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sugarcomatosed · 3 years

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i love your stories so much!! and was wondering if you can give some writing tips perhaps? 🥺👉🏻👈🏻

Breaking this up into sections for you + putting it under a cut cause I went overboard. 😅

General Writing Tips

These work for both academic and creative writing.

Make an outline.

It doesn't have to be a formal one, but having at least a general idea of the scenes you want to include is helpful. If I know my fic is going to be a longer one (like Don't Hesitate was and my current WIP is), I break down the larger story beats i want to hit on a piece of paper or my iPad.

It's good to know what you're planning to do, in a any piece I usually have a single specific scene I want to do and depending on what it is, I might either just do the scene I want to or turn into something longer.

Draft, draft, draft.

I cannot stress the importance of going through and reviewing your work. This is a big part of any sort of writing.

Your first idea isn't always your best idea. As you work on a piece you might find your original idea is holding you back, focus shifts! Don't be afraid to let your work change as you go. It's not always easy to let go of your original idea but if you find it's not working, you have to let it change. Sections will need to be rewritten, things have to be readjusted to fit with later sections. Reread for clarity while you're drafting and look to see if this makes sense to you, or reads well to you. If you can't follow it and you wrote it, chances are your reader can't either. Did you use the same phrase again and again? Find and search it on your doc to double check.

Sometimes you have to cut things you really like because they just don't contribute to the fic anymore. Save those bits and use them somewhere else!In a lot of my longer pieces I will write a paragraph, realize that's not where it should go and cut/paste it into another part of the doc because the pacing/scene doesn't make sense where I had it originally, but it works somewhere else.

If you're stuck, skip around, come back and then stitch the bits you have written together.

Don't Focus on a Word Count

This might be controversial, but I'm of the opinion just because something is longer does not make it better. Some works are short, and that's okay! I very rarely try to aim for a specific count of words unless it's for a prompt exchange or a personal challenge. I write till I feel the piece is done. Some stories require more words, some require less.

Don't Hesitate is a great example of this again, because all I wanted to do was a bittersweet first kiss fic, but jumping write into the kiss wouldn't get the full effect I wanted. Meanwhile, with Old Habits all I wanted to do was write dumb comedic kisses, we didn't need a 2k preamble.

Get Someone You Trust to Edit

My go to editor for the past six years or so is one of my good friends. She has edited everything from college papers to my fics for me before I post them to read for clarity, find any funky phrases or misspelled words I missed, and I do the same for her when she asks! A fresh set of eyes makes a world of a difference. Find someone to trade fics with or ask a friend! They might have good suggestions you never thought of, or be able to tell what you were going for when you don't even know yourself.

I also rely on my friends a lot to brainstorm and talk my ideas out before I start because it helps me think and figure out what I need. It's super common for me to text someone and say "im gonna spitball at you, that okay?" and then spend twenty minutes chatting through my ideas.

Have Reference Material

For my 13sar fics, I regularly go back and review/screenshot videos of the dialogue to make sure I am staying consistent with story events, character nuance and small details. You don't have to go crazy, but it is really helpful to have your source material to go back to and check yourself against. In non creative writing I always had a pile of papers highlighted with my own notes on the margins.

Take Breaks/Pace Yourself

Know your own limits, and if you are working and working on something and it's not coming out leave it alone and come back to it. I'm really bad at this personally because when I get an idea in my head I want to see it through but sometimes you gotta step back! It's not healthy to keep working on things and overwork yourself. Stretch, get up go for a walk.

Write What You Want to Write

Don't focus on what people want to read. Focus on what you like. Find a topic, a scene, anything that you are passionate about and the rest will follow. The only time I write fic for other people is when I am writing for a friend. Even prompt requests I only take open ended ones, if I am not interested in writing it it's not gonna happen. I know it's super hard and I get really anxious sometimes about letting people down now, or worrying people won't like something but then I step back and remind myself this is a hobby and I'm doing it for fun.

Play to Your Strengths

You shouldn't try to write like me, you should try to write like yourself. Find what skills you have and use them to your advantage!

I can't give you a step by step list to write like me, because nobody in the world has my background! We're all unique. Everything I've listed so far I know because I'm not a beginner anymore! I'm in my twenties and have come from a strong academic writing background.

I took on an intensive course load in high school, and then went onto college for a sociology degree. I very rarely had test based finals and at the end of each semester would have five 10-15 page papers to submit. Straight up some of my skills come from having read and studied the works of anthropologist Clifford Geertz. I am not saying you should read anthropology/sociology texts. Unless you like that sort of thing lol

I also have 6+ years of theater experience (acting & directing), I use this all the time for my writing. When I think about a scene, I think about how I would work through it as an actor, how the character would move, and how would things read to an audience. The GOTE ("Goal, Obstacle, Tactics, and Expectation") method of acting by Robert Cohen is really useful hear if you want a more technical breakdown of what I mean by that.

This leads to a lot of what we called "business" in acting, doing small tiny things while you talk or move around on stage to give the sense you're a real human. I don't have to think or try on these sort of things because they're in my skill set already!

Things I do Personally

As in, these are not transferable skills this is just the stuff I do while working on projects.

Find a Vibe™️

I come into any fic with usually a goal I want to hit, a line of dialogue or something I want to capture. Just like, the general idea of a feeling a song even if the lyrics don't match up. Make a mood-board, a playlist, just find something you wanna do. It's less about the actual words on the page and what you're aiming to do.

Look to things that inspire you

Don't Hesitate got written because I wanted to write a fic that captured the same vibe as a scene in Macross Frontier, where two characters have a bittersweet kiss before the final battle and that scene still has me fucked up six years after watching it.

My current WIP is doing the same thing but with the song All I've Ever Known from Hadestown. Two characters working through loneliness, the sudden feeling of falling in love and the frustration that feeling can bring on sometime.

I don't plagiarize them word for word, but these are scenes that inspire me! I also patchwork quilt ideas together. Using Don't Hesitate again, I also ended up pulling from a bunch of shoujo anime, Toradora, Sailor Moon, Yona of the Dawn, Princess Tutu...specific scenes I enjoy to blend and create something new.

Goof Off While You Write

I name my documents stupid things, I write dumb placeholder dialogue or vague sentiments like "insert better word here", I make memes when I'm struggling and roast myself and my predictable tastes.

I spent twenty minutes texting a friend Juro's name with different letters spelt out and then the "fuck your chickenstrips" vine saying it was Juro during destruction. Just have fun with it!

Listen to J-POP On Loop for Hours at a Time

i am not kidding I do this all the time. Perfume, AKB48, anime idol osts, Sailor Moon's OPs/ED, vocaloid songs. I like technopop and Japanese is good because it usually doesn't distract my brain since I only know random phrases, but still know what the meaning og the song is.

I love music, it helps me vibe out.

Thank you so much for enjoying my work ;o;

I hope this is useful to you in some way! I'm so sorry it's so long winded but I am overly thorough and love to teach people ;w;

#sugar speaks #sugar writes #okay to reblog

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lostinfantasyworlds · 4 years

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Don’t mind me while I get super emotional for a minute, but I just wanted to thank the Inuyasha/Inukag fandom for being the best ❤️

I haven’t been this involved in a fandom for years, and it has really been helping this year feel a little less shitty. I, like most other people out there, have been struggling with my mental health a lot this year. Anxiety, depression, not taking care of myself, etc.

Discovering Inuyasha and the fandom here on Tumblr has been a huge comfort to me, and making things for the fandom has given me an outlet that actually makes me happy. My full time job, despite being in a creative field, is really tedious and boring and is always the same, which does not mix well with my personality. I get no creative stimulation from it, and no validation or room to grow. Making art, gifs, fics, etc for the Inuyasha fandom has been SO much more gratifying and has given me an outlet for my creative drive that my job doesn’t give me. It’s pretty much given me life again.

So I wanted to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for being so welcoming and accepting me into the fandom even though I only just watched Inuyasha for the first time a few months ago. I don’t know if I’ve ever shipped a couple as hard as I ship Inukag. I love drowning in feels with you all, and reading all of your theories and meta.

And, most importantly, the creators in this fandom are AMAZING. I am constantly in awe of all the beautiful fan art and the incredible fic writers. I have never read so much fanfic as I have in the last couple months, and I. Love. It.

You have all inspired me to actually post my own work, which I’ve never done in another fandom before (besides gifs and fanvids). I’ve written short rough drafts of fics down in my phone, but I never thought I was good enough to publish anything. The first fic I’ve ever published for any fandom is Forever Changed, and the response to it made my heart so happy. I literally teared up from some of the comments. The support means so much to me. I even finally made accounts/published it on AO3 and ff.net the other day. And it’s all thanks to the inspiration I’ve gotten from reading so much amazing fic, and seeing the encouragement and support you all have for each other!

So thank you thank you thank you! I have so much love for you guys! And I’m so glad that I got into Inuyasha before Yashahime premiered so that I can experience suffering watching it with you all!!

Right now, I’m working on a bunch of stuff that I’m really excited about and can’t wait to show you guys. I’m currently drawing a hyperrealistic Inuyasha (I’ve always been obsessed with wondering what he would look like in real life), and then I’ll do one for Kagome, and then hopefully some of the two of them together! Here’s a WIP preview of part of it - it’s nowhere near done, and I just started on the hair so it's just a placeholder for what it will actually look like.

Also, I’ve been working on an AMV for months now. I’ll finish it eventually haha, but I am really really excited about it. It’s using the song Can You Hold Me by NF and I have been obsessed with how well that song fits with angsty Inukag. It’s also really dramatic and intense, so it’s perfect for mixing emotion with action. I can’t wait to share, even though I have no idea when I’ll get around to finishing it🤣

Lastly, I have a bunch of one shots/fic ideas written down in my phone/on Google Docs. I can’t wait to practice writing more and work on getting some of them published.

Anyways, sorry for this long rambling mess, but I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you guys, and thank you again for making me feel so welcome, following me, liking stuff I’ve made, etc. You’re all amazing! ❤️

#inukag #inuyasha #wip #personal #emotional rambling

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drowningbydegrees · 4 years

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4, 7, 21 for the author questions! :)

4. Do you outline before you start writing? If so, how far do you stray from that outline? I do for almost everything, unless it’s a one shot. I do scene by scene outlines in Google docs that look basically like this.

I give scenes very vague titles and list off whose PoV it should be from, and then bullet point things that need to happen and/or snippets of dialogue. Since I fill in my outline with the actual scenes and I pretty much never write linearly, I make them all headers that I can navigate between and add placeholders when I randomly skip part of a scene I don’t feel like writing just then. That’s what all the (STUFF GOES HERE) bits in the contents are. 😂 Even though it’s really detailed, I tend to treat the outline more like a suggestion than anything set in stone. Often, as I’m writing I’ll stumble upon some other direction I like way better, and what’s great about the outline is that it makes it very visually apparent what needs to shift in the story line to accommodate this new idea. 7. Which part of writing do you struggle with most? Ooh, this is tough. There are a lot of things about my writing style that I struggle with, but from a process perspective, it’s really just staying consistently motivated. I live in a frequent state of wanting to have written a particular thing in the past tense, but having a lot of trouble sitting down and doing the work in the moment. It’s hardest when I shift fandoms because I’m most effective when I’ve got sprint buddies to write with or a consistent beta to work with (and trade snippets with because immediate feedback is a powerful motivator), but I don’t really know any writers in Witcher fandom, so that’s been a hard adjustment. 21. What is the one fic that got away? So, three years ago, I wrote I, The Paradox. It’s probably the plot idea I’m most proud of in the couple of decades I’ve been writing. It’s also got this very bittersweet ending that I intended to rectify with a sequel. I’ve got an outline for said sequel and a handful of scenes written, but it’s one of those things where something always came up. I was working on other projects, and then I completely lost confidence that it could live up to the first fic, and then some stuff happened that made me very abruptly fall out of love with Stucky fandom. I periodically look at the file wistfully, but I think it might be time to resign myself to never actually writing the darn thing. (Author questions for all the writer friends on my feed who fancy answering that kind of thing.)

#answer meme #about me #sorry that ended up being kind of a novel!#buckities

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agentravensong · 6 years

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Why Frisk, Chara, & Kris Being Non-Binary Is More Than Just a Headcanon

An UnderTale/DeltaRune Analysis

Since DeltaRune came out, I’ve been sucked right back into the Undertale fandom. Unfortunately, while I’ve seen tons of great fanart and interesting theories relating to the game, it seems the introduction of a third playable human character who isn’t explicitly male or female has also somewhat re-sparked the debate about whether the genders of Frisk, Chara, and now Kris are up to the player’s interpretation.

On one side, you have people saying to just respect everyone’s headcanons about these characters, down to deciding their pronouns. On the other, you have people saying the three characters being non-binary is part of their thematic purpose in the games, on top of being positive canon representation for a rarely recognized group.

I fall into the latter camp, and this post will explain why. (WARNING: long and text-heavy post)

NOTE: This post was written in late 2018. Since then, I have made an updated version with additional points in Google Docs, which I then used as the script for a YouTube video. As such, this post should be considered an incomplete, though still sound, version of my argument. If you have the time, rather than continuing to read this post, please click the above link(s) to read the Google Doc and/or watch the video for a full understanding of the topic.

If you find yourself repeatedly coming back to this post for whatever reason, remember that my ask box is always open! I’d be more than happy to clarify my position :D

A quick definition to start us off: if a person is “non-binary”, it means that a person doesn’t see their gender as being exclusively male or female. Many non-binary people prefer to be referred to by the pronouns “they/them/theirs” instead of “he/him/his” or “she/her/hers”, since “they” is already a gender neutral pronoun.

Also, just in case someone doesn’t understand this, a person’s gender identity is not necessarily related to who they are romantically or sexually interested in.

This post will be split into six sections of unequal length, with the focus progressing from literally interpreting the text to Toby’s intentions and the outside impact of having these characters be non-binary.

1. The basics: All 3 characters are referred to exclusively by gender-neutral pronouns in the games.

Let’s go character by character, shall we?

FRISK

It’s admittedly hard to find examples for this, since most of the time people are talking about Frisk in-game, they’ll be talking directly to them in second person. However, while looking through screenshots provided by the UnderTale Text Project, I found these:

Thank you, Alphys!

EDIT: Hey look, a more obvious example I somehow forgot about!

CHARA

All of the following quotes come from the character Chara was supposedly closest to in the entire Underground, Asriel. As you read, think about this: if Chara’s preferred pronouns were anything other than they/them, why would Asriel not use their correct pronouns here?

“Chara hated humanity. Why they did, they never talked about it. But they felt very strongly about that.”

“When Chara and I combined our souls together, the control over our body was actually split between us. They were the one who picked up their own empty body. And then, when we got to the village, they were the one who wanted... to use our full power.”

I’ve seen some people take Flowey’s mentions of Toriel in his New Home Genocide monologue to be confirmation that Chara goes by “she/her”, since he doesn’t refer to Toriel by name... even though Chara wouldn’t have been awake at that time, and when Flowey DOES talk about Chara in this monologue, it’s in second person, since he believes YOU are his old best friend. This misconception isn’t common, especially these days, but I figured it was worth addressing.

KRIS

Out of the three humans, I think Kris is the one who people are most likely to associate with a specific gender based on their name. But despite the theory videos and such you may have seen where people referred to Kris as “he”, this is not reflected anywhere in-game.

(Got these screenshots of DeltaRune’s code from this tumblr post)

The lines in the first photo are what Susie says when she’s trying to break Kris and Ralsei out of prison, and you have the option to suggest to her which way to go. The second example. according to Kris’ page on the DeltaRune fandom wiki, is said by Ralsei earlier in the game, if you do not run to complete the clock puzzle to open the door right after reuniting with Susie. Unlike the first example, it is clear in this case that Kris is the only one being referred to.

I remember seeing someone somewhere argue that Susie and Ralsei don’t know Kris well enough to know their “proper” pronouns. When it comes to Ralsei, I can see that argument... but did you notice that he knows both Kris and Susie’s names without asking? It seems he knows more than he lets on... and while Susie certainly wasn’t friends with Kris before this, the fact that they’re in the same class is enough for me to think she would have heard Kris be referred to by their preferred pronouns at least in passing by this point.

And that’s it. Frisk, Chara, and Kris are never referred to by other pronouns... with, admittedly, one exception:

Why does Chara use “it” for themself here? If I had to guess, it’s likely a combination of them being a ghost of their former self without a soul of their own (Flowey’s shown us how much your personality and sense of self is tied to having a SOUL) and the corruption from the Genocide run (remember that gaining LOVE affects a person’s mentality). They see themself as a demon, no longer a person. Whether that’s literally true to any extent or just how they feel after everything they’ve been through doesn’t really matter, I just wanted to cover this point before anyone else could bring it up. It’s not like it makes them not non-binary or anything.

To be clear, not all non-binary people go exclusively by they/them pronouns. Some prefer to go by masculine or feminine pronouns for their own reasons; some go by “neo-pronouns”, ones invented specifically for those who identify as non-binary; and some people go by more than one set of pronouns. However, in the case of Frisk, Chara, and Kris specifically, the fact that they only go by they/them pronouns makes them non-binary, and using any other pronouns for them would be incorrect (even if you have them go by they/them AND he/him or she/her).

Really, that should be enough to prove that the three humans being non-binary is canon. After all, you never have any of the other major characters in Undertale or DeltaRune explicitly state “I’m a girl” or “I’m a boy”. We know their genders because of the pronouns everyone refers to them by. Sure you’ll see gender-bends of those characters, but no one ever claims that those are on the same level of validity when it comes to canon as the actual canon.

But I know that isn’t enough for the people who came into this post disagreeing with the premise, so let’s actually get to countering some of their arguments, shall we? The main argument, of course, is that the humans’ are all meant for the Player to at least partially craft identifies for, including deciding which pronouns they use. But first...

2. Small Fish First: Other characters who are obviously not meant to be self-inserts use gender neutral pronouns.

...I want to cover the easier to counter idea that they/them pronouns are meant to just be, for lack of a better term, “placeholders”; the pronouns you use when you don’t know a person’s gender, rather than being valid permanent pronouns on their own.

If this were true in the case of Undertale and DeltaRune, you’d expect the humans to be the only ones referred to by these pronouns. They’re the ones whose identities are left ambiguous so the Player can project onto them, right?

But that couldn’t be father from the truth. In fact, the majority of the monsters you encounter in both games are referred to with gender-neutral pronouns (they/them and/or it), if any pronouns at all.

Now one might say, “But none of those monsters are really meant to be individual characters.” I get why you’d think that. But you’re forgetting at least one person...

Yup, Napstablook, despite what many fans have assumed from what I’ve seen, does not go by he/him pronouns, but they/them. And it’s not just in the narration either. Undyne does too in certain phone calls with Papyrus. ...Then again, she barely knows Napsta, and we see in DeltaRune that she defaults to they/them when talking about people whose gender she doesn’t know (specifically in that game, Alphys).

But that isn’t my last example. One of the few people who was ever close to Napsta was Mettaton (before he became a celebrity). And what does Mettaton say after Blooky calls in to his final show?

What this proves is that Toby recognizes they/them pronouns as valid for an individual in his work, which I hope makes buying that he purposefully made all three humans canonically non-binary easier for skeptics to swallow (we’ll get back to whether he DID purposefully do that later).

But I’ll acknowledge that there IS a difference between the three humans and the other characters in the games who use they/them, due to their relationship with you as the Player. So with that tangent out of the way, time to diffuse the “everyone can have their own headcanons about the kids’ genders” argument.

3. Thematic Context: All 3 humans have moments of asserting their agency, and part of the game’s subtext is how they each relate to the Player, rather than them all being blank slates.

Again, we’ll go character by character.

FRISK

This section is, admittedly, the one with the least evidence compared to the rest. But here’s what we have, and it’s pretty obvious:

After this moment, as was shown earlier, the other monsters know Frisk’s name and will refer to Frisk in the third person with they/them pronouns. Now, consider this: If Frisk used other pronouns, wouldn’t they have corrected the monsters here? Sure Frisk don’t talk without being prompting much throughout most of the game, but considering how they just shared their name, something equally as personal as their pronouns, I don’t think it would feel too out of place here.

Alternatively, if Frisk’s gender was up to the Player’s interpretation, the Player could have been given a prompt to correct the other characters with the “proper” pronouns for Frisk. You could argue it would be pointless this late into the game, but couldn’t that logic apply to the reveal of Frisk’s name as well? In this case, the lack of such a moment speaks more to me than having such a moment would.

Now, I totally get why people would project onto Frisk up to this point in the narrative, including assigning them different pronouns. It wouldn’t be a plot twist otherwise. Even their design seems to lend to that, with the unrealistic bright yellow skin Legos and emojis have to make them more race-neutral, and their emotionless, unchanging facial expression (though it’s worth considering that most of the other character’s overworld sprites don’t change expression much either; I’m pretty sure Alphys’ overworld sprite keeps her dopey smile even when she’s talking about the depths of her depression and failure at the end of the True Lab section). And this actually works to UnderTale’s benefit through most of the game, making the connections you forge with the monsters feel more personal.

The significance of this moment is that it asks the Player to be willing to change their perspective. Throughout the True Pacifist run, you help Frisk to change the mindsets of the characters you come across; this is most obvious with Undyne, who has been raised to see all humans as the enemy, but comes to admit that at least “some humans are OK, I guess” after befriending you. Along the way, you learn that there’s more to these monsters than first impressions may suggest (again, Undyne being a great example). Now, the game is asking you to look deeper one more time, and presenting you with the challenge you’ve posed to all the other major characters: are you willing to recognize Frisk’s autonomy; to understand there is more to this person than you first saw?

EDIT: Hey, remember that screenshot from earlier where Flowey asks you to “let Frisk live their life”? He’s literally asking you to let Frisk be free and truly themself, rather than resetting and taking control of them again. So there’s some more food for thought.

CHARA

While you are the one who names Chara (the reason for which will be considered in the fourth section of this post), consider these points:

1. If the purpose of Chara’s entire character was meant to be just a reflection of you as the Player, then why give them a “true name” at all?

2. Chara’s backstory is integral to the setup of UnderTale’s plot, and provides a good amount of hints at their original personality, easily making them less of a “blank slate” for the Player to project onto than Frisk.

3. Chara makes a clear distinction between the Player and themself in their monologues at the end of the Genocide route. In case you forgot, here are some reminders.

First meeting:

“Your power awakened me from death.”

“My ‘human soul’, my ‘Determination’; they were not mine, but YOURS.”

“With your guidance, I realized the purpose of my reincarnation.”

“Together, we eradicated the enemy and became strong.”

If you agree to ERASE the world: “You are a great partner.”

In the abyss:

“Interesting. You want to go back.”

“You want to go back to the world you destroyed.”

“It was you who pushed everything to its edge. It was you who lead the world to its destruction.”

“But you cannot accept that. You think you are above consequences.”

“Perhaps, we can reach a compromise. You still have something I want.”

“Then, it is agreed. You will give me your SOUL.”

Second meeting:

“You and I are not the same, are we?”

“This SOUL resonates with a strange feeling... You are wracked with a perverted sentimentality. ...I cannot understand these feelings any longer.”

“I feel obligated to suggest: should you choose to create this world once more, another path would be better suited.”

To say there is no connection between Chara and the Player would be unfair. I mean, if they hated humans their whole life, why do they end up taking out that rage on the monsters, the ones who were actually kind to them, in the Genocide run? Like Chara says themself, you guide them, teaching them definitively that “in this world, it’s kill or be killed”; and the influence you have on them is much more obvious if you subscribe to the Narrator Chara theory (but that’s a whole other can of worms).

Like with Frisk, Chara presents the Player a challenge, but in a more subtle way: can you recognize that YOU are at fault, rather than blaming your actions on a damaged kid who learns from your example and never got the chance to grow beyond their mistakes? And part of meeting that challenge is recognizing that Chara is, or at least used to be, their own whole person.

KRIS

Now we get to the really fun part. DeltaRune as a whole seems to be delving even deeper and more explicitly into the relationship between the playable character as an unwilling vessel and the actual Player than Undertale did. Outside of the prevalent message that “Your choices don’t matter” (which I’m guessing will end up more like the “kill or be killed” of this game rather than DR’s intended final moral), the main evidence towards this is how the game starts.

1. A red soul appears on screen when the unknown speaker (presumably Gaster) asks you if they’ve successfully connected with you. The soul is what you control throughout this sequence. The implication? The SOUL in this game is a manifestation of you as the Player. In fact, considering some of the Chara quotes I mentioned earlier, this could be true of UnderTale as well.

2. You spend time making a vessel, only for it to be discarded, because “No one can choose who they are in this world.” This lack of choice is actually foreshadowed when you choose which legs you prefer, since all but the last choice are the same. The game is pointing out right away how superficial these choices are.

3. The speakers says “Your name is...” and Toriel seemingly finishes the statement by calling out “KRIS!”

The message of points 2 and 3 combined is pretty obvious to me: we don’t get an empty vessel to put ourself and our ideas into in DeltaRune. Kris is NOT an empty vessel; they have an already established backstory and personality, which we get multiple hints at (mostly when going around town at the end of the demo).

The fact that you have to go through this creation process on every new file, even after beating the game, suggests it’s more than just a framing device, but directly tied to the game’s narrative and/or themes in some way. So, let’s keep this scene in mind as we look at Kris’ defining moment at the end of Chapter 1.

In the middle of the night, Kris is wrestling with themself in bed until they fall out. Their walk is very stilted and jerkish, reminiscent of a zombie, or someone possessed.

Kris opens and closes their hand a few times before digging into their body and pulling out their soul, their eyes blank. (Notice how this doesn’t seem to actually leave a hole in their chest or anything? Almost as if the soul was never a part of them in the first place...)

They go to the wagon and harshly YEET the soul into the cage (the flavor text for which mentions it has already seen a few crashes... has something like this happened to Kris before?).

Kris walks back to the middle of the room, as if to purposefully stand in the center of the DeltaRune symbol on the floor, then pulls out a knife from seemingly nowhere, and turns to the camera with a red glow in their eyes.

Now, I totally get why most people will immediately assume that Kris has been possessed by a post-Genocide Chara here. I’m pretty sure the visual similarities between this scene and the one that plays if you choose to stay with Toriel in a soulless pacifist run in UT are intentional.

But remember how we mentioned the red SOUL, at least in DeltaRune, is a manifestation of the Player? This is actually reinforced in this scene, because you’re able to move the SOUL back and forth within the cage.

We’ve been controlling Kris via that SOUL the whole way through the game, and now? Kris is done with us. THIS is their prime moment of agency in Chapter 1 - reclaiming ownership of their own body - and I doubt that it will be their last.

There’s a ton of other stuff I could mention about Kris, like how:

* they had their own save file, which you overwrite at the first save point

* multiple NPCs in the town will comment on Kris seeming more talkative or looking off today, because YOU’RE making them interact with people

* Kris’ ability to play the piano is worse than normal with you controlling them, according to the hospital receptionist

* the narration says Kris feels bitter if you throw away the one possession in their inventory, the Ball of Junk (”bitter” isn’t the emotion one would feel if they did this of their own free will)

or all the hints at Kris’ true personality as an introverted, codependent prankster. But that could be a post in itself. My point is that, if Frisk and Chara’s individualism from the Player was subtle in UnderTale, this is pretty straightforward, if you know where to look.

And if these three humans are all their own characters, then shouldn’t we consider what seemingly little we DO know for sure about them as canon? We all take their names to be canon, so why not their pronouns?

That’s the bulk of the argument done. But when discussing canon, there is one thing that always has to be considered:

4. Can We Know The Creator (Toby Fox)’s Intentions?

Well, not really.

Some may bring up the one tweet where Toby suggested to name the fallen human (Chara) “your own name” as evidence that you ARE meant to project yourself into these characters.

However, I think you could just as easily argue that doing this ADDS to the impact of when Frisk, the character you physically control, confirms themself to be their own person with their own name, rather than a mold for you to pour yourself into.

And though Chara does make it clear that they themself as a character are separate from you, the whole Genocide ending monologue does hit harder when the person reprimanding you for their sins, who describes themself as “the feeling you get when your stats increase”, shares your name.

While putting this post together, I came across this interview Toby did about Undertale back in September 2015, and took particular note of this section:

While this technically doesn’t confirm or deny anything either way, how hard would it have been for Toby to say, “Well the protagonist is meant to have their gender be up to the player’s interpretation”? I doubt he would have gotten more backlash for that then he would have for definitively saying that Frisk is MEANT to be non-binary (though I doubt that would have stopped people from making them male or female anyway).

Then again, the article does start with the interviewer saying this:

“I told Toby Fox to skip questions he didn’t find interesting, and boy did he take me at my word.”

So maybe he just didn’t have anything worthwhile to mention.

I can’t say with certainty that Frisk and Chara’s genders were never meant to be up to the Player’s choice, even after what I mentioned in section 2 (and I doubt Toby would want to make a statement on it at this point). Same with Kris, for now.

However, if the rest of DeltaRune ends up going in the direction I suggested in the previous section, I honestly would not be surprised if there’s a moment where Kris confirms they are nonbinary, as a show of agency and individualism akin to Frisk telling Asriel their real name. I wouldn’t really call it a “theory”, and it’s hard to speculate what the other chapters of the game will at all be like based on what relatively little we have... but I wouldn’t have mentioned it here if I didn’t think it had any validity.

5. Why Does This Matter?

Outside of the previously mentioned stuff relating to the games’ themes/messages about choice, agency, and individualism, there’s one big reason: representation.

How many games can you think of where there are any explicitly non-binary characters? How many where that character is a major one, who doesn’t get treated as particularity different from the others just on the basis of the pronouns they use? And how many of those games are even close to the popularity of Undertale in its hayday? Even expanding these questions to media other than just video games won’t net many more results.

For people who are striving for representation, seeing posts like “Just let people have their headcanons :)” can come across as the OP not understanding how much that representation means. Even worse, coming back to the point I made in section 2 of this post, it could be seen as the OP denying that being non-binary is just as real and concrete as being male or female (a problem which more mainstream representation of non-binary people would help solve!).

But don’t just take it from me. After all, as a binary cis girl myself (”cis” meaning not trans), I can’t speak generally for all the trans and non-binary Undertale and Deltarune fans out there. So allow me to link some posts which provide their perspectives:

This first post is from before DeltaRune was released, and mainly focuses on Frisk, but goes in-depth on the topic (and the OP provided me some feedback on my post, so if they see this, thanks!)

I came across this post just while scrolling through the DeltaRune tag about why this stuff matters to non-binary fans.

This post is specifically about how using they/them pronouns for the kids is preferable whether or not it’s literally canon.

Here’s another post from the same person covering some common counter-arguments.

And if the other posts are too long for you to bother reading after going through mine, this one sums up the point in one sentence.

I know some people flinch at the mere mention of the word “representation”. I know that some will argue you shouldn’t need to see representation of a group you belong to in a piece of media in order to be able to relate to the characters and/or feel validated yourself - because I’ve seen people make this argument. But, I mean, I certainly find it easier to relate to characters that I share traits with; that’s just how humans work. It’s probably the main reason why people assign different genders to Frisk, Chara, and Kris in the first place! Besides, who does it hurt to include more diverse characters?

Oh right, there’s the idea that “forcing” creators to include representation is bad for creativity or whatever. Well good thing that’s not what this is about! As far as I know, no one is telling Toby he has to ADD new characters to fulfill a quota; the characters in question (Frisk, Chara, & Kris) already exist in his work. The point of this post is to show that the three of them were MEANT to be non-binary from the start (assuming I provided enough proof to convince you), so people won’t continue to erase that representation. By making them binary cis boys or girls, you’re only taking away from the original text (and giving people more to “complain” about).

Honestly, what does one even have to gain story-wise from assigning different genders to the human kids? I can’t remember a time I saw where making them strictly boys or girls added anything to their characterization or opened up different story possibilities (I’m sure you could could up with a theoretical example, but compared to the endless fanworks that DON’T do that, they hardly make a dent). Speaking beyond just Frisk, Chara, and Kris, characters being non-binary shouldn't affect how you ship them. You can give such characters more overtly masculine or feminine designs/appearances, but still have them be non-binary and go by they/them pronouns (most people don’t naturally look androgynous after all). In a work with voice acting, casting someone with a more masculine or feminine voice to play a non-binary character shouldn’t stop you from portraying the character as non-binary either - just refer to them with the right pronouns!

And if people who find your work continuously misgender your non-binary characters or ask what their “real” gender is, don’t let them get to you. You don’t need to respond to every such comment, but when you DO respond, clearly state that these characters are non-binary, politely correct the people who refer to those characters by the wrong pronouns, and, if worst comes to worst, block the people who won’t respect that. Before you (using “you” for the rest of this paragraph to refer specifically to my fellow binary cis peeps) can even think to argue “that sounds like too much work” or “it’s not worth the potential controversy”, remember that non-binary people in real life have to deal with this crap far more often than we do, and for them, it’s personal. If they can handle it, why can’t you?

Yes, Frisk, Chara, and Kris are fictional characters, not real people. But more representation of non-binary people in media helps others learn to understand and respect them, both in fiction and in real life. Honestly, it’s beyond time for people to accept that “they/them” aren’t “placeholder pronouns”, and the genders of people who use them aren’t up for others to judge. It’s just who they are, and really, how hard is that to respect?

If nothing else will convince you, think of it this way: if you’re not in the group being affected by a discussion like this, and you don’t care about the people in that group, keeping yourself out of the conversation saves everyone time and energy, without hurting anyone.

6. Conclusion

So, to briefly summarize this essay-length post’s main points:

1. Frisk, Chara, and Kris all go solely by “they/them” in their respective games, so having them go by any other pronouns is technically diverting from canon to the same extent that gender-bending any other character would be, NOT a valid interpretation of the original text.

2. There are other individual characters in these two games, such as Napstablook, who are referred to by they/them pronouns, even by those who were close to them.

3. The three humans are all shown to be more than just blank slates for the Player to project themself onto, making the stuff which IS definitively said about them (specifically, their names and pronouns) canon parts of their characterization unless directly proven otherwise.

4. We can’t assume Toby’s intentions, but even if he didn’t initially make Frisk, Chara, and Kris gender neutral for the sake of giving non-binary people representation, many people have taken it as that. Thus, seeing others say that the humans’ genders are up for interpretation is interpreted as those people not respecting non-binary identities as valid on their own.

The one other point I can think people might bring up would be the idea that kids as young as Chara or Frisk wouldn’t identify as non-binary because they wouldn’t understand the concept. To that argument, I’d suggest looking up videos about people who realized they were transgender as kids. In general, if there are concepts in this post you didn’t quite get or agree with, research is your friend!

Speaking of which, as this post I came across in the DeltaRune tag yesterday pointed out, fun fact: “non-binary” is an umbrella term that still leaves some slight room for personal interpretation when it comes to the humans’ genders! To use myself as an example, I personally headcanon Chara as firmly agender, Kris as a a demi-boy (someone who only partially sees themself as male), and Frisk as genderfluid (meaning that their sense of gender regularly changes). However, despite the nuances in their gender identities, I only have them go by they/them pronouns, their canon ones, in my fanworks. Doing otherwise not only goes against canon, but can be considered misgendering, and thus should be avoided.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t make up ANYTHING about what Chara, Frisk, and Kris are like either. People have plenty of headcanons about the backstories and other quirks of characters like Sans, Undyne, Mettaton - basically the whole cast of both games - and there’s nothing stopping you from doing that for the human kids. I certainly have my own ideas of what Chara and Frisk’s lives were like before they fell into the Underground. The difference is that those are speculating on things not outright said in canon. But Frisk, Chara, and Kris going by they/them pronouns IS canon, and should be respected as such.

At the end of the day, neither I nor anyone else (not even Toby) can outright stop people from having their opinions about these fictional characters. But since I had some free time this weekend, I figured I could take a stand for something I care about relating to a fandom I’ve emerged myself in for the past few years. My main hope in making this post is that you’ll understand why certain people disagree with the seemingly righteous stance of “It’s all up to interpretation, just let people do what they want!”. And if you knew nothing about non-binary identities before, hopefully this was educational for you!

If you have any remaining questions or suggestions relating to this post, feel free to reblog with your feedback or send me an ask. Until then, this is Agent Raven, signing off.

#deltarune #delta rune #undertale #frisk #chara #kris

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monicawoe · 6 years

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Writing interview

I was tagged by @brendaonao3 - thanks : )

Q: What is your coffee order?

large half-decaf, lots of milk, one sugar

Q: What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done?

Gotten a private after-hours tour of an observatory to look at Jupiter and various nebulae with their insanely awesome telescope.

Q: Who has been your biggest mentor?

I have so many! My fandom friends as a whole have been the greatest--giving me not just an audience for my fics, but also a place to connect with other writers: many of whom have become invaluable as betas and mentors. I love them all <3

Q: What has been your most memorable writing project?

If I had to pick just one, I'd say Burdens, Doublefold with @quickreaver. At 70k, it's still my longest fic, and we worked on this baby for months. We ended up developing a really good system of color coding sections, leaving notes for each other on what we'd written during the day, etc. and this was before google docs! I'll always have a soft-spot for this fic in my heart (so much Sam/Brady <3) but also of the experience in and of itself. It was my first time co-writing and it was an absolute joy.

Q: What does your writing path look like, from the earliest days until now?

I've been writing on and off for most of my life. Got discouraged for several years after one unhelpful teacher in college, but rediscovered writing again a few years later when I discovered fanfic. I started participating in comment-fic memes and it was so much fun, I never stopped writing.

Q: What is your favorite part about writing?

Discovering what happens! I'm a discovery writer, so I don't know how things are going to turn out half the time until I get there and that is really exciting.

Q: What does a typical day look like for you?

I get a large coffee (see above) and head to the subway to go the work. It's about an hour commute and I spend the bulk of it writing.

Q: What does your writing process look like?

I generally start with one idea or scene (or a prompt, either words or image). If that scene is already developing, I'll start by writing it out. Then, when the before and after become clear I'll fill those in. I generally do not write linearly, but as the scenes develop, or as the mood strikes. For really emotional scenes I usually wait until I'm in the right frame of mind to do them. For longer fics, I outline very briefly what scenes go where and then fill them in gradually.

Q: What’s the best advice you’ve gotten?

That a scene has to be relevant in some way to the story at large (or the characters therein) for the readers to care. If a scenes exists for no reason, then it probably shouldn't be there.

Q: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned?

I learned this years ago, but it's still very relevant to me every day. It's okay to just throw scenes out and start over. Sometimes they're not working for a reason, and editing won't resolve it. That doesn't mean the fic isn't worth writing, it just means the scene isn't what you need. Toss it, put a placeholder there, move on and come back to it later. You'll figure it out as you move on through the rest of the story. I write about 300k words a year and throw out about 60% of them. That doesn't mean they're not worth writing! It's all part of the process.

Q: What advice would you give someone who wants to start writing?

Do it! It will be hard at first and feel really awkward, but if you write a little every day it will get easier and it is such a satisfying hobby. Also- write where you're most comfortable. Sometimes, that ends up being away from your desk: my favorite writing spots are the subway (with good music), and the local coffee shop.

#writing meme #monicawoe's answers #brendaonao3

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brandon-seifert-comics-writer · 7 years

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Writing Comics: The Brandon Seifert Way!

Hey folks! So, some comics writers have been posting about their script writing processes. I've been finding it an interesting look into other peoples' creative processes. So I figured I'd join in!

Laying out my creative process serves a second purpose, too. I have a tendency to... well... forget how to write scripts. It happens every so often. I'll get partway through the process of writing a script, run into trouble... and then realize that I've blanked on the Best Practices For Brandon Seifert Scripts that I've learned through trial and error. So having a written breakdown of the best method I've found for me to write my scripts will be useful for me too. So I can go back and reference it sometimes, and make sure I'm actually following it.

Okay. So, this is the most effective way I've found for the kind of scripts I write, and for the kind of brain I have.

1. Come up with a story idea. For me, this is the easy part. My brain is overflowing with ideas. (Oh god. So many ideas. Somebody make them slow down!!)

2. Brainstorm the living shit out of it. Once I've got the story idea, I unload my brain on the page about it. I write down potential plot points, ideas, questions to answer, things I might research relating to it. Pieces of dialogue. Sequences of panels. Entire pages, or sometimes entire scenes, that appear in my head without me having to work them through. Anything and everything I can come up with based on an idea, I write down. Plenty of this won't make it into the finished comic. But I write it all down anyway.

3. Make outlines. Make too many outlines. Once the ideas aren't coming quite as frantically, I take the plot points I ended up with, organize them, throw out the ones that don't seem to fit, and see what I have. From there, I build an outline. Or rather, I build several outlines.

My first outline is the one with the plot points that I brainstormed. It's a list of sentences, paragraphs and sentence fragments, arranged in the order that I think they'll occur in. (I do my writing in Scrivener, and all these pieces are individual text files. That way I can easily drag and drop them into different orders, delete some of them, and add new ones.) I flesh this out, adding more plot points until the story starts taking shape.

Meanwhile, I'm also writing outlines in my notebook. (Writing things out longhand is very important for my creative process. I find that writing something on paper, with a pen, frees up my brain a little. Since my final drafts are never written in pen ink, anything I write on a page automatically becomes a rough draft. So there's zero need to get it "right" the first time. Next time you're in the middle of a story and you have writer's block, I totally recommend trying it!) There's a couple different plot structures I find it useful to play with. One is Blake Snyder's "Save The Cat!" formula (which is VERY formulaic but can be a useful starting point). Another is Nigel Watts' Eight Point Plot structure. I often use one or both of these as a starting point. Basically as a writing exercise. I see if my plot points fit into these structures. If they don't, I see how they COULD fit... and then I either make changes based on that, or I don't. Anyway, this stuff goes in my notebook rather than on my laptop. (I don’t know why I do it that way. I just do.)

Think I'm done outlining? Think again! Next, I usually do a prose version of the outline I've decided on. I write out what I think happens in the story — the broad strokes, at least — in simple-but-complete sentences and paragraphs. Once the prose version reaches about a page long, I generally have enough material to start actually writing the issue.

...So then I start the issue. Right? NOPE! MOAR OUTLINES!

Well, one last outline. My last one is a page breakdown. It's a Google Doc with lines numbered 1-20. Each line represents a page of story in the final comic. I write in a really brief summary of what happens on each page. Usually starting with the page-turns. (I think of comics mostly in terms of two-page "units," a page-turn and a facing-page.) I take the material I've produced in my already-too-many outlines and plug it in here.

4. Place my brainstormed writing-bits in a script template. In Scrivener, I have a 20-page script template full of placeholders for panels and dialogue. Page-turns have three panels in the template because page-turns often have big reveal panels and lower overall panel counts. Facing pages have five panels. Each panel has a dialogue placeholder in it. (My scripts don't exclusively have three panels on page-turns and five on facing pages! It's just a good reminder for me that I'll likely need around that many panels or more on that page.)

Remember all that brainstorming I did? Which involved "pieces of dialogue," "sequences of panels," "entire pages," and "sometimes entire scenes?" Now I take that stuff and begin dropping it into the script template in the approximate place that I think it'll go. When I'm done with that, I've got a script template that's partially populated by actual script! That way, I never actually have a "blank page" in front of me when it comes time to do the actual scripting. There's always something in there!

5. Expand what I’ve got. That reveal panel, that I wrote for the page-turn on Page 4? Well, there's got to be set-up for it in the last panel of Page 3. So I make a note of that in the placeholder panel that's already there. Got three panels for Page 11, and then a beat I need to figure before I set-up the reveal on Page 12? Time to figure out that beat! Basically, the rest of my scripting process involves filling in those partially-populated pages, and then filling in the gaps between those pages.

There's two main ways that I write pages: Action-first, or dialogue-first.

Action-First: I figure out what happens (action-wise) in each panel in a sequence. And then I figure out exactly what the characters are saying.

Dialogue-First: I write out all the dialogue that a dialogue-based scene may involve. Then I cut it up where it’s easily cut, condense it, stick it in placeholder panels. And then figure out who’s in each panel, and what they’re doing.

Of the two, “Action-First” is much easier for me to do... with action-based scenes. It’s usually impossible for me to do for dialogue-oriented scenes... but for some reason I always forget the method of Dialogue-First when I initially attempt scenes like that!

6. Write the pages in whatever order works for me — starting with the easy pages. I do this because they’re easy, so I might as well get them out of the way! My finished-page count quickly soars. Man, this is easy! I’m on top of the world!

7. ...Realize that I left the hard pages for last. The further I get into the script, the harder things get. The slower things get. The more demoralized I get. I did it again. I saved the hard pages for last. I did the easy pages, and they went fast, and I got an unrealistic idea of how long the script would take. Deadlines loom.

8. Write the hard pages anyway. Oh. That wasn’t so bad.

9. Revise and polish the whole thing.

10. Send it in, with a feeling of relief and accomplishment.

After this, theres stuff like getting notes and doing additional drafts based on them (and based on any weaknesses that I manage to identify after the fact). But this is how the primary phase of my scripting process goes.

The important thing here is: This is what I’ve found works for me. You need to find what works for you. Maybe it’s something like my method. Maybe it’s wildly, massively different. The thing about writing is, everybody’s process is different. And:

The only “right” way to write is: Whatever way works.

#Brandon Seifert #writing #on writing #on writing comics #writing comics #process

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avanneman · 6 years

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Outrageous rage? Democrats v. Schultz

The possible independent candidacy for president of Starbucks coffee high muckety-muck/billionaire Howard Schultz has Democrats fuming like a vente on a January morning in Chicago, while Republicans snicker. What’s the matter, liberals? Don’t you believe in democracy?

Well, yeah, we do, but we also believe in winning. Besides the which, rage is all the rage these days, and has been for some time. The Tea Party was nothing but “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more” for white folks, culminating in that gift that keeps on giving, Donald Trump, and now Democrats have got that rage thing going too, and, anyway, it’s a lot safer to “rage” at old white guy billionaires than feckless teen-agers, even if they do have southern accents and wear Donald Trump hats.

But what’s the deal with Howie, after all? Is he a fit target for hate? Well, I try not to do hate in politics. I don’t think it works, and I don’t think it’s healthy. But I’m way not a fan of Howie either.

Jonathan Chait, over at New York, has written ¾ of my article for me, so if you believe in, well, honor, you might as well skip the rest of this and go read Johnnie, but if not, I can say this:

Howard’s critique of the “new wave” of Bernieites, Lizzieites, and Alexandriaites is about 90% on point, but that 10% ain't chump change. If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ever learns to add, she’ll be dangerous, but right now, not so much. Still, she’s expanded the horizon, dared to say, and succeeded in making it acceptable, that taxes on “the rich” should be raised rather than lowered, which is definitely a good thing. And, more generally, there’s no question that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were far too obsequious to, and generally absorbed by, the billionaire boys and girls club. If Hillary Clinton hadn’t been so greedy for those big Goldman Sachs bucks, which were totally irrelevant to her needs—she needed the money to buy baby shoes for her granddaughter?—Bernie Sanders would have had much less traction running against her, would not have energized the long-dormant paleolib wing of the Democratic Party, allowing even a deeply flawed Hillary to lead a united (united, but not terribly happy about it) Democratic Party to victory in 2016. But Hillary somehow just “couldn’t” keep her hands off all that easy long green, and the paleos were invigorated, and (in their own minds, at least), they won BIG in November, and they ain’t taking no neoliberal shit no more.

So that’s the ideological side of the story. And, anyway, as neoliberals go, Howie (remember him?) is pretty awful. In general, Howie is a “Democrat” only because he lives on the West Coast. If he were east of the Hudson, he’d be that quasi-extinct species, the Rockefeller Republican, who these days can be defined as people who are as rich as Rockefeller, if not more so. Howie’s right that “fuck the rich” is not a viable economic policy, but “cutting entitlements on the basis of what’s going to happen 20 years from now” is not a viable political one. Lord Melbourne (you remember him, don't you?) supposedly said “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” Well, I don’t believe that, but I do believe that when it isn’t necessary to change, it’s impossible to change.1

What’s really irritating for us Democrats (us sensible Democrats) is the obvious possibility that an independent Schultz candidacy could pull anti-Trump centrists away from the Democratic candidate, whoever she may be, particularly because it will be “unlikely” that any Democrat will be able to win the nomination without endorsing “Medicare for All,” which most Americans do not want—what they want is the subsidized health insurance they’re already getting through their employer.

What’s frightening about Howie is that he sounds very much like a man on a mission. Here is what he said at a recent interview: “Can you imagine what a powerful signal it would send to the Congress and the country if, for the first time since George Washington, an independent person could be elected president.”

To a skeptic/cynic like me, this sounds very much like a man who thinks, not that he could be this country’s second George Washington, but that he should be this country’s second George Washington, and that’s a very bad way to think. Both Schultz’s political thinking—that 40% of the voters in this country are “Independents”—and his “policy” thinking—“We just get a bunch of smart people in a room and we lick this thing”2—are banal. But his ego is even bigger than his bank account. It’s not an attractive combination.

Afterwords Schultz’s personal story, which you can read online for free via the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon for his autobiography, is touching. He grew up in a poor, unhappy, dysfunctional Jewish family in a housing project in New York, his passive mother and father dominated by his grasping “Nana”, a penny-pinching monster straight out of Balzac or Dostoyevsky. But he quickly left all that behind.

Even at the height of the Tea Party frenzy over “cutting spending”, which was much more about cutting off Barack Obama’s balls than about the budget—because he had cut Medicare—Congress lacked the courage to make any decisions about cutting spending. The “sequestration” process—which actually did limit spending—was a “placeholder” for decisions to come, decisions that Congress was afraid to make and never made. ↩︎

And that’s all he has. Despite the fact that he obviously thinks of himself as brilliant, he has no substantial policy ideas at all—just that people “like him” should be in charge. ↩︎

#Howard Schultz #Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez #paleoliberals

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buytabletsonline · 7 years

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Google currently has two OSes on the market: Android and Chrome OS. The company is never one to leave a successful product alone in the marketplace, though, so it’s also developing a third operating system called “Fuchsia.” When we last checked in on the experimental OS in May 2017, calling it an “OS” was a bit of a stretch. We only got the system UI up and running on top of Android, where it then functioned like an app. The UI offered a neat multi-window system, but mostly it was just a bunch of placeholder graphics. Nothing worked.

It has been hard to check in on Fuchsia since. The Fuchsia system UI, which was written with a cross-platform SDK called “Flutter,” quickly shut down the Android (and iOS) compatible builds. Fuchsia has a Vulkan-based graphics stack, and no emulator supports the new-ish graphics API. The only way to get Fuchsia up and running again was with actual hardware, and the only supported devices were Intel NUC PCs from 2015 and the Acer Switch Alpha 12 laptop.

So after the recent news that the Fuchsia team picked the Chrome OS-powered Google Pixelbook as a supported device, we jumped at the chance to get it up and running. And after a little elbow grease, it actually booted. Now, we’re not just running the system UI on top of Android like last time, we’re running Fuchsia directly on a piece of hardware!

This means it’s finally time for a deep dive on what Fuchsia looks like in early 2018. Our usual in-development OS testing caveats apply: Fuchsia only started development in 2016 and probably has several years of development time ahead of it. Everything can—and probably will—change between now and release (if a release ever even happens). Google won’t even officially acknowledge the OS exists—Fuchsia is a bunch of code sitting on fuchsia.googlesource.com.

Installation: Streamed over a network!

Get a Pixelbook and plug in a USB drive and a network adapter. The Linux virtual machine on the left streams the Fuchsia system files to the Pixelbook.

Ron Amadeo

It will send around 1GB of data split across several files, and eventually Fuchsia will boot up.

Ron Amadeo

See. Told ya.

Ron Amadeo

Getting Fuchsia up and running on a piece of hardware is a strange and interesting project. You’d expect to download and compile the OS, put it on a USB stick, and either live-boot directly from the USB stick or run some kind of Fuchsia OS installer. Instead, you load a bootable USB stick up with “Zedboot”—a basic bootloader that will get you connected to a network. On the host machine, you compile Fuchsia and send the system files over the network to a machine currently running Zedboot. That’s all done in a process the Fuchsia docs call “paving.” Once the 1.1GB worth of files is downloaded, the system boots up, and eventually you’ll be looking at a lock screen.

The Pixelbook doesn’t feel like the best device for this, since it doesn’t have the wired network port needed for Zedboot. You’ll somehow need to go from USB-C to Ethernet, and the Pixelbook under Zedboot is picky about what Ethernet adapters it wants to support. The one I had lying around didn’t work, but after picking up a native USB-C ethernet adapter, things started working. You’ll also need your USB stick in the other port to boot Zedboot from, which means you’ve filled both USB-C ports. All of a sudden, there’s no room for power. Luckily, the USB stick isn’t needed once the OS starts up; a hub would work, too.

It’s not just me; this process is a bit weird, right? The network-based installation does make it easy to stream a fresh version of Fuchsia to the device, but it seems like a lot of work for purely development purposes. Plus, if you want to repeatedly put software on a piece of hardware, the transmission medium of choice is usually USB. This is pure speculation, but does Fuchsia have a network-based install process because eventually the data won’t come from a local source? Maybe someday, the goal will be to replace the “host” computer with Google’s cloud. Maybe, if Fuchsia ever becomes a real product, a device could boot into Zedboot, connect to a network, and download the latest version of Fuchsia directly from Google.

The basics

Fuchsia’s lock screen in laptop mode.

Ron Amadeo

Tap the Fuchsia button to switch to phone mode.

Ron Amadeo

You can rotate with the white button at the bottom right.

Ron Amadeo

Hit the plus button for Internet and login options.

Ron Amadeo

The Pixelbook has WI-Fi, but Fuchsia doesn’t know about it.

Ron Amadeo

This Wi-Fi dialog doesn’t work in phone mode.

Ron Amadeo

“Login” brings up a Google login screen, but I can never complete it.

Press caps lock to switch to a command line interface; here’s the debug screen.

Ron Amadeo

Once all the downloading is done, Fuchsia will boot up, and you’ll be presented with the lockscreen. Let’s stop for a minute and just admire what a big deal this is. Remember, this is Fuchsia running on actual hardware without any Linux code under the hood. Right now, Google’s built-from-scratch kernel and operating system will actually boot on the Pixelbook, and some things even work. The touchscreen, trackpad, and keyboard work and so do the USB ports. You can even plug in a mouse and get a second mouse cursor. The battery readout is accurate, and plugging in the Pixelbook produces the expected lightning bolt. So much works that it’s kind of amazing—the only hardware feature that didn’t work was Wi-Fi, but the USB Ethernet adapter worked just fine for Internet.

About halfway through writing this article I learned that, by default, Fuchsia compiles in debug mode. This puts the “slow mode” banner on the top-right corner of the UI, and, well, it makes everything really slow. Adding a “–release” to the end of the build command disables all the debug stuff, making the OS run much faster and disabling the banner. I still wouldn’t say Fuchsia works particularly well right now on the Pixelbook, though. The Pixelbook is always hot when you’re running Fuchsia. Even just sitting on the home screen, it’s a fireball. Things crash a lot, a lot of things don’t work. There is still lots of work to do.

Your first Fuchsia impressions will come via the lock screen. The time is front and center, but there are a few controls here, too. In the bottom right is a plus button that will bring up options for Wi-Fi, a login page, and the Guest login. The Wi-Fi window told me “No WLAN interface found” in debug mode and was totally blank in release mode, so it seems the Pixelbook’s Wi-Fi just doesn’t work currently. The “Login” button will actually bring up a Google login page and will take your email, password, and 2FA challenge before displaying a blank screen and freezing. The “Guest” button is a guest login and is an easy way to start up the OS without logging in.

There are a few features that seem specifically focused on development. The blue Fuchsia logo in the top-left corner will switch between what clearly seems to be “laptop” and “phone” modes. The most official description of Fuchsia we’ve ever gotten from Google is from the Fuchsia kernel documentation, which says it “targets modern phones and modern personal computers with fast processors.” With that in mind, the phone and laptop modes make sense. Remember, this isn’t an emulator, though, so the phone mode is a bit odd. The Pixelbook is pulling double-duty as both a native laptop device and a stand-in for a phone device.

The lock screen also has a few hardware button commands for development. Caps Lock (which is technically called the “launcher” button on the Pixelbook keyboard) will switch between the GUI and a command line interface. In the command line mode, volume down will switch between multiple command line instances, one of which is a debug readout. In the GUI, volume down will make the display render upside-down, which is nice for the Pixelbook’s tent mode.

Listing image by Ron Amadeo

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