#but i'm also like. terrified the stylist will give me something that doesn't work right

[cappurrccino]

the problem with trying to look for haircut reffos is that every picture is like "oh there's a ton of styling and products that went into that, there's no way to know what it'll look like if you don't do that every day"

[shiroselia]

I know that it's technically a day before but I genuinely might forget tomorrow, so I'm writing something about it now because I'm feeling very sentimental right at this very moment in particular

Which is to say that tomorrow (16th of September), it will be exactly a year since I started writing QuintSum, and really since I started actually writing properly period.

For those that haven't snapped it up yet, I've been very so-so about calling myself a writer for a long time because I've mostly stuck to storyboards and plot outlines and character creation and a lot of Background Stuff that I couldn't really show people because I didn't think that it counted. Even when I did start writing it took me a While to settle on the fact that I Have been a writer for 10+ years because it has taken me That fucking long to get this consistent and Good at it. But you know I haven't "properly" been writing before last year so you bet my brain was debating on if I was "allowed" to say I've been writing for 10+ years. (The answer is yes my skills are that of a decade+ that's just fact. You aren't at my level of consistency from just a single year.)

Nevertheless because I was also terrified of showing people my writing because when you grow up noticeably autistic and have a personality at all you're going to be made to feel like all your hobbies suck ass and if you even imply that you have interests you're going to get punished for it. And my stories and characters have always been incredibly personal, so naturally I just didn't show it to people because I know exactly what that does to somebody. (Read: You get told you're a fucking weirdo and then you get laughed at either in your face or behind your back. Fun stuff, truly.)

That isn't to say that I've ever been a person who writes very personal stories in the commonly assumed sense. I don't write a lot of problems or issues that are relateable to me, and I don't particularly care about channeling my own struggles through my writing. Completely valid coping mechanism and an excellent way to do it for the people who like it, I instead prefer to have a podcast talk with myself. Point being, that the personal part of my stories have Always been the kind of tropes I utilise.

If anybody has even glanced at my Ao3, you can tell that I have a bit of a Type. Always has been the case, always will be the case. I know that I like, always have been. But just because what I write isn't necessarily Personal, doesn't mean that it still doesn't reflect Absolutely everything about it. It, at its core, is literally everything that I love and adore and find fun and enjoyable. And I've always considered that to be equally as important to somebody as their struggles because once you get to know people, they really are.

So I just didn't show people my stuff, and didn't really write, and if I did it was half-baked drafts at best because I just. Didn't get it to work.

There is a WAY longer conversation of mine to be had with my personal view of writing style, and my friends have all gotten it multiple times in varying lengths, because I have a lot of opinions there (Shocker, I know). But there genuinely is nothing that has helped my stylistic writing more than, as funny as it is, becoming an English major. I've gotten introduced to so much Interesting and unconventional writing this way, and more than anything, I've been reminded that there's Multiple ways to do it.

When you hang around on The Tumblrs it's very fucking easy to foret that there's more writing styles than heavy-description standard past tense third person. Which is hilarious now that I genuinely do write in primarily past tense third person, but there's a reason why I didn't start out there. Because I fucking hate conventional third person. I write literally, I fucking hate dialogue tags, I don't give a shit about most things that a lot of "popular" writing emphasizes. And it took until last year to remember that that's literally not a problem because I had to sit through multiple lectures on stream of conciousness and why Shakespeare's literal writing was really fucking good so remember that I'm Allowed to write that way.

And then I started talking to @jorvikzelda and three days later the stupidest shit I've ever pulled off started.

I've said this to them so many fucking times, but Zelda is the most direct reason why you even see me writing at all nowadays. It's been a Really long process of getting over multiple layers of Stuff and Things, but none of it would ever have helped had Zelda not asked me to betaread Jorvikpov. The fact that Zelda allowed me to, with all due respect, rip their writing apart from the ground up, was definitely pretty important for me to feel comfortable with sending them, what I generally regarded, as something kind of trash (and while I nowadays call what I started out writing Not Good, all things considered, it's nothing but a receipt that I've improved and gotten more comfortable in my own style).

And all of a fucking sudden, I finished writing almost 300k words in 10 months and it would've been less had Real Life not gotten in the fucking way. Which is kind of where I'm at right now because guess what, it takes time to edit an already disgustingly long fic, especially when you're also studying full time. But whoptido it do be like that.

The point is, that it's fucking Insane to me that I'm sitting here a year later, hell, At All, and not only having accomplished what 8 year old Manda could only daydreamed about (yes, I've wanted to write an SSO rewrite story That fucking long), but also doing something I told myself I just Did Not Like. Which is to say that it's hilarious that I decided however long ago it was that I didn't like writing fanfiction, and also that I didn't like writing period, so I just stuck to storyboarding. And now look where I am.

Turns out that sometimes you just need some good friends to bonk your insecurities out of you, and all of a sudden you have a writing speed of 1100 words per 30 minutes.

Fuck around find out do shit the weidest unconventional way you can think of and sooner or later you're going to consider yourself the best writer you know. (And I am friends with some fucking geniuses let me tell you.)

[kihaku-gato]

Tell me all of your oc's favorite plants or I'm shooting a hostage

Okay, that’s a good but hefty one, cause I do have flowers I attach to my OCs as their “symbolic flower” (idr why I started doing that but I’m pretty sure it was a story or anime that set me on that trend) however that is not the same as what their favourite flower/plant may be. I’m not sure I’ll have enough kinds of Hoepian plant/flower for this (yes I know I could go for irl plants/flowers but we’re gonna keep with the canon anyways to make things interesting) so let’s go (with IMAGES LINKED where able to give visual aids to names- rather than crop/paste those images onto here cause that'd would be a terrifying ton of images to work through) WALL OF TEXT BEGIN-

Terra is a woman of utility like her mother Laurel, so it would not surprise me if she were to have a similar preference for a plant that has a lot of use in her field of work in Mana Tech. Soul Daisies would not be a stretch since she’d probably use them often as the Base for a lot of magic crafts, but I don’t think they’d be her favourite of all time plant. Kabakin Pumpkins would not be an impossible choice either, since she grows quite fascinated by the range of their magical properties they are capable of when she learns of them. Hoepian Tiger Lily I think she likes most, some of it is cause she’d use it a lot to help fuel her fire magic reserves that she uses in combat, but I also think she likes how they look being orange/red reminiscent of the colour of her scales and clothes. If not using them for work or being busy with work, I could imagine her stroking their petals and feeling the bumps of the spots and stripes that mark said petals.

Kayla despite Soul Daisies being her floral symbol she probably would not really like Soul Daisies tbh. Like she’d find them pretty, but the problem would be if she were the interact with them. The fact they are so sensitive to outside magical sources that they would likely distort into a shadowy/crackling mess with her presence would just unsettle her a ton. It’d be the closest thing to a mirror of how unstable her magic is (at least in the earlier point of The Story). I think her favourite plant would have to be a flower/plant that’s pretty and/or cute. So going by current roster of created plants I guess either the tiny little Icedrop, or the Kissumeria tree (being they are so beautiful and the romantic associations attached to them).

Demauria (ah shit only good pic of her is a chibi one) is tricky, cause her symbolic flower (At least I think I chose it as such, it’s been a long time) used to be the Gator Jaws, but even as a symbol it doesn't really feel quite right for Dema, much less being one she even likes, though I think she’d still find them kind of cool being a light-up carnivorous plant. My brain could argue on this, would her favourite be a type of flower/plant she remembers from her childhood or it be something more to her stylistic preferences? If the latter then I would imagine she'd be into something hardcore or badass, like with thorns or venom/poison, like something out of a Gothic Garden, which really narrows down the choices of what Hoepian plant would be her fav as I do not have anything in the roster for thorny or poisonous plants yet save for one, the Demon Rose, which would be a bit too horrifying even for her due to how disturbing they can be to someone unfamiliar with them. I’ll need to expand more on those kind of plant I suppose. If it was a plant that she recalls from her childhood though, it’d be either the Snowcandle or the Glasstree (basically a tree often grown as a living Greenhouse), since both were keystone species to any form of Life she'd get to see outside the caves of the cold icy south, a window of warmth and beauty.

For Riivar either the Kissumeria tree or the Memberance Tree (her symbolic flower). Kissumeria trees can be an aphrodisiac just as much as they can be a romantic symbol, she likely would love the idea of having something to add on top to a fun time. Memberance Tree would be because it has similar associations to Earth’s Forget-me-nots; for remembering a past love, which in Riivar’s case would be her first love/crush. I’ve even drawn her with a tattoo that has Memberance Tree flowers on it so it would not be a stretch if it was her favourite.

Harriet I would try to think of something more creative rather than defaulting to her symbolic flower, but even then I still think her favourite would be the Raftflower (which I’ve called the Water Sunflower before, I’m just trying another name for it. It’s like a blend of Kelp and Sunflower, where the Flowerhead floats on the ocean surface. I am surprised I haven't posted any pictures of it yet but I think it was cause I was unsatisfied with my illustration). She likes the rich underwater forests they make, and their huge floating flower/seedheads are a bonus. She probably remembers sitting on top of a floating seedhead and popping the seeds into her mouth as a snack when she was little.

Anne- If just going by her experiences I’d say either her symbolic flower the Volcanic Protea (as it says on the tin; a Protea that grows along active volcanic areas) cause it’d be a flower that thrive in the volcanic village she was born in or the Sand Pawpaw (xeric adapted pawpaw) cause it was a rich tasting fruit she got to enjoy in her travels across the Heins Desert as a tween. Could imagine she’d know some really tasty recipes for the fruit. I really need to expand on my arid/volcanic flora for Hoep tbh.

Lily- Should I even account for Lily considering how little I’ve ended up fleshing her out as an OC? Screw it we’re doing it anyways; First that comes to mind would be the Bananachoke. Cause its tasty sure but also cause of its associations as one of the oldest documented domestic plant on Hoep, it would tickle her archeological/historical obsessed brain.

Laurel- due to the magical versatility Soul Daisies those would be her favourite, it’s not even a contest. She grows fields of the stuff.

Abbey- I’ll be honest I had to talk to a friend on her to try to grasp what I’m even going for her personality/vibe to help me try to get an inkling of what kind of plants/flowers she’d like. She is another character that reminds me that I need more kinds of plants on Hoep. CLOSE ENOUGH choices would be either the Chocolate Arum (which would be an amusing irony since she is pretty health-conscious with her food so it’d be funny for her to enjoy the one plant with chocolate-tasting necatar) or the Spiral Rily- which I apparently do NOT have any images of online, and not even found in my image folders??? A Crime! Here you go- Spiral Rilies straight from the dusty Hoepian Botany word doc-

Beneri it’d be Gator Jaws I think. She probably has a love/hate relationship with them cause on the one hand a plant that can help light the way in the dark but on the other hand CAN THEY PLEASE NOT MAKE THAT GROWLING NOISE THAT’S SCARY QAQ

Venelle’s is likely the Demon Rose, specifically her own Demon Rose. She hated it when she first got it but it’s (no pun intended) grown on her a bit since, and the fact it’s adapted to her mercenary lifestyle has only helped on that grown bond. Is that a cop out answer? Probably but let’s be real Venelle probably does not otherwise really think too hard about plants outside of nourishment in her travels and therefor a means to an end.

Sango (sorry, our beefcake doesn't have her art up yet!)… that’s hard as I feel like I need more coastal/islandic/oceanic flora to even be able to give her a selection. Coral is not a plant, doesn’t count. Well if we were to find a plant she’d like, it’d likely be something strong and sturdy if not endurant to the strength of the ocean waves. Maybe some kind of mangrove or something. I don’t think the mangroves that’d make a floating city would be one of them though.

Saka- yes we’re including the big vague antagonist that no one even directly encounters or hears about. Roses. No not the Demon Rose (though she is the reason those exists). Earth Roses. She probably remembers them from when she was back on earth so long ago before she settled on Hoep with the other humans. Shame they don’t exist on Hoep, Demon Roses are as close as it gets, and being Demon Roses don’t seem to like her, that’s just salt on an open wound.

Gertrude- despite being a plant herself (a chimera of three plants in a robotic shell) and it’d be funny to say her favourite plant is herself as a Grand Example of Self Love, I feel like her fav would be a plant other than herself that would awestrike her. Perhaps a gigantic clonal array of trees that spread out their branches into the vacuum of space. I am not as confident with the sci fi space flora than I am with the Seed World fantasy flora of Hoep, so can't really give a name for such a plant or much else yet. I am a long way from making spec-space flora.

A lot of other OCs aren’t from a setting where there are fictional plants, or they are gijinkas of plants themselves, so I can’t really account for them here, but that still covers a big net of OCs.