#I tend to change my writing style a bit depending on who I’m writing

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Just finished reading Pez Dispenser Debris (I don’t even go there but I am fueled by Wiki articles and a love for your storytelling) and first of all—amazing!!! 10/10, I think I need to watch this series now. 

Second, I  noticed that (while very much distinct) Yuuta & Izuku have a lot of similarities in the voice you gave them—maybe it’s the constant panic attacks or perhaps both of  them placing blame for everything squarely on their own shoulders, but ough it makes for the perfect blend of gut-punching angst. I’d love to hear any ramblings you currently have about either of them. I am currently obsessed with both of them now and am placing the blame on you <3

I’m gonna pretty heavily discuss some spoilers for my hero academia in this. I figured that was okay since you’d already read my fanfic and the wiki so the cat is out of the metaphorical bag. That being said, maybe wait to read this answer if you want to not be spoiled for more details in my hero.

Yuuta and Izuku absolutely have the most similar voices out of all of my narrators and it is 90% because they are both completely insane and in violent need of a Xanax and a nice soothing cup of chamomile tea. God I love them both so much. They should each be heavily medicated.

My hero academia is a pretty great watch through the Shie Hassaikai arc. The concept is entertaining, the characters are GREAT, and the world building is really cool.

Then the story sort of. Went to shit.

I tried for a while after that, but eventually had to stop watching. My friends and I have a group chat named “horikoshi just call us” because we got so despondent at the writing decisions after that arc.

Horikoshi. If you’re out there. If you’re reading this. Just call us. We just want to help.

That being said, my love for the characters maintains its death grip on me. I simply adore them. They’re delights.

Yuuta and Izuku, on their face, have a lot of similarities as protagonists. The aforementioned insanity and need of Xanax, of course, but the skeleton of the stories has a lot of common touchstones and themes, like:

Both characters have some kind of history with suicidal ideation or tendencies. In the second scene of JJK0, it’s established that Yuuta canonically tried to kill himself. In the first episode of BNHA, Izuku is told to kill himself by his bullies, in an act which appears to be common to izuku’s life, and the only reason Izuku comes up with to not do it is “then you’d get in trouble for telling me to do it.”

Both characters have severe self worth issues. Yuuta’s looking for a reason to be alive at the start of JJK0. He’s looking for a right to be alive. In a way, Izuku is too at the start of BNHA. At the open of action, he is told by everyone in his life that he is useless. His nickname is “Deku,” which uses some of the same kanji as “Dekunobo,” meaning blockhead. The most direct translation were given is that this is a way of calling him useless. He’s the powerless member of a society choked with superpower, and he’s been told his entire life that he can do nothing, that his dreams are pointless, and that he’s a burden who would be better off dead.

They’re both saddled with power they can’t fully control. Yuuta with Rika, and Izuku with One for All, a transferable power that’s too strong to be contained in his body.

They both have a close relationship with an impossibly strong mentor that they are implied to be the successor of. Yuuta with Gojo, as he’s second only to Gojo in the modern age, and Izuku with All Might (aka Toshinori Yaga), who he is more literally taking on the mantle of One for All from.

They both are chugging that Loving Their Friends Juice and have tried to kill grown men with their bare hands as a result

That all being said, they could not be more different characters and honestly aren’t all that similar.

I have this sort of lasting grievance with literary analysis when people take a list of common plot points or events and use them to make the argument that characters are similar or parallel one another. Like, that’s all facial. The real question is how do they substantively handle those events. How do their story arcs treat those things? How does their character react to them?

Yuuta and Izuku’s actual substantive characters don’t really react to those events in the same way at all. The analysis could go on all day in this respect, really, but the biggest difference is how their respective story arcs treat the cornerstone of their original conflicts.

Yuuta opens action with Rika as the cornerstone of his conflict. She’s who he wants to free, she’s who he’s chained to, and it’s her protection of him that makes him think he deserves to die. Izuku’s cornerstone, meanwhile, is his own Quirklessness. He desperately wants to be a hero, and everyone in his life tells him he can’t be because he is Quirkless. He’s useless because he’s Quirkless. He should kill himself because he’s Quirkless. He’s a burden and always will be because he’s Quirkless.

And while Yuuta’s arc reconciles him with his cornerstone, Izuku’s forgoes it entirely.

The story just. Forgets. That he’s Quirkless. They stop talking about it. It never comes up again. It doesn’t make any real big impact on his character or decisions. It’s one of my biggest axes to grind with how the story developed, and it’s actually one of the biggest reasons why I wrote pez dispenser debris.

Pez dispenser debris was actually inspired by this one piece of my hero academia art where Izuku is hugging his younger self. I don’t know if it was official art or fan art, and I have no idea where it is or where to find it because by god have I tried so I can find it and link it for credit/to boost it. I saw it literally years ago, thought “oh that’s cool,” wrote the original first scene of the fic (where Midoriya stops the bus and is hit by the Quirk), wasn’t feeling it, got distracted by other projects, went to law school, graduated law school, signed up to take the bar exam, and was suddenly electrified in the last fucking month of studying with this fugue state of feverish artistic inspiration. I have never written so easily or so compulsively in my life. I’d write for eight unbroken hours and it would be fucking magic every time. It was like an addiction. I was writhing with a need to create and had so much fucking anxiety about the test I was not studying for instead. The words could not be restrained.

Anyway I taught myself three subjects on the plane ride to the state I was taking it in and passed anyway so it’s fine we’re fine

The moral of the story is that this story has been cooking long enough for me to get two more diplomas than I had when I started it and I have no idea where to find that fucking piece of art that inspired it, but if I find it, I’ll reblog it so y’all can see it too.

The thing is, the narrative sort of forcibly excluding Izuku’s past as Quirkless would make total sense to me if it was used as something Izuku himself was doing.

Izuku necessarily had to hide the truth of his former Quirkless status at the start of action—he needed to keep the secret of One for All. Like, he could not let people find out that a Quirk was transferrable, but you know, just the most powerful one, and also he had it, please come torture it out of him.

But as the narrative goes on, that rationale becomes less important. He has people he can trust with it. And yeah, eventually One for All becomes more known, but the discussion is all about him being all might’s successor. Him being Quirkless and how that affected him and still affects him isn’t really discussed or treated as important. And Izuku doesn’t act like it’s important to him either. He never really thinks about it.

And I just hated that. Like. He spent almost his entire life as a member of society who was spit on. He’s had a Quirk for less than a year. How are his experiences with Quirklessness not important to how he interacts with the world?

The other point of contention I had was Mirio.

Mirio is this superstar of a senpai who takes Izuku under his wing. He has an extremely powerful quirk that’s only as effective as it is because he put in the work and learned how to handle it. He’s a perfect, eternally smiling paragon of heroism. He’s flagged early as the one out of everyone, including heroes with established careers, who is most likely to replace All Might.

He’s also the one who was supposed to get One for All.

His mentor had found him and trained him to be All Might’s successor. Before All Might could meet him, however, he found this feral raccoon child in a sewer and said “oh my god I can’t not offer him incomprehensible power within the first three hours of meeting him” and tripped face first into fatherhood.

During a rescue mission, Mirio loses his Quirk in a way that’s borderline irreversible. There’s no known cure, and the only possible one is dependent on a little girl learning how to control an extremely volatile and dangerous quirk and using it in a way she never has before.

So surely, they’re going to commit to that writing decision, right? He’s Quirkless. We’re bringing back having Quirkless characters. It’s going to be this sick as hell juxtaposition between Izuku and Mirio. We are at least going to force Izuku to reflect on his own times as Quirkless or have some kind of discussion about how Mirio is treated differently now that he is Quirkless.

But no. He gets his Quirk back by the next season. We don’t talk about it much. It’s more of a minor inconvenience than anything.

It’s almost as if the show accepted as an actual rule that you couldn’t be a hero without a Quirk. And then just. Forgot. Everything it had to do with its literal protagonist.

Anyway, I hated it.

In contrast, I fucking loved how yuuta’s storyline with Rika ends. That scene where Yuuta’s turning back to Rika, thanking her for loving him, telling him they can die together? I’m obsessed with it. I recently moved across the country and listened to that theme song on loop during the drive.

Yuuta and Rika’s love was unhealthy. They hurt each other. But it wasn’t malicious.

They just didn’t know how to love each other in a way that didn’t hurt.

They were in shit circumstances. But the love was there.

Yuuta felt guilty for Rika’s love for him and his for her almost the entire narrative. He thought he cursed her with his love. He wanted to kill himself because of how she hurt people out of love for him. It’s why I have moments in sea glass gardens where Yuuta talks about begging Rika to stop loving him—he didn’t know why love had to hurt so goddamn bad, and he’s sorry for that, he really is. He wishes he was better at it than he was.

At the end of JJK0, Yuuta truly is the last person who remembers Rika as she was and still loves her for who she is. He’s faced with Geto, who wants to use her as a weapon. Everyone treats her as a threat or a tool, except for Yuuta.

Like. Just that moment. Of loving someone so genuinely, and being the last one who does, and knowing that everyone else will just use them. I’m obsessed with it.

Yuuta reconciles with his love for Rika and her love for him, and they’re both finally freed. It’s this perfect moment of acceptance that I adore. He comes to terms with his past. It doesn’t hurt him so much anymore.

I wrote pez dispenser debris to sort of force Izuku to have that kind of reconciliation. As it is, he hasn’t reconciled with his own Quirklessness and how that affected him. I wanted to give him something he couldn’t physically escape and had to face.

[maaxverstappen]

I’ve been asking ppl cus im nosy. What’s your writing process like if any? Do u have a preferred place or time. Preferred device. Do u write rough drafts then edit or is it much more considered. How do u decide that an idea is worth fleshing out or pursuing if it looks like it’s plotty. Pls yap at length if u so wish — wiz

i love this question!! and would love to know other answers so if you want to reblog them i shall be on the lookout 👀.

i answered partly here so will just like build on that!!

the process is that i’ll have an idea and depending on how large it is write out some sort of outline. my preference for all planning in life is on paper so i have a little journal that ill write out some ideas in. kind of brainstorm / mind map style of just jotting down random ideas that come to mind.

however, with longer fics like my current post-as-i-go wip i have to do it digital bc so much changes and it’s too long (see pics in previous ask). that one i actually started planning in my notes app on a plane bc the idea had to come out of me someway and i was really excited about it. i then transferred it to a google doc and added onto my chapter per chapter outline (1st pic in previous ask). i felt like that was a bit overwhelming for understanding the overall plot so then i went and made a simple overview of the key plot points per chapter (the 2nd pic in previous ask) just so i felt like i had a better understanding of the goal per chapter.

now when i sit down to write a chapter ill get both the detailed notes and the main plot points and just write whatever i feel like in order to get to the goal of the chapter.

for shorter one shot fics i’ll either have no full outline or a one page idea list kind of thing. for instance, for worth the trouble i knew that it would start and end in the present time and then everything in between would be a flashback, but i didn’t know the flashbacks would be non chronological until i was writing it. same for the chewing gum aspect that ends up being quite an important part of the symbolism and that almost weaves the parts together, that wasn’t a *thing* until i was almost finished with the rough draft and i then went to add it in to previous scenes.

for my long fic i have to be a bit more calculated with the hidden messages/foreshadowing as i can’t go back and edit published chapters lmao so that is a little more thought out + i keep track of loose ends to tie together at some point.

editing is a bit of a harder one. for my long fic my overal editing is per chapter, but i do tend to go back and edit per section too. like right now I’m writing a texting scene and first i wrote the plain texting dialogue, then i went back to add the bits in between from characters’ pov. then i’ll read over it fully and edit where needed. finally when the whole chapter is done ill read over it and edit again, but at that point it’s mainly grammar and punctuation.

my main writing issues i’ve noticed so far is that i tend to switch tenses without realising so that’s something i look out for when editing. i also am always worried they don’t *do* enough so i like to think “hmm what action can i add in here to make them more human” when editing.

so far only worth the trouble has been beta read, the rest i do myself. if I’m stuck i will talk through a lot of it with my partner who will give me some ideas and just like help lmao (she’s also the one that beta read wtt!). but she’s not in the f1 fandom so it’s a little hard to have her beta read for characterisation and specific plot points so i do that myself. like when she beta read wtt she gave a few points of feedback that weren’t too relevant bc the average f1 fic reader would understand (like the significance of spa21, there is no need to explain it).

I’m a baby fic writer so a lot of my process will be redefined and refined as i go I’m sure.

as for deciding what to write, it’s really whatever captures my attention. the prompt for help me hold onto you is one i really liked and a trope i love reading myself. i was also ready to challenge myself to a longer plot fic and i was really excited about the idea so i just went for it! my main consideration is really just how excited i am for it.

i will say that i am currently really struggling with perfectionism / imposter syndrome. I’m having a hard time getting the words onto paper bc it feels like it’ll never be as good as my favourite authors anyway so what’s the point. (which is now also impacting the way i read fics bc it makes me sad that ill never write anything as good as what I’m reading lol)

i generally write on my laptop! in a google doc with grammarly activated and the word count on screen (which pisses me off bc i have to turn it back on after every refresh). i wrote my latest crafty!oscar on my phone (bc i was too excited to wait till i got to my laptop) but wouldn’t ever do that for anything much longer or plot-ier than that.

i fear this has gotten very long. i know u said yap away but …. i perhaps have yapped too close to the sun.

[alex-the-nonsensologist]

Disney Dreamland - Part 1: World Galleria

I posted about my idea of a Mysteryland a while back and decided to finally post the rest of my ideas for my personal Disney Park (nicknamed Disney Dreamland; may change the name later, who knows). This outline is a mix of ideas and random commentary related to each idea (I tend to blab a lot in my writing. Sorry in advance). Some ideas are half-baked as I only have an idea how I want them to look and feel rather than function, other ideas are intentionally left vague because they are dependent on experts on the subjects (which I am not). Also, I had trouble coming up with nice-sounding names, so that's why you’ll see a lot of names that are just basic descriptions in quotation marks. Would love some feedback wherever possible!

A bit of background, I originally envisioned this park as a Disneyland in New York (it's one of my favorite self-indulgent daydreams), and that led to my park being a sort of homage to the 1964/1965 New York World's Fair by featuring some iteration of all four of the attractions that debuted there, as well as my version of Main Street being a sort of mini World’s Fair. 

Shout-out to @disneylanddilettante , I was inspired to write this after reading her ideal version of Disneyland.

World Galleria

My version of Main Street would be under a lovely glass roof to shield from the weather, and resemble a Victorian arcade. Inspired by Tokyo’s World Bazaar (their equivalent of Main Street), and in homage to similar places throughout Europe’s history, such as The Great Exhibition of 1851, Passage des Panoramas in Paris, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Italy, etc. 

The architecture would be mostly Victorian with a bit of Turn of the 20th Century. To help carry the theme of “World’s Fair”, international restaurants would be featured here; their building exteriors would follow the Victorian look, but their signage, window displays, and interiors would fully reflect their respective cultures (for example, see Restaurant Hokusai in Tokyo’s World Bazaar).

The entire place would have plenty of ventilation, especially in the summer, to prevent it from feeling like a greenhouse. To help traffic flow, the street would have crossroad branches in the middle like Tokyo does, leading out into Adventureland on the left, and Discoveryland on the right. The parade does not run down this route (more on that later). This allows the center crossroads space to have special decorations for seasonal events, again just like Tokyo does. 

The entire avenue would have accessible second stories to make space for everything. I would also love to have at least one little alcove or mini-courtyard somewhere to relax, containing a small garden with a decorative fountain. 

Disney Dreamland Railroad main station: Victorian style with partial glass ceilings. Other stations will be in each of the five lands, all appropriately themed, and with dioramas in the tunnels teasing each land’s theme / attractions. I also think it would be really neat if the park’s entrance ticket booths were underneath this station.

Great Moments in Storytelling: Successor to Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, one of the four New York World’s Fair attractions. Due to personal reasons, I’m not entirely comfortable making any President, past or present, shown as a celebrity or a friendly buddy. So I decided, how about famous authors instead? Perhaps Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, or all three and more? There would also be a narrative or discussion of some kind, so it’s not just them spouting random popular quotes from their works.

“Mini Disneyland model” : The models of the Storybook Land Canal Boats are a very neat idea, but I personally prefer taking my time to see models up close, not in the blink of an eye from afar. I think it would be really cool to have a scale model of the original Disneyland as an homage, and a learning exhibit.

“Galleria Cinema”: Showcases old Disney shorts, including Steamboat Willie, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and the Alice Comedies. Maybe on special occasions it could even showcase foreign films, like The Red Balloon.

Penny Arcade: Mutoscopes and other coin-operated games. 

World Emporium shop.

"Snack tin shop": In Asia the parks sell snacks in these absolutely GORGEOUS decorative tins. This shop could sell a variety of international snacks with unique Disney art themed to each region / culture on the tin. 

Wishing You Were Here: Stationary shop and post office. Send postcards to your loved ones. Yearly calendar with exclusive artwork available here (Tokyo’s calendar artwork is ASTOUNDING). 

For restaurants, I would include restaurants with the following cuisines: 

Japanese, as a nod to Tokyo Disney Resort (French and Chinese cuisine will be elsewhere in the park).

Norwegian, Moroccan, and Canadian, as a nod to the remaining countries of EPCOT that won’t have restaurants elsewhere in the park.

Thai, as a nod to Amphibia without specifically being IP themed, though there could be a few hidden references to the show in the decor and menu.

Greek. Interior could be themed to mythology and have a few hidden references in the decor to the animated Hercules.

There won’t be any American cuisine in this area as they can already be found elsewhere in the park.

‘‘ it’s a small world ’’

One of the four New York World’s Fair attractions. In place of the classic Disney castle, here I put "it’s a small world" as my park’s icon. If you think about it, Small World is in its own way a kind of castle, it certainly looks like one, but also a small city. I think it neatly adds on to the theming of World Galleria.  Shout-out to @pureimagineering , who also imagined Small World as a park icon, but for different reasons.

This version’s facade would be castle-sized. Color scheme could be either pastels, or white with various shades of blue, and touches of gold. Entrance and queue would be on the back of the building to leave the front free for live entertainment, and nighttime fireworks and projection shows. The main central garden plaza hub would at least be the size of Tokyo’s, but nowhere near as big as Shanghai's, who only gets away with it because their castle is so dang huge. The hub would be surrounded by a river making it an island, much like Orlando’s hub. Features include a structure inspired by Tower of the Four Winds, and fun topiaries. For my park, the parade would follow a similar route to Tokyo and Shanghai, originating from the west and wrapping around the central hub before exiting eastward. 

There would also be a back garden plaza behind the ride building, with plenty of topiaries, flower gardens, and a little river running through the garden with lovely bridges crossing over it. This area transitions into Fantasyland. There would be an international buffet restaurant and a gift shop placed on the second floor of Small World, above the ride, with the entrance also on the back of the building. The classic clock tower would of course be in front, but there’d also be a smaller version in the back for the people in the queue and the restaurant.

A World of Tastes: International buffet. Interior architecture would resemble the finale room of the ride. Buffet would feature a little bit of something from every single country featured in the ride, with emphasis on cuisine not already featured anywhere else in the park.

‘‘it’s a small world’’ Toy Shop: Does anyone remember the singing Small World Animators’ Dolls that Disney Store released back in 2013 / 2014? I would love to have this store re-release them, as well as mini playset versions (non-singing). The store can of course also sell other Disney character plush, and plush keychains in unique outfits like the ones sold in Tokyo.

The Ride Itself:

I definitely want to have a queue designed by Joey Chou like the one he did for Tokyo’s version’s 2018 renovation. He is pretty much this generation’s Mary Blair. I just love all the kinetic sculptures, the delightful murals, and star-shaped lights dangling from the ceiling. It’s all so adorable and colorful!

For the ride itself, there would be more countries added. For example, Europe could have a few more Eastern European / Slavic countries at the end to transition into Asia. Similar to Hong Kong’s version, the Asia room would also have more dolls and scenes, but rearranged so that the Middle East is in the back to better flow into the Africa room. I would also definitely add the Mandarin and Cantonese versions of the song to Asia’s audio. It would be great if there were more countries represented in Africa, or at least a portion added for the savanna, a marketplace scene, and Mount Kilimanjaro. Maybe also include audio of the song in Swahili and Zulu. I’m not opposed to a North America room, so long as there is decent representation of various Native American tribes, and Canada.

For the ride music, I’d love a version that closely resembled the soundtrack that Paris used to have. I think the instrumentation and vocals from that version is simply top tier joy-inducing. For the finale room I’d use the EPIC orchestral rendition from the Small World finale unit in Tokyo’s Electrical Parade Dreamlights.

While I myself have no problems with the dolls, I am willing for the dolls’ faces to be redesigned to be slightly more cartoony to reduce any uncanny valley.

Controversial opinion, I personally have little issue with most of the Disney character cameos that are in the Hong Kong, California, and Tokyo versions of the ride. Since most of the human characters are portrayed in doll form, and the non-humans match the stylized look of the animals throughout the ride, they tend to blend in rather well and make for a fun Easter Egg game. I will admit, some characters stand out too much, like the Toy Story gang, or had unnecessarily extravagant sets added just for their sake, like Rapunzel who had her whole tower added in Tokyo. As a middle ground, for my version of Small World, I narrowed down the Disney cameos to only 4 specific groups in homage to the movies that Mary Blair had a heavy influence on. 

Alice in Wonderland: I’m a little biased as Lewis Carroll’s Alice is my favorite book. Alice and the White Rabbit fit in well at their current location next to the UK chessboard, and are fine to leave as is. 

Peter Pan: Peter and TinkerBell flying above the audience works just fine as they are decently hidden out of view most of the time. While I think Wendy sitting on the moon is a very cute image, I’ll leave her out to keep the cameos to a minimum.

Cinderella: The current versions stand out a little too much, especially Hong Kong’s where she and Prince Charming have the castle added behind them. For my version, I would only have Gus and Jaq tucked away on the Eiffel Tower (where Mary’s cameo is hanging out), but I would also have the Eiffel Tower rendered in white, blue, and silver in the style of Cinderella Castle.

The Three Caballeros: While Donald, José, and Panchito stand out the most of the four cameos I’ve picked, they were part of a genuine cultural movement as a result of the Good Neighbor policy, not to mention warmly received by Latin America, so they’re perfectly in the spirit of Small World, and I think they’re fine to leave as is.

Starting in the hub, the five themed genre lands of the park, going clockwise, are:

Adventureland

Mysteryland

Fantasyland

Create-It-Land

Discoveryland

[absolutebl]

Hi, i have been bingeing on all your and i absolutely love reading about the BL world from your perspective, I have learned quite a bit from your posts.

I just want to share some of my thoughts and pick your brain on some things I would like to understand.

Started watching BLs about a year ago and I mostly stuck to the few korean BLs that were available and also some stuff from Taiwan and the Chinese bromances. I know Thailand dominates the BL industry but when I first started watching i kinda avoided because (a) their language kind of throws me off, I don't know if this is offensive but it is something i struggled with during the first few shows and even now that I am used to it I still need time to adjust every time I start a new video. Thai is very different from korean, japanese, and chinese which I am very comfortable with.

The second reason I hesitated (this part is where the actual ask is) was their acting style. Now, I am not a professional who can give any criticism on these stuff, my opinions are based on personal taste and observations.

My main ask is that do you think acting styles change based on culture, like a lot of thai BLs tend to favor the slapstick comedy. Because of that their reactions and emotions tend to be exaggerated (I don't mean this in a negative way, just the only description I could think of.) I have seen a lot of subtle and great acting and emoting from them but kind of big way of showing emotions tend to remain.

I don't know if that made any sense, my thoughts are not translating well at all. Any way i hope you get what I am trying to get at.

Have a nice day🤗🤗

Ooo, what an interesting question and lots to unpack.

I’m not going to turn this into a proper blog post just going to ramble. 

I do go into language barriers in the BL producing countries a little here. BL Breakdowns by Country 

Struggling with Thai Language 

I actually really do understand this. It will depend on your native language, but it will certainly influence your enjoyment. I recommend studying the language a little and learning about it from a kind of cultural mathematical perspective, it makes it a lot more fun and interesting (and you’ll get the humor). 

Here’s my linguistic starter post on Thai for BL watchers. 

It always helps me become sympathetic when I become intellectually curious about soemthing, anyway. 

So my brain is mostly southern British English trained (not so flat as American) plus a little Spanish. But I hear Thai as very tonal and occasionally quite high and screechy and full of ticks (repeated words) because of the polite particles. It took me about a year of continued exposure to just not hear all that anymore, partly because I was training my brain to translate and understand it. 

Here’s my brain’s emotional relationships... 

I really struggle with Mandarin, it all sounds very much the same to me, the words seem to run together. This is how I feel about French too. 

On the flip side I find Korean extremely enjoyable and sexy, I don’t understand most of it, but I like listening to it a lot. This is also how I feel about Italian. 

Both German and Russian always sound angry to me. 

Most of the Scandinavian languages seem just comfortable and fun and friendly (and sometimes a little silly). (I grew up around a couple of these, in part.) 

Japanese when spoken by men just seems preternaturally low in the chest, and when spoken by women too cute and girly. But then sometimes I just kinda like the way it rolls off the tongue, and a lot of the repeated sayings and politeness just sound adorable to me. 

Vietnamese sounds very sad to me, almsot like a dirge. 

When I turn off the part of my brain, or try to, or have been living in a place where I’ve stopped hearing English on a daily basis, I think English is (most of the time) a very ugly language: chaotic and non-formulaic, sometimes a little brutal sounding. But I love its flexibility and breath of vocabulary and nuance, especially for writing. (Obvs) 

All of this is because of the culture and language of my various upbringings, also music tonality. What makes your trained happy music or sad music influences what we hear as happy, sad, aggravating, calming. How we express questioning, excitement, enthusiasm. Spacers and filler words (like um) and breath pauses. Body language (how close we stand when talking to each other). Facial expressions. All of this is going to impact your immersion in a different society’s pup culture and performance style from a linguistic perspective. 

So I guess what I am say is, it is possible to get over, if you sort of flex your brain a bit in a new way. 

Thai Acting Style 

So (now) Korea film style is the most western influenced of the ones you talked about, with Taiwan and the Philippines following up. China is a little more reserved in many ways, and very married to 4 act structure, which can make it feel over long and narratively off-beat to a western audience. I’m not sure where your film consumption background is coming from, but if you like the Wuxia bromances (like Untamed etc) but can also take the Korean short form BLs, my guess would be you’re coming out of sf/f fandom of some kind with a tolerance for epics but also shorts. 

You don’t talk about Japanese cinema, which is an interesting case (and most geeks having passing familairty with). It is the one that bridges the gap between the pretty atmospheric stuff, dark themes, but also some serious slap stick and pantomime action, which I suspect is what is turning you off of Thai BL. You might explore some of their stuff. 

I talk about it here, the weeds of Japanese filming style in a not entirely flattering manner. 

Also here in a history of live action yaoi in Japan

And here is something all about their (and BLs) darker traditions 

You could try something like Cherry Magic, which combines softness and sweetness with slapstick, but isn’t quite as in your face a soem of the others. If that’s too much, try Restart After Come Back Home, His the movie, Life: Love on the Line, Old Fashion Cupcake, and Seven Days. All of these avoid the panto style over-acting and sound effects that are the biggest turn offs for most western audiences

So for both Japan and Thailand the love of pratfall, or physical comedy humor comes from their local historical theatrical traditions and variety shows. This can be seen by those of use who did not grow up with is as: childish, scenery chewing, or over-acting. 

The addiction to carton sound effects, triple shots (where they repeat the same action from multiple angles, especially around intimacy) mostly comes from anime/cartoons which were tailored to the adult market for much longer historically in most of Asia. (If you think about the British pantomime tradition you will realize that many European countries do have this style of acting, it’s just been confined to the children’s sphere). Although there’s also American soap operas and movie comedies (like Bridesmaids, for example) or Spanish telenovelas that are very scenery chewing. 

What you’re probubly responding negatively to is in part a slight feel of being talked down too, or catered to, or spoon fed (emotions, acting, expression, sound) as if you were a child. I still feel this sometimes. Equally, I get annoyed by the sexual restraint that then is coupled to this style, in Japan in particular, which also makes the romance feel downplayed. But that’s my upbringing rearing its head. And, like any other cultural tradition, you will either grow used to it after continued exposure, or just never learn to enjoy the taste. There are some flavors that are harder than others to adapt too if you don’t grow up with them, whether food, language, performance, or music. 

That said, there are some Thai BLs that are a lot more gritty and serious, with more subtle and nuanced acting, especially now. Here’s some I think you might particularly be able to tolerate:

Not Me 

Manner of Death 

3 Will Be Free 

He’s Coming To Me 

Tale of Thousand Stars 

I Told Sunset About You 

Love Sick (actually I’d be intersted in your take on this one) 

And *maybe* 

SOTUS 

Bad Buddy 

My Ride 

Until We Meet Again 

Love By Chance 

Also you might like Pinoy BL Like in the Movies. 

(source) 

[bg-sparrow]

For the writing asks, do the 3s: 3, 13, 23, etc.

For this fanfic writer ask game!

3. On a scale of 1-10 how much do you enjoy incorporating romance into the average story?

I’d say 6 or 7. I’m a romantic, but I don’t really read romance? I’m more into the romance being a secondary or tertiary storyline. And a good romance, to me, is built upon the small moments of the big, hectic adventure of life, so that’s where I love finding it in a good story!

13. Talk about a writing experience that has pleasantly surprised you.

There Are No Roads (Time Circuits #2.5) was a huge surprise to me. In my OC x canon rewrite, it was meant to be this 10K oneshot of Doc’s time in 1885 before Marty showed up, and it turned in a 40K, 9-chapter fic where each chapter was dedicated to a month, the last of which detailed the timeline of September 1885B (if Doc had been shot at the festival/ Marty hadn’t shown up). I loved the minor characters that took on a life of their own, the subplots that flourished, and the exploration I got to do of the canon characters. I’m still, to this day, immensely proud of it and reread it often.

23. How do you deal with writer's block?

At the moment? Not very well, lol. For real, usually, getting out an actual notebook with a pen and just writing out “Why do we feel stuck?” and prompting myself like that leads to me talking to myself for a page or so until my brain untangles something. Or I’ll ask, “What part are we excited to write next?”, list a scene or two, then tell myself to just write a line or two for them right now (which ends up turning into a few hundred words). I still panic when it happens, though, like I don’t know if it will help. 

(Also, apologies to anyone reading it, but I am a little blocked and lack motivation on Once Upon a Time in the North right now. But it will get done!)

33. Do you start with the characters or the plot when writing?

I guess the characters come to mind first with a vague haze of a plot around them. As I build one, the other fills out, and it’s a back and forth. Then, as I go on, it becomes, “how does the character react if I do this? What if their reaction is the opposite of what I expect? What does that say for their character AND the story?” They’re very co-dependent to me.

43. How did writing change you?

Writing grounds me. It’s the ability to have control and create order with words and ideas I lack in real life, especially as someone who went undiagnosed with severe ADHD until adulthood. I was always centered and focused the most when I had good music structuring a scene in my mind, and I love editing because of that control I have to form the narrative just the way I want. 

53. When writing, do you have an outline? And do you stick to it?

For longer fics, definitely. I try to tell myself to adhere to the basic structure I’ve laid out, but I’ve moved stuff around, like moving scenes from the end of one chapter to the beginning of the next or, within a chapter, rearranging those scenes. After Time Circuits, I gave up the rigid outlining for a bit just to see how I’d fare, but I still end up with loose outlines in my notebooks when working stuff out. 

63. What’s the best insult you’ve read in a fic?

I have no idea! That’s a great question! I can’t really think of one off the top of my head!

73. How do you visualize scenes? Do you see it like a movie in your head, or do the words just flow?

I’m a very visual person, so when I write, there is a movie playing out on the page. Then, once I have it out, I go back and fill in the introspection and detail the setting a bit more.

83. Less is more or more is more?

Less is more. God, I’ve been learning that lesson since I started taking writing seriously in college (again, because I tend to be wordy). Learning how to be succinct and hit people with just the right words is a lot of fun, and I like to practice that with the many drabbles I write throughout the year. They are great practice!

93. Do you hear other people’s writing styles when they talk?

So, and this might sound strange, but I don’t talk to a lot of writers to where I audibly hear them? I chat with fellow writers online, and I can see the similarities if I’m looking for them, but for the most part, this doesn’t really apply to me! I’ve never talked to/ chatted with someone where it was immediately apparent. Sometimes I think I’m that person, though!

Thanks for the ask!! :D

[lorddeath]

we are back at it again, boyos - i know i posted something about this like, two years ago, but times have changed and so have my hyperfixations. : - ) 

hellooo. my name is katie, i’m 21+ yo, i work a fulltime job and i have five cats and a dog with my partner in crime and girlfriend. i do have 12 years of experience in the rp community both on and off tumblr (christ), and while i have tried to find a platform that suits my needs, i have come to the conclusion that tumblr is really the only place to find people like me, so i am opening up a ... roleplay partner call. 

looking for:

someone to write ships/etc. with

someone who is willing to be friends outside of rp!

a buddy to throw hcs and ideas back and forth with all night rather than sleep (last part is kind of a joke but also isn’t 👀)

someone that is okay with/encourages playlists or pinterest boards for ships, characters, etc. and enjoys character development 

putting preferences and fandom specifications under a read more! 

my preferences:

i write in third person and tend to create para/novella style responses. fluent in english. no *action* writing, please.

smut’s cool. i enjoy writing it and do not need to fade to black, so if partners can be 18+, that would be fab.

i prefer to write over discord. willing to give my discord out to people who respond.

i am most comfortable writing canon/canon ships, however i do have a slew of ocs that i would not mind a) creating aus for and b) writing with other ocs or canon characters.

needing someone that is patient with replies - i am mentally ill af and my creative motivation waxes and wanes. i need as much room as possible to make sure that i can write a decent response to any active roleplays, and sometimes i can crank them out in minutes or days. it really just depends. 

things/tropes that i want to write:

give me things like vampires, witches, werewolves - fantasy is HUGE for me right now!

friends to lovers

enemies to lovers

f/f, m/m, f/m !!

platonic love 

doesn’t have to be fandom related, could just be oc/oc!

fandoms:

star wars (BIG HYPERFIXATION RN) - i am a huge prequels fan but i am willing to write pretty much any stage of the saga

characters i am willing to write: anakin skywalker, obi-wan kenobi, satine kryze, padme amidala, leia organa, han solo, poe dameron, myriad of different ocs. others upon request. 

ships: obikin, obitine (!! a big one for me right now!) anidala, obidala, finnpoe, canon/oc. 

dragon age - i have played all three games and am eagerly awaiting the next

characters i am willing to write: anders, solas, cullen rutherford, possibly alistair if i am in a certain mood, myriad of different ocs, others upon request. 

ships: solavellan, anders/hawke (male or female), canon/oc. 

mass effect - i have played the first two games, and i am 3/4s of the way through the 3rd

characters i am willing to write: garrus, thane, kaidan, liara, femshep, maleshep upon request, ocs. 

ships: garrus/shepard, garrus/tali, thane/shepard, kaidan/shepard, liara/shepard.... y’know, any of the companions/shepard tbh. 

fallout - i have played fallout new vegas, 4, and 76.

characters i am willing to write: this one is a bit of a smaller list but hancock is a favorite of mine. ocs are a thing here, too. i can try to write other canon characters upon request. 

ships: available for discussion. 

star trek - i have seen all of the nu!trek movies and most of the original series.

characters i am willing to write: leonard mccoy, montgomery scott, spock, ocs. 

ships: spock/jim, jim/bones, spock/bones, canon/oc. 

tertiary fandoms/series that i am well-versed in: 

psycho pass

castlevania

netflix’s the witcher

good omens

example of my writing and shameless plug: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18647398?view_adult=true

if you have made it this far... COOL BEANS. thanks for being here! feel free to message me here on tungle dot hell if you are interested in any of the above. i am always willing to clarify or answer any questions. 

thanks!

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Thoughts on First Thing/Collaborator – Daniel Kitson (2023):

I wrote a post last week about how I saw the livestream of Kitson’s Ghost Story show, which is pretty much a remake of the Christmas show he’d already done. That’s one of the only two full shows he’s done this year (not counting just messing around with improv/up-a-chicken-style WIP), and the other one is also pretty much just a slightly different version of a show he’s done before. Which backs up the veracity of the thing he’s said in almost everything he’s done this year, which is that he’s out of ideas.

And yet, I am not complaining one bit. You’d think I should be, right? And I could understand another Kitson fan, a proper one who lives in Britain and has been going to see him in person for years, being a bit disappointed. But I haven’t been. I have been collecting all the Daniel Kitson I can find for the past year and a half, and lots of it has been similar, but I like hearing the updates as he progresses in both his artistic skills and worldview.

I think a lot of his shows can be considered companions to each other. Where Once Was Wonder feels like an update to Weltanschuung. Keep is a 10-year-later update to 66A Church Road. Something Other Than Everything is an update to Impotent Fury of the Privileged. A Short Series of Disagreements Presented Here in Chronological Order is… he was up against a deadline to have something to take to America and couldn’t think of anything new so he basically wrote Gregory Church again. Maybe a Ghost Story is A Story for Christmas but for Halloween. I enjoy spotting the many parallels between Mouse and Tree. And I realize that depending how generous you want to be, you could call something a “parallel” or “homage”, or you could call it derivative (of his own work, to be fair, which is at least better than being derivative of someone else). But I do tend to be generous, looking at any repetition as a “two cakes” situation. Why would I complain about having more of a thing I love?

I’d previously said the companion show to Polyphony is As of 152 GMT on Friday 27 April 2012, This Show Has No Title. I still think that’s true, and those two plus First Thing (which I’m going to call the show that was called First Thing in London and Edinburgh over the summer and has now been called Collaborator in Bristol, I’m picking one name to save time and I knew it as First Thing for too long to have changed how I think of it yet) can be a sort of trilogy. Three shows in which Daniel Kitson struggles to think of a new idea, so instead, he writes a play in which he is the main character, and the play is about his own writing process and back catalogue and it discusses his current lack of ideas. 2012, 2015, and 2023.

If anything, the fact that he’s done this twice before makes me less concerned about him spending 2023 insisting he has no new ideas. Okay, Daniel. You said that in 2012. You said it via an hour-long well-written story that plays with fourth walls and reality and shit like that. Then you had several new ideas in the next few years, wrote a few more lovely things (Analog.Ue, Tree, the Christmas thing, After the Beginning), and then wrote another play about how he doesn’t have any ideas. Then wrote a few more great things, and another play eight years later about having no ideas. Surely he has at least a few more cycles of this left in him before retiring to make pots for the rest of his life. And if he doesn’t, then he’s created lots of wonderful original things already and I wouldn’t begrudge him a few years of repetition before going off to make pots for the rest of his life.

So those are my thoughts about it in the larger context of that back catalogue that he wishes everyone would stop going on about. Aside from that context, however, I think First Thing is an enormously fun show. Especially the latest versions, when he hasn’t made fundamental changes but has cleaned up a lot of the dialogue, made it faster and snappier and it flows well and the jokes are spread consistently and the points are made in a sensible order and it’s just really well done.

It's Daniel Kitson at his most meta, it references all the older things about Daniel Kitson and when it runs out of those it starts referencing itself. It’s a retrospective of his career, and to be fair to him, I think his career has been long and varied enough to justify at least two retrospectives. But it is more than that, it’s got ruminations on art in general, and performance in general, and audience participation in general.

It’s kind of an apology, and I always find it interesting when artists do that. Write some art that exists to apologize for different art they’ve made. Simon Amstell’s Grandma’s House. Great Big Sea’s Dear Hometown. Daniel Kitson’s First Thing. What an odd assortment of examples.

In this case he’s looking back at the early days of his career, which I of course find interesting as an early 00s comedy historian, specifically a Chocolate Milk Gang historian, specifically, really, a Daniel Kitson historian. It makes a lot of references to things I’ve heard about, and in a couple of instances to things I’ve actually heard, in recordings from those years. I find it really fascinating to go directly between First Thing and hearing a few specific old recordings from the early 00s where he’s doing the things that he apologizes for in First Thing. Though I think most of the stuff for which he owes apologies is even older than that and from before most of my collection, from the late 90s. There is a documentary from 1999 that documents a little bit of it, and… yep, it is pretty rough. It’s not great.

He's obviously talking about his Late ‘n’ Live days as well, which I do really enjoy seeing, because I think it’s funny when Daniel Kitson is dragging a drunk Johnny Vegas off stage or wrestling David O’Doherty or rap battling David O’Doherty (they did do a lot of that back in the day) or taking apart a cow. Probably less funny when he’s yelling horrible things at audience members, though to be fair you could argue that some of those audience members were very literally asking for it at Live ‘n’ Live, I don’t mean in the sense that they deserved it, I mean in the sense that they showed up to a gig like that because they wanted that to happen. And if they really, honestly want that to be happen, then I guess that can be fun too.

This gets into all kinds of other questions about when and why it’s all right for a comedian to call the audience cunts. Obviously it has a lot to do with context, with whether they showed up to a type of gig where that should be expected, with whether they were heckling in a way to suggest they want that (which is its own problem – rewarding heckling by giving them the thing they want is a good way to ruin comedy overall).

I’d say it has to do with more specific things too – I wrote recently about seeing people online say they were upset that Daniel Kitson called an audience member fat in 2006, and someone else said he used to do that stuff but doesn’t anymore, and someone else said yes he does because he called someone a pedophile recently. Now this is a difficult thing to justify and there’s really no way to make it sound all right out of context, but I think that’s not a fair comparison because calling someone fat is a lot worse than calling them a pedophile. Because the former is a genuine insult, they probably really are fat and you’re telling them you think that’s wrong and you’re telling all the fat people in the crowd that you think how they look is wrong and you don’t respect those members of your audience. While calling someone a pedophile is very obviously a joke and doesn’t pick on a real thing about the person. However… that’s a tough distinction to explain, I’m not confident that I did it successfully here or that I could anywhere. All I can say is I’ve heard Daniel Kitson call people fat (in very old recordings) and I’ve heard him call people pedophiles and I feel like I can hear the difference. You could also make an absolutely fair argument that pedophiles do actually exist and there could be people in the crowd who’ve had their lives ruined by them and won’t enjoy hearing a comedian make light of the idea that one could be in the room. I don’t have a good answer to that, I think I might have just talked myself out of my own justification. I similarly don’t have an amazing explanation for why I as a feminist think the word “cunt” is okay even though I’m often less cool with a word like “bitch”, except to say that “dick” is also an insult because I think we’ve just agreed that genitals are taboo in society so therefore they’re a mean thing to call someone and the insults don’t have to be gendered unless you gender them. I’d be fairly suspicious of a man who only called women cunts, but I’m pleased to say Daniel Kitson applies it liberally across genders.

These are flimsy explanations at best, I’m not really confident in any of them. I just mean that I have heard Daniel Kitson call people cunts in a way that I’ve found hilarious, and I’ve heard him call other people names in a way that’s felt horrible and mean, and I wish I could find a more logically consistent way to differentiate between the two. I’ve also heard some comedians say almost the same thing but in slightly different ways and slightly different contexts, leaving one seem like a funny bit of harsh crowd work and another seem horrible. The status of the comedian comes into play too – if they choose to play a lower status then they can get away with more because it feels like punching up. But also, if they actually are too low a status, then I think excessive insulting can feel a bit cheap and desperate. Kitson might be in the perfect position that way, that he genuinely is sufficiently high-status so the audience trusts that he knows what he’s doing and can do this without really hurting anyone (anymore), but also plays low status enough so it doesn’t feel like he’s doing any real harm.

Back in the day – in the really early days of his compering at rough clubs and first couple years of Late ‘n’ Live – I think he was lower status but played a bit higher status, and that’s a good way to immediately sound more harsh. These are days I’ve only glimpsed through tiny clips as there’s barely a record of them, but I’ve read about them in some articles, and have heard Kitson tell stories of them in many later years. They are most clearly summed up in these paragraphs from this article in the Australian publication The Age from 2007:

For a couple of years, he learned to tough it out with audiences as the compere at the weekly new talent night at one of London's top comedy venues. “It was absolutely invaluable, up to a point,” he says. “It made me confident on stage; it made me not value any gig too much; it made me feel I could talk to people, but I did it slightly too long.” In 1999, he was doing the same thing in Edinburgh. “And somebody said, ‘Look, you've got to be careful; not every gig is the Comedy Café’. It was genuine advice and I thought, ‘f---'. “I realised I'd gone too far down that road and I was no longer doing the thing I'd originally wanted to do on stage. I remember sitting outside, nearly in tears, saying, ‘I’m shit’. And I probably was. I had loads of people saying no, you're brilliant, you're going to be huge and I'd say, 'But this is shit, hateful, bullying shit!' And that was a real turning point. It was after that that I decided right, I'm going to do a show that is material-based, not just me f---ing around.”

I've heard him tell that story on stage too, when he says the person who gave him that advice was small-faced man (and... possibly some things that are a lot less fun than having a small face and the reality of some comedians being horrible is exactly why being jokingly horrible isn't always all fun and games even for the genuinely nice ones, but let's not worry about that right now) Trevor Lock, along with Andrew Maxwell. When the three of them did a joint show in Edinburgh in 1999, which is where he also did a show with the Comedy Cafe, which was the rough London comedy club he's talking about. In Edinburgh in 1999, he took part in two shows - one with the Comedy Cafe where he'd been performing in London, and one with Andrew Maxwell and Trevor Lock.

The former is partly documented in this documentary about Edinburgh that year, so I can confirm that it's pretty fucking rough. A show that he did with fellow Comedy Cafe performer Lee Canterbury, and also appearing in the documentary is Noel Faulkner, owner of the Comedy Cafe who had taken them to Edinburgh like children on a school trip, it sort of seemed. That latter is the show where apparently Andrew Maxwell and Trevor Lock - hardly the epitome of thoughtful and restrained comedians - had to tell him to take it down a notch because you can't treat an Edinburgh show that's not in a truck like it's the Comedy Cafe.

...I may have recently gone through all the Edinburgh programs since his first year in Edinburgh, which was 1999, and taken screenshots of all Daniel Kitson's entries to put in a folder, because that's the sort of thing I do, so here are the two from that first year:

Amazing that at the time, his late-night (start time: 22:45, 00:30) Gilded Balloon show was the restrained one compared to the other one he was doing. Having seen some of the other preserved in a documentary, I can confirm that this is the case. It would be a couple of years later that he took over compering Late 'n' Live, where I think his skills at dealing with tough audiences were welcomed. This is where he did things like yell at audience members for using the bathroom.

After that, in 2002, he won the Perrier Award at the same time as Phoenix Nights was happening, and then he got bigger crowds as a result of both those things, including crowds of people who were just there to see the guy from the quite abrasive sitcom, and who wanted to see him call people cunts. And that was when he hit the brakes very hard on all the momentum he'd built in that direction, wrote the sensitive theatrical touching story show A Made Up Story in 2003 to put off all the people who want to hear him say "cunt", and developed his entire schtick about wanting to be small and un-advertised and refusing to perform on Friday or Saturday nights and starting shows at odd hours and doing everything he could to get rid of the shitty audience he'd cultivated by being shitty. In 2006 (the same year he left his agent, I think - though that might have been 2005) he fucked off from the raucous Late 'n' Live to go host Honourable Men of Art, at The Stand that was for artists rather than the Gilded Balloon that was for raucousness, to have a nice nerdy show with the other Chocolate Milk Gang nerds. He didn't even take some of his biggest stand-up shows to Edinburgh, instead writing more sensitive theatre things and performing those there. I've heard recordings from 2006 in which hecklers have tried to get into arguments with him, and he's said he doesn't do that stuff anymore, he used to be like that but now he's not, if they're here because they remember when he used to spar with hecklers and call everyone cunts then they should go away because he's changed. Though I've also heard him say that and then proceed to get drawn into some rough stuff with the audience anyway.

In his efforts to backtrack on all the things he hated about what he'd done in his early days, when he was only 22 and really should be easily forgiven for being a bit of a dick for what wasn't even all that much time in the grand scheme of things - he may, arguably, have slightly overcorrected. Just a bit. Surely there's some sort of middle ground he could have found. But I think one of my favourite things about Daniel Kitson is the way he eschews the middle ground. Whatever he's doing, he's anything but average.

I'm aware that I've veered wildly off topic, by the way. I realized I was going that way a few paragraphs back and decided to just go on rather than acknowledging it. But I feel like I should acknowledge it now. This is barely related to the show First Thing. But it is related to it a little bit. Because First Thing is him talking, nearly 25 years later, about those days of his career. And apologizing for them, even going so far as to write some of his slated audience members in as characters to come back to haunt him.

I like the show. It's basically Polyphony again, but I very much like Polyphony - it's one of my favourite things he's ever done - and I'm happy to have another Polyphony. Polyphony and As of 152 GMT on Friday 27 April 2012, This Show Has No Title are a similar idea executed very differently. Polyphony and First Thing are pretty much the same idea executed pretty much the same way. Which I think is great! Two cakes!

I think I fit into the exact category that's a target audience for something like this. Someone who knows nothing about Kitson's career history won't get a lot of the references in First Thing. Some who follows his career closely like a normal person will already know about Polyphony and find this repetitive. But someone like me - an obsessive collector of as many versions of Kitson as I can possibly find - will get the references and just be pleased to have a new version of the retrospective on them.

I don't think you have to know his whole history to enjoy this show, though. Because like I said, it's about broader stuff. What art is, what performance art is, what audience participation is, under what circumstances comedians should be allowed to call people cunts. You know, universal themes.

...I started this show planning to write a sort of review of a Daniel Kitson show, and didn't intend to do the long off-topic history lesson in the middle of it. But personally, I find the show more interesting when knowing the context. And there's a lot of context. But even if you have no context, it's a fun hour of the audience all getting to take part and there are good jokes and it made me laugh and that's what actually matters, isn't it?

[lunatiqez]

change w/ ponyboy curtis?

i’m an introverted extrovert and i love spending my free time reading, writing , watching movies, listening to music and drawing !! i almost always have doodles on my hands, and i tend to zone out or get distracted easily. once i start talking about a subject i love, i will talk your ear off for hours on end. i’m touch starved and just want hugs and forehead kisses 🫤 and also i have a downtown girl-esque type of style and my eyes light up whenever i receive a gift of some sort and i get blushy v easily. it’s lowkey embarrassing. whenever i laugh i cover my mouth with my hand cause i hate my smile and laugh <33 alsoooo i tend to be v blunt while also being a people pleaser depending on who i’m with not wanting to be a bother. idk i’m a v passionate person and as you can tell i talk A LOT

Tbh you and Ponyboy would be really good friends!!! I can see you guys just chilling and listening to music while he writes, you draw, etc etc. I can see a bunch of random conversations that lead into very deep topics that you’re both very passionate ab. I will admit, when he’s talking to u and u zone out he DOES get a little tiny bit annoyed yk?? But it’s all in a lighthearted like. Dallasss, you’re doing it againnnn!!!!!

[honesttoblogjuno]

Howdy! 🤠 I’m a big fan of your work have a few questions about TSN and CAAG:

1. While these characters are already fleshed out and have established personalities, do you take any creative liberties from those around you or perhaps your own characteristics when writing them?

2. Are there any traditional and/or fanfiction authors that inspire your passion or writing style?

3. As a reader, do you prefer one-shots or multi-chapter fics? Or does it depend on your mood?

4. Choose: tooth-rotting fluff or merciless angst? Why?

5. Challenge! One-sentence summaries of TSN and CAAG that would confuse non-readers?

Thank you so much for sharing your talents with us! ❤️

Well howdy there! Thank you kindly for this lovely ask ☺️

1. I do take some creative liberties, for sure! For instance, I tried to keep Enid’s mom somewhat realistic with her passive aggressive remarks by drawing from real experiences that either I have had or people I know have described dealing with people in their lives so that she didn’t become untethered from reality like the Evil Mother Character of Media Past. I do also include my own ways of thinking about things and little details about my life that I feel like I could convincingly describe (for instance, having a house filled with odd taxidermy and preserved framed insect specimens, or my interest in tarot cards). We write what we know, right?

The storyline around online fan culture and digital footprints is also based on my own personal wariness of the internet, and my academic interest in the subject, so those are also sort of drawn from my life! Mostly I would say that Wednesday’s internal characterisation draws the most from how I experience the world in terms of filling in the gaps from what we see in canon and how characters needed to be fleshed out for the story 🔮

2. Hmm fanfiction wise, my favourite fanfic I have ever read is by an ao3 author named sablesheep, its a beautiful long-form multi-chapter fic with a lot of original worldbuilding within the scope of the canon, and a lot of characterisation work for some figures from the series that didn’t get a lot of direct description. So I have always been super inspired by the idea that fanfics can take the story from the canon and expand it into this whole new universe where the characters stay recognizable but are changed by the setting and story in their own (believable) way!

In terms of Wenclair fics I appreciated while writing CAAG and TSN, I enjoyed ao3 authors lucozaddy (especially for their excellent characterisation work), overnights (love the writing and story), and Eggplant_Crusader also has a beautiful writing style! And we can’t forget @adorasbuttcheek who has an amazing collection of Wenclair fics of various lengths and prompts 🤟

For non-fanwork authors I am inspired by, I feel like Lemony Snicket was a big influence when I first started writing. More recently, I have been totally inspired by the writing style of Jen Beagin in her book Big Swiss. Funnily enough I don’t actually read much fiction, but I found Big Swiss to be totally captivating and refreshingly weird. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado is also a fiction piece I find myself thinking about a lot!

3. As a fanfic reader, I prefer extremely long multi-chapter fics. I have definitely been known to enjoy a good one-shot or shorter piece, though! But, I am a bit of a media escapist, so my general preference are the types of stories that let me continue living in the little world of that series or book or whatnot for as long as possible at a time!

4. Merciless angst, all the way. I like stories that draw blood and then kiss it better 🤭 so some fluff to break through the heaviness usually feels like a strong writing choice to keep the tone varied, but I prefer angst overall because I find it lends itself to plot a bit more than pure fluff. That’s not to say that fluff can’t have plot, but in terms of its function in fanfiction I tend to prefer plot-driven things overall because I like playing the long game 😈

5. Okay, challenge accepted 💪

CAAG: Enid’s face card never declines (am I supposed to know what that means?)

TSN: Penguins might be evil, but they have nothing on Reddit.

BONUS TSN: Hit the breaks, Enid. No, the breaks. ENID—

Thank you so much for these lovely questionsssss they were so much fun to answer! :D I appreciate you!

[autumnslance]

Hey, just got a writing question when it comes to fanfic. How do you balance "leave most of the setting out since everyone knows what it is" vs "explain it anyways for reasons like making it known to non-fan readers"?

This got long again, and I’m hoping I answered the question, or at least gave some ideas on where to begin and what to consider when trying to balance narrative and descriptions in fic writing (or any other kind). Coming from someone who used to terribly overwrite my descriptions, no less; I like to think I’ve gotten better that over the years!

When writing fanfic, I tend to assume my audience will be primarily of that fandom, so if writing a FFXIV fic, I shouldn't have to go into too much detail on what a moogle of that setting looks like...unless it's my point of view character's first time ever seeing one, and their perception of that creature will be revealing of not only the moogle, but also how they see people, how they describe them, what they pay attention to.

So some of it is going to be up to the point of view character; what do they focus on, in terms of sights, sounds, smells, but also random facts, trivia, history, knowledge they have?

Like in original fiction, how much is too much to get the point across to the readers without bogging down the narrative in too many setting details Victor Hugo-style? A lot of times, writing fanfic setting and character info can be done just like in original fiction, with a lean on slightly lesser, as there is canon material the reader can reference if confused, or simply curious.

Can also depend on how close to canon one is hewing, or if one’s doing completely alternate universe set ups, where you’re going to have to delve deeply into those changes to environment and people anyway.

When it comes to fandom, we do have room to play around, particularly in an MMO setting; the game world is a small representation of the places the characters inhabit, a condensed view of important points, it’s all a visual shorthand. There are places beyond the walkable map, certainly, but also in the maps themselves; those villages, farms, fortresses, houses...none of it's actually sustainable by itself, and many places we know have rooms or spaces we never access. It's only showing us what's needed for story (and developer ease, as well as time; you don’t actually want realistic travel of days or weeks, after all).

The rest is headcanon; so in those cases, I may take some time to describe how I see for example the set up of the Rising Stones outside of the public areas we get in game; how are the Scions' personal chambers handled? How would I describe it for each character? Thancred's room isn't going to look like Y'shtola's, after all; they will reflect the characters' personalities (and again filtered through characters’ POVs, even if the POV is that NPC). How much do I need to describe to get across Thancred's current mood, depending on expansion?

I've spent a lot of time going over game maps, screenshots, and descriptions of Eorzea as it was in 1.0 for some of my stories set pre-Calamity; in those cases, things are similar, but just "off" enough to require descriptions (like the shifting of the aetheryte location in Limsa). But I don’t have to get it 100% accurate either; I can headcanon a lot, and really, who’s going to check up on it as “wrong” more than a decade later?

I'm also currently struggling in a story I'm writing for a fanzine with how much of the NPC's backstory do I reiterate in the intro. I have only 2500 words to get my story across, and have already sacrificed quite a bit. But there are elements I'm working on in the main story where reiterating his history, even in short, makes some sense. Again, I know given the nature of this zine, most people picking it up will likely be familiar with the NPC's background, but my spin on that for this particular tale has an impact. A few other writers for the same fanzine are having to make similar choices, for their own takes on the character, their own stories, to meet both deadline and word count.

Some things can be skimmed over, if trying to keep things short, and trusting the audience to either pick up context clues, look it up, or already be familiar. Sometimes one might pepper in things like mentioning Snowlight is a chocobo in the first paragraph, the next time I mention Snowlight a couple paragraphs down I might include short description of bird-like features or sounds, as a way to break up the info but also give context and reminders. I do the same when writing Miqo’te; I may mention their race or clan, but as they talk to other characters, their ears and tails are mentioned as part of their reactions and pointing out their mood and how they say things. My POV characters after all usually know what a Seeker is, so I don’t have to say “X’rhun’s a person with cat ears and a tail” and try to describe his eyes and the marks on his face. The POV will just note his expression (maybe his craggy brow furrowing deeper in thought), how his ears flatten when annoyed, how his tail twitches, woven through the conversation.

This works even in original fiction; a lot of times, a writer might offhand mention specifics of the setting mixed in with the mundane/familiar, expecting the reader to get context clues. I don’t have to describe every detail of Limsa’s docks; a few descriptive words of the city (perhaps the white stones, the boardwalks between islands, the sight/sounds of the crowd, the taste of the salty air, the warmth of the sun, the smell of fish and wet wood and some rot, mixed across a couple paragraphs as my characters act and talk), a few mentions of common things in any port, and the idea gets through even if it’s set in a magical world.

Somewhere there's a Rule of Threes*; you don't want to have much more than 3 descriptors for a specific thing, usually meant to limit over-describing things like a character's appearance (especially trying to avoid long-winded descriptions of eyes, hair, figure, and so on). It can also be applied to other elements where you don't want to bog yourself down, or need to parcel out information over the course of the scene or story, not all in one lump at the start, and encourages finding strong words/phrasing to remain concise instead of rambling.

So it kind of becomes a blend of 1. PoV character; their perceptions and personality, how and what they describe and why. 2. Headcanons for expanding the world we see in game, adding in logical information that should exist but doesn't due to engine limits. 3. How do I describe my own spin on a known element? 4. How much is it bogging down the narrative? Can I space out my descs? Use stronger wording and phrases? Cut some and trust my readers? 5. If this is for a challenge/zine/etc, do I have a word count requirement and deadline?

If you feel you want to include screenshots or art to break up the text and give visuals that can work too (but then you may have to include alt text to describe the pic for those using screenreaders...). But overall, find a balance, parcel it out, and trust the readers to fill in what they don’t know with their own imaginations. Cuz they will anyway.

---

*Like every creative writing "rule" (they’re more whatcha’d call guidelines), this can be bent or broken as needed, once one has an understanding of why it's there to begin with.

[sunflower-butch]

Stupid fanfic asks part 3/3 @candle-lion “all divisible by 3”

69: how do you write emotional scenes? do you ever feel what the characters feel?

First of all, nice. Second of all, music music music. I have to have some emotional music to write to. I would say I occasionally feel what the characters feel, especially when I relate to whatever thing is going through their head

72: what do you do if a scene gets too serious?

Not sure what this means necessarily. I think I’m pretty good at keeping my serious scenes the right amount of serious and my not serious scenes not serious. I guess if it happened, try to add some witty line to lighten the mood? But usually if I want it serious, I want it serious, ya know?

75: do you know how your story ends before you start writing?

About half of the time. Run away was started spontaneously with no end in mind. Same with so are you with me? But a lot of the others were planned. Sometimes I change my mind halfway through too. I call it the ADHD way of writing

78: how do you choose where to end a chapter?

If the word count is long enough to feel satisfying and I feel I have closed the scene at a satisfying point, I’ll end it. Sometimes I’ll end on a cliffhanger for the fun of it or dramatic effect

81: if you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of writing advice specific to you, what would it be?

Don’t burn yourself out. It’s okay to take your time. Your work will end up better anyway! I used to be so bad about publishing whatever I had written IMMEDIATELY for that dopamine rush of validation (both in my Wattpad middle schooler days and beginning run away). Editing and sitting on my writing a bit before posting has helped its quality and my confidence. Plus writing burnout sucks ass. I love to write, and burning myself out is a quick way to change that

84: said: overused or underused?

Depends on the writer. I think I underuse it in an effort not to overuse it lmfao

87: does your writing style change depending on the genre you write?

I think it does, but not necessarily consciously. I tend to lean into different imagery and metaphors depending on the thing I’m writing. I think it’s most noticeable in like,,, the difference between there in the garden with some of the darker, gothic imagery, vs so are you with me? with lighter stuff, sunlight, etc etc. I emphasize different things too

90: do you notice your own voice in your writing style?

Oh one of my biggest fears is not having a unique writing voice. I don’t think mine is strong by any means, but I think it’s there

93: do you hear other people’s writing styles when they talk?

Only with my irl best friend. I think the more you know someone, the easier it is to pick up on those consistencies between writing voice and speaking voice, but I don’t talk to most writers I know enough to hear it, and I don’t think our Discord/Tumblr convos are super reflective of our writing

96: romantic/social sideplots: interesting or irritating?

Depends. Fuck off with your love triangles (unless they’re true triangles). I love a good messy romantic or other social side plot

99: was being a writer a dream of yours when you were little? or did it spring up when your older? or is it just a hobby? 

It was!! I’ve always loved reading and it translated to loving writing too. I don’t think I could make a career of it, I don’t think I’m famous author material between my skill level and the fact that having to have books out would become a chore. But! I would love to have published books still. I think it’d be fun to be a PhD’d microbiology researcher who also happens to have a few silly queer novels published on the side

[johannadc]

20 questions, writer’s edition! (thanks @britsgovernmentmh for the tag!) 

How many works do you have on AO3?

Today is June 27, 2022, and I have 85. (When did that happen? And it doesn’t count the 5 WIP I’ve hidden.) 

What’s your total AO3 word count?

186,337 An average of a bit under 2,200 words a fic, which makes sense. I write short, because I have more ideas than I have time to realize. 

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Sherlock (TV) is the vast majority. The only other fandom I’ve written for (and created, by the way) is the Locked Down movie, which is terrible, but Mark Gatiss is cute in it, and I gave his character Donald more of a happy ending. There are two (2!) stories for that film’s character, created as a MGAS memento. 

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

“Mycroft in Fashion”, unsurprisingly. Greg reflects on different pieces of Mycroft’s wardrobe. Long, chaptered fics get more attention, and I like to think this concept captures a lot of what we know and like about the character. (It’s a surprisingly flexible framework.) It’s been something I’ve been writing on for almost two years now.  https://archiveofourown.org/works/26606602

“Five Times Greg Called Mycroft "Kitten" and One Time Sherlock Did” https://archiveofourown.org/works/33887575 I thought this would be a silly little chapter about old movie dialog, but it turned into a 5+1. The characters ran away with the story. And then they got a cat. 

“In Spite of Myself” https://archiveofourown.org/works/35416684 It’s Christmas! And somehow I got a text fic inspired by someone else’s PWP. I still intend another chapter to this, some time (next holidays, perhaps) as I left them with the threat of Mummy meeting Greg. 

“The Soulmate Search” https://archiveofourown.org/works/22777495 My first fic, part of an event week back in 2020. I was blessed with all kinds of encouragement, for that reason. Probably still my most authentic Mycroft voice, as I’ve softened him a lot as I kept writing him. 

“Gin and Tonic” https://archiveofourown.org/works/24373948 The second of my Mystrade Cocktails series, and the one with the most chapters. 

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes, mostly to say thank you, because I’m very grateful to anyone who reads my work, let alone bothers to say something in response. 

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t write angst. Happy endings only. (I do know what I would write for a World’s Angstiest Mystrade Fic contest, but why would I?) 

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

That’s a tricky question. “Kitten”, mentioned above, has both brotherly apologies and a marriage proposal. But I’m still fond of “Autumnal Passage”, which was written quickly to meet an event schedule and is something of a change for me in focusing on mood and description a lot more than I usually do. https://archiveofourown.org/works/26488894

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written? No, unless you count “Greg Headroom”, which is heavily Max Headroom-influenced. https://archiveofourown.org/works/25271710

Have you ever received hate on a fic? No, thank goodness. I know some people don’t care for my style of work, but everyone’s entitled to their opinions, and nothing works for everyone. 

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Depends on the definition. I have written mature-rated fic, where sex takes place, but I don’t write very explicit scenes. I tend to focus more on the relationship, less on the mechanics. (Although I admire and enjoy works by those who can and do write that style.) 

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. 

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Someone asked about translating “Mycroft in Fashion”, but I never heard back, so probably not. 

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes. The one year we managed to do an advent calendar of 12 Mystrade works, we had a slot fall through at the last minute, so my co-organizers and I co-wrote “What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?” in a day. I thought it turned out pretty well, although both of them seem to have disappeared from online now.   https://archiveofourown.org/works/28485759

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Mystrade (Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade). My one and only. 

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

One of my hidden WIP was horror-inspired, and I intended to turn it into a ridiculous comedy (think Mars Attacks style), but now I’m wondering why I’d bother going back to it. It was based on a nightmare I had about Mycroft, decapitated, but still talking and still running the British Empire. I don’t know enough about horror to do it properly, I think. 

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, definitely. Understanding my characters’ mindset and background. Writing adults. And I am very good with spelling and grammar and all those details because I did a brief stint as a copy editor. 

What are your writing weaknesses?

Description. I don't think visually naturally, so I forget at times I have to tell people more details about the scene I’m envisioning or the characters’ moods or remind them where characters’ hands are. 

I write short and direct, and sometimes more detail or elaboration would be a good thing. 

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I don’t. I don’t speak anything but English and restaurant French, so I wouldn’t try to include another language. 

One of the things that amazes and astounds me about fandom is the terrific work non-English-speakers do in a language that isn't their first. And then they apologize for it! 

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Mystrade (Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade). And only, just about. 

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Oh, that’s a difficult question. Two of my favorites right now are: 

“Mycroft in Costume” https://archiveofourown.org/works/28927701 Because it was inspired by Mark Gatiss pretending to be Jon Pertwee in his TV movie, and I’m also a Doctor Who fan.

And this one kind of sums up the appeal of the ship for me.  “Oh, Thank God, Sherlock Found a Friend” https://archiveofourown.org/works/32096848 AKA why Mycroft and Greg weren’t in episode two of the show. 

Thanks so much, if you made it to the end of this! 

tagging: @lavenderandvanilla @bookcasewraith @thesilverapplesofthemoon 

[daughter-of-melpomene]

I got some questions for your Tav’s based on the ask game! These ones are for your Tav Raven! The questions are 3,16, 23, 27, 32, 35, 44, 51, 62 and the bonus 70, my bonus questions is what are some headcanons for Raven and Wyll once they finally start a relationship together? And the bonus question to the bonus, what are they headcanons like for the poly relationship with Astarion?

Ahhhhh, thank you so much for asking about my sassy little bard!! Answers are under the cut! (And I’m also gonna tag the BG3 moots @astarionbae and @reyofluke-ocs. <3)

What is your character’s moral alignment?

I’d say that Raven is solidly Chaotic Good. They do want to do the right thing ultimately, but they don’t always want to do it for the right reasons, and they certainly have no qualms about doing some less-than-legal things in order to accomplish their missions.

Which of the companions does your Tav trust most?

Already answered this here!!

What is your Tav’s favorite moment they’ve had with their lover?

I think Raven’s favorite moment with Wyll might be the first dance they share. Raven hasn’t exactly been the easiest person to get along with up until this point, at least not with Wyll, but they’re just starting to come around to him at this point, so sharing this sweet little moment with him, with him teaching them a courtly dance while they show him the looser style they’ve picked up in taverns, goes a long way towards improving their relationship, and it’s probably the first moment when Raven started to genuinely like Wyll.

What is their sense of humor like?

I’d say it’s the closest to Astarion’s over all of the other companions - Raven is incredibly sarcastic and loves to make constant little digs at people they don’t like. A lot of their jokes and comments also tend to be very witty and creative, an indicator of their talent as a songwriter. They’re also not above quoting some of the many bawdy jokes they’ve picked up from performing in taverns, even if Karlach’s usually the only one who laughs at them.

How did your Tav get their scars, if they have any?

Before the whole adventure with the party, at least, Raven only has one scar, a thin slash travelling from their jaw up their cheek. They got it when they were still young, after a group of other street urchins cornered them and attempted to steal the money they’d just earned from one of their first jobs performing at a tavern. Raven managed to get away with all their money, but one of the urchins had a knife and managed to slash their face as they escaped.

How does your Tav react to wearing the Wavemother’s robe? How do they react to their partner wearing it?

Very unlike Nifara, Raven freaking loves this outfit. They’ve always loved a bit of style, and the Wavemother’s robe is without a doubt one of the most stylish and most elegant things they’ve ever worn. If it was at all practical for fighting it, they’d probably refuse to ever take it off (and it definitely helps that Wyll can hardly tear his eyes away from them when they have it on).

And Wyll wearing it? Oh, don’t even get me started. Depending on what point in their relationship it is when he wears it, Raven might tease him relentlessly for wearing it (but still with the occasional appreciative glance his way), but if he wears it after their romance has started? There will be enough drool involved to douse Karlach’s Infernal Engine, and there’ll be no chance of Wyll wearing it on the road because Raven will walk into many trees because they’ll be distracted watching him.

What song best represents your Tav?

Okay, this may be at least in part because a lot of Raven is based off of Lucy Grey Baird from The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but I really think that “Nothing You Can Take From Me” by Rachel Zegler is perfect for them! It’s representative of the kind of music they usually play and write, plus it speaks to Raven’s steadfast determination and refusal to let anybody change them unless they want to change as well.

What does your Tav want in their future? (domestic bliss, more adventure, a family, etc)

I really do think that Raven wants some kind of stability in their future - being essentially raised on the streets and having to live off of meaner pay from tavern gigs, combined with all the stress of the parasites and the party’s adventure, means that so much of their life has been in constant uncertainty, and they would really like that to change further down the road. They don’t really want kids, especially if it would involve getting pregnant themself, but they do want to hopefully be able to settle down with a partner and live a sort of domestic life - and luckily enough, they’re able to find that with Wyll after he marries them and takes over the duties of duke from his father.

What meme describes your Tav the best?

I definitely think that Raven’s whole friendship with Astarion and Karlach can be summed up by that one meme that’s like “local dumbasses knew what they were getting themselves into and did it anyway”.

Some headcanons about Raven and Wyll’s relationship:

They’re sort of a black cat/golden retriever couple, except Wyll also has a bit of cat energy, so it’s really more black cat/polite cat.

Raven calls Wyll “dukeling” when they first meet as an insult, but as their relationship progresses, it slowly becomes more of a term of endearment.

In return for Wyll teaching them the noble dances of his childhood, Raven teaches him some of the dances they’ve learned in taverns. He’s not quite as good at them as Raven is at his noble dances, but he does his best.

Raven writes a great many songs about Wyll after they officially get together, and in quiet moments Wyll can often be heard humming one or another under his breath. The servants, after the two of them are living in the duchy in Baldur’s Gate, finds this absolutely adorable, but Astarion and Karlach don’t hesitate to tease Wyll relentlessly about it whenever they visit.

Some headcanons about Raven, Wyll, and Astarion’s relationship:

Whenever the three of them cuddle or sleep in the same bed, Astarion is always in the middle, soaking in the warmth of his two lovers’ bodies.

After Wyll takes over the duties of duke from his father, he will often stay up much too late working or forget to eat, but Raven and Astarion will always make sure to bring him food or tempt him to bed with the promise of “some fun” (only to bundle him up in a blanket and tell him forcefully to get some sleep, and he somehow falls for the trick every time).

Neither Astarion nor Wyll can sing even half as well as Raven, but when the three of them are alone, that doesn’t stop them from joining in when their love is practicing or working on a song and turning their solos into group numbers.

Though most of Baldur’s Gate refers to Raven and Astarion as “the duke’s lovers,” Wyll will never hesitate to correct people when they say it in front of him, insisting that he belongs to the bard and the vampire much more than people as amazing as them could ever belong to him.

bg3 tav questions!!

[k--havok]

Writer Tag Game

@ceph-the-ghost-writer tagged me for this game (thank you!)

I am an absolute mess when it comes to writing but I will try my best to hopefully make sense and explain in as little words as possible. 

I’ll go ahead and leave this as an open tag since tumblr is giving me pains. If you do this game, please tag me so I can read it! 

One thread that runs through all these questions is that it depends on the WIP

Do you write in order?

Eh, more or less? Not always. Sometimes I have the itching to write a random scene in particular, especially if the inspiration strikes, and I will scramble to write it down. This is especially true if it's a newer idea. But once I turn an idea or a thought into a story I want to write I will try and buckle down and start from the beginning. 

From there, I usually do my best to write in order. Sometimes I skip some scenes while doing so due to writer’s block or not knowing what will happen and wanting to get to the next point before I lose my flow. But these are usually smaller and more transitional sub-plot scenes. 

Do you start with something in particular? 

And here’s a knot in the thread; it depends. It matters on the inspiration and idea. A lot of my story ideas I get from my dreams as I am a very vivid dreamer. Inspiration can come from anywhere, after all. 

I’ll talk a little about my current WIPs (and some hiatus WIPs) as examples. 

Waking into Divinity was a dream I had about a person (it was foggy who they were) had a demon pop out of nowhere and tell them that they were destined to be his soulmate. The person, of course, didn’t believe the demon and the demon had to prove himself.

The idea changed a little bit from that dream, but the basis is still there. Rylie is an average millennial who meets a demon, Casrath, who says he is their soulmate. Romantic comedy and angst ensue. 

Sometimes I like to look at media I hate to get ideas. Sounds counterproductive, I know, but a lot of books I hate, I hate them due to how promising the premise is, and I want to do better. 

For example, Soft Touches, Godless Hands is my own version of an angel sent from Heaven to Earth to try and fight back the growing darkness that has been plaguing the world. I stole the premise from that god-awful book series Halo. 

My version is completely different, but the basic premise is the same. 

Sometimes my fanfiction can grow way out of proportion to the point where it becomes original. I’m not talking just AUs either. The Tales of Ozoarth was originally fanfiction, and I changed it to original fiction after I wrote out all the canon characters in favor of my OCs at one point in the story. Even the locations changed due to this as all the OCs went back to where they originally came from. It had transitioned from being fanfic to being something... not fanfic so I continued on that line of thought.

14 years later? It's a different beast and story altogether. 

How fully formed does your writing come out the first try?

Another thread; it depends. It also matters if it’s a good writing day or a bad writing day. 

I’m gonna go ahead and link my pilot for Osiris’ Trials here (link will take you to AO3, it is an 18+ story) 

This pilot is the first draft. I did minor edits, such as grammar and line editing. But not much else. There are still some rough parts in the story but overall, I doubt much will change when I decide to continue writing this story. I really like what I wrote for the pilot. 

However, sometimes I know I’ll need to go back with heavier editing. Tal’rith (link will take you to AO3, it is also 18+) is a lot more rough I think. There are several missing scenes and scenes that will need to be shortened as its a little too long for what it needs to be I think. However the base idea is there. Again, this story only went through grammar and line editing. 

My writing style tends to fluctuate a little, so some WIPs are easier for me to write than others and will need less work. 

How many drafts do you go through?

Well... it depends. As many as it takes for me to be happy with the story and writing. Usually my drafts need to be edited for the actual content, not the writing, as I change the story and plot. That takes a lot of time. 

And it is something I haven’t successfully been able to manage as I can barely finish first drafts....

Shorter stories, snippets, and one shots usually only get one round of editing. Mainly grammer/line editing. Sometimes I add in scenes or take them away too, however. 

Tell me about your process?

I think if you’ve gotten this far you know it depends. 

My process for longer stories... does not work for me all that much and I am still trying to figure out how to write longer novels. 

I’ve been working on my D&D novella, though, and its going pretty well, so I’ll use it as an example. 

After I get my basic idea/premise (see above, lol) I flesh it out the idea with world building, more characters, etc. After I feel I have a story I can tell with the idea, I start thinking of the different situations and conflicts that can arise in the world.

For Rane and Korzan’s Fantastical Adventures (name pending), it’s set in 5e, so the world building is mainly done for me. Rane is my original character and Korzan is my partner’s. Korzan is also from a different edition of D&D, so first we thought of a way he gets misplaced. 

Magical accident. Easy. Both Rane and Korzan have ties to the Abyss, and the Abyss works in weird ways. 

Rane is a monster hunter in this version of herself. Korzan is misplaced and wants to go back to his world. Rane wants to run away from her past and keep busy and keep her nose clean. 

Lots of wants. But their wants don’t align with what they actually need. I enjoy interpersonal character conflict, so I try and give all my characters a want vs a need. 

Rane and Korzan both know quite a bit about abyssal magic and the abyss. I put a pin in that. 

From here I think of an external conflict that can bring out the internal conflict as well as give the characters a conflict between themselves. 

We went with zombies. Rane and Korzan gets attacked by zombies

Alright, so here is where we get out first conflict. Rane is lawful good and a go-getter. She wants to find the source of the zombies. Korzan does not as it is not his problem. 

Rane wins the first conflict and they find the town getting attacked. 

Okay, now we have a mystery. Time for the next conflict for the characters; the way they want to figure out this mystery. 

From this point, I usually skip the middle of the story and get to the end. I like to figure out where I want to go before filling in the middle. 

So my partner and I both wrote the ending of the story, and from there we work backwards. After we work backwards, we go through the story again chronologically so we know all the pieces fit together and make sense, especially the conflict-resolution, both external and internal. 

This is a shorter/smaller story that will be novella length at most (as long as I don’t overwrite it....) but so far this newer-ish process is working for me, and I may end up fleshing it out and using it in the future for my longer projects. We shall see! 

[drowning-in-cacophony]

14, 29, 41, and 87 for the fanfic asks? (- thinkingisadangerouspastime)

14. what’s your worst writing habit? 

Aside from saying I’m going to write and then just… not? Lol. No, more seriously, I think it’s my trouble with fonts. I used to be just fine with the default word font calibri, but then I started writing more fan fic and I wanted to use a different font for those, to keep them sectioned off from my original projects. (Most of my ATLA fics, for examples, are wrote in adobe jenson pro). And that was fine when it was mostly just ATLA I was writing in, but now I have other fandoms I’m dabbling in too, and I keep dithering over fonts instead of trying to settle in to write. So, tldr: fonts.

29. give us a spoiler for one of your stories?

A spoiler… I feel like this would be easier if I was working on a long form story. Or any with actual plot beyond just cute romantic vibes. Because that’s mostly what I’ve been writing. Anyway: I’ll give a small spoiler snippet to this Doctor Who fic I’ve been trying to work with, which is set after the most recent ep (Legend of the Sea Devils), which will hopefully be a small almost fix-it, laying the pathway down so Yaz and the Doctor might get their happy ending.

“You two look lovely together. Very happy,” the woman tells Yaz sagely, with a couple of nods. “Young love always brings out the light in people.”

Her tongue feels like lead in her mouth, so she just ends up smiling thinly and awkwardly.

Happy. It feels like a lie, wrapped around her like a cobra. Happy, and Yaz is happy with the Doctor – Yaz has never felt such happiness honestly than when she’s around the Doctor, but she’s never known such frustration either. Frustration is the word winning out today. And some sort of mourning too.

She got the words she’d dreamt of hearing and, in typical Doctor fashion, she’d had them crushed in the next moment.

41. what is the weirdest story idea you’ve ever had?

Mmmmm… probably this maiko idea I had last December, in which they were both cursed because of their love for the other, and so only one of them could be human at a time (so they could never truly be together properly) – so in the day, Mai would be human, and Zuko would be in the form of a small dragon, and in the night, Zuko would be human, and Mai would be in the form of a massive dog/wolf. I still hope to write it one day, but I count it as weird because one of them is an animal in every scene they have together, and it lead to some scenes where Zuko could stroke Mai’s fur and Mai could wear Zuko like a warm neck scarf – and it was a bit weird to write the bits I managed to do. A bit odd.

87. does your writing style change depending on the genre you write?

Oh, definitely. I get fancier with some, using longer sentence structures or just more formal ways of speaking, and others I’m a lot looser and whatever. Something like sci-fi tends to devolve more emotional-based paragraphs, and something that’s fantasy based would be more formal, more reading in between the lines for feelings and such. And something that’s in a modern setting would have that informal tone, trying to convey a more in-the-moment type of narrative.

[gunterfan1992]

Interview with Fan Artist loycos!

(Art by loycos)

So a few months ago, I was absent-mindedly scrolling on Tumblr (or was it Twitter?) when I came across something: an Adventure Time fan comic by an artist named loycos. As a person embedded in fan spaces, I find fanart like this all the time, but this time, there was something special about the art I was seeing. It was so... show-accurate!

I don’t mean that necessarily in regard to the art style (although it does feel right at home in the Land of Ooo, while still being its own thing with its own flourishes), but rather in relation to the characterization; the way loycos wrote the characters was spot on. She nailed PB and Marceline’s dynamic as former lovers who deep-down miss one another. She nailed Finn’s naive heroism and his one-sided crush on PB. She nailed Jake’s goofball energy. It was perfect.

In the past, I’ve only interviewed people affiliated with the show’s production, but I thought I’d mix things up a bit and reach out to some fan artists that I think are fantastic. As such, I’m delighted to share with you an interview I had with loycos, who answered my questions about her art, her history with Adventure Time, and where her work is headed!

What is your 'artistic origin' story?

[It’s] kind of a corny answer, but I've been drawing since I remember myself. My earliest drawing memories are drawing Clifford (the big red dog) fanart when I was around 5 y/o. I was always more of a "fangirl" artist, [and] I would draw characters from my favorite franchises to illustrate my headcanons and daydream scenarios I'd put them in. That hadn't changed one bit since. I had since gone on to study animation and illustration in official institutions which forced me to design characters and worlds of my own, but when I draw for myself it's always back to fanart (or studies). I don't have any OCs.

Are there particular artists or styles that you were inspired by and/or like to emulate or allude to?

I'd joke that my artstyle is just a mesh of all the franchises I've drawn fanart for over the years, but honestly, is it even a joke? I think you can easily recognize I had a Disney Phase like every other teenager (I didn't have an anime phase though! I know, I'm an anomaly) and [Steven Universe] definitely left it's fat mark on my style too. Out of [Steven Universe]'s storyboarding crew (which I followed very closely over the years) I especially love Raven Molisee and Jeff Liu for their wacky expressions and proportions, and of course Rebecca Sugar for their fluid and carefree lines. When it comes to art in general, I tend to prefer stylized, colorful and brushy styles over realistic or gothic ones, So people like Hue Teo and Patri Balanovsky pop to my mind (and my artstation feed, seriously look them up).

How do you approach your projects; what is your general art process?

It really depends on the type of project I'm doing, though, my [Adventure Time] comics were all pretty similar in their conception: I write down all of my ideas in my notes so I won't forget them. Then I either roughly sketch out the entire comic as fast as I can, or I write a script (if the concept is specifically very dialog heavy) and then sketch it roughly. Then I do the lineart and color, nothing too complicated. The one thing I think is worth noting in my long comic process is that I draw all of my panels on the same document- that way it's easier for me to make sure the characters stay on model and that my panel layout remains fresh. So basically, the way you read the comics on tumblr, as a long scroll, is the format I work on.

How did you come to find Adventure Time? What made you join the fandom?

Adventure Time is one of those shows you just know about, so I don't remember how I first found out about the show. However, I do remember when I started shipping Bubbline—after the episode “Broke His Crown” aired. I somehow ended up in their Tumblr tag and was blown away by the (by 2016's standards) blatant representation. Despite my obsession with them at the time, I never actually watched any episode that didn't feature the girls' relationship. I only started fully watching the show recently. But I did consume a lot of fan content, which I think helped me shape my own headcanons and such. After my initial interest in 2016 I put Bubbline back on the back burner and kept on my [Steven Universe] ramage, until last year's “Obsidian,” which brought me back fully on board the Bubbline decks around 2 weeks before it aired, so I was in maximum hype mode when I watched the special. It did not disappoint [and it] really reminded me of why I loved these characters and their relationship to begin with. I started drawing my own art for the ship shortly after, when I felt like the hype around the special died down and there wasn't much to keep me sustained anymore. I make what I want to see ;)

As for joining the fandom, I don't know if I can be considered a member, seeing how inactive I am most of the time and my very limited list of [Adventure Time] mutuals. I am extremely flattered that my stuff caught ATimers attention in a positive way.

You've done some amazing Bubblegum and Marceline stuff. What draws you to their dynamic?

I'm gay.

OK, seriously now. I have a soft spot for extremely feminine, dainty characters that are very reserved, so PB immediately marked herself as an obvious fav, and the road to shipping her with Marceline (who is such an obvious candidate and a multilayered, fascinating character herself) was a short one. I know calling PB dainty is far from a true statement, but that's what she appeared like on the surface and that's what caught my attention. Another thing is that I love relationships between immortal beings, I think it always adds another layer of complexity to any relationship, especially a romantic one. The whole "getting older without appearing like you've aged" and "watching everyone you love die around you while you stay the same" can surely make 2 beings bond, right? It always felt like PB and Marcy get each other in a way no one else can, they are very different on the surface but share fundamental internal similarities. Oh, and the fact that they're EXES? The romantic tension and the longing? The familiarity and banter they had in every scene they shared?This hit the jackpot on literally every relationship trope that I love. I'd much rather watch a "getting back together" than a "falling in love for the first time" story.

All of this and the fact that they [are] gay. It's really that simple sometimes.

In broad strokes, what is next for you as an artist and/or as a fan?

I have a few [Adventure Time] comics ideas\scripts on the back burner and one that is in the making. I think I'll dabble into some Nintendo fanart cause I've been playing a lot of Smash Bros and [Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild] lately.

I’m so excited to see what comes next! Either way, a huge thanks to loycos for chattin’ with me! If you’d like to check out more of her art, visit her Tumblr and her Twitter page!