#Planning and outlining is hard

[shellyscribbles]

Reading over what I have of an outline for the 3rd draft of The Shadow of Vale and I think I fixed the beginning of the story. Looking back at it after a year of rest, it works much better than the other beginnings I gave it.

[basket-of-radiants]

Why were you so disappointed by Rhythm of War?

This has been sitting in my askbox for years. I've taken several cracks at answering, only to get frustrated with the subject matter and burn myself out every time. I didn't like Rhythm of War. More than that, I didn't like it in a way that tainted my enjoyment of the entire series. And despite what it may seem, I don't actually enjoy discussing things which I don't like. I always want to talk from a place of good faith. Which is why now that my feelings towards the series are a little more positive, I think I can finally answer this.

I'm going to try to stay away from specific plotpoints and story beats for this post, because my goal isn't to nitpick (if for no other reason than it would take a week to write this post), I'm just looking to talk about my overall impressions. I think that might mean the only spoilers here will be structural? idk, if you haven't read Rhythm of War yourself then you should probably do that before looking for other people's opinions anyway. 

I liked Way of Kings when I first read it. I didn't love it at the time, but I liked it. Certainly enough to keep reading once I'd finished. One thing that made me a bit uncomfy, however, was the war against the Parshendi. They were this unknowable enemy which the book was not interested in knowing. An inhuman army. Their main purpose was to kill Kaladin's friends, or else be killed by Dalinar's armies. And yet the Parshendi, and the parshmen in the form of Shen, did show hints of personhood. And so it bothered me how Dalinar spoke so casually about how the Alethi had decimated their numbers, how the others used the war as a means to amass wealth and power. (It didn't bother me in a "this is a bad book" way but in a "these characters are bad people" way.)

One of my foibles as a reader is that when a book is very clearly treating one side of a conflict with more humanity, I tend to be a bit predisposed towards the other to account for that. And with the Alethi clearly being the invading party and superior military force, there was also some underdog favoritism. I didn't really like how the book treated the Parshendi. This is to say that going forward, the singers would be more important to me than any other through line.

So imagine my delight at reading Words of Radiance and meeting Eshonai, one of the Parshendi, who even gets her own point of view sections! They were no longer being treated as a faceless mass, we were getting to see things from their perspective as well. And it became plain to see the damage the Alethi had done to them. I couldn't really bring myself to root for Dalinar or really any of the humans against the listeners. I couldn't even bring myself to like most of these characters. I still enjoyed the book but once it became clear there wouldn't be a peaceful conclusion, let's just say that I wouldn't have wept for Dalinar and Adolin if Szeth had managed to off them. Like everyone in the book, I assumed that going forward all the parshmen would be turned into evil voidbringers in the everstorm and that the listeners were mostly dead. Except for Rlain, and Eshonai because I'd read or been told that book 4 would be Eshonai's book and thus had assumed she was fine. (Oathbringer spoilers, she was not fine.) So ultimately it was still a bit of a downer way to end the book. 

So imagine my delight at reading Oathbringer, where for the first time singers were being treated as people, full and real people, and where the human characters could no longer ignore or dismiss them. We met Khen and the others, common singers who were sympathetic and just wanted freedom from bondage. We see Venli grapple with the loss of her home. We see Leshwi and Moash connecting with and understanding one another. We learn of a history where singers were the original inhabitants of the planet. Parallel to this, Dalinar is having a truly excellent character arc about confronting one's past actions and acknowledging them to move forward and do better. I loved Oathbringer, for some years it was my favorite book, and I was excited as hell to see what came next. At the time, it seemed to me that there is a clear direction the story is going. Two books about needless war, and then a third where the main cast is forced to acknowledge the personhood of their enemies. This was so cool, all of my feelings from the previous installments were being validated, the characters were going to have to face what they've done in the past and outgrow their militaristic mindsets, I was so sure of that.

Imagine my disappointment when that does not even remotely resemble the direction the story went in Rhythm of War. RoW presented a clear, straightforward “us vs. them" narrative, where every character was totally fine with killing singers. Characters aligned with the singers were either flattened into wholly evil versions of themselves (Moash) or were expected to turn on their side in favor of the humans (Venli.) Because clearly there was no reason good people would be on the side that's all former slaves trying to stay free. Maybe there's some sort of accord or understanding between Navani and Raboniel that I might have found meaningful if the seeds of mutual understanding weren't already there in Oathbringer and then apparently ignored for a year by all the characters.

I have a lot of issues with how the listeners are handled in these books. (Here's some elaboration.) Following OB, I had thought that all my concerns were going to be addressed. Following RoW, I knew they never would be. 

Which is my main complaint, because that's the thread that matters most to me in this series.

I have a lot of other Things as well. Gonna just talk about a few big ones. 

One outsized source of disappointment that may seem a little petty, and which probably is, is that I felt mislead by the premise of the book. It had been announced that this book would center Venli and Eshonai, and I was unbelievably hyped for that. That did not really turn out to be the case. The purpose for their backstory chapters felt less about exploring them as people and contextualizing their arcs, and more about filling in gaps of world history. In the main plot, Venli was a POV character and she certainly played a role, but honestly not a very important one overall. To me she felt like a side character in her own book. I don't think it's controversial to say that the main character of RoW was Navani. A lot of people really like Navani and are happy about that. Unfortunately I'm not one of those people, and I found it all the more difficult to enjoy her when it felt like it was coming at the expense of some of my favorite characters. 

This particular gripe somewhat comes down to preference, obviously everyone prefers to read about characters they like more than those they don't, and it can go both ways. (For instance, on a craft/technical level RoW is probably the superior book to W&T, but I liked the latter a lot more because of my stupidly outsized attachment to Szeth and Nale.) But I do think there's something of a real criticism in how the book would rather focus on the feelings of a queen rather than those of a genocide survivor, and how the former's are given significantly more weight and import. It ties in with my main criticism, I think. 

And then there's how human/human racism had also been wholly cast aside as a plot point. Jasnah fixed slavery so that's resolved, and the only person who still cares about structural racism is the evil bad bad evil villain Moash/Vyre, who is now wholly irredeemable and who you're allowed to totally write off because he's sold his soul to Odium. I've already talked a lot about this. Other people have already talked about this, probably better than me. The writing was actually on the wall for me in OB, but again, RoW was when I fully accepted that this was never going to be addressed. 

There's something else that probably deserves its own discussion rather than being quickly tacked on at the end here, but here we are. This book changed how the series approaches war. 

In WoK, war was very clearly portrayed as a bad and inglorious thing. It was brutal, it was painful, those at the bottom died cruelly and unceremoniously and pointlessly while those at the top turned a profit. Every day was a new horror. The enemy were never evil, they were always just more people forced to go through the same thing. Through the next couple books, it felt to me that even if the characters had accepted war as necessary, there was still a tragedy to it. Conversely, in RoW (and W&T) war is basically a series of boss battles, in between which our protagonists can kill dozens of footsoldiers with barely a thought in the same way WoK had criticized.

Final note on all this, it sucks how we have no perspectives from the former-slaves-singers demographic. Those guys are really thrown under the bus, and seemingly get no self-determination now or ever. It was a glaring problem to me in RoW. Conscripted and enslaved humans and singers probably have just as much ground to form mutual understanding as a fused and a queen. (In fact they already had. In Oathbringer.)

In essence, RoW disappointed me because it left me with the distinct impression that none of the series's most important through lines (well, most important to me) were going to be resolved well. I liked W&T, but I haven't revised my opinion very much about the overall handling of these topics across the series. Maybe one of the reasons I was able to enjoy W&T so much more was because I no longer had such high expectations.

[leons-art-pit]

If you have it figured out, what were the terms of the deal Tango made in the Dungeon Lackey AU? Every time I see you post something about this AU I just gobble it up. I'm always ready and excited for more! <3

i thought i had written something down but i guess not so its world building time :D

the Spirit (as i will be referring to the decked out ghost/whisp/spirit thing) was made aware of Tango's presence when he started digging into the ground. Tango's original intention was just to plan out decked out and test mob mechanics, not expecting to settle in this world. In his reckless digging he gets the attention of the Spirit. It follows Tango and realizes that Tango's tendency to get focused on a project is just what it needed.

If it can trick Tango into a deal that would keep him trapped and hidden underground, then it could feed off his energy and bring life to the underground. Finding out Tango wanted to build an underground dungeon was just coincidence on the Spirit's part.

The deal offered to Tango consists of two main parts:

1) Tango was to accept the Spirit's power and use his newfound energy to finish the dungeon. In order to deal with mobs, they do not see Tango unless he angers them (ie. hitting them or making other physical contact), which would make building and moving mobs a whole lot easier. 2) Tango is not to leave the dungeon. Tango believes this is a bluff, but until the pact starts to weaken, he physically cannot leave the underground dungeon. By this point the citadel isn't as magnificent as canon, but its protyped. The Spirit encourages Tango to gather the mobs in what would be level two and three while he ponders the deal, so when he accepts, he doesn't get stuck without any beasts in the dungeon.

Tango refuses to take the deal without some out. The out is the only thing the Spirit budges on. Believing Tango is and will remain alone in the world, the spirit gives him the terms that if anyone beats the dungeon, then Tango will be freed from the deal. It's clarified that "beating" the dungeon means any secrets being found (the secrets in this are little hints that lead to the Spirit's origins and if all the clues are put together, then the deal is undone).

The Spirits motivations here aren't too deep. It really just wants to see its vision come to lifed: a dungeon built to trap and kill players. It just so happens that Tango is a Hermit and the Hermits don't really succumb to the freezing cold of a mysterious dungeon. When the dungeon was completed, the Spirit was planning to abandon Tango and the world, taking this knowledge and what strength it got from and moving these plans to an occupied world and feeding off the Players that entered the dungeon. Obsiously it doesn't work out for the Spirit and it's left weak and withering when the Dungeon is beaten.

The stages of the deal coming undone are hazy, but what I have so far: (kinda spoiler-y so its under a read more)

1) The Hermits finding the dungeon make the Spirit afraid. It takes strength to repress all of Tango's memories, so things that had previously been buried start to leak through. Hazily, Tango recalls familiarity in the Hermits' names and faces; and he retains these memories. 2) When the first major secret is found, Tango is able to enter the lobby area. He still can't go very far, but the citadel is fair game to him. He only realizes this when he's following a successful Hermit up to the lobby and is able to enter. Gives quite the scare to anyone present that isn't familiar with him. Because the deal is unravelling, so it the Spirit's power, leaving Tango exhausted as each new secret is discovered. It worries the Hermits, but he just encourages them to keep running the dungeon. 3) When the last secret is found, Tango is barely able to make it to the top of the citadel where Pearl is directed. When she completes her run, Tango is finally freed from the deal, losing his blue, whispy appearnce, but also losing the strength to stay awake. (Without too many spoilers of the end, he is taken care of)

[amtrak12]

When you know the fic will turn out so good, the writing, the characters, the humor, all of it -- but then you remember the effort that goes into writing epic-length 50k word fics

[feelingthedisaster]

VOID I JUST WROTE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN LIKE THREE MONTHS!!!!!! OMG IM SO HAPPY

[icewindandboringhorror]

I occasionally wish to reach out to old friends/acquaintances I haven't spoken to since high school/some other even earlier time in my life, but I have SOOO little social energy even for required tasks (like making dr phone calls or etc), I never have any leftover for extra ones, and it would be very odd to message someone I haven't spoken to in like 5 years out of the blue but then take 4 entire months to respond back lol.. My natural curiosity with nostalgia/collecting details of the past/etc. (literally if I were born a little earlier I would definitely do scrapbooking or something lol) is very strong, but, alas, not strong enough to beat out the Social Issues Demons apparently

[xx-j4nu5-c4t5-xx]

What's your creative process for drawing fanfics? And how did you got into them? (Reading and/or writting, whatever you want to answer!)

I feel like making fan content (whether drawing or writing) comes really naturally to me, as soon as a piece of media I enjoy "clicks" the right way. I've attempted some OCs and worldbuilding on my own in the past, but I find it way less intimidating to create stuff when I have somewhere to start. It also makes it a lot easier to share with people that also like that media.

I feel like I have two stages when it comes to getting into a new game/show/book/whatever: the one where I learn the canon, and the one where I bend it to my will.

When I first get into something, I experiment for a few months, learning how to draw/write the characters I like in ways that feel like they make sense. I familiarize myself with their backstories and personalities, patching in things if I find gaps where I could sneak a headcanon I like, until I eventually get a good grasp on whoever I'm focused on. I find out what parts of their face I like drawing, or how I like writing from their point of view, what clothes suit them or what their dynamics with other characters are. It comes naturally with time.

(This sounds like a chore but I promise it's just as fun as the next part. Bear with me.)

Once I feel confident that I know what I'm working with, I start switching things around and getting hypothetical. Knowing that this character has these traits, what would change if [insert thing] happened? How would they react if they were in [situation]? Having a framework already there lets me experiment with concepts more. This is where I really start making new stuff and expanding on what's already there, rather than just drawing a character the same way a million times.

Overall though, these aren't like cut and dry, linear steps I take. I'm experimenting with designs and details from the beginning, as well as going back to glance over the things that are actually canon after I've been doing my own thing for a while, as a refresher.

In the end, most of my process is just thinking, "hey wouldn't it be cool if I changed this?" and if it works well enough, I keep it. I generally just toy with ideas as they come to me and draw them or write them down. Whatever I like sticks until eventually I've got a whole concept down.

[semi-entropy]

its artfight time in a month and i still dont know what her jacket looks like

[yeba]

I orphaned all my stories and it feels so weird and empty now 😔

[oblivious-troll]

Happy Halloween!!

I tried more painting (Still just Dollar store stuff, but I think it works good enough), sketch under the cut

I definitely like the mouth more in the sketch but I couldn't fix the mistake after I painted it 😅

[4lbon]

👀 Do you have any WIPs that you would never let see the light of day? If yes, what are they about? for the ask game pls!

i have a problem where i will just talk about anything so i dont think i have a single wip i've never talked about. most of them have a snippet posted somewhere on my blog. my first serious f1 fic was my og otp in my heart, 4433, and i've posted about it once before here. as i contemplate the sargewood chaptered fic i've been thinking about starting soon, i've been thinking about my first failed attempted at a chaptered fic a lot. i have thought abt sharing more of it but it does feel silly to post full ass chapters that go no where. i supposed i never posted any of it because this was exactly what i was afraid of, leaving it abandoned online.

[genderqueer-karma]

update on that drawing i'm sending off

ref vs my incomplete scrawl.

i don’t hate it. yet.

[dirt-goth]

There is honestly just this pervasive feeling of "this is all wrong this is all bad" blanketing almost everything in my life but it is actually probably just a manifestation of having to go every day through a life I have outgrown until the calendar lines up.cutely and I can really call it quits<3

[the-weeping-dawn]

////

[sanguineshade]

I finished an original draft this week and today I was compiling a document on character descriptions / background info to make the rewrite more meaty (I focused on getting this draft finished so now I'm left with the bare bones of a finished story).

Anyway I just had fun doing this:

I made a list for all the named characters (main POV and secondary) and for each POV character (there's 8 of them feckers) I have a section "how the character describes others" with the plain terms for each (on the pictured example, we have "older man", "sister", "furball", "tidy woman" and such). It was so helpful! A difficult part of working with several POVs is having them not sound same-y so this is gonna come in handy when I start the rewrite.

It also helped me notice the scope of my story! The strikethroughs are characters this POV does not interact with, and we had a 3-3-2 distribution with 3 POVs not interacting with 3 other chars, 3 POVs not interacting with 6 and 2 POVs not interacting with 7. That's a good variety I'd say!

And while I'm talking about all that as someone trying to write a story, this is the kind of analysis you can only make after you have a finished draft at least. It sounds like a fun exercise to do with any story one may like. (I think I'll take some notes next time I reread my favorite manga...)

[inbabylontheywept]

i did wrestling in middle school. on one hand, i was actually quite good at it, which was nice. being good at any sport was a new achievement for me. on the other hand, i was bi, and i was trying very hard not to notice that i was bi, and getting folded into knots by very kind, very muscular dorks made that task somewhat difficult.

adding fire to the problem was that my parents and my grandparents wanted to watch my matches, because they were very proud that their Gangly Nerd Son was actually Sporting, and they wanted to cheer me on. which would've been sweet and all, but if there are four people you do not want there during a key part of your Burgeoning Sexual Awakening, it is your mom and your dad and your grandma and your grandpa.

right? i mean, imagine some guy's got your head in his armpit, and you're going you know, old sweat smells bad, but fresh sweat has a sort of and then you make eye contact with your grandpa in the stands and you remember you're swearing spandex so if you pop a boner people aren't just going to be able to see the outline, they're going to be able to count the veins, and the only way you will be able to restore your family's honor after that would be by moving to siberia and renouncing joy, forever. that, or lift your entire body up by your kneck then twist 180 degrees without paralyzing yourself.

it’s a lot of pressure, is what i’m saying.

still it did motivate me to win my matches really fast. because i was so tall and skinny, i was stupidly good at the double leg takedown, and then once someone was knocked down, i'd just do the half nelson and kind of flip em over for the pin. then the ref would count to three and i’d win. EZPZ.

i had one match where that went great. won in the first ten seconds, sat back down, and prepared myself for a good hour or two of doing fuck all. didn't even feel bad the parents/grandparents were gonna be bored. the matches went up from me in 5 pound increments (i was in the 115 lbs division) and it was going great until we got to the 145 lbs division. the other school's wrestler stepped onto the mat, and she turned out to be a girl so our guy flipped, because for straight guys, wrestling a girl is not a pleasant experience.

i'm not entirely unsympathetic. my experience wrestling dudes was definitely a little traumatic. but also, i dealt. guy could've dealt too. instead, he refused to wrestle, and the coach went - fine. not even worth fighting over.

so he went to the 140 pounder, and that guy said, nosir, my mom said mormons can't wrestle girls. next guy down, 135 pounder, now he knew he could pull the same card and thus did. 130 pounder, 125, both tapped out. he got to the 120 guy, and that guy was catholic, but he said he was considering being mormon, and thus would have to pass. as a precaution.

coach blew up a little at that. he said "is there anyone - anyone - on this entire goddamn team that is willing to wrestle a girl?" and then he pointed at me and said "YOU. MAT. GO."

and i'll be real, if i'd been paying more attention, i'd have pulled the mormon card too, but i'd just been putting all that audio into a buffer file because i was reading, so i was halfway across the mat before i even processed what had been said and by then it was too late to turn back.

still i had a plan. and my plan - my beautiful, perfect plan - was to do what i'd always done. tackle, flip, pin, win. sit down. read. bore my family to death. move on.

i got the first part right. she was bigger than me, but she wasn't taller. just an incredibly stout woman. god built me like a snake with glasses, just as he built her like a combat cube. the problem was the half nelson. soon as she was down, i tried hooking my arm under hers from behind and for both genders, the defense for this move is just clamping your arms really fucking tight against your sides. if you're a guy, that's whatever, but if you're a girl - especially if you're god's chosen combat cube - that pins your opponents hand right against your boob.

so, i got the hook in, she clamped, my whole arm pressed against something soft, my coach was yelling THE HALF NELSON. BABYLON! JUST FINISH IT! FINISH THE HALF NELSON! and i was just trying to press hard enough to finish, when then my brain went

...oh.

and i flipped out. of course i flipped out. i like girls, and touching a boob is an elemental experience, and i was not ready. i was not prepared. i had not committed the sacred rites. i recoiled like i'd just brushed my arm against the surface of the sun, stood up, and backed away. nobody in the room knew why i'd given up. all they saw was me, right about to win, suddenly flailing around and scrambling. so everyone started screaming at me to just get the half nelson again, and i couldn't really yell back there's a fuckin' boob in the way and it was very distressing, and the only way i could think of to make them stop was just doing it over again the right way.

so i did.

i hunkered down and prepared myself for Wrasslin' Attempt #2: The Sequel.

i knocked her down again, EZPZ. i went for the half nelson again, but she knew what i was about to do so she super clamped, and i knew she was gonna super clamp, so i wound my arm back like a pop-eye cartoon punch before swinging my arm through the gap between her bicep and her side, but the amount of time i spent winding back super signalled what i was about to to do, which gave her time to clamp even harder, which somehow redirected the entire force of the popeye punch to the bottom of her bra.

it spat out a single boob the same way an action hero might spit out one single tooth after getting a solid crack across the jaw. as if to say:

*ptooie.* "that all you got?"

i did not actually see this. my experience was that first there was an arm, then there was a bit of boob, but i was braced, i was ready, forward at all costs, tatakae motherfuckers, and then the boob went away, and i didn't know where it went but my team, and the audience, and everyone who was in front of me, they all gasped like i just kicked them in the stomach. except for my coach. he was behind me, and thus one of the four people in the room who did not see the boob. now my mom, my dad, my grandma, and my grandpa, they all got flashed but nooooooo, coach thunderbutt was behind me, and he didn't see shit so he was still yelling NOOOOOO BABYLON WHAT ARE YOU DOING JUST FINISH THE NELSON! GO FOR THE KILL! BABYLON! BABYLON!

but i did not go for the kill. i stood up and she stuffed her boob back real fast, and we just kind of circled each other awkwardly until time ran out and i won on points. that's not technically allowed, but the ref had some mercy on me.

my coach did not.

i barely had time to sit down before he strode over to the bench to chew me out.

"babylon," he said, in that very calm way people get when they're too pissed to yell. "why didn't you pin?"

and i didn't know how to say well coach, i tried, but there was a boob, and it kept getting in the way, and my mom was watching, and so was my dad, and so was his dad, and his mom, and god (like bible god) and that's a can of worms because i'm pretty sure he was already mad at me, and i'm wearing spandex, and i think i might have to move to siberia, so instead i said

"i uh. i forgot how to do the half nelson."

which is actually impossible. forgetting how to do the half nelson is like forgetting how to swallow your spit.

and he looked at me, like i was the dumbest person in the entire world, and i looked through him like i'd just survived my 250th day in a trench at verdun, and he said: fine.

fine.

but we're all going to practice it for an hour tomorrow because you forgot.

and then he left.

and my buddies had the gall to be salty about it. i got so many comments saying "dude, why didn't you just tell him the truth?" and i said "you can if you care so damn much. you could've wrestled the girl too. maybe someone else should do the hard thing today."

but they didn't. so the next day, we did an hour of half nelson drills, and i spent a decent amount of time getting thrown around the mat, and it was pleasant in exactly the way that i hated and the year after that, to the surprise of everyone but myself, i quit wrestling and joined the trivia team.

and if you want more reasons to love my mom, my grandpa joked after the match that i might have to talk to my bishop about it, and my mom told him he would be allowed to make jokes after he stood in front of a crowd of 110 people in spandex underpants while wrestling a woman that was not his wife.

he paused for almost five seconds after that. then he said: aw. hell. sorry babylon.

and i'd have preferred my apology from god, but getting it from him was pretty good too.