#and being the inspiration i need to really get in my feels about complex storytelling and complex messy characters

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

Will I ever be done ranting about the things I love from your fics? The jury’s still out, but today I’m thinking about the differences in the way Luke and Din express the importance of one another. Luke is comfortable voicing that stuff out loud. Outright telling Din that he dreams about him, that he thinks about their time on Vos 3 when he’s overwhelmed, that focusing on Din in the Force helps him settle his mind. Meanwhile Din is a man of few words and he has trouble expressing his thoughts and feelings as such, but his actions scream how much he feels with naming his ship after their time together, and keeping the blindfold safe and with him through the months and his fierce protectiveness of a man who’s more than capable of keeping himself safe. I just love them your honor

*crawls out of the hot messes that are RL and NaNo and flops on these words*

I lovelovelove all the different ways people show who they are and who other people are to them through their words and actions and even just thoughts. I love the idea that Luke is more expressive and open and balances Din's preference and habit of doing and showing rather than speaking. I love thinking how much they'd appreciate each other's love language, how freely Luke expresses it to Din and how carefully Din shows it to Luke. And I love the challenge of imagining and writing how they could and would express themselves to each other based on who they are and what we know about them.

Honestly, I will never stop talking about reading bell hooks in high school and being taken in by what she wrote about love (in this case, romantic love since we're talking about a ship lol). It's the idea that perhaps we'd all be better off if we treated love as an active thing, a verb, a choice and decision made every moment and every day, rather than some passive thing we fall into, that we let happen. It really moved me epsecially as a young idiot ace, and every shipfic I've written since always tried to keep that idea in mind.

I think that's a big part of the appeal of Din and Luke as a relationship and a partnership. I just love imagining all the ways they'd bond, the ways they'd choose to keep being near each other, the ways they'd show their love and respect for one another. They have different yet compatible ways of expressing their love and respect for each other, and I just think that's fucking neat.

*bonks own head* yep the feels are still super strong in this one

[dduane]

Re: Magic systems

kosmonaunt asked:

I have the weird hyper-fixation of wanting to know all their is about The Speech and just how everything works!! I love learning about how power systems work, and it helps since I’m trying to develop my own. I’m always stuck on soft or hard magic systems. Since I don’t know all there is to really know about my system. Do you have tips on crafting magic systems? How do you feel about someone being inspired by pieces of your system?

Inspiration is fine! What you want to make sure you do with whatever inspires you, though, is to work hard to make your own take on it different from or better than what you borrowed. Around here we refer to this as "the magpie principle:" if you're going to pick up and play with/make off with a bright and shiny idea, you need to be working to produce something even brighter and shinier as your part of the "exchange". Whether or not you succeed at this (or can succeed), either sometimes or never at all, isn't the point. The point is to always be trying.

As regards building magic systems: there were three different ones in the foreground or background of my first novel alone—all of them with features that at this end of time I can recognize as being inspired by elements of magic systems in other writers' work. But by the time I'd more fully developed them, each had become something unique. The system I'm probably better known for—the system based on the wizardly Speech and its use—sprang more or less automatically from the increasingly complex answers to the question, "What if there was a manual that could tell you the truth about/the secrets of what makes the world go?". (Because once you answer one question, another pops up. "Where did that manual come from? What're you supposed to do with it? What's wizardry for?" Etc., etc.) I've spent the last few decades, on and off, answering that question in ways that (intentionally) mirror the main characters' exploration of the art of wizardry, and what it means to engage in the business of errantry in a world that mostly thinks wizards are a fairy tale.

Before getting into describing my own approach to building a system, I needed to take a little time to look around and make sure I knew what you meant when you mentioned hard and soft magic. My best guess is that you're referring to what a lot of people are calling "Sanderson's Three Laws of Magic" (fairly enough, as Brandon calls them that himself). I had a look, and have come to the conclusion that they're more general guidelines than laws... as in each of his three essays on the subject, Brandon no sooner names his basic laws/principles than he starts punching holes through them to make room for systems that don't follow them rigidly. (And frankly I find this kind of endearing.)

With his first one, in particular, I have no quarrel at all: the concept that in one kind of magic, which for his purposes he defines as the "hard" kind, rules are extremely important. (Which is why I'm kind of horrified that he apparently got dogpiled about this take on a Worldcon panel, because to me it seems so intuitive. Some of the best fantasy storytellers I know, like this one, would agree with him.) Then later he gets on to the equally valid ideas that limitations on magic are really important, and that culturally interconnecting multiple systems is useful; and here too we're in agreement. This is reassuring to me, considering that I built my first four systems—all of which feature approaches resting on similar concepts—while Sanderson was between four and six years old. :)

People using Sanderson's Laws will look at the three systems in the Middle Kingdoms books and classify them as varying sorts of relatively hard magic, with their power rooted in two or maybe three different sources. (The blue Fire is a gift of the Divine, nearly lost since ancient times and much damaged, but now slowly being recovered: sorcery is a language-based art in which no one's terribly sure where its power comes from: and the so-called "royal magics" probably started out as a blood sorcery that over centuries was shifted toward very specific uses by the power of the demigod-descendants who employed it.)

The Young Wizards novels, though, feature an extremely hard magic deeply rooted in science and (more or less under the hood) very, very rules-intensive... while its power relies on correct use of the language used to create the Universe, and the active cooperation of the Powers still busy about that work. And this is the reason why, though people are going to naturally be curious about the Speech itself, no one's going to hear very much from me about its actual words.

This is because the Speech is canonically described as so powerful that its use is something you can feel in your body and mind (and theoretically your spirit): bone-shaking, life-changing, unmistakable. And there's no way that made-up words on the page can realistically be expected to evoke physical sensations like that in the reader... or like the sense of the universe going silent around you, leaning in to listen, as you speak your spell. The careful writer knows that it's unwise to attempt to produce responses in the reader that, when they fail, will only emphasize how that thing is not happening, and stands a good chance of shattering the illusion one’s trying to weave.

So a Speech-word gets dropped here and a phrase there, but no one's ever going to get enough of it out of me to try to build a spell. Readers are better at doing that work for themselves in their own heads, out of hints and whispers. Over ten books and their interstitial material, there are plenty of those scattered through the text: not to mention the most basic principles of wizardry, which are laid out before the end of the first chapter of the first book in the series. So I'll leave you to get on with deducing what you can from canon.

Meanwhile, if I was about to build a new system, I'd look at my main characters—in the setting of their home cultures—and ask myself for answers to these questions:

What do they want more than anything?

Why can't they have it?

What kind of power will help them get it?

When they do eventually get within reach of the power / the desired thing... what will its achievement cost them?

And will they pay the price?

...Because the payment of such prices is where you find out what your heroes are worth. (Or aren't.) The above arc succinctly describes, in broad strokes, both The Door into Fire and So You Want To Be A Wizard, and a good number of the books that follow them. (Because why abandon what works, or try to fix what's not broken?) :)

With answers to the questions above you can start feeling your way toward what you need—always looking closely at the cultures your characters spring from, and how those cultures will shape their response to the magic they seek. (Or that finds them.) Maybe it's no surprise that the preferred arc structure of a writer who was a psychiatric nurse will be deeply involved with questions of motivation: because motivation is at the heart of almost all human behavior. Find the motivation and you find the character's heart—and, often enough, what kind of magic they need to make their desire and intention overflow into triumph.

...There are quite a few "How to design your magic system" pages out there. You might glance at these to see if there's anything useful in them for you:

How To Build An Amazing Magic System For Your Fantasy Novel

How To Create A Magic System In Six Simple Steps

Building Your Magic System: A Full Recipe

How To Create A Rational Magic System

However, my favorite is the "So You Want To Write A Functional Magic System" page at TV Tropes, which is nicely arranged yet also completely nonprescriptive—a pick-'n'-mix jar of prompts, things other writers have done that've worked, and generally useful ideas. (And try not to vanish too far down the many interconnected rabbitholes...) :)

Now get out there, build the world, and make the magic(s).

[vyl3tpwny]

Music Genres

When I was kid, you would have probably heard me say something like “I don’t believe in genre labels”. To a degree, there is still something about that sentiment that I agree with; I don’t think you can really put music and styles of music in neat little boxes. But otherwise, I was pretty much wrong about everything else.

Let’s go over that.

pictured: Mala, one of the godfathers of roots Dubstep

—

To be blunt, “genre” isn’t just about approximating what a song sounds like. If you say “I love pop music”, that honestly doesn’t mean much. The more specific you get, the more you will approach something someone can imagine like “I like experimental progressive noise pop music”. Ok, I can start to imagine things that likely approach what you're talking about, but even then it will usually not help someone fully understand what something truly is. In categorizing and approximating music styles, genres only go so far. So what makes them important then?

Well, not to say that approximating a style when describing an artist to someone is a bad thing or that doing so isn’t meant to be valued, but it’s hardly the only reason these labels exist. Importantly, “genre” helps establish culture, history, and a musical identity. So when you're trying to tell someone you're listening to a "progressive rock” project, you’re not just imagining odd time-signatures and complex riffs, you’re also meant to understand and consider that whatever is being described as to you has some sort of relevance or importance with regards to the history behind progressive rock; the culture of college bands in the UK, the sound that the punk movement revolted against, the progression of musical storytelling in rock music since the late 60’s and early 70’s, stuff like that. There’s a distinct culture and history you can pinpoint and understand when you describe something as being progressive rock and you can’t just go around calling any complex electric guitar oriented music "progressive rock" unless it has those specific ties as well as understanding and iteration of the roots.

pictured: Genesis, because progressive rock mention

—

Genre labels help to clarify what kind of culture and histories a music project is being associated itself with and where a lot of its inspiration comes from. This is much more compelling reason for underlining the importance of genre labels and why they should be used correctly.

So, there is something I need to get off my chest then. There are a lot of misuses of genre labels all over the place, especially online. And I’m not talking about saying something is “Alternative Rock” when it’s clearly some kind of “Folk Rock” record instead. What I’m talking about is something like “Dubstep”.

Even as recent as a few years ago, I started personally reclaiming the term “Dubstep” as a genre label to describe any bass-adjacent music. At the time I did this, I thought it was cool, because the term Dubstep had been dubbed (pun intended) to be cringeworthy lexicon to some people. And while I feel that’s a noble reason to reclaim something like that, because some weirdos think it's cringe, in this case I actually think it’s wrong.

The term “Brostep” has been used to describe any non-roots bass-oriented music that originates from the proper roots Dubstep. It’s a term I didn’t like FOREVER, especially because the phrase was derived as a generalization of the kind of people who tend to listen to it. However, I actually think that Brostep is a title that people should be more comfortable and confident with labeling things as.

The original Dubstep came as a result of Jamaican immigrants bringing Dub music to the UK, which then fused with the remnants of 2-Step Garage which was prominent in the 90’s just years prior. Timbah.On.Toast made a great video called All My Homies Hate Skrillex and it is a really good breakdown of what separates roots Dubstep from the Americanized Brostep, which came after it. I think everyone knows by now that I have a deep, deep love for EDM based Broste and I am the biggest Skrillex fangirl alive. So being both a Brostep and Skrillex superfan, please understand that I think the video is one of the most important things you can watch as an EDM enjoyer.

Conflating the term Dubstep with things that aren’t actually Dubstep is honestly a slap in the face to all of the pioneers of Dub and Dubstep, which famously were both pretty much ENTIRELY invented by black people. I think it’s fair to say that incorrectly labeling music in this way has racist implications. It dishonours and twists the legacy of the music. You can find og Dubstep to listen to on the RYM Ultimate Box Set > Dubstep page. Check some of that out, then listen to some 2010, 2011 Skrillex and see how different things really went.

It confused me at first when I was a teenager, I didn't understand why so many people hated Skrillex back in the day. I came to realize so much of the hate wasn’t even really with regards music itself, but the total lack of understanding or care for the roots of the genre, which all of his work was founded upon and he then subsequently bastardized without caring at all. It was pure disrespect, it was practically cultural erasure and so many people will now only know of Dubstep as “that Skrillex transformer screech music”. Yeah. It actually fucking sucks.

But there is a LONG history of black music being erased from history and being undermined, whether entirely intentional or due to systemic unawareness.

I saw a post the other day talking about how it sucks that so much music is just lumped into being “video game music” when so much of this stuff has deep roots and cultural significance. The first example pointed how a lot of acid jazz music is just described as “Persona music” by the layperson now. Meanwhile, Acid Jazz as a genre is a huge development on things like roots jazz, disco, funk, and hip hop music. You know. All genres that were invented by black people. Fascinating, right?

Jungle music was also mentioned. And this one is very particular for me. Jungle music, when not being generalized as "PS1 Music", is often just called drum & bass or breakcore (also please Google the difference between breakbeat and breakcore, thanks) which are all fundamentally misunderstanding what Jungle music even is. Much of Jungle music, AS MANY THINGS DO, finds VERY prominent roots in Reggae, Dub, and sound system culture in Jamaica as well as countless other prominently black communities in the UK.

But it doesn’t stop there.

If you’re unfamiliar, there is a genre called “IDM”, otherwise known as Intelligent Dance Music. When I was a kid, and I first heard that word, I immediately was like “that is the most pretentious, stupid thing I’ve ever heard”. Eventually as I grew up, I just stopped thinking about that and started referring to more music as IDM. This style of music is generally characterized with “complexity” and being “not much danceable”. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the music that is called IDM, I do think there’s everything wrong with the term IDM, intelligent dance music.

When asked how he feels about being labeled as an IDM artist, Aphex Twin responded:

"I just think it's really funny to have terms like that. It's [basically] saying 'this is intelligent and everything else is STUPID.' It's really nasty to everyone else's music."

pictured: Aphex Twin, the funnyman himself

—

I think most people would agree with this sentiment. It’s so strange to call one kind of music “intelligent”, out of the hundreds of thousands of genres out there. But let’s bring this back to Jungle music. The reality is that IDM started to become a term around the same time that Jungle music became prominent, in the 90's. Both styles of music are complex, introspective, skittery, and chaotic (but refined and often disciplined) genres. Except, of these two, Jungle music was the one pioneered primarily by black artists. IDM was a sort in competition with Jungle. To therefore call IDM “intelligent” in comparison to Jungle music ... well. I don’t feel like I really have to explain why that’s fucked up.

A lot of people have proposed different names for IDM. A quick look on reddit yields things like “Experimental Electronic” and “Brain Dance” (which was coined by Aphex Twin's label). Me personally, the term “Electro-Prog” comes to mind. Sounds cool.

Similar conversations are presently being had about the term “Riddim”. This brings us back to the dubstep side of this discussion again. Riddim, as an EDM genre, is an offshoot of Brostep music that focuses a lot on repetition over the downbeat, maintaining an insanely distorted sound design, a lot more than the average Brostep song. However, the term “riddim” originates — yet again — from the Jamaican Patois for “rhythm”. And Riddim as a musical style in Jamaica is actually more associated with things like dancehall and reggae, rather than the commercialized "Riddim" that is several hundred times removed from its own roots.

Last year, musician INFEKT proposed that what most EDM listeners call “riddim” should be referred to instead as “Trench” in an article on their website. This proposed name is derived from Getter’s use of the term on his 2014 record “Trenchlords Vol. 1”. I don’t personally know how much I resonate with the term, but whatever the consensus is, I don’t think we should be conflating a westernized, commercialized, and EDM-centric genre like this to Jamaican roots music. Over and over again, it seems that black music is constantly overwritten by developments like this, so I think more care needs to be taken in not allowing that to happen.

As a side note, a lot of people online seem very keen on appropriating Jamaican Patois quite often? There are so many examples of this. When the term “Bomboclaat” started making the rounds on Twitter a few years ago, so many white people were quick to either talk wildly about the term and trend or otherwise start saying it as well. There was a fucking article that sought to answer “The Bomboclaat >> Meme << Meaning Explained”, like they’re not dissecting an element of Jamaican slang lol. Then there was a period of time where people were constantly saying things like “On Jah?” as a stand-in for “On God?” even though this, again, is Jamaican Patois. And even now, you have tons and tons of non-black people going everywhere being like “what is blud waffling about?”, the phrase “blud” ONCE AGAIN also being Jamaican in origin.

I shouldn’t even have to explain what makes these kinds of appropriations weird and messed up. But black people lose jobs and are denied basic things in life over their hair styles, their expressions and slang, and so many other things that a white person can just appropriate and face zero consequences whatsoever for.

That aside, aside. Understanding and labeling genres correctly is such a big part of music history and highlighting and preserving cultures worldwide. When efforts are made to undermine the meaning of a genre label or otherwise use it incorrectly, so much damage is done to the communities and people groups that innovate and pioneer this art to begin with.

For these reasons, I will gladly use the term Brostep. I will happily call things Electro-Prog. And when you talk about genres like Jungle and Dubstep, say it with your whole chest. Be proud of the human race, show respect and love for the people who have forged the greatest parts of music with their bare hands. We will always stand on the shoulders of giants as musicians, so instead of pretending you yourself are the giant, build monuments and maintain the history of these people. You as an artist are nothing without them.

pictured: Augustus Pablo, one of the most important innovators of Dub. Without him, and without many of his contemporaries, I would reckon that half or more of all modern music would simply not exist.

CONTENT WARNING FOR THIS FINAL SECTION, THERE ARE LIKE LOTS OF STRANGE SLURS AND RACIST VIBES.

—

One last thing I wanna mention, this is slightly tangential but I think it's relevant to this conversation. It's always weird how lots of websites categorize things like this:

From Big Fish Audio... "G**sy*? "World/Ethnic Loops & Samples"? What the fuck are you talking about. Seems like racism to me.

On Loopmasters they have a "World" section. Any Americanized genre gets its own category, but the entire continents of Africa and Asia as well as the country of India and region of the Middle East (which are part of Asia, hope this helps btw) and lastly South America are stuffed into the nebulous "World Label". Seems like racism to me. Are you telling me you weirdos can't figure out a better way to represent these things?

But then Psy Trance gets its whole entire own category? Aren't there only like five people who listen to Psy Trance? /hj . But like come on.

Shoutout to WA Productions for categorizing a universe of suspiciously mostly black music as """Urban"""". And this company is a dime a dozen, hundreds of corpos do this shit.

East fucking West, what is this dude. There is a racism happening, I just know it. Please give me a count of how many poc are on payroll at your company, I am so curious.

And while we're at it, East West, what is this. Tell me. Fucking tell me.

Thanks for reading.

[silentcryracha]

❍ ‗ What type of songs Skz would write about you ‗ ❍

Pairings : Stray Kids x reader

Genre/warnings : headcanons, possible use of swear words, mentions of intimacy, mentions of sad feelings and breakups

Summary : What type of songs I think Stray Kids members would write about their relationships

Word count : 1.7k

A/n : these are general headcanons that are described more in a technical way than a fictional one, so yeah

ps: There could be errors. Do NOT repost on other socials. Leave feedback if you feel like it, otherwise enjoy! ♡︎

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Chan ‗ ❍

Holy trinity: agsty, fun, horny

Chan seems like the man who would gain inspiration from strong feelings that he may experience.

The man has range and is talented af so of course he'd be able to write anything, BUT

My idea is that he'd be more inclined to write about angsty feelings ranging from sadness, maybe regret. He wouldn't specifically write about you or describe you as a person or your features, those are for him only to appreciate, or in this case, to miss. I think he'd write down his feelings, whether it's plain sadness and longing, or something stronger like regret, or unspoken things.

But he could also be really inspired by the thrill and 'primal' feeling that comes with the start of a relationship, or even a little earlier when it's the 'chasing' moment before getting together. He'd write about how he's absolutely whipped and stupid in love for you, but in the 'fun' way, not in the 'sad' way.

Both the angst and the fun could (and probably would) be mixed with some horniness, absolutely. He could write about how mad you make him and how fucking desperate he is for a taste of you. Again, this could be applied in a more fun and lighthearted song, like a honeymoon phase, or to a darker more 'toxic' context.

Minho ‗ ❍

A delicate story about romance in all its shades

I feel like Minho would keep the lyrics very vague, but still mainly focus on the other person, more than write about this own feelings. While Chan seems more the type to write a 'letter' type of lyrics, I think Minho would be more of a 'storyteller'.

He'd probably write more chill lyrics, never being raunchy or explicit, but could very well imply intimacy in a more subtle way. In a poetic way, if you will.

I do think that he'd give his best with romantic songs, though. He may not look like it at first glance, but Lee Minho is a romantic and you will not change my mind.

I could see him writing lyrics with a lot of artistic/literature/media influence. Which ties back with the whole 'storyteller' thing. They wouldn't be overly complex as in words choice though, they'll need to be simple and delicate with a perfect melody to accompany them. Maybe some technical or production related tricks (like the 'suspense' at the end of limbo)

The same exact style would apply for more angsty or sad songs. I find him similar to Chan in this aspect in the sense that he'd write about sad, depressing and heart wrenching feelings more than angry or vengeful ones. He'd also probably do it in a 'therapeutic' way, like writing down the last chapter of a story that will be finally be closed and locked away in his memories.

He could also write some more 'fun' songs but I think that they wouldn't be necessarily about romantic relationships. But who knows?

Changbin ‗ ❍

About you, about me, about us

Changbin is another master in the craft of composing and writing, which means that he'd be able to switch povs pretty easily in whatever story he wanted to tell, or even change the style of the narration itself.

He could write about any topic he wanted to be honest, and his rapping and freestyling abilities are probably a big help in that sense, but let's focus on romance now.

Bin looks like someone who cherishes a lot his personal life and feelings, which is why it would be harder to find lyrics in which he directly puts himself as the narrator. But it does happen sometimes, and it's usually a cry for help. May be a pleading to someone that left him, an apology to someone he hurt.

Usually though I feel like he's more the one to pick a specific feeling/situation and elaborate on it. Might be a specific argument, the way that a breakup happened, the mistakes that led to said breakup. In this case he would write openly, like he wants the person in question to hear him out through his music.

His lyrics wouldn't be adorned with pretty words or poetic comparisons, but only with real and raw feelings that will pull at your heartstrings for how honest they sound.

Hyunjin ‗ ❍

Straight out of a literature piece

Hyunjin *say it with me*, is a romantic. Yes, that's the key to understanding him, pretty much.

He is a lover, through and through. A lover of art, beauty, emotions, memories, of love itself. This is why I think that any lyrics that he may write will be almost like a dance of words, melodies, instruments, and feelings. He wants to put his feelings down because they overwhelm him.

With each of his songs he seems like he wants to curate every aspect to the T, almost as if he was creating his own little work of art. He wants it to be evocative, to make you feel what he does, and will do it with different tools such as poetical lyrics, a particular choice of instruments, and even the tone of his voice.

Ironically, I think that the more he'd have to 'hide', the more complex and embellished the lyrics would be. He could do a song with quite simple but direct lyrics, and sing it in an energetic way, almost desperate way, like he can't wait to shout out to the person he loves. Almost like a movie/book scene in which the love interest finally confesses their love.

The thing with Hyunjin seems to be that he enjoys writing about angsty feelings. Something that could be a problem of communication within the relationship, or confusion by getting mixed signals from someone, or again with a dangerous attraction for someone who isn't right for him but still manages to 'lull' him into this toxic relationship.

In both cases I think that he'd use a lot of artistic or maybe visually eliciting comparisons in his lyrics, playing with words and the emotions that those elicit in people.

Jisung ‗ ❍

Let it out, angsty boy

I really feel like Han writes when he doesn't find any other way out, so whatever it is it's likely to be explosive.

He's gonna write lyrics that scream how much he's wrapped around your finger, how your love is essentially all he needs to live and that you could do whatever you wanted with him because he's yours. Would be very smart in writing a whole story about it, mentioning mundane things and then ranging to use metaphors and abstract comparisons to let his explosive emotions through.

I feel like he could write out of frustration too, which would bring lyrics with a different tone to them. Whatever he feels must and will be reflected in the song. If the sentiment is cold, sharp and toxic, the producing part of the song will reflect that as much as his own intonation. If it was a cry for help, a prayer almost, you'd be able to feel it through the melody and the whole structure of the song, not only the lyrics.

He's another one who desperately wants and needs for his music to be honest and to elicit the same feelings that he felt while producing it in complete detail, similar to Hyunjin.

Felix ‗ ❍

A lot of feelings and honesty

Felix has range in what he writes, but what I noticed mostly in the projects that he's been part of, is that he uses his voice a lot to set the tone of the song.

Whatever are the lyrics, his extremely adaptable voice with automatically make you understand what he was going for 'emotion' wise. This also applies to the choice of the instrumentals.

I feel like he could be writing about more romantic and wholesome feelings, in this case with lyrics that sound really clean, pure and almost dreamy, but still simple.

But he could also be writing about more gloomy feelings, mainly of sadness and 'mourning', and would probably treat the narrative as something that is already in the past but with which he still has to let go completely. His main goal I think is honesty, which is why the lyrics would be quite simple but hurt where they should.

Seungmin ‗ ❍

Dreamy and emotional

I feel like he's truly someone that could make a listener go 'Oh, so he is in love LOVE' while listening to one of his songs.

The things that would inspire Seungmin the most while writing is the feeling of being in love. He'd probably be quite poetic, dreamy and transfer these vibes to the lyrics and music as well. His voice too, which is adaptable and very expressive.

He's also someone who tries to give a 'narrator' vibe to his songs, almost like he was telling a story that had a beginning and and end. He can write about pretty much anything if it has to do with love. Unrequited love, longing for someone, looking back on your shared happy memories with a hint of sadness. He is also someone who is quite honest and wants the song to represent his feelings in an almost 'dreamy' way.

Jeongin ‗ ❍

Delicate, warm and comforting

Jeongin is someone who seems more comfortable writing about delicate feelings, whether they're positive or negative. A delicate love, almost like a first love, or on the other end a sad ending to that same love.

They lyrics would be quite easy, not overly complex and aim to be as honest as they can in eliciting the same feelings that the writer felt as they thought them out. But there would be a factor of comfort and relatability to them that would pull at your heartstrings.

His voice can also be quite expressive and he knows is, which is why the intonation along with the instrumentals would be fundamental, even more than the words themselves maybe.

He'd like to take a specific feeling and make a song about it, it doesn't necessarily need to be a whole story, moral, or context. He just wants to be able to express his feelings as clearly as possible, without necessarily giving it a background. I feel like those actual moments would be very precious to him and would want to keep them private in his memory.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

[thecomfywriter]

Welcome to my Writing Corner!

2024 updated edition:

⋆.˚ ♡⋆࿐ 🦢 ⋆.˚ ⋆.˚🦢⋆࿐♡⋆.˚

Hey! Welcome to my writing corner. My name is (not) Naveena, though I more commonly go by @thecomfywriter. This blog is dedicated to sharing tips and tricks pertaining to writing. Occasionally, I'll also share artwork relating to my ocs or details about my own WIP, but I tend to gear most of my content towards helping other writers tackle the messier parts of writing and make the entire process easier for all of us. Here are some fun fact about me, and then some about my WIP.

Follow my socials! You can find my book on wattpad and tapas :)

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ABOUT ME:

When did I get into writing?

I actually got into storytelling first in the form of my doll games, believe it or not. When those stories all started layering and becoming more complex, I decided to take my stories to paper. I think my sister's need for a bedtime story every night is what initially inspired my brain to start weaving stories, but I started creating stories and orating them at the age of 5 (my audience was my sister) and I started writing when I was 6.

What genres do I like writing the most?

Over the years, I have experimented with a bunch of different genres, from horror to paranormal to mystery to romance to action... literally everything. But, the one my heart settles in the most is high fantasy, mainly because it engages every part of my brain and really makes me think. I think it has to do with the worldbuilding part of it. If you've seen my previous posts, worldbuilding is my favourite aspect of writing, and when you're writing high fantasy, the entire world and all its lore is made from scratch. I absolutely ADORE the creative process of forging politics or economic systems; trade routes and cultural history; mythology and language. Every part of worldbuilding makes me devote myself to high fantasy like no other genre. It's also the reason why I become so invested in my own writing.

What are my favourite books?

RECOMMENDATION ALERT. Read all of these books please because I promise you, if for nothing else, it will give you a fresh taste of different styles of literature. I'll keep my essays as to why I love each novel short, but I literally have an entire shelf in my room dedicated to all my favourites. In terms of my top two, The Iliad by Homer and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte have to tie. They're both classics and they both hold a special place in my heart. Wuthering Heights for its depiction of different types of love and the complexities of falling and maintaining love, even through maladaptive and obsessive ways like revenge, grief, and resentment. The Iliad for the sheer theatrics of Achilles LMAO. He's so goofy I love him. Such a drama king, but also so lethal? I love the dichotomy. I love that you can feel his wrath, feel his indignation, and feel the consequences of his retreat through its impact on the war. It speaks volumes about how powerful his character is long before his 3 bellows on the top of the wall after a certain someone-someone dies. I'm not going to say who, but also... Zeus listing off all his affairs while trying to tell Hera how much he lusts for her will always make me laugh. Like, damn bro is really dense, huh?

In terms of non-classics: The Giver by Lois Lowry for how it has changed my perspective of the world. It has made me more appreciative of all the aspects of being human and all the small sensational things I had previously taken for granted. The Last Dragon by Silvana De Mari for the adventure aspect of the tale and getting me so emotionally attached to the characters. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro for the reflective aspects of the tale and how the story tends to hold more meaning after it simmers in the conscious and lingers behind with endless thoughts. I cannot tell you how many times I've reflected on that book. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini for how RAW and emotionally impactful that story is. GOD the ending gutted me. I've never had a book make me sob before this one. And then, goofily enough, The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith because I love how iconic it is, especially with og Elena.

QUESTIONS ABOUT MY WIP:

What's the name and genre of the story?

Throne of Vengeance! It's a high fantasy action adventure.

Is it completed?

As of April 2024, yes! I am going through to edit it a second time since I'm pretty sure my brain was slightly fried the first time, but also starting the querying process right now.

How long did it take to complete?

In terms of the entire concept? I originally drafted the idea for this book when I was 7 years old. Finished it when I was 9 because I took a year long hiatus where I forgot about it. Then, I decided to revisit and rewrite it when I was 11ish? And it took me until now, at the ripe age of 21, to have it done and dusted.

A long journey indeed.

⋆.˚ ♡⋆࿐ 🦢 ⋆.˚ ⋆.˚🦢⋆࿐♡⋆.˚

Alrighty! So, I'll keep the WIP questions short, but I hope you guys enjoy my blog. If you have any questions or post requests, do let me know. My asks are always open :)

Ciao!

[idk-im-just-here-now]

I just had a really wild experience, actually, so this'll be a longer post than usual!

So, the other day, I was discussing with someone the concept of a turtle having life on or inside its shell, and they mentioned inspiration being taken from the movie Strange World. Now, if you haven't seen Strange World, I HIGHLY recommend you go watch it, especially all of you who like speculative biology and complex worldbuilding. It may be a movie directed toward younger audiences, but there was a lot of time and care put into the world, and I can promise you won't regret it (Plus, some really nicely done LGBTQ+ and other minority rep!)! I'm gonna be spoiling the ending to the movie here, so ye, spoilers, beware!

So we were talking about that, and when they brought it up, I got really excited, because the end of that movie revealed that the people were living on and in a giant turtle swimming across a giant ocean. Now, yes, that sounds very cool, but I was especially excited because it was a reference to mythology I both like and am personally connected to: a North American native myth, that tells the tale of how the world was built on Turtle's shell, which became Turtle Island - which is nowadays known as North America.

I mentioned this to them, and they got excited and asked to know more about it so they could see if there were any ideas they could glean from the myth. I got really excited, because it meant I got to share a piece of my culture with somebody, for the first time ever.

So, I told them the version of the myth that I'd first heard, the story of a Sky Woman descending to the ocean that was Earth while animals tried to help retrieve mud from the bottom of the ocean to create the world. In the end, Muskrat managed to retrieve it, but the creature died in the process. Sky Woman made the world on the Turtle's shell and planted the medicine she'd brought with her from her world. The island was named Turtle Island to honor the creature who carried it.

I know there are a lot of different versions of the myth, but this was the one I heard. It belongs to the Haudenosaunee tribe from the Great Plains. None of my elders, or the ones I have, would have been able to tell me my tribe's myth because residential schools did so much damage to my family.

But while I was telling the story, something truly incredible was happening.

I slipped into the same words, the same story, that I'd first heard only a few months ago. I told it almost word-for-word, the same way the person who'd read it to me had spoken it. It was easy to say, and even though I did need to look at some resources at first to confirm the telling I was going to my friend, at some point I stopped checking and just kept speaking.

Now, I'm not saying it was like a trance or magic or anything mystic or voodoo like that. That's not how it works, and frankly, I can see how my wording would mistake it to be something like that.

But no. It just felt completely natural, like I was passing on my knowledge from one person to the next, from one generation to another; the way the oral storytelling in my native tribes worked. There was no drum circle or sage burning or dance - just me on Discord, passing on knowledge to someone who was genuinely interested to learn.

And I don't think I've ever felt more connected to my past and my culture and my people than I did in that moment. And I'm really happy it happened, because it was something that didn't require me to go learn or feel like I didn't know how to get into - its something I'm already good at, and I'm re-learning how to tell stories from my culture and I feel like I CAN reconnect - I just have to go looking for it.

TL;DR: Got to tell a story from my native culture, and that was singlehandedly the most empowering experience I've had regarding my culture in years. I now feel a lot more confident in going out and learning about it and learning to be part of it.

[ihopesocomic]

I think what's also important to point out is that you're both making IHS for a completely different demographic from MP? Not that MP really succeeded at being an "adult series" but making a PG-13 comic means that some things have to be condensed and simplified for your child readers so it's easy for them to follow and understand. Hope I'm not coming across as too patronizing, I just think the way that IHS's storytelling appeals to both minors AND adults rather one camp is its main strength.

I think there's two important things to note here:

I feel My Pride opted to describe itself as "not for children" because it felt that working off that disclaimer meant the show could be unnecessarily violent and depressing. We've had fans use it as a defence for the show's bad writing before (even though a lot of the fans are obviously minors lol) and yeah no, that's not how "adult animation" works. There still needs to be a method and a reasoning behind these things. Not to mention that the bobblehead trigger warnings before each episode were easily one of the most insultingly childish things I have ever had to sit through. Your animation is supposedly for adults and yet you seriously have the characters being all 'so if you don't have a mane as big as mine, you shouldn't be here!" and "cubs: stay out!" like some Dora the Explorer shit? Honestly: get real. It's also incredibly irresponsible to present trigger warnings as these "tee hee funny" segments. Really shows how they had no idea what kind of audience they were presenting this show to and were just using the "it's not for children1!1!" route as a cop out.

Children's media can still be relatively mature. There are plenty of examples out there, some of which inspired this comic. There's just a limit to these things and I think people can make obvious guesses on what these limits are based on how we've ran this blog and shot certain things down. However, our comic still handles subjects that you would view as quite "adult", such as abuse and grief. Because children deserve to be taken seriously. It's because children - particularly teenagers - aren't unintelligent. They can pick up on things quick and understand certain mature aspects, mainly because some have experienced/are experiencing the same things that Hope and the other characters are experiencing in the comic. It's about your writing relating to your audience as well as trying to keep their sensitivities in mind, and this goes for media for adults as well as children. You don't suddenly stop having triggers once you're 18, unfortunately.

So, yeah, while I get what you're saying, anon, and I appreciate it, I don't want us to use our PG-13 rating as a reasoning behind our storytelling. We've already stated why our villains are written the way they are, after all. Because trying to make every single villain in media "sympathetic" is becoming a bit of mishandled curse and we don't want it to apply to all of our antagonists. It's completely doable to make your villains complex AND unsympathetic. - RJ

[musical-chick-13]

Thoughts on toxic yuri?

One of my very favorite storytelling concepts, I love it when women make each other worse. <3

I do think it's important, for me anyway, to note the difference between a dynamic that's toxic in one direction versus something that is mutually toxic. The first one doesn't really interest me a whole lot, usually because it means one character suffers constantly without being allowed to do anything else--at the very least, it will come across as the more ""normal"" character not really being that into the relationship in question. I need BOTH parties to be unhinged.

The important thing for any fictional relationship (though we're specifying toxic yuri here, obviously) is that it's interesting. If there is no limit to what the women can do within a dynamic, then there are an infinite number of ways for that dynamic to go. And while you can learn a lot about a character through examining their values and positive qualities, you can learn just as much (if not more) by considering their flaws. And those flaws really come out in the case of toxic yuri; characters get to show the uglier parts of themselves in this context, which I am always a fan of. A fraught, complex relationship, when written well, can be a really great way to psychologically explore the characters: what inspires them to act this way? why do they think this behavior is acceptable? if they don't think it's acceptable, why do they keep doing it? what do they think about the concept of love as a whole? how far would they go for intimacy or to be understood? how do they view other people in general? and probably most importantly, what led to them developing the beliefs underlying their actions in the first place?

From a more "psychologically, why do people enjoy this" standpoint, mutual toxicity often goes hand in hand with extreme obsession, extreme jealousy, and a willingness to forgive a whole lot of horrible shit. Which, yeah, in real life you don't want to be in a relationship like that. But I think there's a lot of emotional resonance in exploring those feelings. The idea that someone will never leave you. That they think so intensely about you specifically that they'll break anything and anyone to stay with you. That even if you're the worst version of yourself, someone will still want you because that's still you. Someone knows exactly how to fuck you up because they genuinely understand you. Things in fiction that we would never want in real life can be incredibly interesting or even cathartic to witness from a distance. I think we all feel things that scare us sometimes (or even simply feel an innocuous emotion so intensely that it scares us), and looking at unpleasant feelings within fiction can help identify, parse out, process, and successfully cope with those feelings. And I think, at the end of it all, a lot of people want to matter to someone, in some way. It makes sense that some creators would take that concept-of meaning a great deal to another person, of affecting them deeply-to its absolute extreme through writing.

(And also, consider. That I am very gay. And that horrible women are very attractive.)

[churutu]

The Science Behind Great Storytelling

(Photo by Pereanu Sebastian on Unsplash)

Why do you write?

There’s probably no easy, straightforward answer to such a question. Some people write to express themselves, some to share their stories or opinions, some to inspire other people, some to educate, some even find it therapeutic. It’s a question that has both no answer and multiple, complex answers, all at once — we all write different things, for different reasons.

Nonetheless, whatever your why might be, there’s a common denominator among them all: As writers and story-tellers, we aim to transform our why into written words, in order to elicit a certain array of feelings and emotions in our readers.

What we write certainly plays a big role here, but in my humble opinion, how we write it is what makes the difference: The way you describe a murder can make the whole scene go from tragedy to comedy; the way the reader feels about a character depends on the words you use while presenting it; different punctuation can give completely different meanings to the same sentence. In other words, by learning how to write you are able to control what your audience feels while reading your work — this is why learning, experimenting, and practicing are crucial steps towards great writing and story-telling.

No surprises here, right? Everyone knows the more you write, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the better you write. It’s the well-known practice makes perfect cycle that has repeated itself throughout history and, paired with talent, has churned out some of the greatest writers of all time.

So, I could tell you to practice everyday, to read more, or to join a writing course. I could also tell you that Jane Austen’s literary style relies on a combination of parody, burlesque, irony, free indirect speech, and a degree of realism. I could tell you how Hemingway stood out from the crowd thanks to his concise, straightforward, and realistic style. If we wanted to get even more technical, I could also tell you that Shakespeare used a metrical pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, called blank verse — in short, I could tell you things you’d find in your English literature book, or things you’ve already been told a million times before.

But that’s not what I’m going to do. Instead, I’ll tell you about the science behind our readers’ emotions, the effect our words have on them while reading, and how to make them work for you:

The science

It’s all about neurotransmitters.

Technically speaking, a neurotransmitter is “a chemical substance which is released at the end of a nerve fibre by the arrival of a nerve impulse and, by diffusing across the synapse or junction, effects the transfer of the impulse to another nerve fibre, a muscle fibre, or some other structure.”

In simple English, neurotransmitters are chemical messengers: To keep it simple, all you really need to know is that external stimuli get them fired up, and according to which one is stimulated, a certain chemical is released inside your body, provoking a certain feeling or emotion.

Unfortunately, since there are way too many different kinds of neurotransmitters, we won’t be able to cover them all here. If you are interested in the topic you can grab yourself a copy of Marco Nigrini’s book “The Brain: A User’s Manual” — reading the book, I came to the conclusion that, when it comes to writing and story-telling, there are three main neurotransmitters that we can exploit: Dopamine, Oxytocin, and Endorphins.

The storytelling

It’s still, all about neurotransmitters.

Dopamine

As Nigrini puts it in his book, “dopamine is the superstar of neurotransmitters”. You have most likely heard about it at some point in your life, and for a good reason. Most people know it as the pleasure and reward hormone, because it plays a major role when it comes to experiencing happiness, our well-being and that rewarding feeling we get after doing certain things — take social media for example: Instagram likes, Facebook messages, and Twitter retweets all stimulate the release of dopamine in our brain, which is why they all become so addictive.

For us, as writers and story-tellers, the addictive properties of dopamine are perfect if we want to keep our readers glued to our work. So the logical question now, would be how do we do it?

Suspense and expectation. These two elements alone are enough to flood your readers’ neural highways with dopamine, and get them hooked to your story — creating shorter sentences, revealing vital information that the characters don’t yet know, and building anticipation, are all simple yet effective ways to accomplish this.

Oxytocin

As writers, specially when it comes to fiction, we want our readers to fall in love with our story and our characters, we want them to bond with us and our work — this is where oxytocin steals the spotlight.

To give you an example of what exactly is this neurotransmitter’s role, imagine a mother and her newborn. As we all know, the bond between the two of them is pretty much unbreakable, but why is this? In part, it’s because of oxytocin — while nursing her newborn, oxytocin is released in large amounts, thus creating a sentiment of generosity and trust between the mother and the baby.

For obvious reasons, we can’t rely on nursing our readers, so we have to stick to the next best thing: In order to stimulate the release of oxytocin in our reader’s brain, we need to create empathic characters or narrate touching stories.

Endorphins

Chocolate and sex both release endorphins — this should give you at least a vague idea of the role they play in our body. To clear up what it is they actually do though, just know that, much like dopamine, these neurotransmitters have a massive impact on your feelings of well-being, and this is what we should take advantage of: If we give our readers a more immersive reading experience, while making them feel more at ease, comfortable, and relaxed (which are all effects that endorphins have on our body), chances are they will enjoy whatever it is we put in front of them.

The good news? Stimulating the release of endorphins in our readers is way easier than you’d think — just make them laugh.

Conclusion? As with every other aspect of life, the way we experience reading massively depends on the way our brain perceives and processes information. If we, as writers, are able to understand the mechanism behind it, we can get one step closer to mastering our craft.

So remember, use science and neurotransmitters to your advantage, and develop your writing according to the feelings and emotions you want your story to elicit in your readers.

[snurgle07]

Say all your psychonauts 2 thoughtS

All of them huh? I think about this game so much, I’d be here all day, but this certainly gives me a good excuse to ramble about some things I love about pn2. :D

- The characters are amazing! 10/10 I care about pretty much all of those freaks. The art style makes them all look so charming in a lopsided weird sort of way, and the game is so empathetic to everyone that even the characters we don’t get much of or who serve a limited purpose still feel well rounded and real.

- Raz is excellent. He’s loads of fun in the first game and continues to be a blast in the second. He’s even more adorable and earnest in the sequel and I love that for him!! He’s definitely one of my favorite characters of all time, I adore him.

- Adoring the characters goes for everyone though. And pn2 has a whole new cast of characters who are all super fun in their own ways. The Psychic 7 especially are super cool. My biggest soft spot is for Lucy, but I love Bob, Ford, and well, the rest of the seven really, a whole lot. Getting to meet the Aquatos is also awesome, and the interns are cool too. Lotsa cool groups of characters to enjoy.

- The story? Awesome. Feels grander than pn1 to be honest, and I like that, but also it’s completely great on its own. It’s got loads of mind shenanigans, drama, great mental health commentary, and manages to balance out all the trauma with enough healing and empathy and even a bit of humor that it all still feels nice and hopeful despite everything. Like yeah there’s a lot of angst material certainly, and as a fan I gotta love that, buuuut sometimes I need a piece of media to punch me in the gut and then give me a warm hug afterward.

- On the note of mental health stuff, I feel it did great. It’s noticeable that they talked to experts and people with personal experience. They were able to convey the mindscapes of certain traumas and mental health issues with more accuracy. The first game was certainly empathetic and kind in regards to that, which was a big deal at the time, buuuut the accuracy was a bit lacking back then. Pn1 shows it’s age a bit in that regard. Pn2 improves on that wonderfully with both kind and more researched explorations into the mind.

-The morals regarding the complexity of the human mind and the messiness of humanity and how we often make mistakes and have more to us under the surface… heroes are often flawed, villains may just be a version of a person we made up in our mind based off of our limited perceptions… aughh good stuff. There are so many good takeaways from psychonauts 2 and I love it!

- Also on a more personal note, I probably owe this game my fascination with psychic powers and psychics in fiction. It’s tangentially what got me into Mob Psycho 100, and has inspired me to make some psychic ocs. The art direction really impacted me and even the way I draw. My style has opened up so much more since practicing drawing such funky looking characters. I genuinely think it has helped me improve a lot and helped me discover more about what kinds of art style I adore and inspired my own. The gameplay too, alongside the art direction, has impacted my aspirations a lot as far as being an artist and hopefully to work in game design— which is to say it’s super inspiring! I think it can inspire people in a myriad of ways, it’s a very unique game like that, and it really reminds me why I love art, storytelling, and games so much. I genuinely feel I owe it a lot for a variety of reasons and I’ve seen many others who play it feel the same. :)

TLDR: Psychonauts 2 my beloved…

Thanks for the ask! I will never not want to talk about psychonauts, this game is sticking in my brain for good.

[vigilskeep]

imo Leliana’s character becomes infinitely more interesting with her inquisition appearance! i know i originally had a hard time connecting to her character despite her being my first romance, and got really put off by her banters with Morrigan, because that’s almost word-for-word shit i hear irl sometimes, but i think inquisition actually does a good job with her for the most part! i think it focused on things that should have had more focus in origins! her character arc plays with themes of devotion and how betraying yourself and morals for someone else is bad for you, and not just on her softened/inspired routes either! Leliana is a character who, imo, spends a lot of her out of game appearance being manipulated and used by other people (or, hell, depending on how you play it, that can be her origins appearance too), and i like that she can eventually break out of that!

i have played the first like 15 hours of inquisition and i did love her in that!

i just find her writing in dao... confusing? i don’t get what they’re going for. it’s contradictory but not imo in the way that makes her writing feel complex, just jarring. she’s a fighter in leather armour and accused by more than one character of having ragged boyish hair, but one of the very same characters who says that then calls her “powdered, perfumed, you ooze elegance” and literally afraid to ruin her hair (what happened to it being ragged and boyish???), and she’s also the “girly” one who picks fun at morrigan’s clothes and lack of “civilisation”. she takes the role of the innocent prudish judgemental girl in banters, easily offended and easy to tease, as if she’s never both been a killer and idolised one, as if she’s never been a seductress and spy who should be able to control conversation! she’s supposed to be a bard but she’s awkward in flirting, a bad liar and shocked at the idea of writing a song about a tragedy (???). i feel like i’m constantly told she’s a bard but never shown

i also find a lot of her writing underwhelming on a technical level—her remarks during npc dialogue are often very generic and sympathetic in a way that barely even convinces me she cares, which falls so flat compared to the more entertaining characters. and i’ve said this before but i think marjolaine’s writing is incredibly bad as well. there’s such a lack of subtlety that i would dislike for any character but especially for two supposed bards and manipulators. no leliana i do not believe you have been fundamentally influenced by the subtle serpent’s whispers of a woman who cackles and says “oh but leliana you are me” in one of the worst french accents i’ve ever heard. seriously was it so hard to find french people for this game

i don’t know, that reads like a solid block of criticism, it’s not that bad and i do like leliana i just don’t get it. it feels to me like they came up with two separate character concepts and they already had morrigan to be the bad girl love interest so they needed someone to be the contrasting nice girl and they just shoved whatever they had into that role. and i also think her story feels a bit disconnected from the main plot, which is such a waste to me because one of dao’s few big storytelling flaws to me is that it doesn’t explore the past between orlais and ferelden enough for you to understand why loghain and many others feel the way they do. you know, the driving force of half the plot. and they have a culturally orlesian companion! right there! why doesn’t she talk about this more! why isn’t this central to how people react to her! sorry that’s kind of a separate issue but it’s such strong missed potential to me

[manuscripts-dontburn]

The Palace: From the Tudors to the Windsors, 500 Years of Royal History at Hampton Court

Author: Gareth Russel

First published: 2023

Rating: ★★★★☆

Gareth Russel is an extremely readable writer and I particularly love his biography of Katherine Howard. However, The Palace did not meet all of my expectations. I had hoped this would indeed be a story of the building, with its workings, its growth, its daily life, and its impact. Instead what I got was a swift (even if enjoyable) fast course on English royalty from the Tudors onwards. The Hampton Court in itself did not seem to be especially important to anything that happened. If I already did not have considerable knowledge about English history, I would also probably get swamped by the names and events that span over 500 years but need to be crammed into roughly 350 pages. Well written, not uninteresting, I did like it a lot but ultimately... I guess not many books can be like Pavlovsk : The Life of a Russian Palace

The Girl Who Couldn't Read

Author: John Harding

First published: 2012

Rating: ★★★★☆

Even though this is officially a sequel, it can easily be read as a standalone. In both cases, I found it engaging and OH SO satisfying.

Prize for the Fire

Author: Rilla Askew

First published: 2022

Rating: ★★★★★

A portrait of a complicated woman who fights for her own identity and strength and eventually finds it, along with inner peace, in her faith. Anne Askew was, by a definition, a religious fanatic in a time when religion was being redressed and differences of opinion on it punishable by death, and Rilla Askew (a curious accident of a name) does not make her exactly likable - which is good, because instead of a legendary martyr washed of off all sins, we get a believable and complex human character, a woman trapped by her era and her circumstance. The whole book is what I would absolutely call a quality historical fiction and the nearer the end, the more powerful it becomes.

Russian Fairy Tales

Author: Alexander Afanasyev

First published: 1855

Rating:  ★★★★☆

It took me several months to go through all of the stories. Some I enjoyed more than others, naturally, but I suppose the main great thing about this collection is the possibilities it gives to future authors who can search for inspiration in it.

Magic Lessons

Author: Alice Hoffman

First published: 2020

Rating:  ★★★★★

Practical Magic was an OK book but I loved The Rules of Magic and this one is also *Chef´s kiss*. I was ready to scream at a certain point near the end and audibly breathed my relief afterward. Alice Hoffman is a beautiful storyteller.

The Company

Author: J.M. Varese

First published: 2023

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This had a gorgeous cover, some seriously creepy vibes, and not bad writing. Unfortunately, most of the book felt like an endless repetition of previous scenes, and in the end, there is really no resolution, just a feeling of being confused. At some points, I thought this book needed much more editing since some dialogues felt unnecessary. I also felt very frustrated that whenever the two main characters interacted and you would hope they would actually have a conversation, it ended after a bunch of sentences with "Ya know?" "I know", but my sweet dude, WE don´t know. Not a terrible book by any means, but it truly could have been so much more.

Maximilian Kolbe: the Saint of Auschwitz

Author: Jean-François Vivier

First published: 2021

Rating: ★★★★☆

The life of Maximilian Kolbe was remarkable, not only for his martyrdom he chose to save another person but for his tenacity, unwavering energy, and belief in God and that everybody can become holy. The richness of it, however, makes it difficult for a volume as slim as this one to really make you feel connected to his story. I felt that it either needed to be a bit longer, or should have focused more on at least some of the episodes. That said, this makes his legacy accessible to any reader, and the art style, though simple, conveys everything it needs to. I am also happy to note there are actual photographs of the saint included at the end of the book.

The Mill on the Floss

Author: George Eliot

First published: 1860

Rating: ★★★★☆

I am a little torn. Some of the scenes were written so beautifully and played out in a manner so powerful one could not but be swept away. At other times I felt that while still written well, the pacing was off and the mundane was losing my interest. I understand that the first part was needed to establish the characters and let us truly know them, but I was also seriously considering DNF-ing the book while plowing through. My rating would be in between 3 and 4 stars, but since Goodreads does not allow that, I will be generous.

Mere Christianity

Author: C.S. Lewis

First published: 1942

Rating: ★★★★★

C.S. Lewis explains Christianity in a very sensible and natural manner, with no shoving of it down your throat. I loved all of the parables and examples he used, bar one, which obviously stemmed from his inexperience with that one issue: actual women. (Or at least he had little experience of them at the time he wrote this book). "Who would you rather talk to if this happened? Man or a woman?" "The one with the brain, Clive Staples, the one with the brain." Other than that small part of one chapter, this is a book any Christian can easily and reliably draw on for inspiration when speaking about their faith to others.

Hell Bent

Author: Leigh Bardugo

First published: 2023

Rating: ★★★★☆

I was reading this slowly, a few pages at a time, to keep my sanity and focus, while the genocide of Palestinians was raging (still is) in the world for all of us to witness. Who would have thought that a book about demons and Hell would be absolutely nothing compared to our reality? But yes, it was absorbing, it led me someplace else for a moment. It was good.

Small Spaces

Author: Katherine Arden

First published: 2018

Rating: ★★★☆☆

I wish this had been an adult horror because I guarantee you I would have shat myself.

[wistfulwisp]

And lastly, some words on why I think shows like good omens are important.

I really like the movie ratatouille. It’s a little funky movie about a funky little rat, and I loved that as a kid. As I grew older, what I was able to appreciate is all of the commentary that a movie like ratatouille has on creativity and of the idea that is a collective we are taking on a responsibility in a creative world to protect new ideas. Now, good omens is not a new idea necessarily — the book itself has been around for quite a while. However, queer representation, queer media, religious trauma, and the complexities of human life (the ability to be curious, the ability to find love and protection in the world around us, and the ability to be accepted no matter how ruined we feel) all being wrapped up into a funky little bow is a relatively new idea. I think this show is one of many of these small new ideas that represent a turning point in media, more particularly in the stories we tell. I think the hype around shows that it’s worthy to discuss matters like these in an accessible way, in a universal way, and in a way that gives these people a voice.

And, yeah, it’s a fragile idea. It’s something that’s just starting out, which is why I feel like I need to tell people to go out and watch the show if you haven’t. You’ll notice that, yeah it’s about funky little demons and funky little angels, and it’s cute and gay and we love to see it, but once you let it sit with you you’ll find this real weight to what Pratchett and Gaiman are trying to say. Theres something so magical about experiencing a piece of media and not only finding it fun and entertaining, but being able to see the weight and the importance and the passion that’s carried through with the artist’s vision. I find with all the checkboxes that have to be filled with bigger corporations, it’s easier to find myself loving smaller indie films and shows, and it’s rarer to find something as big budget as this being done so creatively and freely. Plus, even if it was easy to please the big cheese, it’s a damn hard thing to become an artist. The world is often against you and the work you make. There’s an importance to a story like this being told, and I’ll do my best to play a part in our collective responsibility to protect stories like these as they emerge. It’s essential that stories of acceptance and love, a love for humanity and a love for shades of grey, and the gift and drive to create change no matter the cost exist in our world. The world is better for it.

The best storytellers give other people the space to become storytellers themselves. The best storytellers give people the space to breathe so they can paint their own picture and draw their own conclusions. And, this story and this show have really inspired me to get back into writing, and to indulge in stories once again. So, in that sense it’s been a bit of a pillar for me recently. And, I’d like to thank @neil-gaiman for that vision and for being part of that. His work is something that’s inspired me over and over, and just when I find I’ve lost my sense or spark he’s found his way back to me. If you haven’t seen the show, it’s a part of the legacy. You should watch it. Absolutely ineffable.

[gigantomachylesbian]

saw your storygraph post, and now i'm wondering, do you have any favorites amongst the LGBTQIA+ books you've read so far this year? would you recommend any of them? i'd love to hear your answer!

Yeah absolutely! I'll try to recommend a variety of things (without going overboard) but I must admit that I'm very biased towards epic fantasy and horror in my reading (also wlw stuff more than anything else, though I'm trying to broaden my horizons a bit!) Under the cut because I have so much to say about books literally all the time every day.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan.

This is my absolute favorite book I've read so far this year, and it probably makes my top 3 overall! This is a historical fantasy novel inspired by the rise of the real-life Hongwu Emperor in the 1300s in China. It follows Zhu, a girl who takes on her dead brother's identity to also claim his fate of greatness, becoming a skilled tactician and ruthless enemy along her rise to power. This book has some of the best scheming, back-stabbing, and vying for power I've ever read--I cannot possibly emphasize enough that a guy gets drawn and quartered and it was delightful to me <3. In addition to just being deeply compelling and well-written (Zhu is SUCH a good, complex character, she is absolutely ruthless and clever and perceptive), it has some really interesting representation! Because it's set in historical China, a lot of this stuff isn't stated explicitly in the way it would be in, like, a contemporary novel, but it's absolutely clear in both how the text is written and its themes. Zhu does have a romance with a woman which I really enjoyed, and at a certain point she acknowledges that, while she's not a man despite living as one to maintain her power, she's not really a woman, either. At the same time, our other POV character (and Zhu's narrative foil, which is done so well it makes me BANANAS), is Ouyang, a eunuch within the Mongolian army who, while not transgender, faces a unique, interesting, and incredibly degrading position of gender within this society due to his status as a eunuch, and it drives everything he does. He's literally my favorite character in the entire book I need to study him like a bug. ALSO he's gay. She Who Became the Sun really explores, through Zhu and Ouyang, this theme of "like recognizes like," where, despite being on opposing sides, Zhu is able to recognize in Ouyang this sort of precarious gender status she herself experiences, and understand him better for it. This book is complex, extremely well-written, and delivered everything I want from a historical fantasy, from rich settings, cut-throat politics, complex and morally gray characters and, of course, ghosts! The sequel (I believe the series is a duology?) comes out this summer and I AM going to flip out about it.

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers.

Now, on a totally different note, I've got a contemporary romance! But not really of the rom-com variety necessarily. This novel follows Grace Porter, who recently completed her Astronomy PhD and celebrated by letting loose for once in her life--which results in her having a vegas wedding with a girl she just met. As silly as that premise is, much of the novel focuses on, yes, Grace's developing relationship with Yuki as the two connect, but also on the effects that Grace's perfectionism and burnout have on her mental health. The novel explores her feelings of uncertainty about her future, as well as how the scientific field she loves is 10 times harder for her to succeed in as a queer black woman, even when she's dedicated her whole life to it. It has some incredible discussions of both the beauty of science and of storytelling, a delightful and fleshed-out set of side characters (including a fantastic queer friend group that I adored), and absolutely beautiful, rich descriptions and prose. I absolutely adore Grace as a character and find her to be just so incredibly real and believable, and this was a book I could just sink right into with its beautiful descriptions.

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White. Now we're onto a YA dystopian horror! This novel follows Benji, a trans teenager whose eco-fascist, Christian cult has destroyed most of the world, and turned him into a bioweapon to destroy the rest. He's on the run, and finds refuge in a group of survivors based out of a local LGBT+ teen center as they fight to survive when faced with the murderous cult members, horrible conglomerations of flesh and bone made to kill them, and a damaged, burning Earth. This novel has some absolutely fantastic body horror! It's very gnarly, and combines a lot of meat with Christian imagery in a way that was just delightful. The tension and horror elements definitely worked for me, and I really enjoyed Benji as a protagonist. Benji's experiences as a trans kid are pretty heavily focused on, especially combined with the community he finds in the other survivors and his relationships with them. Also, his love interest is canonically autistic! Overall, Hell Followed With Us has a great balance of nasty body horror, the challenges of fighting to survive, and the hope found in community.

Okay those are the only books I'm letting myself write extensive recommendations for because otherwise I'll be here all day, but here's some bonus recommendations: The Burning Kingdoms series by Tasha Suri (lesbian epic fantasy series, 2 books so far, Indian-inspired fantasy world with incredible world building, action, and complex women <3. Also in my top favorites from this year!), A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows (mlm fantasy romance, explores cultural differences really well+a powerful trauma recovery narrative (with a touch of vengeance <3), first book in a series but the second isn't out yet, I LOVED this book and its characters and the romance so so so much, but do heed the trigger warnings as it starts out pretty dark), Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth (Horror that plays with metafiction, weaves together narratives of past tragedies at an all-girls boarding school with the making of a contemporary film about those events, lesbian+bi+polyamorous rep, grossnasty bug stuff+picnic at hanging rock vibes. An absolute blast!).

Okay those are all my recommendations for now (and limited to just what I've read this year) BUT if you're looking for a specific genre, type of representation, or even just something more lighthearted than most of what I've mentioned, please don't hesitate to ask! I definitely have way more things I could've recommended if I didn't want this post to be a million miles long. Also thank you for asking! :^D

[seeminglyseph]

Okay, because I suck at video games and didn’t have much for systems when I grew up I didn’t really play Metal Gear or know a lot about Hideo Kojima or his writing style, and I will admit. Could stand to interact with and learn to write more women, but he is steadily improving at that I think, and it’s not like it’s a Kojima exclusive problem when it comes to Video Games and Writing Women Characters. He actually writes women with stories, it’s just that his stories are fucking batshit so every now and then you sit there and go “yo wait hold on what the fuck???”

But from what I’m getting, listening to various explanations of the lore and stuff of his games (especially, currently, Death Stranding because I’ll be honest that game’s opening was dope as hell but I did struggle to stay engaged because my ADHD and inability to actually play games meant I was watching other people and that removed a lot of the engagement. I just cannot focus on something long enough to make the experience worthwhile.) is that a lot of his stuff feels like when you’re playing pretend with your friends as a kid, but then also applying the ability to create storytelling and literary devices like an adult who went to University.

Which is very very fun. Maybe literary is the wrong word, it’s more cinematic, but the lore choices and stuff is like. “Is that a biblical reference?” Along with some guy named “Die Hard Man” because he kept surviving things during the war, which tbh if I know nicknames correctly that guy would have gotten a nickname like “Roach” for that. You don’t get cool nicknames from your friends in the military, you get dumb nicknames. Even if Die Hard Man sounds dumb, I think it’s supposed to be cool. I think most military nicknames are insults. Honestly in general most nicknames are insults.

But Kojima works under the same mindset as I did when I in elementary school and played games with the other neighbourhood kids and said I was “Wolf because I was raised by wolves” because that was the level of creativity we were working with because I was fucking 7 and we were basically just riding our bikes in the cul-de-sac or however that’s supposed to be spelled and not actually knowing how anything worked. Because being a child in the 90s that’s kind of a normal activity?

I feel like that’s what Metal Gear Solid feels like, and Snake is just the vibe of “a cool animal name that can be a military hero.” Hell isn’t there a character in the first Metal Gear Solid that was actually raised by wolves? Like just, exploring concepts we all definitely thought were cool at one point or another and then finding ways to either play them straight or pull a full plot out of it, while also just going kinda batshit. I can appreciate that.

I think he needs to maybe meet some ladies that he finds as inspiring as the dudes he definitely maybe has huge fucking muse crushes on because I feel like that might be part of the problem, Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen and Guillermo de Toro have obviously like really inspired him as people, but like. Maybe the memes haven’t been as obvious about the women in his life, but that might also be why the female characters in his games sometimes fall flat? Though I have heard fantastic things about The Boss, and Bridget in Death Stranding is. Definitely notable and interesting and I think she’s supposed to be a complex villain? I think that’s a normal set of feelings to have for her?

Like he’s a Japanese director, wordplay is huge in Japan, and most Japanese names have meaning, especially in media. Those names are picked for a reason. Yeah Kojima definitely picks hammy names but they stand out in part because they’re in English. But he made military and post apocalyptic games with surreal and slightly silly tones despite serious topics, and naming conventions like this aren’t uncommon in Japanese media. They’re just extra hammy in English. And double extra hammy because Kojima is eccentric. But I feel like that eccentricity is necessary to keep games from becoming… the most boring grimy shit you will ever experience. I need inspiration and fun, and Kojima seems to inspire the whole industry to have more fun, and also wants everyone else to play. Which is why he has so many collaborators?

And he designs games to have teams working on them and with the idea in mind that the people working for him should always have work in the future, that was part of the Fox Engine and PT gambits? To keep his team employed in the future, not just himself?

This has been a very long rambling nothing, but while he costs a lot of money to create things, I think he also is like… actually interested in just… “let’s see what this baby can do, shall we?”

And I think we really fuckin need that in video games. Like damn. Yeah. Go ham dude. Figure it out, fuck Konami. Let’s play some games and get wild or something. Be weird.

[allsassnoclass]

hazel!!!! i'm sending you 🧠🤘😈 along with my love 💙 -megs 💙

@igarbagecannoteven hi megs :) this got long so it's all under the cut!

send me a 🧠 for a long ramble about something i’m obsessed with lately

well well well. i'm going to talk about my character at the haunted house :) because i love her and i am obsessed with her and i have so much time to think about her while waiting for people to come into my tiny little oasis of a room. i am especially obsessed with her contradictions!!!! she is best friends with two outsiders but well-loved enough for the entire town to go absolutely crazy about her disappearance. the news stories we show in the haunt imply that she's in elementary school but her missing poster says she's 5'2 and shows a teenager (and also she's played by me, a 24 year old). she is dead but she also can never die. she knows everything going on but she can't properly remember her life (and also sean hasn't given me a journal to turn into her photo diary yet!). her disappearance is the catalyst for the entire storyline but only a handful of patrons actually get to hear about it from her. she's a daddy's girl and he becomes the secondary villain of the haunt because grief turns him crazy but the news stories mention parents plural yet there is no evidence of her mother at any other point in the haunt. her only character traits are that she's blonde and wears green but she's also the most complex character in the entire story. she's a paragon of feminine innocence but she has a guy's name. she has no agency but you can't get the full narrative without talking to her. her room in the haunt is the least scary room but it's a prison and she's trapped there for eternity because it's a memory but it's not even her memory!!!! she is fully reliant on two dudes (her dad or her best friend) to save her but they're both doing a terrible job and murdering a bunch of people instead. her life sucks!!!! but at least she might get to properly die at some point!!!!!

send me a 🤘 for a song rec

oooo let's see! Happy Birthday by Cooper Morrison is about being young but dreading getting older because you feel like things are never going to get better and that you're behind where you should be in life. also i met cooper once because he used to be in a band with/date a friend of mine from high school.

and because promoting women's music is important, Dessa released a new album recently and it's more pop focused than I like from her but I do really like the two songs from it that she had already released, one of which is "I Already Like You"

send me a 😈 for a hashtag hot take

People really, really need to not take songs lyrics as 100% truthful retellings of actual events in the singer's life. Many songs are inspired by personal experience, but there are always going to be aspects of fiction in them. Songwriters are creative storytellers, first and foremost, and they are storytellers who are writing from a specific perspective rather than writing an objectively truthful account. I've seen people prying into Olivia Rodrigo's life to find out who or what her songs are about, when the fact of the matter is that they're all going to have elements of fiction in them. She's telling a story, regardless of what the inspiration for that story was. Respect her privacy and stop trying to dig up her life to connect every line of a song to an actual event. This also really bothered me when All Too Well TV came out and everyone was taking the short film as gospel truth and hating on jake gyllenhaal to the extreme. Was the age gap weird and did he mistreat her? yeah probably. but that doesn't change the fact that ATW TV is a sensationalized retelling that she crafted into a story, and the short film especially is a double-fictionalized version of that story. Basically, everyone needs to be okay interpreting songs in their own way and they definitely need to make their peace with all songs being fictional to some degree.