luke’s guest bedroom didn’t seem like a bad idea, after all, it was the most private place they could possibly find in that giant house. 

“Okay but, one queshtion” he mumbled, following her lead “Can you tell daddy about the jungle thingy?”

A giggle came out of her “The jungle thingy?” she reflected “Right. You know what he’ll say, something along the lines of ‘that’s ridiculous, what’s next? do you want to swim in a shark tank’” she mocked. 

A pretty good impression of her dad, she must say. 

“Cool” Joe mumbled. 

“Not happening” 

She made her way to the hallway and once they reached the guest bedroom, she peeked inside, for some reason she always had the feeling someone else might be in there, and she did not wanted to create or be into any uncomfortable situations. Luckily, it was all clear. She let the dog enter first and opening up the door to Joe. 

“Can you at least ask him if you could have one more puppy?” he says in a begging tone, hoping she would be the one to make something happen. 

The way he crossed his fingers and looked up at her with hopeful eyes made her see once more how adorable he would be sometimes. 

She didn’t answer right away. She leaned down and kissed his head, ruffing his hair playfully and nodding him to get inside. 

“Don’t grow up, Joe” she told him, giving him a warm smile. 

If there was something she needed right now, was something that reminded her how many beautiful things she had in her life, and her little brother was one of them. She was the luckiest to have him, and moments like these, little conversations that she would remember...Those were the ones she appreciated the most. She didn’t want them to ever end. 

For the couple hours they were left alone, she focused on playing any good quality movie that caught Joe’s attention, and they laid on the bed shoulder to shoulder, watching the film and focusing on each other’s company. If they really thought about it, this was like any other weekend they’ve had together at her apartment. 

Hours passed unnoticed, a movie and a half went by and the lights around them were now softer than usual. Joe was asleep and she was alone, not really having the most energy and sort of enjoying the quietness around the room. The peace of mind she had was so deep, that it was hard for her to notice when the door of the room opened, and suddenly, it was not just her anymore, now she had company. 

Luke walked into the room looking both drained and fresh at the same time, she didn’t even know how he did that. Without saying much he nodded to his front and kept walking straight, going straight on the balconies direction and opening the door for himself, making his way in and disappearing before her eyes. 

He didn’t need to say anything, she slipped off the bed with a gracious move to not wake Joe up and walk after her best friend. 

Once out, it was just to be expected that she would find him sitting on his usual seat, watching the view and feeling the fresh air hitting his pale skin. This was his time for relaxation and he couldn’t let her out of it, sometimes he just needed a little bit of her presence to make his day feel complete, and it was the same thing for her. 

He made her feel complete… if he only knew that.

“Where is everyone?” She asked, once she stepped outside, and took a sit right next to him. 

“Leaving, we’re done for the night and we’re all tired” He explained, taking a sip of beer as he nodded towards the small table in front of him “I hope you’re hungry” he said “I got some cheese and these are chicken nuggets, couple of pizza slices  if you wanna go a little crazy” he said, pointing at everything “also this chilli sticks, they’re not half as bad” he shrugged “Gosh, I’m hungry” “I thought you hated chilli” she questioned, reaching out to grab one of them. He chuckled “Why?” She smiled and shrugged “Oh well, remember that time when you started bragging about eating the hottest sauce ever known to man-“ “-and then your mom gave me those tacos?” he completed almost immediately. She nodded. “It plays every night like a movie in my head” “It was your fault though, you can’t stand spicy, you shouldn’t brag about it” She laughed, shaking her head at his statement. “No, no no, I can stand spicy, but my kind of spicy is not your kind of spicy” He justifies himself. “My mom thought you’d like it” She could only mention, because after such a statement it was expected that her mother would offer him that. “I did, but I was like- sweating” he explained, looking at her with a surprised face. “You were crying, sir” she argued “that’s what I’m saying, you hate chilli” “I don’t hate it, it tastes good, we just need to get along, have a few dates” 

She nodded. 

“Not cry in the process” she teased, pushing him lightly.

Luke gasped, just as she had just insulted him in his face. 

“Oh hush, Miss. I can stand tequila like a champ” he stated, grabbing a stick for himself and taking a bite. She gasped as well. “Hey! that’s different” “No it is not, you were two shots down and stumbling on your feet” he laughed, as he returned the soft push on her arm  “Lightweight” “Stop” she shook her head, if he kept going, it would be a real embarrassment for her.

There was a silence between them, a comfortable one that gave her some time to let that memory sink. The memories she had with him were plenty, and also still counting. She hoped these never ended, she had fun with them, especially when looking back, those really warmed her heart for good. 

“Gosh, I can’t believe you brought that up” she sighed, smiling “it’s been like what? Two years? From just that?” she asked, now feeling curious. He sighed “Roughly” he admitted, thinking about it  “Yeah” “Crazy” She mumbled.

It was really something that felt surreal in some ways; how long they’ve known each other, all of the things they have lived together, how they are able to now look back and laugh about it, it’s been so long, their friendship is so deep, this is something that now was going to live in her heart for a long time and never letting go. 

The craziest thing of all, it’s how different they are in everything, but somehow, they get along like no other. “How was your day, tell me about it?” he asked, leaning on his seat comfortably and looking at the sky, clearly trying to relax a little. 

“How was yours, Mr. famous?” she returned the question, imitating his movements and leaning back.

“You first, we’ve hardly talked, I want to hear how you’re doing, lady” He teased, looking back at her and winking. 

How cute is he? She thought. She shrugged. “Not much” she said, not really knowing where to start “We played baseball, went for ice cream, had some pizza at home, he chased your dog for like two hours, and then I put that movie on, it’s like a lullaby to him” she laughed to herself. 

It’s been a very active day for both of them, she didn’t usually had days like this, but when it came to her little brother, she would do this every day if she had to, she loved spending time with him. 

“Are you tired?” he asked, looking back at her. 

She shook her head “Not really” she mumbled “Are you?”

He smiled “Just a bit” he said, in a small mumble. 

He seemed to tense up. She could see he was completely drained, his job could sometimes be heavy on him, but he loved it, he wouldn’t let it get in his head to the point of stressing him out, he just got tired sometimes, and this is one of those times, he just needed some time to relax from all the fuss he had to deal with earlier. 

He closed his eyes, took a couple of seconds to take a breather and then looked at his surroundings, he was looking for something, she just had no clue why he suddenly had the necessity of something when just a second ago he was trying to relax. He looked behind him, right at the corner at the very back of the balcony, laying his eyes straight on that black acoustic guitar he’s had since forever, she guessed that was what was left for him, because his eyes glowed when seeing it, and a smile started spreading on his face. 

 “Yo, look, Stacy!” he laughed, reaching back and grabbing it with ease  “What are you doing there?” He asked the object, like it could speak. 

She rolled her eyes. The appreciation Luke had for that guitar was almost unrealistic, it’s been with him for so long, she would even dare to say it has become his personal instrument of choice, wherever he went inside of the house, it went with him. Wherever it was, it meant he was home, it made him feel home. 

“I moved her” she confessed “how many times have I told you to not leave your guitar here?” She laughed, shaking her head as he laid the object on his lap. 

“What's wrong with that?” He asked, frowning a little bit and acting completely dumbfounded. 

Her eyebrows raised at that answer. 

It was not her place to now explain how gravity worked, but she has always been sure that if he left small and medium objects just around the balcony, they would most likely fall and break. Just like it has happened in various occasions, he just seemed to never learn from that and always do the same thing. She was tired of telling him. 

“You leave everything here and I assure you, it will fall out of the balcony” she explained one more time, completely repeating herself, because she has said that a thousand times before. 

“Mimimi” he mocked, playing dumb melodies with his fingers. 

She gasped “I’m serious, that thing costs like ten thousand dollars” she argued, shaking her head 

“why?”

He shrugged, like it was completely obvious why he would keep his favourite guitar in such a place, and the reason would probably be the same dumb statement he always had. She could say, it was completely nonsense, but if he was going to keep insisting on that, then she would let him think that, just until it fell down the balcony, just like she predicted. 

“It’s not too cold out here, nor it is too hot” he started  “the bathroom is a couple steps away, these chairs are a dream” he kept explaining “it’s quite, it’s… just me, and you, obviously” he says as he laid back and let go.

Those last words made her smile, it was nice that he included him into something he loved to do on the daily and took his stress away. As silly as it was, she thought it was quite adorable, and maybe if it could end wrong because of his habits, the fact that he liked that place that much was adorable for her. 

He struggled a little, as he moved his fingers over the strings with tremendous skill, trying to find some kind of melody to fill in the silence of the night. It was one rhythm, then another… then he changed to another one, but at the end, he just slowed it down, looked up at the sky, and started playing the first thing that came to mind.

Oddly enough, she knew the song better than anyone. 

“That’s nice” she mumbled, listening to the soft melody very carefully “That’s really nice”

He hummed, continuing playing that melody and trying to remember the notes in order, putting them in a way that made sense and sounded good for both of them. It was amazing how he managed to create such nice ambient I’m just a couple minutes, she could almost feel how the tension left her body and let go with the music.

Luke chuckled, at the sight of her, relaxing and closing her eyes, he liked that. He liked that she felt something in response of his music.

“You know it” he said to her, nodding her way “C'mon, go ahead”

It was almost incredibly how little he said, but how much she understood just from that. “No, no way” she chuckled nervously  “Joe is asleep, no” she shook her head, feeling like acting like the adult in the room. “So?” He asked, shrugging. Suddenly his hands stopped playing and now he was facing her way, trying to speak seriously.  “He wouldn’t wake up if the would was falling out the window, you know that” he clarified “For me? I don’t know the lyrics”

Why did he had to say it that way?

Her body shivered a little, her cheeks turned red and she was suddenly fidgeting under the sleeves of her sweater. She was not going to sing in front of him. 

“I sound bad” she excused herself, laying back in her seat. “No you don’t” he argues “it’s cute” he stated, directing a very nice and soft smile at her and winking.  “I’ll start over, you go”

It was almost like he was commanding her what to do.

Without saying anything else, he just started playing. The melody soft and heartwarming, and he was absolutely nailing every single note, it was like he has been playing it all of his life and not only a couple of times, the melody was just like the original. 

She shifted on her sit uncomfortably, clearing her voice and trying to remember the first few phrases to continue with the rest. The truth is, she was so nervous he was making her do this, that she felt sort of scared to mess up and have him laugh, but a few mumbled words wouldn’t hurt anybody, and after all… it’s her favorite song. 

I walked across an empty land

I knew the pathway like the back of my hand

I felt the earth beneath my feet

Sat by the river, and it made me complete

Oh, simple thing, where have you gone?

I'm getting old, and I need something to rely on

So tell me when you're gonna let me in

And if you have a minute, why don't we go

Talk about it somewhere only we know?

This could be the end of everything

So why don't we go

Somewhere only we know?

Somewhere only we know... 

He looked very committed into carrying with the melody and sound that it was almost as if he was trapped in his own little world. A small frown forming on his forehead as he kept playing, and she thought it was adorable, she almost wanted to be able to smooth it out and see his face be a little more peaceful. But something else was of, and it wasn’t that, it was something else...

  “Sing with me!” she said, over that pause in the song, reaching out and ruffling his hair a bit. He laugh, not stopping for a minute and still carrying on with the melody. “I don’t know the lyrics” he excused, shaking his head. 

“Bullshit” she started, shaking her head. 

She just kept singing, looking at him with eyes full of expectancy and waiting for him to join her at any moment, as the song kept going and his best friend was just looking for a bit of company from someone who actually knew what to sing. 

Oh, simple thing, where have you gone?

I'm getting old, and I need something to rely on

So tell me when you're gonna let me in

I'm getting tired, and I need somewhere to begin

His voice joining in comes as a surprise for her, she was almost so surprised she had to stop for a full second for him to finish the phrase, but she managed to join him right away. She felt inspired now, he always inspired her. 

And if you have a minute, why don't we go

Talk about it somewhere only we know?

This could be the end of everything

So why don't we go?

Somewhere only we know

Those two voices harmonized better than she would have ever expected and it was a pleasant surprise. His fingers skillfully moved up and down the string of his guitar, while they both muttered the last few phrases of the song, he looked at her. He really looked into her, and with a quite single, they both coordinated to perfection and with that, the last bit of the song was harmonized with total perfection. 

Somewhere only we know....

It was really like hearing angels sing, she thought, he had a voice that made her believe angels really has an incredibly beautiful voice. 

“Yeah!” he exclaimed, raising a hand in the air and giving her an energetic high five “We got the touch” he laughed; holding her hand in place and mumbling “you don’t sing often, that breaks my heart”

She laughed at his statement, because she was almost completely sure it was only another one of his many exaggerations. 

“I’m not that good” she shrugged  “unlike someone” she said, winking at his direction. 

“Uh Huh” he rolled his eyes heavily  “Don't underestimate yourself, you’re amazing and the best ever” he said, moving his hand from her and poking her forehead. 

She almost felt like he was repeating himself. He would do this a lot, hype her up for no reason when she was being negative, as an attempt to cheer her up, but now it felt more like it was just him. Making a big deal out of everything and putting things higher than they should be. 

“I feel like you overestimate me” she admitted, giggling a little. 

His brows raised up high “You bet” he said, nodding  “someday I’ll have your picture hanged and it’ll say on somewhere underneath ‘the most talented and kind soul in this earth, thanks for not letting me down stupidly’”

And there it was, just what she was referring to…he hyped her way too much.

“Fair enough” she nodded, deciding not to make another comment about it. Being under the highlight was weird for her. 

She laid on the chair, getting comfortable now that she was getting in the mood. Right when she was about to grab one of those chicken nuggets, that were oddly calling her name, an odd sound came out of nowhere, something she wasn’t expecting to hear so early in the night, but it was happening, and if she was honest, it was very surprising.

 “Was that a yawn?” She asked, being completely taking by surprise at that moment. 

The moment she turned to him, he was holding a hand up to his mouth and almost immediately moving Stacy into her usual spot and sitting up straight. He was exhausted, it was more than evident. 

“I think I am done for the night” he announced, getting up from his chair and looking down at her “Should we go?” he suggested, holding a hand out to her as an invitation. 

She frowned a little, she knew what that meant and she wasn’t sure if it was right for her, her mental state and personal space. Not that it was weird by now, but the fact he was just putting it out there… for her didn’t feel right. 

“You want to sleep with me?” she asked unsure “Like, on the same bed?”

He shrugged, clearly not seeing the big deal out of it. Obviously because he didn’t see it on the same level as her, not even on the same perception, for him, it was the most regular thing in the world. 

“Yes” he said “we do it all the time”

She smiled up at him, it was really sweet of him to want her to spend the night along with him, in a total friendly way, but she just didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do. There was a lot going through her mind, she didn’t need another trigger for getting new and pointless ideas. 

“I don’t think I want to leave Joe alone” she excused, scrunching her nose a little “he’s scared of the dark, I wouldn’t like him to wake up alone”

And she wasn’t lying at all. It could be kind of messy to leave Joe sleeping by himself and have him wake up in an unfamiliar place, alone. Not like he didn’t know the house already, but sometimes he could become very disoriented when just waking up, and seeing he was just a kid, she would most rather stay by his side. 

“That’s fine” he nodded, not minding about it at all  “Goodnight then” he mumbled, walking past her, and as he leaned down to kiss her head he mumbles a quiet “I love you” 

Something not as unusual between them, but still, that same rush of electricity ran through her spine. 

“Love you too, Goodnight” she smiled up at him nervously, getting up from her chair herself and walking inside the room, calling it a night and trying to already forget about the little things that made such an effect on her. 

That night, the thoughts on her head were louder every time. 

The fact that they were so close already, everything they did now seemed like they were only a step away from becoming something else, that was getting in her head a little more every time, and right now, it was starting to make her frustrated at life in general. One part of her thought it was unfair, for many reasons; another part of her thought it was immature, and that was sort of obvious; but even when she tried to get a grip on it and control it, she felt that at this point in her life, this was something she just couldn't control by herself. 

It was definitive, she was going to get help, no seconds thoughts, no anything. 

She needed to wipe all those crazy thoughts out of her head.

[sothischickshe]

Colloquialism and flashback please!! ❤️❤️❤️

<3

Colloquialism: How do you approach writing character voice? Do you have any hints or tips for making a character’s voice unique? 

Oh, well I think with fanfiction this is a lot easier bc the characters already have voices that you don’t have to invent, ha!

For me, writing Americans at all is a challenge (bc I’m not one), so I suppose I guess I start(ed) with...trying to write/edit my voice out...? Which obviously is impossible to entirely do, but I do think a fair bit about whether language choices or phrasing feel like something the character would say.

For example, I’m very fucking sweary and I use a lottttt of adverbs, and both of those are things I pare out. and generally i think voice is something i try to pay attention to in the edit? like: is there a shorter way to convey this, or a tauter way, or a stupider way, or an old man-ier way etc

And not to go FULL i listened to one frank langella interview and now think I know everything about acting but uh... I feel like writing tight single POV is quite a good way to practise voice, and in a way it probably is quite similar to how a lot of actors work? Like...you’re trying to get into the headspace, and doing that kinda helps in terms of knowing what words they’d use or how they’d gesture/express things etc. (likewise, i’d think writing a lot of dialogue scenes is good for this?)

But I actually think the idea that every character’s voice should be unique is a bit of a misnomer. People who speak to each other, speak like each other...and the more they speak to each other, the more they speak like each other!!!?! Like, in terms of vocab, yea, but also speech patterns etc.

And that’s something that’s fun to play with! e.g., I’ll write Beth closer to how I write Rio when she’s actively trying to mimic his behaviour (like, not necessarily in terms of speech patterns but I’ll go more stylised with more dramatic language). Or I’m sure you could do something funny with Beth, Annie, Ruby etc all referring to something by one term vs Dean using a different word etc.

In terms of tips... I guess as with everything, the only way you figure out how you do it is by trying it? And I think if you’re really trying to capture someone’s voice, often less is more. And, for me: just going fuck it, I buy that these characters are annoying enough to be obnoxious anglophiles, who for no particular reason speak some amount of french ha

Flashback: Post a short excerpt from an old piece. How much has your writing changed since then?

Ooh! ok, here’s a lil bit from The Good Kind:

As she answers the call she starts walking quickly again, not quite at her breakneck speed of a moment ago (figures she’ll need her breath as well as her wits for this conversation) but her heels are clicking pointedly against the sidewalk, other pedestrians seem to be flowing around her rather than her ever needing to get out of their way. It makes her feel purposeful, maybe a little powerful even.

“So what’s the good kind?” he asks, and it is him, of course it’s him. She thinks his tone still sounds pleasant but that maybe there’s an edge there too, underneath. But she’d already started embracing the fact that maybe she can’t read him as well as she thought, that maybe she can’t read him at all.

“What?” she says bluntly. It’s not rude exactly, the way she says it, but it’s not exactly polite either.

I guess, overall, the answer is it hasn’t changed thaaaaaaaaaaaaat much, ha

but immediately I can see things I’d edit differently now:

I like the bracketed bit, but I think it’s missing a pronoun? without a starting ‘she’, it almost reads like first person POV to me? (not sure if I thought there were way too many ‘she’s there, which leads neatly to:)

THE CHARACTERS’ NAMES WOULD BE USED....LIKE EVER AT ALL 

there’s quite a lot of condensed repetition which I’m not sure is entirely purposeful (maybe maybe maybe; but but but; maybe she can’t maybe she can’t; not...exactly not exactly). given the purposeful/powerful is definitely intentionally repeated later, I think I’d probably try to vary up some of the sentence structures so that the intentional repetition would hopefully be more striking

I’d probably reconsider the adverb use? it’s not wildly excessive but it sounds kinda Bringlish-y to me now (americans use adjectives in the place of adverbs a lotttttttttttttttttttttttt)

that first sentence is approx. 100 miles long and somehow doesn’t seem to have quite enough punctuation despite having an awful lot of it; i’d maybe break it up a bit more

I’d put a paragraph break between that first line of dialogue and that ‘She’

just generally I think I’d vary up the punctuation a bit more

I’d maybe try to mix up the negatives (it’s not quite x, it’s not exactly y etc) and explain things in terms of what they ARE as well. again, i think this is something that can be effective, but overuse dampens it

broad broad stroke but... i’d be a lil more show rather than tell (especially in terms of what someone’s feeling)

don’t sweat the technique

[seven-oomen]

Hi, Ben!  I hope your day is going well so far!  Are you still getting snow, or has the storm calmed a bit?  We’re supposed to be getting a potentially severe ice storm over the course of today.  There’s already a thin layer this morning, we’ll see how the rest of the day goes.  And temperatures are supposed to stay in about the -4 to -6C range the rest of the week.  I’m very glad that I’m off the next couple of days, and managed to get by the grocery last night after work.

I saw your post about writing and writing styles!  It was helpful because I’ve not really seen the different styles written out and explained before.  I’m still not 100% which I am, but probably either an intuitive plotter or a methodological pantser.  Usually there’s a scene or a line or two that I’m like “this needs to happen in this story” and everything else is fairly free-form.  I did try actually writing down an outline for IYWTD, but even then it’s more a list of beats/tropes and the order I want to include them in.  (And I’ve only just made it past halfway through, although a couple may need to be altered a bit, oh god, how did this get so long…)

It’s also always kinda of amusing to me how many of those writing advice lists are like “Don’t do this”, “Stop doing this”, “Never do that”, and then they’ll encourage you to find your own voice and style.  Like, bitch, you just told me not to ever do half the shit that makes up my style.  Which am I supposed to do?  Damn.  XD  (You will seriously pry adverbs and similar descriptors from my cold, dead, grasping hands.  Also the occasional epithet.  No, I’m not using a character’s name nine times in one paragraph, sorry, and pronouns don’t always help if the characters are the same gender.  The reader can deal. ;D )

And I feel ya on the tall, skinny, blue-eyed boys thing.  It doesn’t have to be just a white boy, but if he’s taller than me, slender, and has a pretty pair of baby blues, my higher brain functions tend to go into insta-lag.  I ain’t particularly proud, but I’ve long accepted this about myself (there are many reasons Luke became my forever BAE.)  That’s not to say a lack of any of those is a deal-breaker in the slightest, but it’s definitely going to immediately get my attention.

Speaking (vaguely) of Luke, I had a thought the other day of him and Din being off on some planet together (Grogu is staying with Aunt Leia and Uncle Han for a few days), and there’s a noise in the middle of the night, and Din refuses to accept Luke’s assurance that there’s nothing out there, and in true himbo fashion insists on going out to investigate having grabbed only the darksaber and his helmet to cover his face -but nothing else.  Luke just finds it a combo of hysterical and adorable (and kinda hot.)

I hope your novel is going well (whatever stage you happen to be at), and I’m always up for hearing whatever you feel like sharing about it.

I hope you’re still doing well with the whole eating and hydrating regularly thing (it’s also totally okay if you aren’t!), and I’m super proud of you for sticking to it as much as you can anyway.  That shit is hard.  (Also, ignore the 1500 calories thing, I swear that shit is designed for 130lb women trying to shed a few pounds, not people who need to safely and steadily lose larger amounts of weight.  But then I’ve also never fully understood making someone lose weight before surgery, either.  “We need you to get rid of some excess weight before we’ll okay this surgery to *checks notes* get rid of some excess weight."  Like, weird flex, but okay.)

Anyway, I’m rambling again, and should really eat some breakfast and try to write a little myself today, maybe.  Hope you’re feeling okay, and that things are going well overall.  I hope Mo is doing well, and enjoying his best cuddle buddy life.  Take care!  *Hugs!*

Okay, gonna try this this way so that I can refer back to the links on my phone if need be.  I couldn’t quite see the full entries for the physical descriptions, and when I tried clicking on them it kept asking for a login, but I think I saw enough to get the gist.  I’m not sure exactly what sort of feedback you’re interested in, if any, so this will mainly be my usual sort of rambling stream-of-consciousness type thoughts and questions.  Hope that’s okay.  Feel free to ignore if it’s not what you’re after right now!  :D

I think one of the first questions that popped to mind was where is/what happened to Ellie’s mom, and is that something that’s going to cause problems later in some way?  (I.e.- was she killed on a hunt, are they divorced, was it bitter or amicable [would she come after her daughter if she heard about his relationship?])  I guess technically similar questions could also apply to Nate (late husband, ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, one night stand, sperm donor?) it was just more noticeable with Ellie being so young still.  Although that could also be part of why he’s ended up in Wyoming, which was another question I had, although there I assume it’s hunt-related.

I also anticipate quite a bit of tension of all kinds when he and Nate first meet, because Faron strikes me from his descriptions as someone rather used to being able to get his own way either through the influence of who he is, or through his size (not necessarily in any kind of intentional or aggressive way, more in an unconscious privilege kind of way, if that makes sense?), and I don’t think Nate sounds like the type to give two shits about either of those things, and it would probably drive Faron up the proverbial wall that Nate isn’t intimidated by him in the slightest.  (I could be entirely wrong about all this, this is just the impression I get so far. :D )  And I think Nate being noticeably older than him would just make it that much more irritating at first, too.  Now, how long these impressions last will just depend on how quickly they get to know each other, and whether Bachelor #3 is helping or hindering things.  XD  The potential for just sitting back and watching the fireworks as “laid-back dad jokes with a quick temper” clashes with “quiet, reserved, and possibly takes themselves slightly too seriously” might prove too much for our last contestant for a while, depending on where his personality falls.  ;D  (Especially since Faron coming in and starting shit will likely come off as a direct threat to people and places Nate considers under his protection.)

Also, are any of these three going to have met before?  Will Nate already have some sort of relationship with the werewolf (Does he already know about the supernatural at all?)  Did he and Faron encounter each other on the trip to Europe you mentioned in the Life Highlights?  If he and the wolf already know each other, how does he get along with Cas, or Nate’s pets?  Is the werewolf also going to be native to the region?  Does he know anything about Faron’s family?  Does Faron already know he’s a werewolf, or is that going to be a bit of a crisis for him later?  A test of how well he’s learned not to judge?  If Nate doesn’t already know, how will he deal with both their secrets?  Do you plan for full-shift only wolves, partial-shift only wolves, or a mix of the two like TW?  Are there other supes in the area?

I think you mentioned maybe having him be of Native American descent?  I think that could be very interesting, but would require a LOT of research into which tribes are active in the Yellowstone area, and what their individual mythologies say about things like shapeshifters, and LGTBQ+ issues, etc., because there can be a fair amount of variance, I’m sure.  Also, I’m just overall curious how he’ll fit in with the other two size wise (get your mind out of the gutter, you know what I mean.  XD )  Also curious if any o them are going to have the slightest clue on the feelings front, or are they all going to be just absolute disasters?  Will the kids figure it out before they do?  Will the kids get along?  (Will BachelorWolf have any kids of his own, or just Nate and Faron?)  Will Nate’s coworkers have any clue about either the supernatural, or what’s going on with those three?  Because I suspect at least some of them will be way more obvious than they think they’re being.  XD

Uh… I think that was all that’s occured to me right now?…  I’m sorry you’re having a yucky day overall, and I hope tomorrow’s a bit better!  The ice storm has finally moved in here, and I can feel the temperature drop radiating off of the front door and windows.  It went from rain to freezing rain/hail and I’m not sure how long it’s supposed to last.  Hopefully only a little while.  Also, sorry your book was terrible.  I haven’t seen too many recent recommendations from friends, and I’ve been mostly reading “cozy” mysteries (Agatha Christie, Elizabeth Peters, etc) as my comfort reading myself, lately, so I can’t really suggest anything in particular, unfortunately.  At least, nothing I think you wouldn’t already know.  Anyway, hope you’re getting some decent rest, and hope you have a better day tomorrow!  Take care!  *Hugs!*

Alright since this is going to be like a very long one, I’m break it down into a few things.

First full physical descriptions, cause I didn’t know Milanote would be a bitch about it.

Nate:

164 cm (5'4), 75 kg (166 lbs), Short slightly overweight trans man in his middle age. Nearly always the shortest man in the room, only standing around 5'4 and weighing in around 166 lbs. With kind moss green eyes that have permanent crow's feet in their corners and a polite but reserved smile always on his face. 

A face that's framed by faint freckles that are only visible in the sunlight. A neatly trimmed beard spices up his features and frames his pink lips. His thick but short eyebrows frame his eyes and create a short arc to his slim nose. 

A high forehead separates his brows from his wavy dark blond hair that's always tucked behind his ears. 

He generally wears the Superintendents' Park Ranger uniform while on duty. When he's not he wears comfortable jeans and t-shirts, usually a mono color like green, white, or black, plaid flannel shirts, socks with the weirdest patterns and colors, and hiking boots. He wears a steel ring on his right index finger and has a little steel Mjolnir on a necklace around his neck.

He's missing two fingers (his ring and little finger) on his left hand due to a childhood accident.

Faron:

185 cm (6'1 ft), 93 kg (205 lbs), Faron is a tall man with plenty of muscle from his time hunting. He can seem daunting and intimidating when you first meet him but there is a kinder, softer side to him. He has a warm light brown skin color, blue eyes, and black natural tight curly hair that he keeps very short. His full dark beard decorates his cheeks and chin, connects to his upper lip, and all the way up to his sideburns.

  He tends to wear dark clothing, leather jackets, no jewelry that could identify him, jeans, henley shirts, or V-neck shirts, and black, brown, or red jackets. He usually wears black combat boots or dark brown hiking boots. He's got knives and other weapons hidden all over his body and pockets and it might take him a good few minutes to unload every single knife from his body when he was to disarm.

There are also scars all over his body, including some scars on his neck that are visible from day to day life. He had the bad luck of being struck down by a vicious Wendigo but managed to escape. He survived thanks to his sister's quick thinking and first aid.

He covers some of those scars up with tattoos; he has one tattoo of a dragon laying down on his shoulder, with its head on his chest and its body curling over his shoulder and ending just below his shoulder blades. And one tattoo covers up some scars on his lower arm, it's a tattoo of a wolf's head that covers up a bite mark.

Dichali:

He’s 37 and has 4 siblings, and two children, Kajika & Kaniya (Jika & Niya, identical twins, but one of them identifies as male, he’s trans. Kajika is his chosen/reassigned name. They are 10.) Dichali grew up in Riverton, WY, which is the largest town of 10,000 in the largest Native Reservation in Wyoming. He’s also a dear friend to our Nate (who is also his boss technically) and has slowly been falling in love with him for the last few years. (Although he still hasn’t realized that he loves his friend.) 

Yena, his coworker and friend, who’s much younger at 25 has been watching her coworker and her boss joke and dance around each other. She has a betting pool with her girlfriend on who snaps first.

Not sure how I’ll connect him to Faron if it’s more fun/better to have him find out later or to already know him and keep it quiet. 

I’m still working on him, so I don’t have much of personality and other things written down yet. But I have made his physical description:

At 178 cm (5'8) and 83 kilos (182 lbs) Dichali probably isn't the tallest man you've met, he's also not the shortest. And while he's got some good muscle on him from working as a Park Ranger, and being a werewolf, he also has some softer sides. All the better to cuddle with. He has long straight brown hair that falls to his mid-back and deep brown eyes and a long nose that ends prominently. His eyebrows are thin and he has a high forehead. His skin is a light Tawny color, there's a hint of an orange brown with a cool undertone.

His skin is also relatively clear and youthful looking because of his lycanthropy.

He tends to wear pants and jackets made by native designers and always incorporates native fashion into his outfits. He has jackets of mostly gray, blue, brown, and black colors made of denim, cotton, wool, or brass that are lined with more traditional cloths and patterns like the designer brand Ginew. Usually he pairs them with dark jeans, either black, gray, or dark blue. He pairs it with white, blue, red, black, or printed band t-shirts (Metallica, Green Day, Marianas Trench). 

For shoes he has brown hiking boots that are part of the Ranger uniform, more western styled boots like black cowboy boots, and a pair of sneakers.He also wears a copper bracelet with lighting bolts etched into it.

-

Now this whole story got started because I had the question what if we had a DILF romance going on while/because the following happened?

What if a YouTube video that accidentally got uploaded shows the existence of a werewolf in Yellowstone park? Threatening to expose the entire supernatural world.

The werewolves right now are a mix, so half shift is like the classical half shift of a wolf head on a man’s body, but the full shift is more like a larger wolf. Almost the size of a black bear. Though I might change those ideas as the story progresses.

But that is how the Cryptid of Yellowstone is brought into the world. And that brings problems. Big problems.

Wendigos, vampires, djins, I plan to create a world where a lot of supernatural creates exist. From all sorts of cultures. I’m also toying with the idea of Kelpies and Griffins. That kind of stuff.

The supernatural world is hidden from ours, hidden in plain sight if you will. Most encounters are written off as really strange, sometimes a picture pops up, but with the coming of the internet, things have gotten more complicated. Also with deforestation and competition with regular wildlife has made some bigger supernatural creatures either extinct or thought to be extinct. They’re not sure what still lives in Australia, though.

Nate or his son don’t know about the supernatural world. Neither does Yena. Or much of the world. Dichali, his children (to some extent), Faron, and Faron’s family do know about this world.

-

Alright, as for your other post XD

Right now it’s no longer storming but due to the freezing temperatures the snow’s not going away and all public transport and delivery services are still not driving/delivering/running. So that’s neat. Not. 

I swear we get some snow and the country is just down. Upside, ain’t nobody going outside and this helps with lockdown.

I hope your snowstorm won’t be too bad and everything thaws down soon. Snow’s fun for a day but after that...

Make sure you stay warm alright? And bundle up.

Yes dad... alright XD

Honestly, I’m glad to hear you liked my advice too. I’m getting quite a bit of positive feedback on it and that just makes me really happy ^^. I’m definitely writing more writing advice from everything I’ve learned so far.

There’s honestly so many contradicting ones out there, it’s a matter of picking and choosing which ones work best for you and applying those. And that’s the real trick of advice.

Fun fact, a lot of famous writers are also pantsers. Steven King, Neil Gaiman, George RR Martin are examples of famous pantsers or gardeners as they are also called. 

John Grisham, JK Rowling, RL Stein fall into the plotter or architect category. 

Writers like Hank Green seem to fall in the in-between category of plantser (somewhere between a plotter and a pantser. Or the Intuitive plotter.)

Okay but the DinLuke things is really really kinda hot and cute and adorable and has me smiling <3

And I can’t remember what else I wanted to say since it is like 2 am and my meds are seriously kicking in now.

But I hope you’re doing alright and that the snowstorm isn’t too bad where you’re at.

I’ll be alright, my diet hasn’t been going so well the last few days and I can’t really exercise, but I did mostly get healthy groceries that will be delivered friday so there’s that. 

Fingers crossed I can pick it back up.

Okay I’m heading to bed XD 

I’ll talk to you later, B <3 

Hugs from me and Mo <3

[letteredlettered]

diff anon, i have a different problem with that anon in regards with word counts, I usually don't have a words to say, like usually my story ends up being under 10k even if I wanted it to be a lot more - I don't know if its because I'm just writing all the big plots and not enough small things, but your story always have so much content and it all feels so smooth and none of it boring.

In however many days it’s been since you left this ask I have been composing a response in my mind. At one point I realized I’d have to break it into four posts and link various parts to other parts wiki-style. It probably would have been 10,000 words. I do not have time to write that response, so he’s the tl;dr without having written it (I tried to cut for length but tumblr wouldn’t let me):

1) I’m a long person, almost six feet. Maybe that’s how my brain got long, and my thoughts are long. The thoughts I have feel like one continuous thought, and I feel like I have to tell you all of it. Even conversations I have feel like a conversation continued from another conversation. Not everyone is this long and I think that’s a good thing.

2) Long isn’t always better. Sometimes it’s just long. So write what you want, but if what you want is long, I have some advice.

3) The advice I’m about to give isn’t about how to write well. In fact, it’s the opposite of how to write well in today’s day and age, and part of the length of the initial response in my mind was a dissertation on what “good writing” really means. The short version is that many 18th c writers used omniscient POVs and told you many extraneous things not pertinent to the story with complex syntax and flowery word choice and a delightful number of adverbs, and Hemingway came along and taught us all differently, but one is not inherently better than the other. Many stories from western cultures follow a shape like a graph but that is not inherently better either. Certainly there is good writing and bad writing, stories that move us and those that do not, but almost everyone that talks about how to write well is talking about how to write to match a certain accepted style. If you want to get lauded by others, if you write for kudos and comments, if you write to get published and be paid, then listen to advice about how to write well. If you would like to write a story that would make you happy, do that instead.

4) Here is the advice if you would like to write something long: a) put yourself in the characters’ shoes, b) don’t skip over anything

5) I'm just going to talk about Away Childish Things, sorry if you haven’t read it. The idea for first part of that story was “Harry gets de-aged. Draco sees how sweet and fiercely loyal and vulnerable Harry is. Meanwhile, Harry latches onto Draco, thinking Draco is the smartest, coolest, handsomest, kindest, most wonderful adult ever.” I had no specific scenes in mind, but I thought they could just hang out and Draco would do things like show him magic and make him dinner and read him story books. I thought Harry would get de-aged and that stuff could happen right away and then somehow Harry would grow up but Draco would de-age and then we could get into the rest.

So then I de-aged Harry, and I didn’t want them to stay where the accident happened, so I had Draco Apparate them to Draco’s flat. Then Draco being awesome was meant to begin so Harry could have a great time--except I pretended I was Harry. I thought about Harry at the beginning of Sorcerer’s Stone, and I realized I didn’t know what magic was. I had never met an adult who was kind to me, whom I trusted. Strange things happened around me all the time and I got blamed for it--and I realized, I would not want to stick around. I wouldn’t trust this guy. I would try to leave.

So I tried, over and over again, to make Draco explain, “Ah, yes, there is such a thing as magic and you have been de-aged,” but then I pretended I was Draco. I thought over what I knew about Harry at 11, and I realized I had no way of knowing that he was neglected and abused. He’s famous in my world; those Muggle relatives probably worshipped him like royalty. It would literally never occur to me that he didn’t know that magic existed--even if I had read it in the papers, my belief in Potter’s arrogance and pretentiousness and self-centeredness had been so real for me at 11 that even though so many of my opinions in life had changed, I had never grasped the reality of Harry’s early home-life. And so I would blithely assume he knew what magic was and that I didn’t have to explain.

The result was 17,000 words of a first chapter that was solely about Harry coming to understand that he had in fact been de-aged and that magic was a real thing, and that maybe he shouldn’t run away because he was in the future and had no where else to turn, and about a Draco struggling to get Harry to believe him and through the course of that happening realizing that the kid had been severely abused and hadn’t even ever had a proper hot chocolate. n

I mean. I’m sure many folks agree that that was the best chapter, but I spent literally 8 rewrites trying to get them to just ACCEPT THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES and get to the fun parts, except if you treat them as real people with real reactions to things with different perspectives and different knowledge coming into the situation all the sudden there are all these logistics--and as it turns out the logistics are the most fun.

So then I thought, oh, but the next morning they can do the fun stuff! But. Instead of summarizing the next day where now that they have accepted their mutual circumstances, they can develop a routine, I asked the question, “What happens when Harry wakes up? Does he have on pajamas? What does he have for breakfast? When does he take a shower?” This resulted in a breakfast conversation and bacon which is another part of the fic that is extremely important character-wise, though plot-wise it is entirely unnecessary. Some people certainly care and think that it is a poorly paced and unwieldy story--and it certainly is. Many do not care and love the bacon fiercely; I am one of those people; I wrote what I wanted and enjoy it.

6) ughhhhhhhh I have so much more to say about this. But anyway, these are the main reasons my fic is so long.

7) I will say that despite all my blather about what is “good” vs what is just a current style, this kind of thing is uniquely suited to fanfic. If Away Childish Things were an original fic, people would be a lot less interested in what Harry ate for breakfast. The first two chapters get across the emotional points you need for the story to continue--it establishes that Draco didn’t know what Harry went through as a child and now does know; it establishes that Harry likes and trusts Draco and thinks he’s cool. You don’t know more than that, but there are five chapters of it because I WANTED Draco’s Patronus to be a fawn and I WANTED us to get to see Harry strike out on his own without adult support just like he does in the books; I WANTED to see Draco lose his mind over it and call him darling. I’m sure other people wanted it too, because with canon they know what a Patronus means and they know how Harry tries to fix things for himself in canon and they know Draco is a hateful bigot who stomped on Harry’s face and was willing to get Harry killed, and so to watch him lose his mind, to watch him clutch at Harry and call him darling, meant so much more than it would have. Therefore, even though the story is not in fact a good shape and has many extraneous bits about dressing gowns and what the word Gryffindor means, the added bits we’re not supposed to keep because they don’t help us tell the story sharply are delightful. Like I said, some people disagree! But again, it’s about telling a story you want to read and live in, not something to sell or someone else will say is great writing.

THE END (for now, thank you for listening)

[jokerfic]

Do you ever find it hard to push yourself to keep writing/to finish a fic? I really admire your works, especially pastimes, because you write both good quality and a good quantity with your stories. I find i'll plan out this long fic, and know all the details, but when it comes to writing more than a few chapters I find it difficult to continue. I don't know if it's just me getting bored of my own idea or being lazy but, do you have any advice for seeing a story through to the end?

Oh, it’s hard forrrr suuuuure. There’s a post floating around about how Charles Dickens shouldn’t be given credit for his prolificity bc he didn’t have streaming services and it strikes me to my core every time I see it. It’s part of why I like Neil Gaiman’s writing advice more than anyone else’s (in no small part because it’s really advice, not rules for you to follow– I hate “writing advice” that’s really a bunch of “don’t EVER use adverbs” and “write only in the mornings!” and other things that only cage you in rather than making you feel free)– it basically boils down to “write anything, write everything, just make the time to write.”

and generating content is just one part of the multi-pronged problem– the second is generating content for a specific project, consistently enough that you actually finish it, lol. some people would have you believe that if you love a project enough then it’ll always come naturally (and imply or even outright say that if it doesn’t come naturally, you don’t really love it– side note, I like some of Charles Bukowski’s poetry but he can eat my entire ass with that “if it doesn’t come easily then it’s not what you’re meant to be doing” idea). That’s only part of it. A thousand writers better than I am have already said that love/“inspiration” only gets you so far, and after that comes the work.

I’ve found that to be true. Not that the love doesn’t come back! I’m constantly falling in love and out of love with different WIPs, and each time I fall back in, I get a little bit (or a lot!) more done, but there’s definitely a point where I say “okay, I’m not allowed to work on anything else until x book is finished.” (Whether or not I stick to that resolution is a different matter.) Honestly, it happens the most with jokerfic because I have a small but active and devoted audience and I start to feel THE GUILT if I leave them too long without new content bc they’re so loyal and it has to be a symbiotic relationship or it’ll 100% die.

idk, man, I’m mostly musing out loud here because writing is work, and it might be fun work, and fulfilling work, but you have to allot time and energy to it specifically, and if you do want to finish and publish something on the longer side (fanfic or original), you have to be the one to decide to put that time and energy into it– no one else can do it for you.

All that to say: you have to figure out what motivates you, and what’s important to you. Personally I’m motivated by a moderate dose of ambition and just a little bit of spite (I see writers I don’t like flourishing, I think “I can do better than that,” and it’s good for at least a few pages), as well as feedback from readers and the desire to be able to re-read the specific, finished work whenever I want to. Probably more significantly, and not to be morbid: it’s extremely important to me to get these stories out there and not let them die with me. Listen, I may be a slow writer, but I live and breathe storytelling, it’s the majority of what I think about, and there’s very little that kicks me in the ass like the realization that time is coming for me and all of us, and I don’t have an unlimited amount of it to waste. So what’s important to you, what’s worth spending your time on? Rewatching a TV show you’ve seen all the way through 3 times already? or making something new and sharing it with people, connecting to people through a story that’s important to you?

of course, you can’t and shouldn’t aim to be productive all the time, you’re not made for it, you need to live your life in addition to doing your work. Stephen King says you have to read a lot if you want to write well, and I agree with him. It’s harder to write people if you’re never around people! Some days you are just gonna NEED to veg out in front of the TV (or tumblr) because you don’t have the energy, mental or otherwise, for anything else. you have to read books, watch movies and tv, spend time with people, live your life, have experiences, if only so you’ll have more to draw from when you are working.

Outside of that normal “living life” stuff, I’d focus on trying to trim things that you know are a waste of time, or that drain your energy without reward. Delete the social media you can do without (or outright hate but for some reason haven’t pulled the plug on yet). If you’re sitting down to write, then write, even if you have to use an app to block out the million distractions that are just a click away. If you can, try and make friends that write so you can egg each other on (there are a lot of writing Discords out there that may be helpful). I personally like reading or watching interviews with artists (not even just writers) that inspire me or that I relate to– the richness of David Milch’s mind and the way he seamlessly ties together humanity, community, history, and art makes me want to work harder and be better so that someday I can be a fraction as good as he is, I found out like yesterday that Donna Tartt and I have basically the same process (and take about as long to finish a thing lol), Jack White’s live performances energize me and make me want to create, Tom Waits is a natural born storyteller and funnyman who weaves such a thick atmosphere and mythology for himself with every word that I feel compelled to try and do the same.

and that’s it, that’s the process that consistently results in the most productive work for me: I read or watch other creators I admire until I’m whipped up into a frenzy of needing to do something, then I get in front of a screen and do it. When the excitement runs out, I pretend it hasn’t until it comes back (with mixed success, but really, “fake it till you make it” is an EVERGREEN piece of advice in almost every area). I try not to let too many months slip away without having something finished and semi-polished to show for my time. That’s about the only way I know how to do it anymore.

[trulycertain]

All right, so I’ve had a couple of people come to me asking if I can beta for them, which is one part terrifying to one part flattering, and I’ve had several conversations this week with followers about writing stuff. And about writing improvement.

I think I have some Thoughts.

Look, in my opinion, I'm quite often a terrible writer. I’m self-taught, I’ve picked up some bad habits, and my grammar is... um. Let’s just ignore my grammar. I need to refresh several things. (Where the hell does a semi-colon go in a list? Please. Help. Also, I need someone to surgically extract about half my adverbs.)

But I see so many people ripping into new ficwriters with that old-school LJ "sporking" mindset and crying "MARY SUE!!!" and... honestly?

That's not criticism, that's... shiticism. Excuse my French.

Yes, sometimes someone has a bit of an ego on them, especially if they’re new to a skill. That might grate on you. Fair enough. But if they’re not hurting anyone or forcing you to read, ripping into a new writer teaches them nothing except to shut up and be afraid. If someone's actually willing to learn and put the effort in and this matters to them, why crap on something they've put their heart into? Especially if one doesn't have to read it or pay for it.

I see so many self-conscious ficwriters who either don't dare write anything or define themselves entirely by "Look! I'm so much better than those self-insert/Sue/[whatever's out of vogue now] writers!" and... that doesn't always teach you to get out of negative patterns. Often it just inculcates you into different negative patterns, and a crab-bucket mentality where you and your feedbackers are so busy panicking and dragging each other down you don't get anything written.

I'll be honest, overpowered OCs are usually not my cup of tea as a reader. But I'm not going to wander in and tear someone's fic apart, and if someone comes to me for help, I am certainly not going to take that trust and hurt them with it.  I see a lot of nicely done OCs because of being in RPG fandoms. I love watching people build protags with distinct voices and backstories they've put a lot of heart into. And statistically, yeah, sometimes you get stuff old-school fandom would call Sue-ish, but I don't think a beginner story where someone feels out the ropes and is proud of themselves for writing is going to ruin my day or destroy the world. Why bother being a jerk about it? And how does that ever teach someone to write?

Five times now, from different followers, I’ve heard things like, "A commenter tore my story apart, and I still remember it, and I cried but it was such good constructive criticism." And it might just have been a bad day, but if someone made you cry? That’s... probably not constructive criticism.

If people had treated me when I started drawing the way a lot of people treat new writers in fandom - 

Actually, no, scratch that. Some people in real life did treat me like that when I picked up a pencil. That meant I put it down again pretty fast as a kid and didn't even try to draw until adulthood, when I was scared stiff and fought the impulse to hide everything I was working on. And I didn’t start again because of tough love, I started because people encouraged me.

Everyone goes, "Those poor kids!" but I don't really care if a writer's six or sixty, the principle of "be a decent teacher" applies.

Silencing is not teaching. If someone’s left scared and despairing and stops writing, you have taught them nothing. You’ve failed.

Random anecdote:

When I was looking at going semi-pro (long time ago, and bluntly put, I wasn’t brave enough at that point), I used to be on a writing forum. They prided themselves on their merciless criticism and their “I’m just being honest!” 

And you know what happened? Crab bucket.

No-one ever tried to get anything published or optioned, no-one ever went to go and try and find an agent, because they were all too busy tearing each other's stuff down to feel better. They might have had some good points, once, but it got buried in the echo chamber and the self-importance.

I went in expecting pros to be brutal, to have to gird myself all the time. And they... weren't. Because I'd learned to write partly in crab buckets. And the pros, the real pros, know well enough not to do that. Because they’ve got less to prove, and a lot of them are readers themselves, or were fans themselves once. They want new stuff in the field, not to scare someone off writing forever, because then they'll have no new colleagues and nothing to read. 

The worst that'll happen is the slush pile, and that just means hearing nothing or a form letter. (Very few pub houses do bit-by-bit critique rejection letters these days, and if they do, the good side of it is you've caught an editor or an intern's attention and they cared enough to go through it. And they may remember your name next time.) I got rejected by Clarkesworld. And I had the shakes sending my stuff in, but when I got the rejection? It actually... didn't hurt. Because I was so proud of myself for even trying and being brave enough to do it, and hell, getting seen by a slush pile intern in the same magazine that published Alastair Reynolds and Neil Gaiman. Because it was proof I'd tried and once I'd done the big scary thing, I could do all the smaller magazines and the anon stuff.

"Tearing someone's fic apart" is not criticism, it's fuckwittedness, and if someone knows how to be a decent beta, they don’t do it. A good reader recognises their own bias and realises that they’re coming in with subjective thoughts and skewed views of their own, and doesn’t represent themself as the only authority. 

If you’re here for actual writing advice and not just a rant (I am so sorry), here’s some advice I’ve given a couple of mutuals. This is what works for me, and it might not work for everyone else. I tried?

I had to stop associating feedback/concrit with personal validation, because that made writing an emotionally fraught activity rather than something safe. So I never have friends beta read or edit my work, because I want a professional boundary or a common goal there. I let myself make mistakes and grin at "This is awesome!" comments with fic, because it's a practice ground where I'm just doing my best, rather than trying to ask for money with it or make a career out of it. It lets me relax. I definitely don't mind concrit and rather like it; it's not the thing itself, it's having a pseudonymous boundary. For that reason, I still don't have friends beta read me. Strangers, fine, friends, no.

A lot of people tell me "bloody hell you're prolific." Well, that one's partly unemployment, can't lie. But before that, when I was working and studying...  Learning to write aimlessly changed everything. Doesn't have to be big, doesn't have to be your next novel or a completed short story. I drabbled, focused on 4/500-word snippets and just capturing a mood/place/concept or building the start of a character, whatever took my fancy. Hell, for six months I took phrases I'd read on billboards as daily prompts. Basically, the aim is to start associating writing with fun and relaxation rather than pressure, and to get into the habit of sitting and doing it. 

I tend to write longhand (for original, not for fic; it's how I keep the mental lines drawn). That sounds like a helluva lot of work, I know, but it also lets you see your progress so it's not just some... theoretical thing in cyberspace that you can’t quantify. (God, now I sound like I'm from 1995.)

I still am absolute shite at outlining when it's for fic. I'm too relaxed, but I try my best. What got me learning to do it for original and completely changed my process was Scrivener. (Also very good for essays!)

Relatedly, the final thing that made me get into a consistent writing habit was NaNoWriMo. It forced me into it because bluntly, I really wanted half-price Scrivener. And it never wore off. Three years later, I'm here. You might be too busy, too ill or too tired for it, and just not be into it, and that's OK, but a challenge like that can be fun.

If concrit and idea exchange are important to you, it may seriously be worth looking into writing groups, in real life and online. Absolutewrite, for instance, is very publishing-focused and a really good group.

And, most importantly of all:

Don’t give up. It gets easier.

[liz-and-the-blue-bird]

First Video Review

Am I allowed to do this for such a minor thing? Whatever, I’m gonna do it. If you somehow missed my spam (apologies, btw), here’s the video. 

I’m gonna run down the feedback I received and also a lot of thoughts of my own. 

Recommended soundtrack

So, btw, Youtube Analytics is like way more detailed than I expected. I guess this is what happens when your parent company is a massive search engine that makes money on incredibly specific targeted ads. 

I digress. 

It’s been about 24 hrs since I published the video, and it’s gotten about as many views as I’d expected (which is to say, less than fifty). Here’s the breakdown: 

33 views with 120 minutes of total watch time (audience retention of ~45%). 2 comments, both positive (thanks guys!).  Pretty much all my views came from discord, where I shared the video and asked for feedback.  All the discord views are complete watch throughs, other sources are a mixed bag, most people dropped after around 2 minutes. 

With that in mind, this video is basically unlisted on youtube, given that no one has seen it, nor will it be recommended often. 

That’s fine, I don’t really mind. I think the video deserves around maybe 100 views. Max. Seriously. 

Let’s start with feedback: 

1) Audio balance is the worst 

Yea sorry about that. I’ll be honest, when I recorded then put the music, I thought it was fine, but now that I watch it, yea the music is a bit too loud at points, and the ed cut in was way louder than my talking volume, it’s a bit of a mess.  I suspect it’s because when I’m just listening to audio, I close my eyes and focus, but on a video, I’m watching a thing so the audio gets messed up more in my head, so the parts that need to stick out need to be more emphasized. I’ll get it sorted for the next time. 

2) Text on screen is weird 

There’s a few pieces to this. First of all, the transition is just really bad. The slides in particular. @shinbec made a great point about how dated they feel. I’ll defend myself, I chose the slide transition because I thought it provide a specific energy to the video. It does, but he’s right, they feel like they’re made in powerpoint. The fade ins are less problematic, but they do lack variety. Moving forward, I’ll probably have to come up with some more interesting transitions. Especially between scenes. 

Secondly, the use of the text in general. @chuuni-p made a good point saying that the text at the beginning with the direct quotes felt weird. Yea, it kind of does. I suspect it’s a combination of the poor transition and the strange phrasing (saying “quote” “end quote” very much cuts into your mental flow of the paragraph). But he did like the quotes near the end where I didn’t directly quote. I’m a bit torn on this. I like the direct quotes and then the text because it adds a sense of proof. Like, here it is! I’m not lying! kind of thing. If that makes sense. But the transition fails to emphasize that. This is all just something I should keep in mind for future text on videos. I don’t think this is something that is going to go away, it has to get better. 

3) My voice is nice 

Hey, thanks. I like my voice, I’m glad other people like it too. 

Now then, on to my own personal criticisms. 

The video now feels far too long to me. You may recall my surprise at my recording being 8 minutes and 30 seconds long. But it makes sense. I wrote about 1300 words, and I speak at about 175 wpm (this is above average). Of course it was gonna be 8 minutes long. It would be great if it needed to be 8 minutes long. 

But it doesn’t need to be. 

The video meanders, I think. When I wrote the script, I set out to post an interesting video about how Project No Chikara actually ended up revitalizing anime, even though its shows failed, with an interesting minor point on how the theme of the first show (So Ra No Wo To) actually lines up fittingly with that premise. Yet, due to the structure of the essay, it ends up being something else.

Here’s the structure of the video: 

Intro (what is anime no chikara?)  Body 1 (What So Ra No Wo To does well)  Body 2 (What So Ra No Wo To does poorly)  Conclusion (How did Anime no Chikara end?) 

Just looking at this, you might see the issue. If you look at the topics of each paragraph, they don’t line up together. The Intro and the Conclusion are related, and the two body paragraphs are, but they aren’t technically related to each other. 

And that’s the rub. 

Essentially what I did was write a So Ra No Wo To review (6/10 btw) and then forced a structure into the intro and conclusion so that I didn’t have to title the video “So Ra No Wo To Review.” I don’t think that’s a very good strategy, and it lacks a sense of cohesion. Like seriously, you could rip out the middle two paragraphs (starting at around 1:00 and ending at about 6:50) and put the “thanks for watching” at the end of Amazing Grace and it would be cohesive. I could call that video “So Ra No Wo To, A Review on Moving Forward” and I think it would be a decent generic anime video. 

I talked with another friend about this the other day. I think I could rip Body 2 out entirely, and restructure Body 1 to be more about Anime no Chikara and the integration with So Ra No Wo To. It would require more research and less “oh btw the show did x” but it would be a more flowing and exciting viewing experience. At least I think so. 

My favorite book on writing, On Writing Well, has multiple chapters dedicated to ruthless cutting. The author mentions his distaste for adverbs because they rarely add to a description, unless you are using poor adjectives. He talks about how when he was a teacher, he’d tell his students to make their 10 page articles into 5 pagers, and once they’ve finished, ask them to make it a 4 pager. 

If you’ve paid attention to The Nerdwriter, you may know that he used to make a video every single week. To be frank, that’s an ungodly amount of production for a single man making tightly edited videos. But it speaks volumes that when he slowed production down from 4/month to 2/month in order to “focus more on each video,” his videos remained short—they did not grow longer. 

You might read all this and think I’m being kind of hard on myself for my first video. I got quite a lot of compliments, lots of people excited for where my channel is headed. (spoilers, it’s headed straight into a million kyoani videos.) 

Maybe I am hard on myself. But if you consider video essays a form of art, and I certainly do, then I should learn to color in the lines. 

[dreamingkelz]

Thing three:  It’s so hard for me to enjoy fanfiction now, because I have spent so long beta-ing my own fics (and some for friends) that I cannot turn off editor brain.  I’m out here trying to enjoy a story (and to be clear, I really enjoyed the story), but my while my brain wants to go: 

“Oh, this Tommy is so good!  I love the insight into c!Wilbur’s thought process!  Look at all of these little environmental and character details he’s included that wouldn’t have been possible in Minecraft!  Literally every exchange between Wilbur and Quackity is flawless!  Ranboo, my beloved!  Some of this prose is really darn nice. Look at c!Wilbur being a dramatic bitch! (who wears burgundy to a heist?  This guy!)  Look at c!Quackity being a dramatic bitch (the gold Q on the door?  Love it!!)  The fist fight?!?!?!  This feels so very much like what those streams were building to last summer, and it’s so satisfying to finally see it all realized!” my brain is unable to do so.

Because these nagging little thoughts keep interfering.  Things like: “The sentence structure in this paragraph could be better,” or: “There are maybe a few too many adverbs strung together in this paragraph and I’m not feeling it.”  

Or, more specifically:

Having the narrator in Ranboo’s perspective refer to Tubbo as ‘the boy’ feels really weird.

Not vibing with this Tubbo characterization at all, really.

Some paragraphs have really nice prose, but there are perhaps a few too many that feel more like a summary of events, which does weird things to the pacing.

Speaking of pacing, there are some entire scenes that get summarized in a somewhat clumsy way.  The transitions between scenes probably could have been handled a little better.

Man spends a paragraph trying to justify the name of Quackity’s horse whose name was canonically changed to something less silly a long time ago.

For obvious reasons, cc!Wilbur seems a lot more comfortable writing Wilbur than the other characters, which leaves the fic feeling a bit unbalanced given the choice to feature other perspectives.  Wilbur’s scenes are deep and insightful, while the other characters’ feel a lot more utilitarian.

And of course, Rich Text Editor is your friend, and always make sure to hit the Preview button before you hit the Publish button.

Anyway, I loved the lore!  The plot and characterization (the important bits) were pretty on point, but some of the prose-related details didn’t work out quite as well.  I’m hoping (probably futilely) that we get to see some follow ups on the plot threads that happened in here.  I don’t think it would be too hard for the other cast members to work this into their stories, and it picks up or ties off most of the threads that were left dangling after the Burger Van streams, which I don’t see being dealt with otherwise.  Please let us have this guys!  

[enf-uckedu-p]

Writing Tips: Details, story flow, and more!

I asked my boyfriend what he struggles with in writing most, and he said "making things long enough and not seeming too try hard." So let's go!

(This is pretty messily and quickly put together so it's not perfect by any means.)

First off, remember that it's okay to have short stories. Writing doesn't have to be long and detailed for it to be good. It's about the way you use words, not how many there are, and sometimes simplicity is much more effective.

When writing, people tell you to imagine the scene in your head. But don't do that. What you really need to do is imagine yourself at the scene. Imagine yourself as the characters. What would you be feeling, seeing, hearing, thinking? Reading a story and watching a movie are two very different things.

A good rule to follow is the famous "show, don't tell." This basically means that you need to show the reader what's going on, not just tell them.

Here's an example:

I feel tears in my eyes and I want to cry from anger.

You're telling the reader that you feel tears in your eyes and that you want to cry. You can't picture the scene very vividly in your head. You can't feel the character's pain. Instead of telling, you want to show them how the character's feeling.

My eyes sting and there's a lump in my throat. I swallow it back down and then clench my fists.

This is better. You can tell from the context that the character is trying not to cry. It comes across much better than outright saying it. Not only does it give the reader imagery, but it comes across as much more professional.

Now, for the being try-hard. In my opinion, this is slightly more important, because you don't know how hard I cringe when I see people write in this way.

Details are important, but too many details completely ruins the flow of the story. Here is an example:

She looks at me with green eyes.

BAD BAD BAD. Why? "Green eyes" is unnecessary and takes away from the sentence.

Tip: get rid of the adjective.

She looks at me with eyes.

That sounds stupid, right? Exactly. You're telling the reader she looked at you with eyes. Well, duh! What else would she be looking with? This takes away from the flow and makes it seem very try-hard. It's obvious you're not entirely sure what you're doing, which is okay! Nobody's perfect! But it's definitely something you can fix.

There are some exceptions, though, where it'd be relevant to point out her eye color. If you're already describing her eyes, then it's relevant.

She looks at me with green eyes full of hatred.

This is fine, because you're describing how her eyes look. Saying that they're green only gives the reader more imagery.

Another good example:

She looks at me with green eyes. I love green eyes.

This is also fine, because the progratonist is making a big deal about her eyes being green. Do they have a thing for green eyes? Are they recalling a past partner who had green eyes, which gives them grievance at the memory? It's all up to you.

One final example, since this is a very big pet peeve of mine:

She glanced across the room. My heart skipped a beat.

Her eyes glanced across the room. My heart skipped a beat.

Green eyes glanced across the room. My heart skipped a beat.

This is also fine, because you're saying that her eyes are glancing across the room. It's okay to add the adjective when the noun is already present. But if the noun isn't present, don't make it present just to add the adjective. It ruins the flow. Though in my opinion, it's pretty unnecessary to use the noun of "eyes" instead of just use the pronoun of "she."

Now, onto point of view! Today, I'm just going to talk about third-person, since it's what I'm most well-versed in.

Even if you're writing in third person, you're still going to want to get into your character's head. It helps the reader better understand what they're feeling and thinking.

For example... Which one of these do you prefer?

God, this is so stupid, he thought, why can't they just leave me alone? There are plenty of other people to mess with, so why me?

God, this is so stupid! Why can't they just leave him alone? They were plenty of other people to mess with, so why him?

You're probably going to prefer the second one. More often than not, it's better to put a character's thoughts into your actual writing, instead of putting it into thoughts. Use thought dialogue sparingly, as it can sometimes interrupt the flow of your story.

You ultimately need to understand your characters and get into their head. That's when your writing will turn out best. I'd recommend practicing this with a character you can really relate to, so it's easier for you to feel what they're feeling and put that into words.

Finally, we'll talk about adjectives. It's a hit or miss with these, and it honestly all depends on the mood you're trying to set.

For example, in fast paced scenes, you'll want to mostly avoid using adjectives and instead use adverbs. It makes it flow much better. Or you can even throw out the adjectives all together and use sentence structure to make things work.

Person A quickly stabbed at the woman, but she jumped back, dodging easily. Person A could only slice the air. She's making a fool out of me, they thought angrily before lunging forward to try again.

Stab. Stab. Jump. Person A sliced at the air. Person B smirked and stuck out her tongue as if taunting them. She wiggled her hips back and forth and no, that's exactly what she were doing. Taunting them. Person A growled, gripping the knife tighter in their hand. She's making a fool out of me, they thought. Lunge. Person A jumped forward before Person B could even blink.

Isn't the second one much better? The short, choppy sentences enhances the imagery of the scene. When lots of actions are happening, it can be good to break them up like this. It’s also very good for action scenes like this one.

You can tell Person B dodged the attack from the subtext, which is more interesting than just outright saying that she dodged it.

I also got into Person A's head a bit to describe how their thoughts, but without adding that to the dialogue thoughts. "She wiggled her hips back and forth and no, that's exactly what she were doing. Taunting them. " See? That's Character A's thoughts, but it's subtle, so it doesn't mess up the flow of the scene.

You can tell Person A is angry by how they growl and tighten the grip on their knife. Then because of these actions, you don't need to add the adjective to "they thought," because you can already tell they're thinking those words angrily.

So, this is all I have for right now, and I hope it helps somebody!

[truecrimehunter]

Wattpad Story Review Went Bad

Richard Brittain won a British Tv quiz show,Countdown, as a teen. To him, that won gave him life. It was his biggest goal. He boast about the win and thought he was smarter than those around him.

Richard enter university and went to a bar to hang out with his small group of friends. A woman named Ella Durant worked as a waitress. Soon, he became obsessive over her. He tried to win her over with his smarts with putting her on a team with him for University Challenge. He stalked her at her work, Twitter, Instagram, and such to keep tabs on her. She changed work shifts and started to work in the kitchen instead of in front of the house. She went to the Metropolitan police and student union. They didn’t do really anything. He stayed away for awhile but keep looking at her Twitter. She was one of those girls that tweets out relatable sad tweets, and she thought nothing of it. For some reason, he took those relatable tweets as she is talking about and to him. He went to her graduation, and she was creeped out when she saw him. After graduating, she moved from London to Glasgow.

After university, Richard wrote a poem called ‘The Benevolent Stalker’ and a book called 'The World Rose’. The book was about Ella and over romanticize of her. He traveled while writing. He wanted to publish the book and turn it into a movie. A publisher had other ideas and turned him down. He was pissed. He thought his book was a masterpiece (everyone thought otherwise). He still wanted his book to be out there. He puts the prolong on Wattpad for free and put his book on Goodreads(It’s also on Amazon).

He found Ella’s address from her college application. He went to her workplace and waved at her. She called the police and took her home. Two days later, he went back to her workplace and spoke to her even though she was screaming to get the attention of others. On September 23 2014, Ella saw a link a tweet to a blog called 'The Benevolent Stalker’ and went to the police. The defence counsel, Michael Meehan, told the judge that Richard either stuffering from paranoid schizophrenia or a personality disorder(maybe y'all should got him check out). He knew that Ella was living in Glasgow because her Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Back to his book, Wattpad’s users hated the prolong. He was pissed off that the users hated his work. He had arguments with them. A eighteen years old, Paige Rolland, read the prolong and knew how he reacts to criticism. That didn’t bother her(she has some balls), so she went to Goodreads after reading what was free to give her review with her real name. She dragged him to the dirt. Her review said(warning: it’s long review),“Before anyone reads any further, I must confess that I haven’t read this entire story. I’ve only read the prologue, courtesy of Mr. Brittain leaving it on Wattpad as a means of advertising and expanding his audience. There are two reasons I did not choose to buy this book and read the entire thing. Reason one being that the prologue was just awful and I certainly would not be paying £5 plus P+P to read the entire thing. Reason two…well, I don’t have a Kindle. And even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t be paying £1.90 for it. Surely Mr. Brittain was aware that first time authors self-pubbing give the Kindle book away for free. That way more people are likely to actually read it.

Let’s first talk about the cover.

As a writer self-publishing, I would have hoped Mr. Brittain did his research and understood the costs behind it. Surely he was aware of how much a good cover would cost him. What I’m looking at now looks painfully like something my English teachers in high school would make me read. Or a textbook. A washed-out photograph of a dirt path through a thin cluster of trees? Well…it doesn’t do anything for me and it certainly wouldn’t catch my eye in a bookstore. That combined with the bland colours used for the text and borders around that makes for an incredibly anti-climactic cover. And it definitely doesn’t scream "fantasy/romance novel” to me.

That blurb…

Yeah, that’s not a blurb. All I get is that it’s a fairytale and that the title means something. Nothing about the characters (other than the main one is a renowned beauty - urgh, gag me) nor about the plot. Probably because those elements are nothing more than a nice effort, at best. And if you have to explain the metaphor that is your title, you’re doing something wrong.

Now, to the prologue. As a reader, I’m bored out of my skull and severely disappointed in what I might have paid for. As a writer (albeit an amateur one) I’m appalled that anyone would think this was worthy of money.

Not only does it begin with “once upon a time” which you could argue is perfect as this is a fairytale (and it doesn’t work, it’s incredibly pretentious), but it’s filled with many writing no-nos. Way too much telling, pretentious prose, and a main character that I already hate. Ella is the perfect princess (true to fairytales, so we can at least give him a little credit despite how painfully annoying this is coupled with a complete lack of real personality shining through).

I’d like to take a moment to explain that fairytales, for those of you who don’t know, are short. They are short because frankly, nobody can stand that kind of writing for very long. It’s not considered good. Fairytales are there to entertain. Usually to entertain children. Full-length novels written for teens to adults?

Can we deal with the purple prose for a second? All this over-describing and stupidly flowery wording to describe Ella walking to her balcony and looking out.

Unfortunately, Mr. Brittain has gained a bit of infamy on Wattpad where he’s known for threatening users who don’t praise him (pray for me) and telling successfully published authors that they know nothing about the industry and are completely wrong in saying that writing rules must be followed in order to be successful. What I’m saying is, you can expect complete disregard for basic rules that lead to good writing for the entirety of this story.

Another writing rule that’s big is to avoid adverbs like the plague, particularly words like “suddenly”. Such a shame Brittain used this very word (which is considered a cheap and childish way of conveying suddenness, FYI) to describe a wolf howling and Ella jumping back in fear. So not only is Ella physically perfect, she’s faint-hearted too. Such a fair maiden. Never was a maiden so fair nor so beauteous. Nor so boobilicious.

Oh please.

Sentence structure. It’s all very repetitive. First part of sentence, second part of sentence. And that’s mostly how it goes. The first part of the sentence is separated by a comma before we go into the second part of the unnecessarily detailed sentence. It’s painfully dull to read. Doesn’t do much for engaging the brain.

Dialogue tags. They’re not so bad, but combined with those adverbs? Another writing no-no that Brittain has chosen to completely ignore has made this story all the harder to read.

Here is a perfect example of that purple prose I was talking about as well as this problem Brittain seems to have when it comes to over-describing. “The princess let her pet melt under her keen stare for a bit longer before she bent forward for stroke him.” This is fine, right? Well…no. Only because it is then followed by this: “Ella caressed Duncan’s fine brown hair, rubbing his ears and scratching him with scarlet fingernails.” First of all, we already know what colour the damn dog is thanks to the paragraph before. Also, we already know she is stroking him, so why do we need all this “caressing” stuff thrown in there and who cares what colour perfect Ella’s fingernails are? As if we need more reasons to dislike her already.

At some point, Duncan the dog “suddenly” becomes aggressive towards something in the room and all of that purple prose and telling and usage of “suddenly” completely ruined it. I didn’t care. I wasn’t scared. Why Brittain seems to think he can get away with not following these important writing rules is beyond me.

This sentence now. (“SPIT IT OUT!” Ella shouted.) I don’t think Brittain knows that using all caps like that in a story other than a children’s book is considered highly unprofessional. Not to mention with the exclamation point and the dialogue tag, we know Ella is shouting. So the caps become redundant anyway.

“But the bulldog merely yawned, slumped lazily in his basket with a sullen frown on his face.” Adverbs: check. Redundancy: check. Slumping is a lazy action. Frowns are usually sullen. From the context, we know this. I just…

Urgh, I can’t. Even if there WAS more on Wattpad to read, I wouldn’t. This is painful. Everything is written through telling and purple prose which is just about the worst combination there is as both a reader and writer. You can have the most fantastic plot in the world, but if you can’t write it well, it won’t sell. At least concerning self-publishing. And bad writing usually equals bad characters.

In the end (SPOILER) Ella’s father is found dead and Ella cries. Like…I don’t even care. There has been so little character development here (not that he allowed himself the room for that with all the pointless description) for a character I didn’t like from the first sentence about her, that I don’t give a damn if her father’s dead or she’s crying or how scared of the wolf’s howl she was.

The writing of this entire prologue (and what I managed to see of the chapters before they were removed from Wattpad) is bland and boring to read. It’s hard to keep reading because it’s so boring. It reads like a history book, and nobody goes into a fantasy/romance for bland, boring, textbook-like writing.

And Brittain has the audacity to say “To continue reading, please purchase the book…” You mean I have to pay to read something that’s not been professionally edited? No thank you >…

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 92 Thoughts

Dear Marley:

What the ever loving fuck is wrong with you people?

This is likely to be an incredibly short post. I know I keep saying that, but there’s really not much to go through here that I didn’t touch last month. Action scenes be actioning, and everyone continues to be a level of awful that...

Yeah.

Yeah, this is a little.

Okay, well, I guess I’ll start with the part of the chapter that already has me looking at my inbox in grim expectation. Usually I do the thing I care about most last, so I give everything I don’t care about a chance, but this is being distracting, and it’s not like anything was going to give me a chance at being happy this chapter anyway.

Galliard, your friendship status with me has been thrown into question.

Last chapter the assumption that Galliard had nommed Ymir drove me nuts. We’d seen something like two pages of the guy, shark motif seemed going strong, and we were still missing a Titan, so it felt like a bit of a reach to declare Jaws and Dancing the same Titan. Besides, he’s got the whole face armor thing going down. Totally reasonable to assume he’s doing his own thing.

This chapter, we get to see him in action beyond diving in front of some kids, and the similarities between his movement style and the Dancing Titan’s are significantly more pronounced. Also, they have the same teeth.

Thanks to the new season of the anime, the teeth thing is especially jarring. We haven’t seen Utgard animated yet, so Marcel’s end can only currently be found in the new opening, but as several people have pointed out, in Ymir’s flash to that event, the titan’s teeth are flat.

The manga version is pretty clear about them being sharp before the Shifter nomming, but the anime has a history of knowing more about the manga than the audience does, as well as correcting some of the manga’s mistakes.

Along with that, we do have an established history of Titans being named differently than their introductions implied. Eren’s officially the Attack Titan, not Rogue. Female Titan is Female Titan, Armored is Armored, but when there’s not a tower to swing around, what sense does Dancing really make next to Jaws.

Point is, while I am going to hold out hope that Ymir’s alive until I get a visual of her corpse, the idea that Galliard is her successor is no longer the reactionary accusation that has happened every time a new Shifter gets a panel. There’s some genuine credit to the theory. At best, I’d say that Jaws is definitely meant to remind us of Ymir.

What that means if you’re a nutty optimist is that it will enhance the shock when she turns up breathing. What that means if you have the dial at 9 instead of 11 for happy sunshine is that the seeds for Galliard eating Ymir have been successfully planted for a traumatic reveal.

I’m still willing to go with the first, which bodes great for the kind of fandom interactions I’m going to have.

Even if it turns out we’re dealing with the second (which will annoy me for a multitude of petty reasons before being really, really sad), I maintain that Ymir’s role in whatever story’s being told isn’t done. I know a lot of people object to how Bertolt’s death came about. Despite the lack of fanfare for his actual death, I was never one of them. I felt like Bertolt’s character development had pushed him into being a person who refused to develop, and that was the final nail in his coffin long before Armin’s gambit.

In the case of Ymir, though, you have a character who has repeatedly said she wants to live for herself sacrificing herself for others. Maybe all that means is that her story is a tragedy. She doesn’t get to live for herself, and she doesn’t get to marry Historia. She wants to, but too many parts of her take her down the wrong road for that. Sad, sad story, boo hoo, at least the people she’s leaving behind have a chance.

But as straightforward as Ymir is (what Historia calls “simple”), nothing in her character suggests that walking into an enemy stronghold, offering up her life to the enemies of people she loves, and giving them a weapon by letting them kill her, is something that she would consider a satisfying endgame.

She doesn’t want Reiner and Bertolt to die. She owes them, so she saves them, and she sees a way to protect them further down the line by being their prized prisoner.

Ymir is one of the most intelligent characters in the series. Her simple nature means that she’s willing to do nonsense like the above, but she isn’t oblivious to the implications. She thinks up the thought of getting Reiner and Bertolt out of trouble by being their tagalong pretty darn easily.

If she is dead, well, yay, something new to be sad about.

If she’s dead because she does absolutely nothing to fight back against Marley wanting her dead, I have my first real problem with a character decision for this series.

If she’s dead and Historia is going to be the one to off Galliard, I... will admittedly be bothered much less.

Since I’m stupid, I’m going to continue to be optimistic and hope that Galliard is a red herring. Most of the Titans we’ve seen are pretty unique, but the Female Titan, besides having breasts, mostly mirrors the Attack Titan, so maybe Jaws mirrors the Dancing Titan.

However, to the delight of people who aren’t me, Ymir’s possible link to Galliard is actually a very serious plot point.

If Ymir is dead, and Jaws and Dancing Titan are one and the same, we have a Titan missing from our roster. Without Jaws doing his own thing, we’ve got eight, not nine.

Founding

Attack

Armored

Colossus

Female

Cartman

Beast

Jaws/Dancing

So place your bets, I guess. Are we looking at an eleventh hour savior, a greater evil for all of the lesser evils to fight, or is Ymir still alive?

Considering the level of impact the first two options have, my happiness prospects keep going down.

On the other hand, one of the first signs that Ymir is peculiar involves herring. Introducing a red one is truly the natural progression of her story significance.

At the end of the day, I’m serious about holding out hope until I see a corpse. I’m similarly serious about Ymir’s story impact not being over even if she is dead (and no, not just because Galliard probably wants to nom Our Heroes).

But wow have her odds gone down, and wow do I find that ludicrously depressing.

On that subject, how ‘bout those flying titans?

Every time Marley does something atrocious, they manage to top themselves. It would be impressive, except it’s so horrifying that every new horrible thing makes my soul feel like it’s shrunk three sizes.

Does anyone else find it funny that Marley and the rest of the world curse Eldians for being able to transform into titans, then form their entire military strategy around them being able to transform into titans?

It isn’t ha-ha funny for very long. It’s sick.

Rudolph and his red nose get a lot of depressing posts about how the real lesson is that your differences are only appreciated if someone else can make use of them.

In the case of the Eldians, they don’t even get that level of appreciation. They’re used for their talents in the same moment that they’re cursed for having them to begin with.

On a similar level of amusement, people on Paradis, seeing the damage that titans do, and the terror they inspire, vow to remove the titans.

Marleyans, they of the reported persecution by their hands, do everything they can to make more of them.

Just. Wow, okay.

There is something abominably sick about a command that does this. And I have sympathy for the Warriors growing up and wanting to change things for their people, and being brainwashed into hating the “bad” Eldians who caused all of this, but...

This is how Marley fights.

“Isn’t war a terrible thing?”

Yes. War is terrible.

What Marley does, and what Zeke is actively complicit in, is worse.

Someone who doesn’t keep being distracted by that can probably put words to how when Eren screams, it inspires hope, but when his brother does it, it brings nothing but despair and destruction, and yay for that I guess, but fuck.

This is how Marley fights, and it turns the loyalty the Warriors we know best have to their cause... That was always a pitiable quality. You could see the honor in them, and the love for their comrades. They’re desperate, and they want their home, and they want all of this to be over.

When it’s just one wall, and they’re so young, it’s easy to hope for them, and want them to escape this nightmare, no matter how much of it comes from their own decisions.

Then you have this, and it’s a lot harder to give a damn about anyone who can go into battle with a blimp full of their own people and rob them of their autonomy, especially when that, for their side, is considered a victory.

What even the fuck.

I don’t even want to talk about it. As part of the story, oki doki then, but as something ripe for examination, Marley’s way of doing things is so unspeakably depraved that the adverb’s pretty much not hyperbole.

And I don’t know if the title, “Marley’s Soldiers,” is a mistranslation of Warriors, or if Marley’s version of a “soldier” is cannon fodder.

If you’re looking for amusement, Scouts are called soldiers back in Paradis, and they’re sent out to the chopping block just as often. Except Paradis soldiers are allowed the choice. Even the thousands of people who are sent out to “reclaim Wall Maria” are allowed to keep their minds when they’re ordered to die for the greater good.

Heck, “greater good” in that environment just meant getting rid of enough mouths so that the people left inside the walls wouldn’t starve to death. What’s the Marley version of that?

...So I am very, very clear about this: PARADIS BEFORE EREN’S ABILITIES CHANGE THE TIDE IS A TERRIBLE PLACE FULL OF TERRIBLE PEOPLE IN POWER BOWING TO THEIR WORST IMPULSES--and I would take it over Marley ever day of the week.

Paradis does not start out as a good place. It’s built on genocide and brainwashing. Our Heroes force it to be better, and they aren’t sparkly clean moral paragons, either.

But I have to actively remind myself of this, because Marley is so unilaterally awful that it’s hard not to look at the setting we left for it and start singing its praises.

Before this post turns into nothing but strings of profanity, I’m going to stop.

They would be highly deserved strings of profanity.

Oh, and thanks to Marley’s continued awfulness, Reiner and Bertolt giving Ymir up is... somehow a lot worse than it was to begin with, and it started out with “this person who saved your lives is going to be eaten alive to save your lives again.”

This was not a happy month.

[coldtomyflash]

So I was hoping you could do a speech analysis of Lisa Snart despite her unfortunately very few appearances (I hope the #BringbackLisaSnart will bring some acknowledgement from the writers. Thanks!

I think I got the older of these two asks over a month ago, so I’m sorry for the delay. Speech analyses take special effort, especially for a character with very few lines (and few gifs in the system so I have to make more of my own), so I let it sink to the bottom of my pile while I was working on writing and other stuff.

Annnd it got quite long so I’ll save everyone’s dash the trouble and put it under a cut.

But okay, on to Lisa!

It’s interesting to analyze her because, given how few lines she has, fic writers have a lot of license for how they want to characterize her speech patterns across different settings and moods. She also doesn’t have too many things that jump out as making her linguistic patterns unique, because so much of it is in tone of voice for her, and facial expression. So I’ll talk about what we can glean from canon, but I’ll also discuss how I’ve extrapolated from there for my particular Lisa “voice” when I write.

One of the very first things that jumped out about Lisa’s voice to me was her use of the diminutive suffix for people’s names. Huh? I mean the “y” she adds on. She does it for Len, calling him “Lenny”, but she also does it for Mick, showing it’s not just a thing between her and her brother.

Lisa calls men she knows by a ‘cuter’ or softer version of their name (and these are some hardened men). Also note the use of “darling”: she’s comfortable referring to people by petnames, particularly if she wants something from them. When I write, I make sure to pepper those in (classic ones like ‘darling’ and ‘dear’), but only when she feels confident or in control, mind you. When she’s aiming at something, placating or amused. Not when she’s feeling too worried or strained.

And this is all part of her ‘charm’, the way she puts on a cute, simpering voice designed to control and manipulate. To make herself nonthreatening, because damn can she be threatening. She makes people (men, romantic paramours or otherwise) do what she wants by playing up her femininity, either in a cute manner or a weaponized one. 

Look at that pout, directed at her brother. And note the direct reference to her femininity. We see that earlier in the same episode when she’s trying to manipulate Cisco.

References to her femininity are common in Lisa’s speech in both direct and indirect ways. It’s a super fascinating counterpoint to how she dresses like she’s ready to start busting heads. 

Personality stuff aside for a sec, note the use of sentence starters: “well” “besides”. Lisa continues ideas when she starts a new sentences. Unlike her brother who tends to start a sentence cold (and even drop subjects at times, he’s so weird), Lisa’s speech patterns imply that she’s replying to someone, bringing them in to her speech. She softens her speech in this way too. 

[She doesn’t let the boys get away with excluding her and I love it].

Also! 

Never ignore that Lisa loves a bit of chaos. She is every bit as hard or harder than Len. To be honest, I think of her as someone with his patient and eye for detail, and Mick’s thrill and impulsivity. Lisa is a storm. And when she’s in business (head-busting) mode, she shows it in her speech. Her sentences become colder commands, and her speech becomes a lot more clipped. 

Even in a fight, she’s exclaiming in a short way.

(Which, note that Len’s reply to her after this is a lot longer of a sentence).

But all of that is when Lisa is in charge, after a sense. Feeling in control and safe, or manipulating people. Her speech patterns when she’s worried about Len take on a different tone.

Watch how she goes from simpering/manipulative to about 1000% more genuine when she’s worried about her brother.

When she thinks Cisco might say no, realizes that her ‘cute’ act isn’t going to have any more sway with him (thanks to what happened at Ferris Air), she drops it entirely and goes for broke. So it is an act, and be cogent of that if/when you writ her. She likely enjoys being cute and coy, but it’s also a defense mechanism.

Like that? That’s a defense. Keeping people away, calling herself bad/toxic/etc before anyone else can call her those things, so that she doesn’t give them the power to hurt her when they do. And she bats her eyelashes and tries to be cute while she does it (or else cold, like above when she calls herself toxic, which felt much harder).

It’s also notably an act because she drops it when she’s monologuing / in business mode, when she’s focused.

Note the details in her speech. Where they were, what they were doing. Lisa likes a clear picture of things. Nothing jumps out in terms of word choice, but she speaks in positives a lot. You might remember I talked about how Wally makes his speech a little more flowery with some clever double-negatives? Yeah she doesn’t do that.

For all her charms, Lisa is more direct almost always, regardless of whether it’s short sentences or long ones. She cuts to the point. More evidence? There’s also not much metaphor in her speech (another example? Her talking about putting plastic down when she’s worried her head will explode is probably the closest we’ve seen to being roundabout about something, and that was literally her death).

So she’s very plain spoken, if you look at how she says things.

Like that isn’t flowery, it’s very much to the point. Len called their father a ‘sterling role model’, his own roundabout and ironic way of saying the man was a menace, and he talks about Lewis having broken his sister’s heart. Lisa just goes straight to “he’s a bad guy”. She doesn’t speak with irony or sarcasm pretty much ever.

So in that regard, keep her speech simple. She conveys her ideas straightforward and honestly except when she has a reason not to. You can see it in all the gifs I’ve posted her, but also when she’s happier and more open, she’s still straightforward and linguistically uncomplicated in what she conveys.

Some final ‘parts of speech’ type notes.

She uses adverbs in all her speech. Beyond just opening sentences, she uses them as (*gasp*) proper qualifiers. So excited to see a character use a range of qualifiers on verbs. Some examples are “Actually” (like above) and “really” (”I really did enjoy kissing you, know you”) and “Lenny practically raised me”.

With the adverbs and the sentence openers, her normal speech is direct, but it’s not clipped or short in the way that say, Mick (another straightforward character) ends up sounding at times. She’s also less absolute in her speech than Mick though, “you might actually be” instead of a more absolute “you are”. So she doesn’t hedge a lot, but it comes up.

And hmm... don’t fear contractions. “Wha’d’you say?” “gotta” but not “woulda” (she says would’ve or even “would have” sometimes). 

And it’s okay to drop the occasional article (”a” and “the”), particularly when they’re implied sentence openers. This comes out when she’s being coy, like “[A] girl’s gotta defend herself” (1x16) and “[The] least you could do” (1x22) -- both lines from when she’s got her perfect pout and/or smirk in place and is needling someone (Len or Cisco) for something. But that’s not inherently the case either, because we see it come out when she’s being very serious too:

(She drops “the” here, and it even seems like she drops “he” at one point in this speech as a sentence opener). Her speech doesn’t have a ton of articles in general, nothing making it longer than it needs to be or rambling.

Final notes? Tone of voice is huge for her, beyond the specific words. It ranges from simpering to cold and hard to vulnerable and open. She laughs at herself in a soft, pained sort of way she’s in private with Cisco, but laughs loud and excited on a job. She scrunches her face (it’s adorable) and is generally very visually expressive, even more so when she drops her acts, I find.

And that… is what I’ve got for you on Lisa. This is long but hopefully fruitful.

[thejsubexperiment]

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Episode 21 Runthrough (Part 10)

Scene 6 — Hospital Room, Dusk — Roy, Riza, Havoc, Fuery

ロイ：ホムンクルスに大総統...予想外にでかい獲物が釣れたな。

リザ：大きすぎる気もしますが。       

ロイ：やりがいがあっていいだろう。

ロイ：さあ、君たちにはバリバリ働いてもらうぞ。

ハボック：ああ、その件ですが一抜けさせてもらいます。

ハボック：オレの両脚　感覚ないんすよ。

ハボック：すんません、リタイアっす。

Scene 7 — Hospital Commons, Dusk — Roy, Dr. Nox, Riza

ノックス：よう。

ロイ：やあ、どこか悪いのか。

ノックス：腰痛。

_______________________________________________________________________

ロイ：ホムンクルスに大総統...予想外にで獲物が釣れたな。 (Roi: Homunkurusu ni daisoutou... yosougai-ni dekai emono ga tsureta na.)

ホムンクルス (homunkurus)- is a loanword noun meaning “homunculus,” which is an in-world term in this series. They’re basically the bad guys.

に (ni)- is the dative particle. The dative case denotes the indirect object, an agent, a place intrinsic to the action, or a time. In this case, we are getting only part of a complete sentence, and it is probably denoting agency.

大総統 (daisoutou)- is another in-world term, referring to the ruler of the country this show takes place in. Literally in means “great-supreme ruler.” “Soutou” is the term used for the führer, which is what they call the ruler in the official dub.

予想外に (yosougai-ni)- is the noun “yousougai,” meaning “unexpected” with the adverbial suffix “ni.” 

でかい (dekai)- is an adjectival verb, conjugated for the imperfective tense and affirmative, meaning “huge.”

獲物 (emono)- is a noun meaning “catch” or “prize,” as in something you acquire after some challenge or conquest.

が (ga)- is the nominative particle. The nominative case denotes the subject of a sentence. Sometimes it also serves to denote the direct object emphatically, which is what it’s doing here.

釣れた (tsureta)- is the potential, past, affirmative conjugation of the verb “tsuru,” meaning “to fish” or “to catch,” if you don’t want to say something like “to fish a fish.” The potential mood indicates that the action is a possibility, rather than an actuality.

な (na)- is a dubitative ending particle. It leaves the statement up to validation by others, rather than telling everyone what’s what.

Translation: “By homunculi the Führer... We could have caught an unexpectedly huge catch, huh?” 

____________________________________

リザ：大きすぎる気もしますが。 (Riza: Ooki-sugiru ki-moshimasu ga.)

大きすぎる (ooki-sugiru)- is the indicative, imperfective, affirmative conjugation of the verb “sugiru,” meaning “to exceed [in a quality].” In what exactly a thing precedes is determined by its prefix, which is a noun or participle. In this case, the participle is “ooki;” and a participle is the stem of a verb (a verb without its temporal suffixes.) “Ooki” means “big.” So this is something “too big” 

気もします (ki-mosshimasu)- is the polite, indicative, imperfective, affirmative conjugation of the verb “ki-mosu,” meaning “to feel.” What this really is is the noun “ki,” which means “energy,” and a verb “mosu.” “Ki,” then, is being modified by the verb “ooki-sugiru,” making it “a feeling that it is too big.”

が (ga)- is a conjunction meaning “though,” which often find itself at the end of sentences, rather than conjoining sentences, because it invites others to share their ideas.

Translation: “Though I feel it is too big.”

____________________________________ 

ロイ：やりがいがあっていいだろう。 (Roi: yarigai ga atte ii darou.)

やりがい (yarigai)- is a noun meaning “something worthwhile.” It behaves a bit strangely, and is seen most often in this inflexional phrase.

が (ga)- is the nominative particle, indicating the subject.

あって (atte)- is the gerund of the copula/verb “aru.” The copula is a verb that establishes a categorial or identity relationship. These are basically the “is” verbs. In Japanese (and in many other languages) they also serve as the “has” verb. “Aru” has mainly two counterparts: “iru” and “da.”

“yarigai ga aru” means “to have something worthwhile,” which often gets translated as just “worthwhile.”

いい (ii)- is the imperfective, affirmative conjugation of the verb meaning “good.” The use of a verb phrase with its verb in the gerund plus ii indicates that “Xing is good/fine.” 

だろう (darou)- is a verbal expression that is a rough equivalent to “na” or “ne” and often gets translated as “isn’t that right?” or “isn’t it?”

Translation: “[It] is good to have something worthwhile, isn’t it?”

____________________________________

ロイ：さあ、君たちにはバリバリ働いてもらうぞ。 (Roi: Saa, kimi-tachi ni wa bari-bari hataraite morau zo.)

さあ (saa)- is an interjection meaning “So” or “Well then.”

君たち (kimi-tachi)- is the 2nd person pronoun “kimi” with the pluralizing suffix “-tachi.” “-tachi” is used mostly for only living things and most of all pronouns.

に (ni)- is the dative particle. Here it is indicating agency, as in who will do the action.

は (wa)- is the topical particle. Every now and again Japanese will allow for two particles to attach to one noun. The topical particle indicates the topic of the sentence, not the subject. Japanese sentences do not need subjects, but English sentences do. Thus it is often the case that a Japanese topic will be translated into an English subject.”

バリバリ (bari-bari)- is an adverb meaning “very hard” or “to the bone.” It’s an onomatopoeia describing a crunching sound. (Japanese has this whole thing on onomatopoeia, remind us to talk about it one of these days.)

働いて (hataraite)- is the gerund of the verb “hataraku,” meaning to work.”

もらう (morau)- is the indicative, imperfective, affirmative conjugation of the verb meaning “to receive.” This verb is one of three (and their polite/impolite counterparts) that is used to describe actions being done for one or another’s benefit. “Morau” is used to express that one is getting someone to do something for one’s benefit. So Roy is getting them to work for his benefit.

ぞ (zo)- is an emphatic ending particle. Emphatic particles are not always translated into English as an exclamation point, but we will do so here to distinguish it from anything else we might encounter, such as “yo.”

Translation: “So, [I] will have you working very hard!”

____________________________________

ハボック：ああ、その件ですが一抜けさせてもらいます。 (Habokku: Aa, sono ken desu ga ichi nukesasete moraimasu.)

ああ (aa)- is an interjection with its English equivalent being “Um,” or “Oh.”

その (sono)- is a demonstrative adjective meaning “that,” as in a thing that is close to the addressee but not the speaker himself.

件 (ken)- is a noun meaning something like “statement.” It’s referring to what Roy has said.

です (desu)- is the polite, indicative, imperfective conjugation of the copula “da.”

が (ga)- is the conjunction we saw before. “desu ga,” is a very common verbal phrase and as a bit of a meaning of its own. You can say “Though [it is] X,” and the meaning will come across, but translators like to say “About X,” as in “I will not provide some unsettling news about what you just said.”

一 (ichi)- is a number meaning “one.” Numbers in Japanese tend to need suffixes to make them parts of speech in normal sentences. Here it is acting as a counter, a unit or amount by which an action is done. This is rather irregular.

抜けさせて (nukesasete)- is the causative, gerund conjugation of the verb “nukeru,” meaning “to be omitted,” here referring to counting Havoc out of the task, for reasons we will soon discover. The causative mood indicates one making someone do something else. 

もらいます (moraimasu)- is the polite, indicative, imperfective, affirmative conjugation of the verb “morau,” which we just saw. Here it is being used in the same way. In this case, it is Havoc who is benefiting from causing Roy to omit him.

Translation: “Oh, about that thing you said, I will make you omit one, for my benefit.” (We are using a clunky translation so you can see some things working together.)

____________________________________

ハボック：オレの両脚　感覚ないんすよ。 (Habokku: Ore no ryou-ashi kantaku nai-n su yo.)

オレ (ore)- is a masculine, first-person pronoun. 

の (no)- is the genitive particle. The genitive particle indicates possession or categorization. “X no Y” tends to translate to “Y of X.”

両脚 (ryou-ashi)- is a noun meaning “both legs.” It comes from the noun “ashi,” meaning “leg” and the prefix “ryou-” meaning “both.” Note that we have no particle for this noun. It would be “wa.”

感覚 (kantaku)- is a noun meaning “feeling” or “sensation.” Note that we have no particle for this noun either. It would be “ga.”

ない (nai)- is the indicative, imperfective, negative conjugation of the copula “aru.”

ん (n)- is a substantivizing suffix. It makes an entire verb phrase syntactically a noun.

す (su)- is a colloquial form of “desu,’ which we have seen before. We need a copula here because have a noun.

よ (yo)- is an emphatic ending particle.

Translation: “My legs do not have sensation.” or “I have no sensation in my legs.”

____________________________________

ハボック：すんません、リタイアっす。 (Habokku: Sunmasen, ritaia ssu.)

すんません (sunmasen)- is a colloquial form of “sumimasen,” which is a verbal expression to beg another’s pardon for an inconvenience. 

リタイア (ritaia)- is a loanword noun meaning “retire” or “retirement.”

っす (ssu)- is another colloquial form of “desu.”

Translation: “Sorry, [this] is [my] retirement.”

_______________________________________________________________________

Scene Change

_______________________________________________________________________

ノックス：よう。 (Nokkusu: You.)

よう (you)- is an interjection of greeting. A casual way of saying hi.

Translation: “Hey.”

____________________________________

ロイ：やあ、どこか悪いのか。 (Roi: Yaa, dokoka warui no ka.)

やあ (yaa)- is a variation of “you.”

どこか (dokoka)- is an indefinite pronoun that syntactically is an adverb meaning “anywhere” or “somewhere?” (Someone remind me to talk about the noun-adverb things soon.)

悪い (warui)- is the imperfective, affirmative conjugation of the adjectival verb meaning “bad.”

の (no)- is a substantivizing suffix. The “n” we saw earlier comes from this “no.”

か (ka)- is the interrogative ending particle. Note we do not have a verb here. When we have no verb, we are allowed to put in a copula. 

Translation: “[Is] there something that is wrong somewhere?” 

Another clunky translation, but you get to see everything.

____________________________________

ノックス：腰痛。 (Nokkusu: Youtsuu.)

腰痛 (youtsuu)- is a noun meaning “lower back.”

Translation: “[My] lower back.”

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[useyourrwords]

Month in Review // I FINALLY CHANGED MY NAME – February

You are officially reading the post of someone legally named Greyson and I am so fucking happy!

So obviously February was a bit of a landmark month for me and boy was it packed! And March looks to well an truly have earned the name Adelaide uses for it, March Madness.

          Introducing The Structured TBR

Last month I introduced my new structured TBR! So here is a quick overview for those who want to follow along.

Must Read

  5 books a month

 1 backlist ARC, if I have any 

 Read new ARCS ON TIME 

 2 owned backlist books 

 3 diverse books 

 10 entries from Rejected Princesses

 5 entries from Bygone Badass Broads

Allowances

 1 library book in either physical, ebook and 1 graphic novel format 

Month’s TBR

│Unbroken Anthology││

│The Boneless Mercies││

│Sadie││

│The Raven Boys││

│The Dream Thieves││

│Blue Lily, Lily Blue││

│The Raven King││

│Yaa Asantewaa│Mary Bowser│Nwanyeruwa│Nana Asma’u│Nanny of the Maroons│Agontime and the Dahomey Amazons│Josephine Baker│Nzinga Mbande│Arawelo│Ida B. Wells│Rejected Princesses││

│Queen Arawelo│Stagecoach Mary Fields│Sarah Breedlove AKA Madam C. J. Walker│Alice Ball│Nwanyeruwa│Lorraine Hansberry│Bygone Badass Broads││

So I knew when making my TBR last month that I probably wasn’t to get to all of these but wanted to see how I would go for my first structured TBR and I’m not entirely disappointed.

     Read

│Unbroken Anthology│Marieke Nijkamp│││││3.5★│Read Feb 4│

I wanted more from this one and it never quite got there.

│The Raven Boys│The Raven Cycle #1│Maggie Stiefvater││││││★★★★★│Read Feb 15│

Love love love! Even better the second time. You should see how many tabs I used. It’s going to take me forever to log all the quotes I marked.

I’ve linked my original review but I might do a new one at some point. .

│The Boneless Mercies│April Genevieve Tucholke││││││★★★│Read Feb 18│

Uh this was fine. It was entertaining and I loved the whole women seeking glory thing but it could have been more engaging. This is a really journey heavy book and those just aren’t my cup of tea.

│Queen Arawelo│Stagecoach Mary Fields│Sarah Breedlove AKA Madam C. J. Walker│Alice Ball│Nwanyeruwa│Lorraine Hansberry│Bygone Badass Broads│Mackenzi Lee││││Read Feb 7│

│Yaa Asantewaa│Mary Bowser│Nwanyeruwa│Nana Asma’u│Nanny of the Maroons│Agontime and the Dahomey Amazons│Josephine Baker│Nzinga Mbande│Arawelo│Ida B. Wells│Rejected Princesses│Jason Porath││││Read Feb 16│

Really glad that I’m using this year to finally read these two books and so far I am loving learning about 15 different women from history a month!

│The Dream Thieves│The Raven Cycle #2│Maggie Stiefvater││││││

So I kinda got into a bit of a slump at the end of the month and it really isn’t this books fault and is entirely because I’m not giving myself down time to do “pointless” fun things.

│Skylarks│Karen Gregory│││││

│The Surface Breaks│Lousie O’Neill│││││

Book of the Month

│Sadie│Courtney Summers│││││★★★★★│Read Feb 14│

This book is fucking brilliant. Like God has blessed us and her name is Courtney Summers and it’s just so fucking good.

│Average Rating: 4.1★│ 3│

Structured TBR Pass or Fail?

│Must Read:  4/5│ 1/1│ 0/0│ 1/2│ 4/3│ 10/10│ 6/5│

│Allowances:  2/1 P or EB | 0/1 GN│ 

This month was a bit of a fail but I expected as much as I have only just started to implement it! I knew I’d have a few kinks to work out as I went!

I didn’t quite reach my 5 book goal and I didn’t read 2 owned backlist books.

I also read 2 Physical/Ebook library loans so that broke the rules too.

Next month I’m going to bring my library loan all together so I can only read 1 physical book or one ebook or one graphic novel to make room for my backlist.

I’m also planning on adding audiobooks!

Past Grey Reads

 Book Review // Everything Leads To You – A Quite Love Story

 Book Review // Girl Made of Stars – I Am Broken

 Grey Reads // Everything’s On Fire and I Couldn’t Be Happier – Girls of Paper and Fire

        Film & TV

Month’s TBW

│On The Basis of Sex││

│The Favourite││

│Drag Race All Stars│Season 4││

│Jessica Jones│Season 2││

│The Young Pope│Season 1││

│Brooklyn Nine-Nine│Season 6││

│One Day At A Time│Season 3││

│I Am The Night│Season 1││

     Watched

│The Favourite││2018│ Yorgos Lanthimos│ Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz │★★★★★│

This was so fucking funny and just good.

So there’s a little story time for this that I’ll get into further down the post.

│Drag Race All Stars│Season 4││2012│ RuPaul│RuPaul, Michelle Visage│Watching weekly episodes│★★★★│

Fave One-liner This Season: “Yeah, well some of us don’t have to force story-lines to get air time” -Farrah Moan.

I am so mad at that ending, don’t talk to me. Also I was really hoping RuPaul would not be a judge on the new UK edition of Drag Race and I am nothing but disappointed.

this is my new fave drag race gif

│Brooklyn Nine-Nine│Season 6││2013│ Daniel J. Goor, Michael Schur│ Andre Braugher, Andy Samberg, Stephanie Beatriz│Watching weekly episodes│★★★★★│

This is great. I am actually all caught up! I really loved the episode that focused on Jake and Rosa solving an impossible case.

│One Day At A Time│Season 3││2017│ Gloria Calderon Kellett, Mike Royce│ Justina Machado, Todd Grinnell, Isabella Gomez│★★★★★│

I started watching this with mum and then binge watched the rest by myself and then got my aunt to watch the first two episodes of season 1 and then started watching the rest of season 3 with mum again.

│I Am The Night│Season 1││2019│ Patty Jenkins│ Chris Pine, India Eisley, Jefferson Mays│★★★★│

So I did start this but I’ve not been great and keeping up with new episodes…

I’m excited to see how it continues though!

│The Umbrella Academy│Episode 1││2019│ Jeremy Slater│ Ellen Page, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda │★★★★★│

This was a wild ride and I am looking forward to seeing how it goes.

│The Girl King││year│ Mika Kaurismäki│ Malin Buska, Sarah Gadon, Michael Nyqvist │★★★★★│

I mean at this point I might as well be on a hunt for sapphic royalty.

It was a bit made-for-tv-movie for me but I still enjoyed it.

│Russian Doll│Episode 1││2019│  Leslye Headland, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler│ Natasha Lyonne, Charlie Barnett, Greta Lee│★★★★│

I had no idea what was happening but It was fun and I’m hoping to get to the rest of the season at some point.

│The Bold Type│Season 1││2017│ Sarah Watson│ Katie Stevens, Aisha Dee, Meghann Fahy│★★★★★│

I started this on the very last day of the month because I was anxious and sad and needed something to calm me down and make me happy… Or so I thought.

What I actually needed was a cathartic watch of women kicking ass and tackling lots of issue and to just cry and cry and cry which is exactly what I got from The Bold Type and I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!!!!

     Music

Mostly I’ve just be listening to music I can belt out and cry…

│Dodie│Sick of Losing Soulmates│Monster│Human│She│Burned Out│Secret For the Mad│

│Troye Sivan│i’m so tired…│

│Noah Cyrus│Mad At You│Sadness│Good Cry│

│Julia Michaels│Anxiety feat. Selena Gomez│Happy│Deep│What a Time feat. Nail Horan│

│Lauren Jauregui│Expectations│

│Billie Ellish│idontwannabeyouanymore│lovely w/ Khalid│when the party’s over│

│Ruin My Life│Zara Larsson│

Past Grey Watches

 Grey Watches // I Wanna Bone Jude Law and Kate Winslet – The Holiday

 Grey Watches // It Has To Be A Shit Show – A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding

 Grey Watches // I Hate It So Much I Love It – A Christmas Prince

Use Your Words Highlights

 2019 Ahead // It’s Twentybiteen, You Ready?

 January in Review // I Cried, Laughed, Ate Pasta, Celebrated My Birthday & Completed TWO Read-A-Thons/Challenges

 February Ahead // I’m Finally Going To Read The Raven Cycle Series & It’s Black History Month + A Great Resource for Education!!!!!

 Grey Reads // Everything’s On Fire and I Couldn’t Be Happier – Girls of Paper and Fire

 Tag // The Library Lover’s Book Tag – I Am a Library Fiend

     Blogosphere Highlights

│Krystin @ Here’s The Fucking Twist│Opinion: Withdrawing My Support of ‘Woman in the Window’ & AJ Finn Is Creepy AF.│True Crime Tuesday: The San Francisco Witch Killers│

│Lauren @ Northern Plunder│Announcing Blogs & Tea | Online blogger help group│

│Rain @ BOOKDRAGONISM│HOW TO CONQUER YOUR TBR PILE IN SIX (OR SEVEN) WAYS│

│Destiny @ Howling Libraries│BEST OF 2018: HORROR│

│Jamieson @ Jamishelves│some of my favourite tropes in books│BOOK TAG (ORIGINAL): Books I WANT to read, but don’t want to READ│

│Vicky @ Vicky Who Reads│Heroine by Mindy McGinnis: A Harrowing Tale About Addiction│Ace Reading Recommendations from An Arm and A Meg! │The Ultimate YA Romance Reading Recommendation List: 80+ Romances to Fall In Love With This Valentine’s Day!│

│May @ Forever And Everly│Discussing Blogger Appreciation and the Lack of It: Analyzing Answers, Stats, and Graphs From a Survey I Made!│

│Ellyn @ Allonsythornraxxbooks│HOW TO: OUTLINE A BLOG POST│MY 10 STEP GUIDE TO GROWING YOUR BLOG│

│Marie @ Drizzle & Hurricane Books│HOW TO STAY POSITIVE WHILE BOOK BLOGGING│

│Marija @ Inside My Library Mind│The 5 Star Rating System: Why It Does (Not) Work and How I Rate Books│

│Kelly @ Just Another Book in the Wall│MY CONVERSION TO AUDIOBOOKPHILIA // FIRST LISTENING EXPERIENCE AND SURPRISES│THE VALUE OF TEEN VOICES IN THE BOOK BLOGGING COMMUNITY + PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENT!│

│Shealea @ Shut up, Shealea│21 SAPPHIC ROMANCES THAT’LL MAKE YOUR HEART SOFT ON VALENTINE’S DAY│

│Swetlana @ The Caffeinated Bookworm Life│My Goodreads TBR Has 12 Books On It – Here’s Why│6 Reasons Why YOU Should Watch One Day At A Time│

│CW @ The Quiet Pond│Collab: Balancing Book Blogging and Life│

│Madeline @ Caffeine & Writing Dreams│How to Cut Adverbs for Stronger Writing // & When It’s Okay to Use Them│

│Kat @ Novels and Waffles│Stand Out Above The Crowd // 4 Ways To Make Your Free WordPress.com Theme Look Different From Everybody Else’s│My Branding Journey + Four Questions To Ask Yourself While Rebranding // ft. A Free Downloadable Checklist│How in the World I Make My Graphics // A Step-By-Step Tutorial│I Font It That Way // How to Choose the Right Font for Your Blog│By Any Other Name // 5 Steps That Will Help You Choose An Awesome Blog Name (ft. A Free Worksheet!)│This is The End // Q & A Session + A Secret Reveal│

Past Month In Review

 Month in Review // November – I Already Hate Christmas

 Month in Review // Christmas is Over Thank Fuck – December

 January in Review // I Cried, Laughed, Ate Pasta, Celebrated My Birthday & Completed TWO Read-A-Thons/Challenges

Month’s Goals

 Start floor exercises

 Start regularly going for 40-minute walks

 Read 5-7 books

 Get my mental health plan

 Book a therapy session

 Service my car

 Get a massage from mum

 Try and take a mental health day

 Have my name change official!!!!!!

I know I did terribly but I kind of took a mental health weekend. I mean I worked both days but I just relaxed and didn’t go for my walks because I have a bad blister and I think my body just needed the break.

I Left the House

I had to get my car serviced on 7/2 and seeing as I can’t really rely on anyone to help me out and mum was working I had to drop off my car and then find a way to kill time without a car for several hours. So I decided to use my free birthday movie ticket and caught a train to the nearest cinema for that chain.

Two main positives from the whole adventure:

I took public transport for the first time in years and didn’t have an anxiety attack.

The Favourite was amazing.

And then I got my car back from the service and they told me everything that was wrong with it and how much it was going to cost and so that was no great and there were some tears and a panic attack but I don’t know. Hopefully I can work it out.

I was only 80 steps away from hitting 14000 steps on 12/2 so I’m very proud of that!

I Socialised

On 14/2 my aunt came to stay with use for a few days while my cousin was busy having her baby only 5 minutes away from us. In hospital. I feel like I need to clarify that… It’s my cousin’s second baby, he didn’t come until 16/2 I’m pretty sure, and he’s pretty cute I have to admit and hes very calming to be around like my nephew who’s birthday is only a couple of days before.

Speaking of my nephew. It was his birthday 14/2 see we visited him and hes walking around and his whole personality is changing now that he can run around and he’s just so cute I die a little every time I see him. I can’t believe he’s 1 already!

While my aunt was down she made mum and I dinner and cheesecake (15/2)!!!! The dinner was surf and turf which I’ve never had before and it was delicious! and the cheesecake she made from scratch, only going off what flavours I wanted, WITHOUT A RECIPE. My mum nearly died when she was told that. It was so good and I desperately want more… So basically now I have to try and visit her once a month just so I can have cheesecake.

I Did Things

I made myself some protein oat cups (19/2) from scratch WITHOUT a recipe and they’re actually really good considering I had no idea what the fuck I was doing???? It was also the day I officially got my new birth certificate and my name change was complete!!!!!! now I just have to do all the hard part which is changing everything. 

On 22/2 I cried and literally have no idea why. Like there wasn’t anything that triggered it…I just cried. I really need to book a therapy session…

On 25/2 I decided I needed to play the sims and then wasted basically a whole day because some of my mods/ccs were broken and so I was having to figure out which ones it was to get rid of them.

26/2 I actually got to play the sims and I just really needed it??? I also changed my licence over to my new name!!!

On the 27/2 I decided to open a new bank account with a different bank because I haven’t been that happy with my current one for a while. But i didn’t have enough points of ID yet so I can’t access the account…and I didn’t discover that until after I already gave the details to my work so thats where I was paid so that was NOT. GREAT. Thank god my mum could help me out with money until I paid again (hopefully in my old account until I get my new licence in the mail otherwise I’m??? Kinda?? Fucked???

So basically the 28/2 was me crying and fighting anxiety attack while on the phone trying to find SOME way to access my own money… It did not work… I hopefully it is all worked out next week but also I’m not holding my breath.

Past Month Ahead

 Month Ahead // December – I Already Hate It

 Month Ahead // Happy Birthday To Me + Hiatus Announcement – January

 February Ahead // I’m Finally Going To Read The Raven Cycle Series & It’s Black History Month + A Great Resource for Education!!!!!

Outro

What did you do this month? What did you read? What did you watch? What posts did you write that you’re super proud of?

│Blog│Goodreads│Instagram│Twitter│Tumblr│

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