#ask me about things

[conundrumoftime]

If I may:

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?

🎯 Have any of your readers accurately guessed major plot points? Care to share which? (nb not asking for spoilers!)

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

cheers!

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

Things that turn up in a lot of my stories across fandoms/pairings/ships and gen, whether I mean them to or not!

The passage of time and how people relate to history, their own and other people’s. 

Duty and what it means: whether that’s a duty to specific others, or your people more generally, or to yourself, or duty in the form of some kind of promise or oath 

Long-term impacts of war

The importance of story and narrative and whether it’s a good idea to present your own experience/what you want it to be as a story

(since I had kids myself) More than I thought I’d ever include about parenting! 

🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?

I think I do when it feels like worldbuilding, and I don’t when it feels like checking for accuracy. And those can overlap - I have spent a lot of time measuring out Middle-earth distances to work out how long it would take people to get from A to B via various methods of transport, but what interests me about it is whether there’s a road and if so who built the road, what sort of state of repair is it in at this point, why; or like in the most recent chapter of Shadow-Bride where there’s a voyage by ship but it takes longer because they have to cling to the coast, because Pelargir at this point isn’t really seafaring. 

A lot of my Babylon 5 WIP is set on a war cruiser spaceship, and for that one I did a lot of mental plotting out to think what kind of size crew it would have (it’s a really big ship! but it’s also not wartime and they have very advanced tech so would it need that many people?) and I looked a lot into things like what crew rotations and staffing and specialisations and training would be on a contemporary aircraft carrier or a submarine, etc., to build off for that. But it’s mostly to give depth and colour to a world I want to tell stories within, which for that fic is a lot about how the people who fought in the war are dealing/not dealing with peace; so I’m not set on accuracy as much as consistency.

Or for Tolkien: I tried really hard to get Quenya and Sindarin right for my Galadriel/Celeborn fic ‘Softest of Tongues’ because it’s about language and translation and telling stories through that. But when it comes to things like which First Age elf was born when, I’ll just handwave a lot of it as “eh it’s probably somewhere different in HoME anyway” if I check and it’s not convenient.

🎯 Have any of your readers accurately guessed major plot points? Care to share which? (nb not asking for spoilers!)

yes :)

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

Most of the time I have an ending in mind before I start - I find it really hard to begin a story without - but for a one-shot it’s sometimes very roughly sketched. For longer WIPs I do have the general outlines planned in advance and then let the story go where it wants in the middle. 

Shadow-Bride is the most outlining I’ve ever done because of the structure it has with the present-tense bit as a framing device, so with that one I know exactly where it’s going and how it will end and what the epigraph is for the final chapter etc etc. It has expanded a LOT within that outline over time though (I think my initial chapter count was 9? and then 12? hahahaaaaaa). This does mean that when I get stuck in a scene I sometimes jump ahead a bit and write something from a chapter yet to come - I have lots of Elrond scenes in draft at the moment because I like writing him so much!

[phantomrose96]

I think we should have a turn of phrase for "I'm not in the right, but I AM annoyed with this situation, so I just need to go bitch to a friend about this before I suck it up and go do the right thing" because more and more I'm finding this is a critical element of functional adulthood.

[beebfreeb]

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[oobbbear]

I want to post this here too because I’ve seen it happen a few times

Please understand that there are cultural differences and language differences, if you see this happening let the person clarify what they meant, that person might just not be familiar with words the western side of the internet use

[hinamie]

surprise it's yuri!!!in 2024

[fallahifag]

palestinians don’t owe you anything

[starcurtain]

Please someone redraw this with Dr. Ratio and Aventurine because this is the exact vibe they have in my head post-Penacony.

[its-tortle]

— taylor swift albums as months of the year —

[caruliaa]

staff still hasn't given me polls, what should i do?

🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪 their moms 69%

🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪 their dads 31%

grace image os i get to look at her

[varian-ross-horror-author]

"Disabled people should be allowed to be as independent as we can be" and "disabled people should not be pressured to be hyper-independent in order to not wind up in nursing homes against our will" are two thoughts that can, and should, exist at the same time.

[egophiliac]

What do you like about the Diasomnia boys if I may ask?

I always love hearing about the different reasons people enjoy characters.

I mean, c'mon. he has split custody over Sebek okay

also, Lilia in particular has maybe the best timeskip character development of all time

[pencilscratchins]

to everyone asking when i’m gonna post art again… hey guys i recently acquired six incredibly large clown paintings so i’m sort of booked at the moment

[inkskinned]

the problem is that being single is seen as the consolidation prize, and not the natural neutral state of being-a-person. at the end of the movie or the book or the poetry, there is a person waiting for you at the altar, and they love you. if the play is a comedy, everyone gets married. the metaphor is about how you are not-whole. the metaphor is about how everyone is going to be happily-ever-after. the metaphor is that romantic love is the most important resource on the planet, not just all-love. all-love is not a thing, that is a disappointment. the treasure is not the friends we made along the way. the treasure is the girl you landed.

the metaphor is that you cannot be alone, that means you are broken. are you getting over someone? that is acceptable, you can be getting over someone, but not for long. you must be single because you would rather not be single. you must be single and looking to not-be-single. you must want to date, eventually.

friendship and community are never seen as being equal-to or even-better than romantic connection. that person is your one! you need to find them. you need to hunt through the sand particles until you can shift out some kind of gem. this is regardless to your own experience of the beach and the sun. you need to be somewhere with someone.

if you are taking this time alone to heal, that is so sad. everyone gives you this little pitying look. the understanding is that you are not actually happier than you were before you were single. it is seen as a sort of pity - oh, you are choosing yourself, making yourself the priority? - that isn't quite right. you must mean that you are making yourself ready for the right person. you are just laying the bed better this time. open up your heart. you'll find them, we promise!

what do you mean you're really-truly genuinely-very happy? you are probably misremembering what it was like to be in a relationship. and besides, once you meet your person, that time will look grey and bland and wasted. your person is the only way for you to see in color. so what if you have taken this time - for the first time in your entire life - to actually-for-real do the fucking work. you can be proud of yourself, sure. but the way we need to know that you got better is that you get a partner. you're healed enough for the next bad part!

people don't choose to be single, they just say they're choosing to be single - they actually mean "nobody wants to date me." it doesn't matter how many people you have gently rejected or how many times you've talked it over carefully in therapy. what matters is that you are single, and by all accounts - that means you are something worth our pity. your successes and life all seem pale in the sunlight. sure, you have done amazing things and finally found your way in life. what matters is that there wasn't a person in the room with you while you did it.

you want to tell them - that's the whole thing. i didn't know how to be alone in the room. i didn't know how to handle the silence. every moment was so sharp, and i kept choosing the wrong way to close the door. i have spent my entire life in the empty well, living in the ricochet of someone else's cruelty. for once i have built myself a ladder. for once everything i taste is all mine, every bite of sunshine and laughter. i have learned how to sleep out in the open with my memories. recently, they have started to purr.

your father rolls his eyes. listen. this isn't about you. i just want a grandchild in my future.

[comradekatara]

it's national draw your sibling day

[placesyoucallhome]

Size/Height difference poses

I love height differences aesthetically, but posing them can sometimes be a pain! So to cater to those that also struggle with posing smols and tols, I have a few options-

Meant for art of any type and ask memes, for drawing, writing, photography (like gpose!), ect. Gender nonspecific and for any sort of relationship type, romantic, platonic, and antagonistic!