Me, an amateur writer with poor english grammar thinking of dialogue for fanfics: hmmm i need to make sure i catch their personalities and particular dynamic here, otherwise it'd seem too generic
Netflixvania, acclaimed show done by professional writers: sassy girlboss and dumb moron man! Sassy girlboss and dumb moron man! And for you hmmm. Oh i know! Sassy girlboss and dumb moron man!
Hahahahaha
the implication that NFCV would care about personalities
they couldn't even be consistent with their own OCs 💀
The thing is that sassy banter is not inherently a bad dynamic. It can be fun, and it can show natural chemistry. Even the games had something similar: Maria gently pokes fun at Alucard for the way he talks (as in, barely), and Julia gives Hector some attitude when she plays coy about her identity. Or, not quite the same still, but Jonathan and Charlotte have this Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic where Charlotte really wants to be Jonathan's braincell. It can work, it's fine, sometimes friendship and love is joking around each other.
But NFCV fails because it's much more meanspirited about it. And there is an audience for this, of course: for example, look at all the people who are positive N!Trevor and N!Alucard had steamy hot gay hate sex because they see their dynamic as homoerotic, but for me, it doesn't feel earned because they have just met and N!Alucard plays jump rope with the line in a way N!Trevor never matches. N!Sypha calls N!Trevor a deformed pet bear in jest, again without him ever matching her (and I'm not mentioning when she got genuinely angry with him over nothing, like when he made a comment about beer being better than sex and she got so pissed she froze that beer - it's played for laughs but still, it's mean). Greta jokes that N!Alucard is lucky that she's there to run his life for him, when again they don't quite know each other that well and she met N!Alucard when he was a traumatized mess (a trauma she made a nonsensical joke about, although he found it funny so I guess that counted as a bonding moment). And I don't think I need to tell you that Lenore is more than mean to N!Hector - but I can point out how incredibly tasteless the very idea of her spouting dick jokes to pass the time is, to pretend they have sexual chemistry, when not even two months prior she sexually abused N!Hector in multiple ways and she forced that sexual tension onto him. Again, you could have written anything else, you could have had her ask him if he likes his new uniform or some shit, but somehow you managed to choose the worst possible option. peak
But also yes, the sameness just hurts everything. Hector/Julia and Alucard/Maria are conceptually a similar ship, mostly because they share similar narrative roles, but they don't talk the same, they don't interact the same, Alucard and Hector are different people and Maria and Julia are different people and it reflects in their dialogue. Maria is more jokey than Julia, because Alucard is more terse than Hector. Jonathan and Charlotte poke fun at each other from time to time, but the whole game is about their friendship, how they help each other and support each other. Jonathan is angry about his father's death and Charlotte emotionally supports him, Charlotte feels slighted when treated like a girl and Jonathan treats her like a peer, not like a genius like she wants to be seen lol but not like a little girl either. They have each other's backs in every way.
Like. You have to have some substance behind the banter. That is what I'm saying. Chemistry can be shown by jokes and all, but you also need to convince me these people like each other. When you scratch under the banter of the NFCV couples, there is either nothing behind it, or something really rotten.
(and, as I said multiple times, I actually would have liked if N!Hector and Lenore sassed each other to keep up the façade that they're happy with one another, but N!Hector is quietly seething and conflicted and Lenore regrets that their chemistry is built on deceit and imprisonment, and this is why she snaps when he briefly breaks it: out of guilt she can't cope with. That would be a great way to subvert the cliché and actually play with the tragic elements at hand that had the audience interested. But S4 is cowardly on a whole another level, so the dick jokes are just to laugh at and I'm really meant to believe their love is wholesome.)
I'll just leave this here to cap it all off:
10 notes
·
View notes
Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class.
Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules.
But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point.
I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009.
But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end?
Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:
And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out
133 notes
·
View notes
OOOH! Definitely interested in your wips. Would love to hear more about these in particular (whichever one(s) you feel like sharing)
(also yes definitely still happily stuck inside this fandom bubble)
will indulge!!! (This is long but it's good to organize my thoughts lol)
I straight up forgot to put the name of this one lol. Meliodas doing dangerous antics is part of my Through the Wall sequel fic, called "Stakeout" which is the one where I have him cooking. I tried to mix in some humor with the angst here. It's basically Stigma Meliodas if Nakaba didn't nerf his intellegence. This one, I'll be feeding you guys soon!! Because I plan to try to finish Through the Wall this Thanksgiving Break, since I started it last thanksgiving break (ambitious I know, but imagine the poetism if I pull it off!) and Stakeout is farther along in its completion than that one. Stakeout is about Meliodas looking out for the TC and his brother from the opposite of the war. The first part is him deciding to try to get them dinner after seeing how worn-down they are, and the second . . . well, he can't exactly leave Zeldris to watch over both the Vampire and Demon Realms all by his lonesome, right? I'm actually really excited for you and @7-ratsinatrenchcoat to see this one in particular when it's finished because I tried to channel the melizabeth energy I liked in your work
This one is named such not cause I wanna name it something bulky (it has a better name! that's the exclusive lore lol) but I'm commited not to spoiling the plot twists in this one. This is gonna be my main gift to this fandom, a spiced up psychological horror rewrite of the whole show with original elizabeths and original adventures for the first and second season (that one is a backstory with Liz!) Plot point collaboration welcome. A bunch of season one, and the plot tiwsts, I made with my good friend zeldriszezinho, and I'm pretty antsy and excited to finally get around to it and present him with the result of our hard work, haha. I actually have a lot of senarios planned both in detail and loosely, just not written down. I'm currently procrastinating on Season 1 Pt. 2 because it's literally 5 or so arcs of content, one for all the sins, and uh. mental energy. So I'm trying to finish up a lot of small projects first just so my mind isn't everywhere. I can't remember if you've seen what I've posted on it so far but here's the masterpost and season one part one! It's on tumblr too! but I went ahead and pressed the space bar like 4 times every indent so it would be normally formatted on A03 sooooo https://archiveofourown.org/works/48567730 https://archiveofourown.org/works/48611485/chapters/122618557
3. Ironically, think Rings was another one inspired by you - it's old, almost 8 months by now, and the only reason I haven't published it yet is the second ellie spiraled out of control into her own adventure and I haven't had the time because I've been word vomiting so many other projects into existence. it's half meme format, half usual writing. The second ellie's meme story is complete and the third's just needs its wrapping up of its actual plot, which is simple: an arrogant man thinks his bride is secretly a nutcase, but feels pressured into marrying her because medival times, because she's a sweet and intellegent woman running an orphanage all by herself, and technically he can't do better, and because it would look disasterously on the both of them and destroy his carefully crafted persona if they somehow couldn't make this community-arranged marriage work. So he's "putting up with her quirks." Including the ancient what-looks-like-wedding-rings she wears around her neck, and the fact she genuinely thinks her one-that-got-away lover sold a prized possession to demons. (the significance of these rings is in the stories of the previous two elizabeths). Well. Actually. He steals them while she's distracted with wedding planning. It doesn't go well for him from there.
Let me know your opinion: should I try finishing the third ellie and then publishing it? I can always go back and make a full story out of "purple ring" ellie + friends later.
Basically, the purple ring's story is as thus: Meliodas decides he needs to rest, "REALLY rest", since his emotional stress is beginning to affect his demon biology in a bad way, and voluntarily coma-tizes himself for a while. He wakes some time later only to find out Elizabeth and her new 'family' have been considering him as their good luck charm. (Maybe even more than one Elizabeth has passed by now. Probably the apothecary he visits figures out what Meliodas meant to do and goes to fetch him, too late, and looks after him . . . see, that could be a whole OTHER story in itself. anyway.) He's a "good luck charm" because his demon aura has been disgusing the magical signature of her druid family, not that they've figured this out. Meliodas tries to get up and run away with an injured Ellie but surprise surprise he hasn't quite recovered from what his body and mind has been through, and the combination of that and the drugs has left him critcially weakened. He actually collapses falls down a small cliff with her. Ellie assures him they've gotten far enough to shake off the people who are searching for her, that it's okay. Moreover, she understands more or less what he's going through, since she lost her leg a while back. They reuinte with Ellie's little "siblings," druid children the family has rescued along their journey.
Later ~ the main organizers of their group are shocked to return to their isolated cabin to find that not only have all the children survived the winter, and possible clashes with whoever's been hunting them for decades, but there's one extra child! And a talking cow. (I haven't decided whether some of these people are semi-antagonsists.) Meliodas's condition never improves (angst angst <3) but he takes up the task of looking after the kids alongside Elizabeth anyway- especially when she and the others are gone, working or otherwise. Oftentimes he and the spunky talking cow go on adventures in the forest or in town, collecting herbs or materials for crafts and toys. She carries him, Hawk-style. I can't remember her name but it was a silly one, and he saves her life once with his wings. He's also fought away intruders once while the 'adults' weren't home with Full Counter, being able to stand for long enough to use it before collapsing.
In this iteration, Meliodas recieves his ring from his new 'siblings' as they say that "it's the same color as the magic you used to protect us." Referring to the times he's used his demon magic around the house, and, unknowingly, to the fact his very presence has been the only thing keeping them safe from raiders on more than one occasion. Throughout it all Meliodas struggles with having to be the one cared for for once, and not being able to be the muscle of this group that so clearly would benefit from him being his 'usual' self. While his siblings think he's a genuine gift from God, and are more than happy to look after him as he does them, trading stories between them and cuddling up like he truly belongs, adult members of the family never take a shine to him and resent him somewhat, even perrfering when he was comatose. There's more (and more angst) but I should probably say less.
4. (TW: this one gets DARK with the demon brothers angst) modern fantasy ireland boarding school au" is actually another gift for @gh0stofyesterday, who can't escape me, from back in like feburary or something lol. It's an angsty modern-day genderqueer demon brothers and genderqueer elizabeth. Basically Meliodas tricks his snooty father into letting him and his brother (who's not technically old enough but academically girlboss yourself outta that condundrum zeldris) go to boarding school in his deceased mother's home country, where Meliodas plans to study interior design (he's gonna design the boar hat himself <3) and, against his father's wishes, join the gymnastic team. Little does he know that his online friends in his tween gymnastics discord server or whatever (The TC) are also going to end up there. ( I have the scene where they realize he's not the snooty daughter of the DK ceo and actually their Captain planned out already actually. they realize it when he beats the snot out of some guy that chases zeldris through the gymnasium lol).
Other plot points include! Elizabeth and Meliodas have a secret online romance as "Study buddies" and plan to perform a ceremony to use whatever their magic is unsealed to share a bit of that magic with each other, as a kind of marriage ceremony (peak 14 year old romance lol). Meliodas and Zeldris learn (originally Irish) sign language in order to communicate without their father snooping. Cusack and Chandler deal with being technical slaves to the Demon King and attempt to parent their protegees in more important ways than teaching them fencing, keeping their secrets, and buying them things. Gelda explains she never cuddles with her sisters for emotional support, Zel and Mel feel sorry for her . . . then figure out they are touch-starved and probably need therapy for that too. Hot springs date. Zel discovers Mel has been cuddling him while laying on his side specifically because there are fresh child abuse wounds across his back. Meliodas commandeers his gymnastics coach's coaching authority and starts an underground fencing ring upon being told he can't do that (we go to school in a castle! c'mon!). Zeldris tries to deal with a ginger-haired kid who seems equally hellbent on being his friend as he is his school rival. Depending on how dark I'm gonna make this, you might even get to see a prolouge where Zeldris forgoes a plan to murder - suicide his brother following his mother's funeral after meeting a small Gelda at the playground. Oh, and the DK having to fidgit uncomfortably in court. This one is basically a for-fun daydream, but a pal volunteed to beta it for me so it will eventually get written up for you all!
4 notes
·
View notes
Writing habits tag
Thanks @vacantgodling for the tag!
rules: Bold/color the things that you relate to and then tag some people to play.
I WRITE: daily | most days | a few times a week | a few times a month | random
I WRITE MOST OFTEN: when I first get up | later in the morning | afternoon | evening | the wee hours of the night | whenever
IN ONE SITTING I TEND TO WRITE: a few sentences at a time | a few hundred words | a few thousand words | a complete chapter/section no matter how long | an outline | whatever comes
I TEND TO WRITE SCENES: in chronological order with no skipping | mostly in order but with some filler/skipping | whatever scene I feel like | who knows what’s gonna come out
THE THINGS THAT COME EASIEST TO ME ARE: dialogue | description of senses | description of action | description of characters | exposition | other
I TEND TO WRITE: on a phone | on a laptop | in a notebook | on whatever paper I can find | with speech to text | in the blood of my enemies | it doesn’t really matter to me | on paper first and then typed up | old school typewriter | on a computer
WHEN I TAKE A BREAK FROM WRITING, IT USUALLY LASTS: a few days | a few weeks | a few months | it’s kind of random
MY FAVORITE THING TO DO ON A WRITING BREAK IS: recharge with other creative hobbies | read/consume other media | do something physical | catch up with old friends | work on my WIP in other ways like with playlists or art | other
IN GENERAL I THINK MY WRITING HABITS ARE: pretty much what I need them to be | okay, but I’m working on making them better | non-existent | not great | i’m excited to develop them further | totally random | perfect for me
I'll tag @autumnalwalker, @outpost51, and @writinglittlebeasts plus an open tag!
3 notes
·
View notes