#fun fact - did you know that this chapter was entirely inspired by an old episode of the animated Batman series from 1992? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lovely-necromancy · 3 years

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A Cure for Insomnia CH 1.

This is a reader insert I originally started posting on AO3. I’m cross posting here because I know some of the fandom still lives here.

Quick Disclaimer:

This is a fic I'm writing for my own comfort.

I was inspired by RaeBees (you can check out their works over on Quotev and AO3), and how they characterize the "proxies". Having always seen the characters different than most of the fandom I've interacted with I never really shared my thoughts until now. This work is only placed in the Creepypasta tag so it reaches its demographic. However, I am fully aware of the fact that no main character is considered a Pasta.

It may also appear to lean more Toby X Protag in the beginning but end goal is protag with all three, and Brian and Tim already in a relationship. How I picture it now is a slowburn but Toby and Protag will be in a friends with benefits relationship before either has any feelings, so I think that counts. Some may be confused by the asexual protag tag but it'll be explained in story, as an Ace myself I get frustrated with media that only show one version and say it goes for us all. That being said I don't represent the whole Ace community but I hope to provide a bit more representation for some others out there.

Protag will be depicted as agender, and will have a few tics that stem from their Autism. Again I don't speak for any others with Autism but I hope to provide some representation for those in similar positions.

Tags will be updated as the story progresses. Canon-Typical violence and mental health issues are to be expected if you feel uncomfortable with those aspects I advise you to not engage. This story will also have a lot of NSFW themes and scenes so I highly discourage anyone under the age of 18 from viewing this work. You will get warnings on chapters with NSFW and I will make it skippable as well.

I'm also very nitpicky and gave the main characters birthdays just because it irritates me when it gets mentioned once and you have to do the math or imagine your own conversation when a birthday was too close to a character's.

Tim January 1st, home state Alabama

Toby April 28th, home state Virginia (saw this years ago no clue if it's accurate)

Protag May 13th, home state Virginia

Brian May 23rd, home state Alabama

Connor the service dog July 18th, home state Kentucky

I've referred to Protag as Protag here but in story they're referred to as YN.

Everything felt impossibly dull; your senses, the dark room you're currently in, the noise coming from the fan just to the left of the bed on which you laid. Turning to the window beside your head you stare out into that weird midnight summer sky. More of a gray than a true dark blue night, cast in an orange glow that made the night seem closer to day than it truly was. While the time was just half past twelve, you felt it may have been more accurate to say it was closer to four in the morning.

You're exhausted but that true sort of exhaustion where whatever energy you have left buzzes all around. It consumes your entire being, dances between being deafeningly loud in your ears to giving you twitches in your legs. You'd laid down hours ago thinking you'd be tired enough to sleep once your tics started to spasm in closer intervals, but to no avail were you able to rest. That buzzing preventing you from dreamland. Maybe the hum of your body was right, you didn't really need to sleep, you just wanted it to feel normal.

Knowing the battle had already been lost you push yourself off the bed and grab a pair of shorts off the floor. Slipping them on you contemplate your options for the night. Going into town was out since it was Sunday...well Monday now, but there would be nothing but bars open and you were never one for drinking. And as fun as a drive sounds right now, you feel the buzzing in your bones grow stronger, you need to move. A late night hike should keep you occupied, with it being so quiet and the middle of the night you wouldn't even have to take your headphones to cancel out the sounds of other people, you aren't likely to run into many people tonight.

Deciding on a hike you grab a mask and car keys and make your way to your yellow Kia Soul. A going away present from your parents that they gave you the moment you got your driver's license after your 24th birthday. Having anxiety throughout your life you'd never been in the head space to start driving till later on, and while you still don't enjoy driving you are pretty good at it even with your “late” start. Surfing through radio stations as you let the car warm up you find your latest obsession, it's a conspiracy theory podcast that someone in Kepler managed to blast through the limited air ways of the town. Impressive considering Kepler was in a radio quiet zone and even cell phones couldn't work in the small town, luckily you lived just outside of the zone so you could send texts and call your parents every weekend.

It seemed today's episode was a rerun, Mothman: Murderer, Man, or Myth. It was actually one of your favorites, the paranormal stories tended to be more entertaining than hearing about how a man could murder sixteen people while working as a cop ruining evidence to lead the others off his trail. Humans could be more vial and cruel than any little gray alien from the future or tall Fresno Nightcrawler could ever be. And they weren't as entertaining to hear about, nor were their exploits as impressive. You could always see patterns, either connecting clues first or finding connections no one else saw, it was never hard to tell where a certain case would lead so you'd always end up disappointed in humanity when they overlooked such obvious clues. Though that often led you down a path of deep diving for information to see just how obvious it was, more often than not you'd find that the most logical conclusion was shady public officers. After investigating so many cold cases you're sure if you're ever in trouble you'll never involve the police, in the end they'd probably just ignore you and rule your case closed if anything ever did happen to you.

'I'd haunt them if they did.' You decide and you shift gears and begin driving to the Monongahela National Forest, as the timeline of Mothman sightings and events play out before for your ears.

Instead of going through town and possibly loosing the signal of the show, you drive on the old dirt road that runs along the very edge of the town, partially covered in trees. This over grown road is the main reason Kepler doesn't see many visitors, the second someone makes their way onto it coming off the interstate they floor it until they see civilization. Over the few months you've been here you've nearly been run right off the road by spooked tourists, trying to escape whatever ghouls their wild imaginations created. The only real thing on this road was a mini mart gas station, and even though it was shady as hell the cashier didn't bug you too much when you came in in the dead of night. Plus they had a cat, how could you not stop in and say hi to little ole Magnolia?

Speaking of which you should probably get a drink for your hike, you could already feel your throat drying out. Turning into the parking lot you're happy to see no other cars around, putting your face mask on you make your way inside. As usual the store is dead at this time, and Ronnie is manning the desk. What's unusual is the man also behind the counter, he has dark brown hair that he's tied into a small and low ponytail, thick sideburns frame his face. You immediately take note of the slight imperfections of his face, most would see the slit in his eyebrow as following the current trend or even just a genetic thing, but you can see the slightly off color of a healed scar that starts just above his eyebrow and ends mid eyelid, he has a few smaller discolorations on his crooked nose, you'd guess he's had it broken at least twice.

Briefly taking a glance to his brown eyes before looking away, today is not an eye contact day. Nodding in their directions, the best acknowledgment you can give right now, you make your way to the freezers. From the freezer section you can hear Ronnie “explain” you.

“That's YN, a regular mainly at night though. A bit skittish and rarely ever says more than 'thanks have a nice day'” Even though she's whispering you can hear everything. Including the high octave her voice takes to mimic you, it feels more like mocking.

If being mocked hadn't already put you on edge the eyes boring into you have. The eyes may not be roaming over your body but the icky crawling of your skin sure makes it feel that way. The feeling of being put under a microscope has always made you sick, the stares, the leers and sneers, and the judgment just makes you want to implode on the spot. Cease existence, be swallowed into the abyss. You're about to set yourself into an anxiety attack with all these thoughts.

'Mask, mask, mask' you repeat over and over in your head, it's the only thing you can focus on. You are wearing a mask, there is one thing they can't perceive, the face is the most important for humans to perceive, your mask protects you.

Without looking you pull a water bottle from the cooler. You don't think you like this brand but the sports mouth makes up for it, and you can't focus enough to grab another. As the imaginary spiders crawl their way under your skin and your breath hitches you make your way over to the counter head down, never looking up at the employees beyond the counter. Your vision is blurring in time with the beating of your heart, you can't tell if it's due to nerves or from being up for five days in a row.

“Hey YN, how're you?” Ronnie asks, her tone is different from the past times you've been in. It's higher and has a lilt in it that you'd expect from a teasing friend. But Ronnie isn't a friend and has never spoken to you like this, you hate it. You nod to politely move on with the process, between the crawling of your skin and the buzzing underneath it you feel sick. And you're now very aware of the existence of your eyelids, you try to focus on ignoring that awareness. You need to move.

“Hmm, that's good. Anyway this is Tim! He's just started so go easy on him.” you hear the sound of a hand hitting fabric and assume she's patted Tim's shoulder as she introduced Tim to you. Why was she doing this, what purpose could introducing you two have? You nod again, was anyone going to ring you out?

“Hi, this all?” a deep voice asked, it isn't extremely deep more of a standard baritone that has a slight raspy quality, probably a reformed smoker. You don't smell cigarettes currently so he could've quit after years. Unfortunately despite your efforts to stave them off your blinking tics emerge. Making it difficult to keep your eyes open for longer than a nano second.

Startled and ticcing you look up and catch his eyes, you see pity in them, before casting your glance back to the counter. You can never tell what's worse people seeing you as weird or seeing you as something needing to be fixed. Nodding again, Tim tells you the total; a dollar fifty eight, and you hand him two dollars from your wallet.

Tim doesn't ask if you want the receipt or a bag, he prints out the receipt and hands you your change. The change goes immediately into the cat food fund for Magnolia. She got diagnosed with diabetes about a month ago and having worked in shelters and pet stores you know just how expensive her prescription food is. After folding the receipt into your wallet, Tim gently slides the water bottle over to you.

“Have a good night.” he says it so low and gentle, as if he thinks you'll shatter in front of him. As kind as the gesture seems, you aren't that fragile...or maybe you are if you have to keep repeating 'mask' over and over in your head to ground yourself. With a final nod you turn and make your way to the door, and just as you open it you hear Ronnie call out.

“Awwww, c'mon YN at least say 'Hi' to Tim.” You really don't like how she squeaked out 'hi'.

Taking a deep breath you prepare yourself, you'll show them both you can do this simple task. Even if you can't stop blinking long enough to see straight. Once you've steadied yourself you turn and look at Tim. He's sending you a look that says 'You don't have to' all that's missing is a slow head shake to complete his unease with this “peer pressure”.

But you can do this you can say 'Hi, Tim.' Two words super simple, nothing complex like 'Hi, Tim, nice to meet you.' and so much better than the option of your next meeting saying 'Hi, Tim. Sorry for spazzing out the other night.'. Yup you can do this just breathe, you open your mouth and...and you've forgotten what to say. Looking like a deer in headlights, well at least the tics stopped, you say the first thing that pops in.

“Mask.” You've said it loud and clear both cashiers heard you.

Tim stares with wide eyes and you see Ronnie failing to hide her laughter. Out of all the ways this could've gone this was probably the best outcome for her. The blinking has started up again, this time growing more frequent. You can't even hold your eyes open, to the two cashiers it must look like you're in pain or crying. And while you want to die of embarrassment, crying is a bit of an extreme for you.

So with red face and the inability to see you leave through the door, and try to make your way back to your car. Once in you lock the doors, switch the car on, and rest your head on the steering wheel. Out of every way this stop could've gone, being perceived by a new comer and Ronnie was not what you expected. While this hadn't been the worst five minutes or so of your life, it definitely would be another thing keeping you up at night for the next twenty years.

Calming down in the cool quiet dark of your car your slowly brought back to the world by the beginning of a new episode. This one talking about the Tailypo legend. A favorite story of yours from when you were a kid living on the coast of Virginia. So with yet another deep breath and the wave of nostalgia, you pull out of the parking lot and slowly coast down the old dirt road. Heading yet again for the Monongahela forest.

It's nearly two in the morning when you roll up to see an RV parked by the forgotten entrance of the park. It isn't surprising at all to find an RV out here since the Monongahela Forest is one of the most beautiful parks you've ever been to. You also don't think anything of them being parked by this unused entrance because you use it all the time since finding it accidentally. Figuring they just wanted to camp and be left to their own devices rather than use the RV sites and be bothered with other campers here for the summer.

Climbing out of your car you notice the RV isn't new by any means but it isn't a total rust bucket either, looks like it's been passed around throughout the years. There isn't anything to suggest it's been here a while, nothing left set up outside, must have just gotten into town then. You do happen to notice dog tracks around the sandy dirt you've parked in, good to know they have a dog before you slammed your car door. Closing the door gently behind you so you don't startle a pup and wake up it's owner or owners, you make your way through the woods. No real direction in mind, with no real thought in your head. Just the thought of moving and to keep on moving.

You could walk the same path every time you came through and always find something different. In fact that's exactly what happens, you're almost positive that you've deepened the imprint of the path just from walking through several times a week. Following the same winding path you usually do, climbing over the fallen tree, and through a scattering of blueberry thicket's you find yourself on the edge of one of the forest's many streams. It's your favorite spot in the forest so far, and about as far as you've gotten considering these hikes of yours take place during the dead of night.

The wind picks up and sends a chill through you, taking that as a sign you slide down to sit by the stream. Vans placed to your side as you sink your feet into the cool water. It's peaceful out here, so cool, and quiet, save for the slight noises the stream makes, various bubbling and drips. You try to think on things like your recent move, your job, the embarrassing 'mask' incident, just life in general. But you can't seem to form a single thought, this happens a lot, you've recently been conscious of the fact that you've been running on auto pilot for the past two months, hell a lot longer than that. You think everyone must get like this from time to time, but you think you've always been this way. Keen to dissociating and slipping in and out of existence.

It's quite nice really, except for the times like right now where you'd love to figure out why the silence in your head is so painfully loud. The more you think on it the louder it gets and the stronger the buzzing under your skin feels. And right now the static in your mind has been getting louder and louder for the past few minutes. You feel your head jerk to the right of it's own accord, moving back in place it happens for a second time, and then a third, then jerks up, before jerking a forth time to the right effectively cracking you neck.

“There we go.” you mumble, you can relax a bit as the verbal tic indicates the end of this round of tics.

Sighing you look at the sky...that can't be right. The sky has been painted it's fresh baby blues for the day, but again that can't be right. You just got to the stream, that path is a thirty minute walk meaning it should be just about two thirty in the morning, but the sky suggests it's five or six at the latest. Reaching for your water bottle you find it empty next to you. You didn't fall asleep you know that much, perhaps you did dissociate tonight. Well this hike was disappointing if you knew you were going to dissociate you'd have saved yourself that embarrassment and stayed home. Maybe done some painting or tidied up.

Sighing you push yourself off the ground, collecting you vans you're about to put them on when you notice a figure off in the distance. You freeze out of shock and stare at the figure, it stares back. The figure is about ten yards away, god your near sighted ass should really remember to not leave your glasses in the car when hiking. The figure starts to make it's way to you and after a few steps you realize it hasn't moved from it's spot. Rolling your eyes you ignore the hallucination.

You'd really needed to get sleep last night, today is day six of no sleep and though you haven't had many episodes these past few days, you have a feeling they'll start to get more prominent today. Hopefully tonight you can manage to get some rest, the longer you go without sleep the more realistic the hallucinations become. But for today you're content with the knowledge that it's just shadow like beings that you'll be seeing.

After putting on your shoes you start the thirty minute hike back to your car. You're thankful for the weather in Kepler, nothing like back on the coast. Here you can go for a morning hike through the forest while a gentle breeze passes by and the sun starts to give the area a pleasant warmth. Back on the coast you couldn't run and grab the mail without getting drenched in moisture from either sweat, humidity, or a mixture of both. The coast sucks, hell Virginia sucks altogether, you're glad to be in Kepler.

“I want to go home, home.” you say out of nowhere.

Before you reach the entrance you hear barking, oh the RV campers must be up. Should you be careful not to scare them, or just walk normally and say 'Good morning' in passing, maybe just nod your head in greeting. Oh and you've stopped just beside the entrance as you got lost in your rambling. You didn't mean to come to a stop here, and as you try to move you notice how silent it's gotten. Did the dog go inside, maybe they've already passed...no it's too quiet for that. No the silence is oppressive like the one you deal with nightly, there's a reason for the silence. The situation's making you feel uneasy, but that could be the sleep deprivation talking.

You're about to brush it off and move when you hear a whispered, “Seriously man, I don't think anyone's out there. Let's get inside.”

There's a noise of agreement before you hear shuffling. Oh no, you zoned out and now you look like a weirdo stalker. Just perfect, maybe if you wait around a little more you'll seem more normal or at least feel normal. Not knowing how long to wait you walk along the tree line for a bit, looking at the ground as you do making sure you won't step on any snakes. In you quest to not step on any snakes you spot something suspiciously off white. It seems purposefully buried under a dead blueberry bush and some fallen branches.

Having listened to too many true crime shows, you know better than to implicate yourself in a murder. Grabbing a stick off the ground you gently brush the foliage away from the supposed corpse. No way, you can't believe your luck, it's an actual fucking skull. An intact skull of a deer! That is so cool, you've only seen taxidermists on TikTok getting so lucky and finding these dudes. Since the jaw bone is connected by tissue it of course isn't with the skull but maybe it's close by? Clearly this got planted or hidden by someone, maybe they were planning on pranking a friend by 'uncovering' a skull later. Oh well, finders keepers and all that, you have way better plans for this guy, hopefully you can find that jaw bone.

You set off searching through the foliage and near by bushes with the branch while holding the skull in your other arm. After searching about three feet around and finding no more bones you decide that this is the only part of the deer's skeleton in this area. A little disappointed but still thrilled with your find, you decide it must be a good time to go back to your car.

Surely you won't look weird now. You a little forager with their treasure in hand. Looks like you'll be busy cleaning, then bleaching, and cleaning these bones today. Is that the order to treat found bones? You aren't sure but you can look into that later. Placing the skull in the trunk so it doesn't roll about and get damaged you make sure it's secure before closing the trunk and getting into your car and locking the doors.

Not once did you notice the pairs of eyes that had been watching you. One watching as you found the deer skull, and the other set seeing you place bones into your car. They kept watching as you fiddled with the radio while the car was starting up. They watched as you pulled out of the sandy dirt lot and drove back down the old road a little faster than before now that you could clearly see.

#creepypasta fanfic #ticci tobyx reader #brain thomas x reader #timothy wright x reader #masky x reader #hoodie x reader #reader insert #no clue if I'm reaching a wider audience than AO3 but I'll try this out #Crossposted #as of now 13 chapters are over on AO3 if you wanted to read #other wise I'll post a chapter every 3 days on here until I catch up with AO3 #Ao3 has priority #A cure for insomnia

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gffa · 4 years

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Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Stories of Light and Dark, coming August 25, promises to be a beautiful tribute to the just-completed animated series. The anthology will collect 11 stories by 11 authors — Lou Anders, Preeti Chhibber, Zoraida Córdova, Jason Fry, Rebecca Roanhorse, Greg Van Eekhout, Tom Angleberger, E. Anne Convery, Sarah Beth Durst, Yoon Ha Lee, and Anne Ursu — including 10 retellings of memorable episodes and arcs and one original Nightsisters-based story. So if you loved the tales of Ahsoka, Maul, and clanker-busting clones, Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Stories of Light and Dark will give you the chance to experience them again in a whole new way. Like Captain Rex on a recon mission, StarWars.com reached out to each author to learn why they love The Clone Wars, and which stories they’re telling. Lou Anders (“Dooku Captured” and “The Gungan General,” based on the episodes of the same name): I love The Clone Wars for expanding the story of Anakin’s fall from grace. Skywalker really shines in the series, and we see what he truly was, and what he could have been, and by giving him so many opportunities to excel in the early season, his ultimate fate is that much more tragic. I also love the series for gifting us my all-time favorite Star Wars character, and one of my favorite characters from any universe — Hondo Ohnaka! My chapter is a retelling of the first season story arc that plays out across the episodes “Dooku Captured” and “The Gungan General.” I wanted to explore this storyline because I find Count Dooku a fascinating character. Sometimes pure, mustache-twirling, mwa-ha-ha evil can actually be boring to write, but a villain who feels they are justified, either because of perceived slights or intellectual superiority or the failure of their rivals or birthright are much more interesting, and Dooku is a bit of all of this. For research, I obviously watched tons of Clone Wars. But I also read up on everything about Dooku I could find, and I listened to Christopher Lee and Corey Burton’s interpretation of the character over and over, trying to internalize their speech patterns. Dooku is so gorgeously supercilious. It was just a blast to get in his head and see the world from his perspective. (And the fact that the storyline gave me another chance to write for my beloved Hondo Ohnaka was an added bonus!) Tom Angleberger (“Bane’s Story,” based on the episodes “Deception,” “Friends and Enemies,” “The Box,” and “Crisis on Naboo”): There’s a lot to love in The Clone Wars, but I think it’s Ahsoka’s arc that really stands out the most. Ventress’s arc does, too, and the way that these arcs cross at the just the right moment is really great Star Wars! My chapter is based on the “Crisis on Naboo” story arc. It’s basically a Space Western. The baddest bounty hunter of them all, Cad Bane, is hired to kidnap the Chancellor. What he doesn’t know is that almost everyone is lying to him, especially a fellow bounty hunter who is really Obi-Wan in disguise. In the TV version, we see it all from Obi-Wan’s point of view, so we know that Bane is getting played. In this retelling, we see it all from Bane’s point of view and, boy, is he going to be mad! To prepare I watched both The Clone Wars AND old spaghetti Westerns starring Bane’s inspiration: Lee Van Cleef. Preeti Chhibber (“Hostage Crisis,” based on the episode of the same name): I love the story that the prequels tell, but because of the nature of what they were trying to do — tell a decade and a half worth of story in three films — we’re missing major moments in what the war really means to the galaxy at large, and in the Skywalker saga itself. The Clone Wars tells us that part of the narrative, it gives us the shape of what entire populations of people had to go through because of this war manufactured by the ultimate evil. And within that scope gives us the hope and love and beautiful tragedy we associate with Star Wars on a larger scale. (Also, Ahsoka Tano — The Clone Wars gave us Ahsoka Tano and for that I will be ever grateful.) I’m writing Anakin’s story during “Hostage Crisis” — an episode in the first season of The Clone Wars. I decided to write the story entirely from Anakin’s perspective, which meant being inside his head before the fall, but where we are starting to see more of the warning signs. And then there’s also the romance of this episode! Anakin’s love for Padmé is real and all-consuming and, as we eventually find out, unhealthy. So, this is a romantic episode, but one that shows us Anakin is ruled by his heart. And that that’s a dangerous thing for a Jedi. In order to best wrap my own head around what was going on, I watched the episode itself several times, and read the script, and then I watched the chronological episodes of Anakin’s run-ins with Cad Bane, so I could get a real feel for where he was with his understanding of Bane’s character. E. Anne Convery (“Bug,” based on the episode “Massacre”): I love it because I think it’s a story that manages, while still being a satisfying adventure, to not glorify war. It does this mainly by following through on the arcs of wonderful, terrifying, funny, fallible, and diverse characters. From the personal to the political, The Clone Warsredefines the ways, big and small, that we can be heroes. My chapter is the “original” tale, though it still touches on The Clone Wars Season Four episode “Massacre,” with brief appearances by Mother Talzin and Old Daka. If I had to boil it down, I’d say that it’s a story about mothers and daughters. Honestly, it felt a little like cheating, because writing new characters meant I got to be creative in the Star Wars universe somewhat unencumbered by what’s come before. I did, however, have several long text chats with Sam Witwer because I was interested in Talzin’s motivations. We talked about stuff like her capacity (or lack thereof) for love. I think I came away thinking she was more a creature driven by issues of power, control, and the desire for revenge, whereas Sam was a little kinder to her. I mean, he is her “son,” so you can’t really blame him for wanting to think better of her! I always love a story within a story, and I was interested in the space where the high mythology of Star Wars and the home-spun mythology of fairy tales could intersect. I drew on my own background in mythology, psychology, and the language of fairy tales, plus I did my Star Wars research. Re-watching the Nightsisters episodes was just plain fun. Zoraida Córdova (“The Lost Nightsister,” based on the episode “Bounty”): The Clone Wars deepens the characters we already love. It gives us the opportunity to explore the galaxy over a longer period of time and see the fight between the light and the dark side. Star Wars is about family, love, and hope. It’s also incredibly funny and that’s something that The Clone Wars does spectacularly. We also get to spend more time with characters we only see for a little bit in the movies like Boba Fett, Bossk, Darth Maul! My chapter follows Ventress after she’s experienced a brutal defeat. Spoiler alert: she’s witnessed the death of her sisters. Now she’s on Tatooine and in a rut. She gets mixed up with a bounty hunter crew led by Boba Fett. Ventress’s story is about how she goes from being lost to remembering how badass she is. I watched several episodes with her in it, but I watched “Bounty” about 50 times. Sarah Beth Durst (“Almost a Jedi,” based on the episode “A Necessary Bond”): I spent a large chunk of my childhood pretending I was training to become a Jedi Knight, even though I’d never seen a girl with a lightsaber before. And then The Clone Wars came along and gave me Ahsoka with not one but TWO lightsabers, as well as a role in the story that broadened and deepened the tale of Anakin’s fall and the fall of the Jedi. So I jumped at the chance to write about her for this anthology. In my story, I wrote about Ahsoka Tano from the point of view of Katooni, one of the Jedi younglings who Ahsoka escorts on a quest to assemble their first lightsabers, and it was one of the most fun writing experiences I’ve ever had! I watched the episode, “A Necessary Bond,” over and over, frame by frame, studying the characters and trying to imagine the world, the events, and Ahsoka herself through Katooni’s eyes. The episode shows you the story; I wanted to show you what it feels like to be inside the story. Greg van Eekhout (“Kenobi’s Shadow,” based on the episode “The Lawless”): What I most love about Clone Wars is how we really get to know the characters deeply and see them grow and change. I enjoyed writing a couple of short scenes between Obi-Wan and Anakin that weren’t in the episode. I wanted to highlight their closeness as friends and show that Anakin’s not the only Jedi who struggles with the dark side. There’s a crucial moment in my story when Obi-Wan is close to giving into his anger and has to make a choice: Strike out in violence or rise above it. It’s always fun to push characters to extremes and see how they react. Jason Fry (“Sharing the Same Face,” based on the episode “Ambush”): I love The Clone Wars because it made already beloved characters even richer and deepened the fascinating lore around the Jedi and the Force. I chose Yoda and the clones because the moment where Yoda rejects the idea that they’re all identical was one of the first moments in the show where I sat upright and said to myself, “Something amazing is happening here.” You get the entire tragedy of the Clone Wars right in that one quick exchange — the unwise bargain the Jedi have struck, Yoda’s compassion for the soldiers and insistence that they have worth, the clones’ gratitude for that, and how that gratitude is undercut by their powerlessness to avoid the fate that’s been literally hard-wired into them. Plus, though I’ve written a lot of Star Wars tales, I’d never had the chance to get inside Yoda’s head. That had been on my bucket list! Yoon Ha Lee (“The Shadow of Umbara,” based on the episodes “Darkness on Umbara,” “The General,” “Plan of Dissent,” and “Carnage of Krell”): I remember the first time I watched the “Umbara arc” — I was shocked that a war story this emotionally devastating was aired on a kids’ show. But then, kids deserve heartfelt, emotionally devastating stories, too. It was a pleasure to revisit the episodes and figure out how to retell them from Rex’s viewpoint in a compact way. I have so much respect for the original episodes’ writer, Matt Michnovetz — I felt like a butcher myself taking apart the work like this! Rebecca Roanhorse (“Dark Vengeance,” based on the episode “Brothers”): I always love a backstory and Clone Wars was the backstory that then became a rich and exciting story all its own. The writing and character development is outstanding and really sucks you into the world. I chose to write the two chapters that reintroduce Darth Maul to the world. We find him broken and mentally unstable, not knowing his own name but obsessed with revenge against Obi-Wan and we get to see him rebuild himself into a cruel, calculating, and brilliant villain. It was so much fun to write and I hope readers enjoy it. Anne Ursu (“Pursuit of Peace,” based on the episode “Heroes on Both Sides”): The Clone Wars creates a space for terrific character development. The attention paid to the relationships between Anakin and Obi-Wan, and Anakin and Ahsoka make for really wonderful and resonant stories, and give so much depth to the whole universe. I was at first a little scared to write Padmé, as her character felt pretty two dimensional to me. But the more I watched her episodes in Clone Wars, the more dimension she took on. She’s such an interesting character — she’s both idealistic and realistic, so when corruption runs rampant in the Senate she doesn’t get disillusioned, she just fights harder. She has an ability to deal with nuance in a way that is rare in the Republic — and it means she’s not afraid to bend a few laws to make things right. In this chapter, the Senate is about to deregulate the banks in order to fund more troops, and Padmé decides to take matters into her own hand and sneak into Separatist territory in order to start peace negotiations. Of course, neither Dooku nor the corrupt clans of the Republic are going to allow for this to happen, so the threats to the peace process, the Republic, and Padmé’s life only grow. This arc is the perfect distillation of Padmé’s character, and it made getting into her head for it fairly simple. But I did watch all the Padmé Clone Wars episodes and read E.K. Johnston’s book about her, as well as Thrawn: Alliances, in which she has a major storyline. I really loved writing her. Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Stories of Light and Dark arrives August 25 and is available for pre-order now.

#obi wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #padme amidala #asajj ventress #ahsoka tano #katooni #yoda #captain rex #darth maul #novels #news #long post

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flyingupward · 3 years

Text

critical role - vox machina chapter 4 - attack of the conclave

all sentences taken from episodes 39-56 of the first campaign of critical role. feel free to change pronouns, phrasing etc. to fit your needs!

“All this time, you’ve been trying to kick my teeth in and your true enemy was right over there.”

“That’s good. Moving is not my forte.”

“We’re in a hentai. Make it go away.”

“Not all short people look alike.”

“God, I wish I was not made of farts.”

“We live in a cold, cold world. No one deserves anything.”

“You chose so poorly. It is truly impressive how poorly you chose.”

“Stay away from all men. Forever.”

“I’m glad I came in handy for that field trip.”

“I hate your friends!”

“Little do they know I shop for everything at Home Goods so joke’s on them.”

“It’s just radioactive material in the basement. It’s fine.”

“Somehow the coffee has not been poured on your head. That’s the greatest magic trick I’ve seen all morning.”

“Everything else was dragons. Why wouldn’t it be dragons?”

“Sorry, I was so caught up in the fact that I’m literally going up against death incarnate.”

“You’re a magnificent handsome bastard. Don’t die.”

“Do not go far from me.”

“He’s just a sociopath, that’s all.”

“There are dragons outside and we’re playing rugby with a fucking skull!”

“A simple mind is looking for a simple solution to a complex problem.”

“I’m a firm believer that there’s always a way to victory if we’re smart about it and we’re quick about it.”

“We either stand now or we might as well be dead.”

“We try, we mostly fail, but occasionally we get it right.”

“It was such a bad deal I said no. Can you imagine how bad of a deal it must have been?”

“No offense darling, but you look like shit.”

“If we’re going to be roaming about the streets, I’d like you to not fall open like a can of baked beans if you don’t mind.”

“Let’s not get overexcited about the sudden realization that some of us can be a bit iffy.”

“Thank you for that smattering of applause.”

“I have one of those terrible ideas I get on occasion.”

“This is politics. You’re not supposed to like them.”

“You can talk my fucking ear off in a moment. Shut up for a second.”

“If the parasite hasn’t a host to feed on, the parasite dies.”

“I never forget that when I rule, I rule these people as well.”

“One day, you’re going to stop being afraid of me and I hope that day comes soon.”

“There’s no swinging by, that’s a caper.”

“It will be built back better than before. That’s what we do.”

“We have a lot of Pop Tarts, but not very many gold pieces.”

“This is where I live. What are you doing here?”

“I’m cold and I still haven’t been paid.”

“We’re not trying to score points. We are trying to do right.”

“This is fucking happy fun bunch over here. They bring death with them everywhere they go.”

“And to think I might have briefly missed you.”

“You have to find the no name guy who’s going to help you find the stuff that’s hidden that nobody knows where it is or what it is.”

“What do you want to do? Do you want to stay here while the world burns?”

“World’s always ending, baby.”

“It would be wondrous, after we complete this transaction, that we never meet again.”

“Oh my God, I just buy healing to save my life, what a waste.”

“I’m going to stand over here and fail to stay in character, okay?”

“Let’s all have a toast to the inevitability of the universe.”

“My God, I love other people’s problems.”

“Are we sober yet?”

“I think her foolish impulses are exactly what we’re looking for.”

“Better to die a fool for something than live in regret for doing nothing.”

“I think we want her to do her stupidest.”

“You’re… brooding.”

“I tend to glaze over when he’s talking.”

“Lead the way, shitkicker.”

“A lot of your friends are very weird.”

“I would just like to point out that I’m mostly sober.”

“That’s okay because remember, I’m me.”

“I’d like to stand up, please.”

“I’m scared to death which is why the math is so bad.”

“I’ve met few as unremarkable as you in my travels.”

“Well then, we’re in trouble. I have an attitude about everything.”

“Yeah, there’s like 37 things we have to do before tomorrow so… ”

“She’s not really gonna care about court so much as ripping the bones from your back.”

“I thought you were gonna tell me a dirty joke or something. When you say, ‘Come here,’ that’s usually what that means.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s going to be daylight if we’re underground.”

“I’m really hoping that it’s the worst decision we make because then everything’s uphill.”

“I like who we are together and I think that that’s important.”

“Dying in slow motion over here.”

“Oh good, more darkness.”

“Oh my God, you’re going into a special section of your book. That’s never good.”

“I’m very aware that my greed killed me.”

“Oh, I must have missed it because I was dead. That’s right.”

“Do you have feelings and did that hurt them?”

“I’m pretty tired after dying.”

“I think I love you too. I’m just terrified to allow myself to.”

“We are a city of seasonal affective disorder.”

“So I heard a rumor that you sort of saved my life in a really creepy sort of way.”

“By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you my Pokemon.”

“Your secret is safe with my indifference.”

“I always fucking hear you in my mind. It’s very quiet in there these days.”

“If it becomes a problem, just raise your hand and scream.”

“Our lives are so bizarre now.”

“Why is my brain tingling? Is someone noodling around up there?”

“You know what? It’s just fire. I will be on fire.”

“Did someone lose an orb?”

“Are we really about to pretend to do CrossFit?”

“Not enough spit takes in the world for this moment in time.”

“Beyond it being an engineering issue, it might be a greed issue first.”

"She's an adult. Deep levels of arrested development, but an adult nonetheless."

“Retroactively, you’ve never been seen in your entire lives.”

“You take everything good away from all of us.”

“It’s not one problem, it’s a very large problem and a massive problem.”

“Those that give a fuck, speak up.”

“We’ve lived half our life in the shadows. You’ve made them your home.”

“I love my reckless brother as much as he hurts my heart.”

“Duck hunt’s a bitch.”

“This is so dumb. Why am I doing this?”

“Congratulations, you’re creepy as fuck.”

“Give me this you fucking hoarder. What’s the matter with you?”

“I will smite you.”

“I was born to shove things in holes.”

“Knowledge is power, for reals!”

“Are we time bandits now? Is that what’s happening?”

“I hate time travel. I hate time travel so much.”

“No worries. I didn’t need to live anyway.”

“Perhaps it’s time to be a better badass.”

“It’s been a traumatic five minutes.”

“Like any good plan, everything will go wrong.”

“Oh well, I’m fucked then.”

“Oh, tiny dancer, you are fucked.”

“He died as he lived: Deeply unimpressed.”

“Don’t you dare die happy.”

“I like that we managed to make solving problems with violence into an ABC afternoon special.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say, ‘At dawn, we plan.’”

“I genuinely don’t understand the place you come from.”

“That is the weirdest coping mechanism I’ve ever heard of.”

“Maybe we should just sleep together and see what happens.”

“Thank you for telling me the truth after you sort of lied to me.”

“Yeah keep twitching, twitchy.”

“We totally planned at dawn!”

“Everything is terrible. Our lives are terrible. They are way worse than they were six months ago.”

“You are a fucking madman, but I’m glad you’re here.”

“I’m fucked. I understand I’m fucked. It’s fine.”

“This was all part of the plan, the hastily smushed together plan.”

“He’s a liar and a bringer of death and he’s smiling at you while he does it.”

“Bravery means nothing. Survival and victory mean everything.”

“Oh shut up, you flying suitcase.”

“You don’t need inspiration, you’re fine!”

“If I move, he’ll kill me. So I won’t.”

“Cursed Lizard! We’re going to give all your gold to the poor!”

“Don’t be so glum you old fool! This is a day of glory!”

“We will all die. It just depends on cost.”

“Oh, wow. You just said a lot of things in a very short amount of time.”

“You are the worst of us.”

“If there’s a dare involved, that’s completely different.”

“I don’t like wanting things.”

“Is it the people or is it the fact that you have finally realized how pointless it all is?”

“I feel like I’ve been lied to my entire goddam life and it’s all crashing down upon me right now.”

“The thing is you’re not wrong and you’re not crazy, but it’s not hopeless either.”

“Even surrounded by friends, I often feel so alone.”

“Thank you for being a friend even though we just met.”

“The terrible woman may have a point.”

“Woo! Good leadership!”

“The awkward woman makes a fine point.”

“It is not about idolizing ourselves, it is about a very long story which we are a very small part of.”

“I’m doing something very stupid now with my friends. We’re going to try to save the world.”

“I admire everyone in our band of misfit toys, but you most of all.”

“You are all kinds of fucked up all the time and that’s why we love you.”

“We’re all all kinds of fucked up and that’s why we all are together.”

“That’s all we can be is ish.”

#MEME | incoming #long post #i know i still have some other memes to answer but i finished this one so #send me these and i'll answer them all tonight/tomorrow

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seriouslysam8 · 3 years

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Hullo, Sam. Sorry to keep bothering you, but I am so excited to hear you will take the time to answer my questions. I have more.

I am only about to start chapter 7 of Kalopsia, but can you please answer these ones?

1) Do you really think that’s why Fred and George gave the map to Harry over Ron, because he needed it more?

2) George tells Ginny that Harry needs constant validation, I’m not sure what you mean. Like does he want people to tell him they love him a lot?

3) Did you research real medicine and drugs to explain the potions? It was so detailed.

4) How do you choose such unique names for your stories? Kalopsia? Brio? And the others?

5) Why did you choose Malefic? Is it because it sounds ominious like Maleficent the evil queen?

6) Have you invented many places for your universe? How did you come up with the idea for Apricity Lane and Malefic Way?

7) Do you think that even after all these years (in Kalopsia) with three kids that Harry still believes he doesn’t deserve to be happy? Did the Dursleys mess him up that much?

8) Otis Maverick? Democritus Day? How did you come up with these names?

9) What inspired you to invent a crime show? Forensics, Bones, and Brains of Darkness is an interesting title. Is it a talkshow?

10) The Sky Mirror and walking into a storm is the coolest thing I have read! How did you come up with it? Why did you make that the entrance to Malefic Way? Where is it located in England and why did you choose that spot?

11) What inspired you to have Harry trapped in an alternate reality with potions? It reminds me of an old Supernatural episode.

12) Ron making plans to rescue Harry when he leaves the hospital is a cool thought. I like how you write Ron as being this cool Auror. What made you decide to keep him as an Auror? Do you think Ron is a better Auror than Harry or Harry better than Ron? Or is it more about their teamwork? I think it was Demelza who mentioned before they have the best solve rate in the department. Can you elaborate more on that?

Thank you.

1. I do think Fred and George gave Harry the map over Ron because he did need it more… they wanted Harry to know Harry was as much of a brother to them as Ron was and they wanted him to be happy. They thought the map would bring him some happiness.

2. Harry was never loved as a child. Harry doesn’t express his feelings well. George believes (and he’s right in this assumption) that telling Harry that he’s his brother, that he loves him, that he’s family is good for Harry because Harry often forgets it. Harry was so emotionally abused as a child that he needs reminding that he’s loved and he’s a part of a family or else he can kind of shut down and shut out the people around him. George always makes sure that Harry never doubts his place in the Weasley family for a second.

3. Yes, I did a lot of research into illicit drugs and medicine to craft this story.

4. I like looking up unique words and using those words to name stories and places or things within my stories. Like Kalopsia is an Ancient Greek word that means the delusion of things being more beautiful than they are. Brio means vigor or vivacity of style or performance.

5. Malefic means causing or capable of causing harm or destruction, especially by supernatural means. So Maleficent, if I had to wager a guess, derived from malefic. I liked the name so I named the village named it Malefic Way.

6. Apricity Lane and Malefic Way were the only two wizarding villages I’ve created so far. I didn’t want everything to be Diagonal Alley or Knockturn Alley. I wanted to explore new and different places. That’s why I made Apricity Lane an upscale and posh wizarding village and Malefic Way a more gritty and dark village.

7. Yes, I think Harry suffers a lot from the Dursleys’ abuse and neglect. That kind of upbringing just doesn’t go away. There’s a lot of emotional baggage that you carry your entire life with you. He has a lot of self-worth problems, problems talking about his feelings, problems with perception and over analyzing what people say/do.

8. Otis Mavericks I made up after looking over some popular British names and surnames and thought they went together. Democritus Day was actually named by @breaniebree

9. So, I wanted to expand upon wizarding media. So, Forensics, Bones, and Brains of Darkness (named by the brilliant @breaniebree ) is essentially like a real crime show that takes cases and then goes over them in-depth with experts and hired actors to recreate some of the moments from the crime.

10. So the Sky Mirror is a real thing in Nottingham. I was looking up different fun England landmarks and saw the Sky Mirror. I thought about having to stare into the mirror and step through it to enter Malefic Way. I’m pretty sure @breaniebree added the storm clouds to it.

11. The Supernatural episode. I thought it would be intriguing to do my own spin on it except I didn’t want a Djinn and then had to come up with why a wizard would realistically do such a thing and I invented Zephyr.

12. I wanted to keep Ron an Auror because I wanted to write stories where Ron and Harry continued to be partners. I love them together and couldn’t imagine not writing them as partners and making up some OC to be Harry’s partner. I don’t think Ron is better than Harry or Harry better than Ron. They both excel in different areas of the job. Harry has good instincts and can work out a case in his head. Ron has really good people skills and he is good at helping Harry work out his instincts into facts.

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ilkkawhat · 3 years

Note

Any tips for first time writers? Specifically any tips and tricks for writing CSI stories and the Nick/Greg ship? Trying to stay in character and make the story interesting like a show episode instead of a boring text procedural is hard.

lmao as someone who is forever insecure about my own writing when it comes to keeping the characters in character, I think something to keep in mind is that you may view a character differently than someone else--and sometimes those views align with others, and most of the time it's better than what's presented in canon, and it can be really difficult to get confident about that, but I think that creating anything, even if it's not just writing--drawing, giffing, photo edits, etc, you do know and love that character enough to bring them to life under your hands and it's something that's just so like, poetic about keeping these characters alive, even if the show offed them or the show is cancelled, in these works (honestly the song "poet" by bastille says this best imo) and you may end up discovering parts of yourself as you explore these characters in depth, you'll learn more about them, too, and the more you write, the more confidence you will gain

but be weary of the validation trap (says someone who falls into it literally every time I post a fic)--do not rely on comments and feedback to let you know you're doing it "right." the fact that you're getting thoughts into words onto paper is good enough, and you are good enough and even if you don't end up sharing it, you still did something special that nobody else has done before, and that, is amazing!

I'm not gonna lie, a huge weakness of mine that I feel I've known ever since I started writing CSI fic is that I really don't do well in making cases for the CSIs to work on--and even when I do, the case is usually forgotten by the end of the fic and I end up just kinda focusing on the emotions between the characters and describing their feelings and actions the best I can and unfortunately the plot sometimes suffers because of that.

I guess it really depends on what you want out of your story--do you want a really intriguing case and basically make an episode of CSI, or do you want to kind of bend out of the procedural drama, and just write something fluffy like Nick/Greg going on a roadtrip or something actiony like them getting into some sort of trouble? (as I often do lmao)

Something that does always help me when I do decide I want an actual like, "plot" to the fic beyond just playing around with the characters and making them do things or experience things is that I'll make myself a very flexible outline--which I will admit, at times, does kinda drain the fun out of the actual writing part but I found that I'll try to write chapters/fics in segments in this way, like I'll have the start of a fic, and then when I feel like I need to break but want to write what I got going next, I'll have something in brackets like: [Self deprecation at home/drinking, evil Nick in the mirror?] (for agony), and sometimes maybe a bigger summary, and sometimes less to just kinda remind myself of what I wanted to accomplish with a fic

BUT know that there are gonna be things that pop up sometimes. twists that come to you halfway through a fic--or if you're lucky, you'll find that your reader friends will kinda give you a twist to add in (my fic Last Breath is the greatest example of this--I originally was gonna do like, 12 chapters but then @dannilea said "HEY MK GIVE NICK AMNESIA" and then the fic got doubled in length lmao) so don't feel confined to any sort of outline. go with the flow, go with what feels right for you.

I know it's a lesson I'm still learning myself, but do not pressure yourself with these sorts of things. there are no deadlines. you're not doing anything wrong. if you don't like something you wrote? don't delete it (i've deleted so many things--fics, my entire blog, old art and gifs I did and it's one of my biggest regrets that I carry with me and god...it just hurts) but don't be afraid to tweak, re-write or rework if you need to--I know ao3 has an option where you can even say something is a "remix" of another work if you write a fic and then somewhere down the line, decide to expand on it or change it up? (I think it's meant for that at least, I haven't done that sort of thing....yet)

and that's another thing--you'll always be learning new things as you keep writing. I've been writing since I was like, twelve years old. Had a long ass depressive gap (though I did still write some things, just not...as intensely as I used to) before I came back to the CSI fandom (which I never felt I contributed to before, when I joined tumblr I posted some caps but that was about it, it really wasn't until 2018 that I started giffing and writing and three years later lmao here we are!) and there are just hard lessons you do learn--like I said, the validation trap and pressure and all of that

but motivation wise, something I've been (trying) to do is write at least 100 words per day. Doesn't have to be a specific fic, doesn't have to be anything I intend to make a fic, but just...getting the words flowing. But again, no pressure, because I recently had another depressive bout and went 33 days without writing and it climaxed to me having another mental breakdown swearing I was never gonna write again and damn near deleting everything and giving up.........only to start writing again the next day (and full disclosure, I did have a friend helping me literally every day with that and if they read this, I hope they know how forever grateful I am that they convinced me to keep going and I would not actually be here without them)

You will need to recharge, you will need to be mindful of outside stresses that may be impacting your creative energies. And sometimes, you can try doing things not relating to writing at all. Make a playlist of songs that make you think about the fic; if you can, draw or make photo edits of the fic. find a friend to bounce ideas off of--so many of my fics were enriched by that, I can't even begin to list them all lol.

But above all, again, just know that what you're writing is unique to you, nobody else will be able to write the way you do, and that is just...so special. writing can be difficult, it's exhausting, it's a thankless job at times but when those words start clicking together and your fingers just keep typing/writing, you'll just kinda get this like, rush like nothing I've ever been able to match.

and lmao I know you said specifically CSI and Nick/Greg and feel like I got sidetracked--but the great thing about CSI is I feel like you'll have excuses to put them in situations given their line of work, but like I said before, you can bend out of the genre a little bit. Have Nick and Greg go on a vacation, or make an AU (even something as wild as a sci-fi AU--honestly Specimen Stokes is the most fun I've had in writing the past three years) or if you do want to stick to canon, and don't want to make a whole new case or elaborate on the details--play with an established episode. If there was a Nick focused episode, what was Greg doing and vice versa? Did they talk about things afterwards, or did something happen leading up to the episode that made them act a certain way around each other?

I'll honestly find inspiration also just watching the episodes--something I've been doing in these past few months of my rewatch is making little ficlets about the episode, like I wrote one about Nick and Greg post 6x02 elaborating on the breathplay that Greg hinted about earlier in the episode, or I made a revenge fic for 14x12 where that douchey abusive husband went after Nick, etc. So sometimes it helps to dive back into canon and play in that sandbox too

I hope these tips can help get you started and honestly, don't feel obligated to agree or do any of these things I listed above. We all have different ways of going about writing, and it is just one big learning process and something I don't think I'm ever gonna perfect or master in any sort of way--(not to say I think I'm the worst writer in the world but I just...try to humble myself and not believe I'm the best or better than anybody else cause that's part of the validation trap, you get those ideas in your head and then it can destroy you when you realize you're definitely not)--and there will be times you get heavily discouraged, but...you just gotta keep going. keep pushing. find outside encouragement, but don't rely on it. practice a lot of self care and don't pressure yourself to finish or share or write more than you think you can. just...let it come, and enjoy the ride

I honestly feel like I'm one of the least qualified to say all of these things, but I really do hope it helps and hey, you already got one cheerleader, me, who will be excited to read whatever you share!

#writing #(does this novel of advice count towards my word count goal 😂 jk i already hit it)#mk talks

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

Text

Mrs. Douglas was the music teacher. Let me be clear: she was not a music teacher, she taught music at the three predominately Black elementary schools in my hometown. She taught at a different school every day and, if you lived in Hartsville, S.C. any time between 1968 and 2006, she was the music teacher. Mrs. Douglas is the reason everyone from my childhood knows the words to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black national anthem.

Being home-schooled at a young age, my mother hadn’t shielded me from whiteness so much as she surrounded me with Blackness. But I longed to go to school. I wanted to play on a playground and carry books in a knapsack. Having to raise your hand to speak and eating square pizza seemed like so much fun, which is why I cherished Wednesdays with Mrs. Douglas. On Wednesday afternoons, Mrs. Douglas gave me private piano lessons in her home and I was her prized student. I was a child prodigy and–if I could just remember to lift my wrists and keep my posture straight–I was on the path to becoming the next Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles. I was always eager to play for Mrs. Douglas because she had one thing that inspired students to perform at the highest level:

Mrs. Douglas was beautiful.

Even as a ten-year-old, I could see it. Everyone could. Perhaps the best way to contextualize her beauty is to say she was a combination of Thelma and Willona from Good Times. She had a pre-Beyoncé level of fineness that made little boys swoon and little girls belt their hearts out in perfect tune. And, she began every gathering with the Black National Anthem–“Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

It really is a perfect song. God must have laid that on James Weldon Johnson’s heart because, in 169 words, he somehow captured the entirety of the Black experience. The lyrics are at once painful and triumphant without wallowing in our trauma. And when we hit that “Sing a song...” part, we really spill out all of our Blackness. In the annals of Black music, “sing a song” ranks right up there with Frankie Beverly’s “Before I let you goooooooo....” or Ricky Bell’s confession that “it’s driving me out of my mind.” If there’s anything Black America can do, we can sing a song.

Mrs. Douglas did not teach me the Black National Anthem. I have never been in a setting where people actually learned the words or the melody. Everywhere I went, people just seemed to know it. Looking back, this was probably the work of Mrs. Douglas, but for the first ten years of my life, I assumed everyone was born knowing how to blink their eyes, do the Electric Slide, and sing “Lift Every Voice.”

One Wednesday, at the end of our hourlong lesson, Mrs. Douglas gave me a copy of the Maya Angelou bestseller along with the sheet music to “Lift Every Voice,” as if one were necessary to understand the other. She told me that she would be teaching me how to play the anthem for the next few weeks but we could only begin after I read the pages she had bookmarked. In the chapter, Angelou describes her elementary school class singing the Negro National Anthem. I’m sure my piano teacher was trying to stress the importance of the song to our history and culture but all I could remember is Maya Angelou describing her anger after a local school board official denigrated the entire Black race during her grammar school graduation ceremony:

We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous.

Then I wished that Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner had killed all whitefolks in their beds and that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and that Harriet Tubman had been killed by that blow on her head and Christopher Columbus had drowned in the Santa María. It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life.

It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.

Jesus. Was I supposed to be reading this? Were white people this bad? Was the song this good? And how would this help me play the piano? It did not help my posture at all. I know this was probably Mrs. Douglas’s attempt to ensure that I would thank her in one of the Grammy speeches that I would surely give later in life but, Ma’am...

I. Was. Ten.

Still, enthralled by her beauty and a little disturbed by her reading assignment, I committed to playing the fuck out of that song. And, by “playing the fuck out of that song,” I basically hit the keys harder and with more emphasis (Did I mention I was ten years old?). It was obvious that Mrs. Douglas was pleased. For the next few years, I played “Lift Every Voice” at all the Black functions around town, including Pastors’ anniversaries, cotillions and every Black History Month program. I didn’t even need the sheet music. I didn’t know any other songs. To this day, my entire piano repertoire consists of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It was the only song I could interpolate into other keys.

But my favorite time to play the anthem was when Mrs. Douglas’s Combined Glee Club performed. The Combined Glee Club was basically the best singers from the Black elementary schools combined into one choir. Led by Mrs. Douglas, the CGC was the number-one ranked glee club in all of the greater Hartsville area. Not just anyone could be in the Combined Glee Club; you had to be selected by Mrs. Douglas. It was the official verification that you had musical talent. I’m sure some people put it on their college application.

If there was something Black going on, they were invited and those motherfuckers could sing. All of my neighborhood friends were on the Combined Glee Club and my best friend played the drums for them. (Yes, they had a drummer!) The CGC usually performed the Donny Hathaway version of “I Believe in Music” (which, until a few years ago, I believed was a song Mrs. Douglas had penned herself). But their specialty was opening up with “Lift Every Voice.”

If I am being honest, I have to admit that I am a tiny bit afraid of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in the way that I am afraid of the Holy Ghost or making potato salad for a family dinner. I know how important it is to us, so I am afraid to mess it up. Even though I hadn’t been around white people, I somehow knew it was our song. I had never seen it on television or on the radio. It was like a secret handshake or a fried chicken recipe–It belonged exclusively to us. Plus, if I messed it up, Mrs. Douglas might not consider the marriage proposal I was planning in a few years. Every time I played “Lift Every Voice,” there was a lot riding on it.

When I finally started attending public schools, my mother enrolled me at a predominately white school where I was assigned to a homeroom where I was the only black kid in the class. I’d like to explain how the white kids made racist jokes at my expense but, if they did, I didn’t even notice it. In fact, spending time around white people for the first time at ten years old, I learned more about Black people than I learned about white people.

I had not assimilated the subconscious deference to whiteness that often accompanies being Black. I became acutely aware that white people are not smarter or even more educated than any of the kids in my neighborhood. They were perfectly mediocre. They didn’t know how to double-dutch and they didn’t even have a glee club. In music class, the teacher just passed out instruments and let the kids have jam sessions. How were they supposed to acquire their daily recommended dosage of glee? I was a little ashamed of going to school there, so I led all my friends to believe that I was still being homeschooled until they discovered the truth at the annual Holiday Music Showcase.

Every year, all of the schools would get together for a Christmas program to show off their best musicians and singers. The white schools would have violinists, saxophone players and ensembles playing classical music with terrible basslines. As for my predominately glee-less institution, we learned a special super-Caucasian rendition of “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.” I was just thankful that we didn’t have to follow the Negro Mass Choir. They were last on the program.

My white classmates were unmoved as each individual school performed and, with each successive song, I slunk lower in my seat. During Washington Street Elementary’s performance, as they lifted up His name with a perfect a cappella version of “Children Go Where I Send Thee,” a kid sitting behind me whispered:

“Look at all those lips!”

Everyone giggled. I did not.

Our performance was predictably lackluster (probably because I refused to sing). It sounded like an episode of Little House on the Prairie. It sounded like long division. Rudolph’s nose had never been so unremarkable. Had he heard those flat notes wafting through the Center Theater, I’m sure he would have been as ashamed as I was. We trudged back to our seats as the Baddest Glee Club in the Land took the stage for the last performance. Of course, they sang “I Believe in Music.” Accompanied by Mrs. Douglas on piano and my homeboy James on drums, they blew the doors off the place. Even my classmates were impressed because, when they hit one particular a cappella refrain that every Black choir does, my classmates were clapping along. They were off-beat, but they still clapped.

After a rousing round of applause, Mrs. Douglas announced the next song from her piano: “Lift Every Voice.” Of course, all of the Black people in the audience—even the children—stood up. None of the white kids even moved. I was the only person in my entire class who stood.

Mrs. Douglas didn’t play that shit.

She stood up from the piano and glared at the audience as if to say: “You motherfuckers better stand up and show some respect.” I had never seen Mrs. Douglas express anger. And she waited. And the choir waited. She looked. And the choir looked. As she scowled at the audience, Mrs. Douglas saw me standing and smiled. She waved me to the front of the auditorium and whispered in my ear: “You wanna play?”

By the time I sat at the piano and she ascended to the stage to direct the Combined Glee Club, everyone was standing. She looked at me with her usual glance and in one microsecond, my back straightened. My wrists were raised to the perfect 45 degree angle.

And just like that, I was Black.

For the first time since I had read Maya Angelou’s angry words, I was no longer afraid of the song. I don’t know if it was the repetition of playing so many times, or the hand of some unseen thing, but I was suddenly able to play and sing the song simultaneously. And goddamn, did that Combined Glee Club lift their voices. They sang that song.

Our song.

I called Mrs. Douglas today.

I had so many questions. I wanted to ask her why she dragged me around town when I don’t have a sliver of musical talent. I really wanted to know why she made me read that book. I figured she’d tell me something about building my character, giving me a reason to socialize with people my age or how music helps the brain mature. Or maybe she’d make some perfect metaphor about birds in cages.

She did not answer.

I still have a song, though.

We are the song.

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lost-in-sokovia · 5 years

Text

toxic - chapter 2

hola mi amigos! welcome back! i’m super excited to keep this story development rolling! i can’t believe how much attention i have gotten in the mere few chapters of this series! thank you all so much and without further ado, let’s get reading! :) (may contain spoilers to Knives Out)

Warnings: Depression, sadness, puking, hangover?

Claire stared at you with a huge grin. You wanted to slap her and cry and run and change your name and your identity and move out of the city and out of the state and out of the country-

Your mind was racing.

“(Y/N), come on,” Claire began seriously. “What’s the worst that could happen? I just did you a HUGE favor.”

You zoned out, staring out the window into the cloudy nothingness outside.

Claire sighed and pushed back her black hair.

“Whatever, we’ll talk more about this later. I’ve gotta keep working on my article, and don’t you have a political report you should be doing?” Claire pointed out.

You nodded. “Yep, mhm...” You walked slowly and silently back to your desk without another word to Claire and sat yourself down gently.

How many more hours in this god-forsaken office?

~•~•~•~•~

Ransom brushed off the text relatively quickly.

Probably just some desperate girl from the party dying to act like she knows me.

He didn’t have time for crap like that. He had a hangover to work off. Ransom stalked into the kitchen where he poured himself a cup of coffee and nearly puked in the hallway.

Ransom wasn’t the best with dealing with his depression. He had been told to go to therapy many times by both him family and everyone around him. But no, he wasn’t going to therapy because it was for “freaks and people with problems,” and Ransom quite obviously didn’t have a problem. No; no problems. I mean what harm was drinking doing to him anyway, right?

He took a gulp of coffee and felt the hot liquid rub down his throat and land in his already irritated stomach.

He almost slammed the cup back onto the counter before grasping his unwashed brown hair and falling to his knees on the cold wooden floor.

You’re going to die, and nobody will care. You think Linda even cares about you? Ha! Let’s face it, you’re not worth a damn.

Ransom growled at his depressing thoughts as he hyperventilated, holding his stomach.

He stood himself back up and ran to the bathroom. He grasped onto the sink and raised his head slightly to be greeted by his furrowed brow and blue eyes filled with anger and loss. He then fell to the toilet and heaved every single content he had in his stomach into the toilet.

It wasn’t necessarily the fact he’d drank last night that made him puke, sometimes his episodes of depression wound send him over the edge as well.

Ransom flung himself back against his bathroom wall and sighed, weakness flooding his entire body. He also began to realize how cold he actually was and pulled his knees to his chest like a six year old.

You’re so pathetic. Look at you! You’ve just puked because you aren’t strong enough to handle a little hangover, and now you’re sitting like a kid who’s afraid of the dark. No wonder you’re still alone, both in your family and your love life.

Ransom looked up as the lights pierced his eyes, making his head light. He felt his blue eyes become salty and he parted his lips slightly, shaking his head.

“Screw this, hell with this,” he pleaded to himself softly. He took his arms off of their resting place on his knees and slowly laid himself on the bathroom floor.

He should’ve been getting water and food, but no; more sleep.

He heard his phone buzz from on the sink and he completely ignored it, falling back to sleep to try and escape his intrusive thoughts.

~•~•~•~•~

You stared at your computer. Your eyes darted all across the screen as you tried to focus on just one thing to snap your head back into place.

What if Claire just started something you didn’t want to get into? You hadn’t thought about Ransom in years, what if this was just a one day crush sort of situation? You could be over him by tomorrow but that text would remain to exist.

Your stomach churned lightly but uncomfortably.

You opened your Google Doc back up and stared at your work in progress. You glanced at the time in the lower right hand corner of your screen; 11:43 AM.

You didn’t have it in you to get fired up about politics.

Huh, maybe since I’m liberal Ransom wouldn’t even like that... That’s a way out of things... But why would I want to get out of a relationship with-

“Hey girlfriend, how’s the article going?” Claire walked into your cubicle with a huge smile on her tan face.

Your eyes left their place on your computer, staring into the white pixels, and to Claire’s face. You managed an uncomfortable smile.

“Mhm.”

Claire’s smile turned into her iconic “oh-my-god-I’m-so-freaking-done-with-you” face.

“(Y/N). Don’t tell me that one, harmless, forgettable text is still on your mind?” Claire asked.

You felt... angry?

“Well I don’t know Claire, maybe it’s the fact you texted a really hot guy I haven’t talked to in like five years and put me in this weird position?” You retorted fierly. The Latina broke a smirk.

“...You think he’s hot?”

“Shut up!” You covered your blushing face.

Claire sighed in defeat. “Well from what I found he apparently lives in Boston, so he probably won’t just show up out of the blue one day.”

Your heart sunk.

“Oh.”

You and your best friend just stared at each other for a moment, until you looked down.

“Do you... uhm, actually think that text was forgettable?” You asked as if it were no big deal with a small shrug.

Ding!

~•~•~•~•~

Ransom woke up in the same spot he fell asleep in. His head hurt slightly less, his stomach felt like a load of crap, and he just overall still felt sad.

He groaned as he sat himself back up, scratching his head and scrunching his nose at the touch of his oily and dirty hair.

His phone dinged again from earlier and he reluctantly scooched over to grab it.

Scrolling through more random notifications he remembered your text from earlier.

Remember me?

He mischeviously smiled and shook his head. Yeah, I guess he did remember you. The picture in his head was faint yet vibrant; he remembered fragments of moments and time he spent with you, and could just barely remember you were somewhat hot when the two of you graduated.

Time to play a little game.

He opened your chat and began to type quickly.

How could I forget?😉

Ransom smirked and pressed send, watching the little blue bubble move it’s way to and watch it deliver. He wasn’t going to be elaborate quite yet, he wanted to have some fun.

The blue-eyed playboy stood up carefully as he grabbed his growling stomach. He walked out of the bathroom and back into the blinding light of the kitchen.

His usual swagger was coming back to accompany him throughout the day. That devilish attitude and mischevious smirk.

This was just the kind of game he needed to keep his steam running for a little bit, and he was sure as hell excited to see where it was going to go.

And you bet your bottom dollar he wasn’t going to stop playing.

wellllllll this is going to be fun, isn’t it? i hope you enjoyed this second chapter and we’ll get chapter three rolling! and, as always, i’m here as a support system for you all during these uncertain times, and i sincerely hope my works provide an escape and distraction from the outside world. here is a link to my master list if you’re wanting more🤍 love you all!

taglist:

@heyiamthatbitch @mcuclintasha @captainsmallassrogers @fangirlinacoffeeshopweshare @anisiamoisa @awesomelittledemarco03 @aletteredaffair @castellandiangelo @theangrylizard @frencchfries @takemetooneverlanddd @sp2900 @smilexcaptainx @monpetitcoin21 @marymoon18 @mccunted @iamapersonwholikesunicorns @chuuulip @sweetlittlegingy @lookalivefrosty @brookebradford @patzammit @stucky-is-life-thank-you @bval-1 @need-more-time @blowfishevans @polarcrystall @little-dark-empress @rosalynshields @asianbuttcheek @dailythotdotcom @topstory21 @canny1902 @alexxcorona113 @what-inspirational-name @summer-may @abbyalee @littlefiercequeen @stardancerluv @oncemorewithfeelingg

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the-u-s-s-enterprise · 4 years

Text

This is a long one, but I love Undertale.

Eighteen-years old, fresh out of their sheltered hometown and onto a liberal arts college with more diverse people than they had ever experienced in their life. They’re nervous about school, the up in ante, the new lifestyle, the new freedom. They found their place with some friends that they wouldn’t think about in a few years time, people that would come and go, and a couple that would stay, but the first step on their journey into adulthood.

This is fall of 2015. Their parents dropped them off with a teary goodbye less than a month ago, and Undertale comes out today. They don’t know about it. At least not until Steam Train plays it not too long later. They watch a cute game played and commentated by a duo from their favorite YouTube gaming channel. It’s exactly their style, a cute, fun game with interesting and lovable characters.

The first episode doesn’t even span the tutorial, and the kid doesn’t bother waiting for the rest. They load up steam and buy it, playing it well into the night, sobbing at the heartbreaking conclusion and not knowing that five years later they would break into tears over hearing “Home” for the first time in years.

I played Undertale because I thought it was cute, the designs were fun, the mechanics were interesting, the story was easy enough to follow. I liked video games, but not enough to spend money on them only to get bored halfway through, so I watched a few Let’s Play YouTube channels to experience them without having to devote my constantly overstimulated brain to playing them.

Undertale was different. I don’t choose the things I become obsessed with (do you think I would be thinking about It: Chapter 2 over a year later if I could?), but when I fall into something, I fall hard.

I played it through, and then I watched Steam Train, and then I watched Press Heart to Continue, and JackSepticEye, and Markiplier, and Dan and Phil, and streamers I don’t even remember the names of in order to see every single reaction and playthrough I could see. Don’t get me wrong, I played again and again, too, even forcing my friends not to play it if I wasn’t there to watch.

In fact, I distinctly remember a friend, I was watching him play and telling him where the secrets were and the background for every little thing that wasn’t explicit in the game. He loved it. We played the entire game in three sessions, the first involved us going through the Ruins and saving after meeting Sans and Papyrus, the second going about halfway through Waterfall, and the third was the rest of the game in a six-hour session.

All in all, I can’t even count how many times I’ve witnessed the game, nor how many times I’ve read the Wiki pages, clicking “random page” over and over again until I had circled back around to the start. If I had to guess, I’ve played the pacifist playthrough about ten times on my own, and watched it anywhere between 20 and 30 between different YouTubers and rewatches of the same playthroughs. I’ve seen the genocide run a fair number of times, likely close to ten, and various neutral runs in the teens.

Not only that, I spent hours in the library with my headphones on doing homework, listening to not the OST, but the ten-hour extended versions of my favorite songs, “Bonetrousle”, “Hopes and Dreams”, “Death by Glamour”, and the ever so aptly named “NGAHHH!!” just to name a few.

And don’t get me started on the glitch characters. The hours I spent looking up information on Gaster because I was too scared to mod my own game are endless.

So, I guess you could say I’m very familiar with the game. It meant a lot to me as a young adult with fresh freedom, a story about a lost child finding a family of their own. My first and only tattoo is of the delta rune (although people will try to tell me it’s from Legend of Zelda).

It’s hard to talk about, but I don’t have the best mental health, with constant long-running depression, social anxiety, and mild OCD, my brain tends to run a mile a minute, and I had a really hard time making friends in high school, which resulted in me not having any friends at all after my friends from middle school decided they were too good for me.

I spent the better part of my four years in high school eating lunch alone and not going out on the weekends because no one wanted me to. In senior year, I managed to make friends with a few people, but nothing deep or long lasting.

Cue college, a fresh start where I could be exactly who I was supposed to be. I came out as asexual on the second day there, not knowing that my involvement with the LGBT organization would lead me to realize that I was also nonbinary and a lesbian. But needless to say, I was an outcast looking for a place to call home.

I found it at school, making a couple lifelong friends (I love you girls!) and finding a place in coming to my own leadership abilities and my desire to be a role model and resource for young LGBT people. Always in the background was Undertale.

Here was this game, though with a few flaws, was the greatest game I had ever played, as I remarked on every little detail from the stunning backgrounds to the fun yet challenging fight mechanics to every little piece of witty dialogue.

I remarked on Toby Fox and his ability to create this game almost entirely on his own, coding and designing and writing music. He didn’t do it alone, but so much of the game was him, and seeing someone accomplish something that meant so much to me was an inspiration.

I looked at this game and saw a breathtaking story, hints of the twist being woven into every pixel, parallels at every turn, tidbits that you had to play the game ten times (like I did) to catch pieces of backstory that were so vital to fully understanding a character.

Not only that, but I looked at this game and I saw me. I saw the cute and honestly rather stupid love story between Alphys and Undyne, between a shy (presumably) bisexual lizard girl and a buff (presumably) lesbian fish lady. They were awkward and uncomfortable and bashful and I loved every part of their interactions. They cared for each other and their story being thrown in and accepted, not a word said about it except outside the game. And don’t get me started on the guards.

But beyond that, I saw Frisk, a child without a denoted gender, which many people took to mean you could impose the gender you wanted, but to nonbinary people, to people like me, they saw a main character that used they/them pronouns without it being a joke, without it being asked about, without the characters ever slipping up or even having to guess. They did it because that’s who Frisk is, and they love Frisk.

I see this game, this funny, heart-wrenching, sweet, and wonderful game, and I see found family. I see a child who we know went up Mount Ebbott knowing that children who went up there didn’t come back find people (monsters) that loved them, cared about them, even after only knowing them for what we can assume is a day.

Frisk finds these monsters and they loved them for who they are. The love these characters share meant more to me than I ever could have imagined they would, the background to my introduction to freedom, the meeting of my best friends, the discovery of myself, the growth of my leadership and motivation. They were there. They were always there for me, and now, today, on the day of the five year anniversary of my own self discovery, I listen to “Home” and I cry.

I cry for Toriel, who lived alone in the Ruins for years, I cry for Sans and Papyrus who take care of each other in more way than they know, I cry for Undyne who’s desperate to prove herself and protect her people, I cry for Alphys who lived with the guilt of her mistakes and wanting nothing more than to make amends for the monster she thought she was, I cry for Asgore who was so overcome with grief he became the worst version of himself.

I cry for Asriel for obvious reasons. And I cry for Frisk, a child that wanted love and found it in the journey, just like I did.

I listen to “Home” and I cry because it is home. It’s a story about love in the time I needed it the most, shaping me into the person I am today, even five years later.

Because despite everything, it’s still me.

#undertale

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goingoverthegardenwall · 5 years

Text

Chapter 8: Babes in the Wood

In this last hurrah of explicit homages to animation of the past, the most obvious discussion point is Merrie Melodies and its ilk: Babes in the Wood is essentially a full-episode reference to the bouncing musical shorts of yore, where everything can sing’n’dance and the villain is a blustery bozo who’s defeated with a sight gag. If we expand to children’s entertainment in general, as we did with Greg’s Beatrix Potter episode, then The Wizard of Oz is our logical next step: the song welcoming him to Cloud City owes everything to Dorothy’s introduction to Munchkinland, complete with the fact that our hero has just entered a dream.

And look, there’s nothing wrong with talking about the obvious. But as we near the end, I think it’s a little more interesting to instead explore the very beginning. So let’s go back to a newspaper cartoonist in New York—the one who inspired fellow New York newspaper cartoonist John Randolph Bray to become an animator, which in turn led fellow New York newspaper cartoonist Max Fleischer to become an animator, because it turns out that just like the birth of superhero comics a few decades later, the birth of American animation hinged on print artists who dreamed big in the city that never sleeps.

A boy named Zenas was born in Michigan on September 26, 1871. Or maybe he was born there in 1869. Or maybe he was born in Canada in 1867. He said one thing, and a biographer said another, and census data says another, and I wasn’t there. It’s similarly unclear when or why he started going by his middle name, but by the time he took his first job at age 21 (or 19 or 17) as a billboard and poster artist in Chicago, he was calling himself Winsor McCay. They sure did know how to name ‘em in the 19th century.

McCay began his newspaper career as a freelancer, but moved to New York in 1903 to work for the New York Herald, where he wrote a variety of comics before hitting it big with Little Sammy Sneeze. McCay’s art was always brilliant, but his gag work was formulaic to a fault: the joke for Sammy Sneeze was always the same, he would sneeze and ruin everything right before the last panel. That devotion to formula would continue in his second big comic Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, where a fantastical events would occur for ever-changing characters before the lead woke up in the last panel, revealing it was a dream.

That second formula was the basis of McCay’s masterpiece. Already a successful cartoonist in the two short years since he’d moved to New York, his fame skyrocketed with Little Nemo in Slumberland, which used the same “wake up at the end” formula but with recurring characters and a running story. He toyed with the medium like none had before, playing with panel arrangement and innovating the portrayal of motion in comics, and his art skills only improved with this full-color strip. His success led to the vaudeville circuit, where he turned the act of drawing into a performance, and this combination of stage entertainment and his continuing comic work led him to seek new ways to dazzle the crowds.

By 1910, the earliest animated shorts had already started to emerge, and McCay was inspired by pioneers like James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl to try animating the characters of Little Nemo. Under Blackton’s direction, McCay singlehandedly drew around four thousand fully colored frames to produce his first animated cartoon, presented at the tail end of a filmed short about said cartoon in 1911. As mentioned, animated shorts were already a thing. But none of them looked anything like this. (If you’re concerned that there might be racist caricatures in it, don’t worry, there definitely are, McCay had a lot of strengths but overcoming garbage prejudices was not one of them).

The sheer quality of his work, continuing with the legendary Gertie the Dinosaur, directly led to the invention of the rotoscope as a means to mass-produce cartoons of similar finesse. The influence of Winsor McCay over animation as we know it is hard to overstate (and let’s stress again that this was his side gig, and he was just as influential over comic art): as crazy as it sounds, it’s safe to say that Over the Garden Wall would not exist if not for a story about the whimsical adventures of a little boy who traveled across a land of dreams from his bed.

“Where’s Greg, Wirt?”

Babes in the Wood is delightful and goofy and lighthearted exactly once.

In the same way our fourth-to-last episode mirrored our fourth, this third-to-last episode mirrors our third: Chapters 4 and 7 focus on Wirt, but 3 and 8 are Greg’s. It’s not simply a matter of who the main character is, but what these episodes are about: Greg’s love of fun clashing with his drive to help others. Both times he's spurred by the desire to help others to go off on his own, both times he gets distracted by whimsical wonders involving funny animals and physical humor, and both times he ends up deciding to help out anyway. But despite switching his goal from making the whole world a better place to just helping his brother, the stakes are actually far higher now, so the fun has to be that much more fun if we want the full horror of the ending to sink in.

There’s no tonal shift in the series that’s more devastating than Greg falling prey to the Beast after nearly ten minutes of goofiness in Cloud City. It turns a moment of welcome relief from the growing tension of Wirt’s despair into a dagger in the heart, and the knife is twisted when we learn in our next episode what the Unknown truly is.

That despair is evident well before Wirt explicitly gives up. We get our second opening in a row featuring Beatrice in a hopeless search, and things aren’t much better for the boys. All sense of progression from the first episode feels lost, with Wirt reverting to mumbling poetry and Greg reverting to Rock Facts. Their boat is an outhouse and Greg uses a guitar as an oar, because (if you’ll pardon my French) they’re up shit creek without a paddle. When they land, Greg’s victorious bugle is a ridiculous sign of hope, but he soon drops it in the same way he abandons the guitar: in Schooltown Follies he takes instruments to help others, but this time he loses them.

Wirt’s frustration with Greg threatened to boil over in The Ringing of the Bell, only to be cooled when the Woodsman interrupts them. This time there’s no such interruption, so after Greg’s total failure to read the room gets to be too much, his brother finally snaps. It crucially isn’t entirely unjustified, as Greg’s antics might be funny to us but have not been appreciated by Wirt, and despite Greg’s age excusing his lack of emotional intelligence, it’s still gotta be frustrating for a teen to deal with that behavior nonstop. And Wirt’s “tirade” reflects his depression, because he doesn’t even seem that angry: he doesn’t shout or rave, he’s just openly irritated as he argues that they’ll be lost forever. This is apathy and fatigue, because he’s lost the energy to be furious.

But the most chilling part of the exchange isn’t Wirt cruelly blaming Greg for their mess, or abandoning their search. It’s when, after Wirt asks if they can give up, Greg responds with a chipper “You can do anything if you set your mind to it!”, a sentiment that the Beast will fiendishly repeat verbatim while tricking Greg. It’s such a generic positive expression that Greg hangs a lampshade on it, but it shows the darker side of the power our minds have over our well-being. Sure, it’s a great lesson that focus and dedication can help us achieve our dreams, but if we use that focus and dedication towards self-destructive behavior, there’s no limit to how badly we can hurt ourselves.

After a goofy sort of prayer (incorporating lines from the classic Trick or Treat poem, which will become super relevant an episode from now), Greg is whisked away by so-creepy-it’s-funny cherubim to the score of a so-overwrought-it’s-funny song. His flight aboard the bed/cart pulled by a donkey across the sky feels legitimately magical, but we soon switch to the surreal world of 1930′s songs and physics.

Cloud City is such a stark contrast to the tone of the episode so far that it instantly feels delightful, and such a stark contrast to the tone of the entire series that it lends a special sort of wonder to Greg’s dreamland. References to old cartoons are everywhere in Over the Garden Wall, and before we delve into the tension of our last two episodes, we get one last gigantic celebration of the past with a sequence straight from the golden age of animation.

The transition alone is enough to make this scene hilarious, but the actual jokes help quite a bit: Greg’s growing impatience with the numerous Wizard of Oz reception committees is my favorite gag of the night. Everything is cute to the point of being cloying, including our three angels that look and sound an awful lot like Greg, and the parade that he leads seems like such a fun and peaceful affair after so much time wandering alone. It’s easy to get as roped into it as Greg when we first watch it. But considering the events of our next episode, the scene destroys me every time I rewatch it, because there’s a very specific place Greg is being welcomed to.

Babes in the Wood gets a lot less cute when it becomes clear that it’s a welcoming committee for a dying child. Greg and Wirt are drowning, and this is the episode where the shock wears off and the cold sets in and the younger and weaker of the two looks into a bright light. Greg’s near-death experience is hammered in when we get to The Unknown, but for now it’s being rationalized in a way that brings him comfort.

The cold is Greg’s enemy, and the same childish tone is used to show that he’s willing to fight for his life: thus, the North Wind segment is ironically more hopeful to me than the parade’s warm welcome of death. This third song sounds enough like a Randy Newman number that I’m honestly still convinced it’s an uncredited Randy Newman performance, and it jolts us back to reality for a moment as we see the effect this bitter wind has on our babes in the woods. The boys are starting to freeze, and we again see Beatrice searching for them, getting so close before an owl that looks remarkably like the one we saw in our first episode scares her off. The episode doesn’t want to lose us completely to the sky, and this grounding helps keep the stakes clear as we complete Greg’s dream.

The Popeye-esque battle between Greg and Ol’ Windbag is a hoot, between the latter’s grumbling anger and the former rolling up his sleeve to get back into the brawl. Its conclusion is hidden from us, so we have no idea how Greg gets him in a bottle, but that fits right in with the weird logic of this throwback and allows us to meet the Queen of the Clouds.

I ought to bring up the theory that everything we see here is an illusion created by the Beast, even though I don’t really subscribe to it myself. The most obvious “hint” is that this sequence directly leads to Greg deciding to join the Beast with an off-screen promise, but we also have the old man in the welcoming march wearing an outfit just like Wirt’s and holding a lantern, perhaps a reference to the Beast’s intended fate for Greg’s brother. Plus there’s lines in the songs that seem like they’re luring Greg in, especially the assurance that the wonders of Cloud City “ain’t gonna lie,” which sounds a lot like what a liar would say. Both the Queen of the Clouds and the Beast pointedly call him Gregory instead of Greg, but so does Old Lady Mrs. Daniels (and Wirt when introducing him in Songs of the Dark Lantern).

While it’s a neat enough idea, I think the Queen of Clouds is pretty clearly on Greg’s side for real: she seems upset at his fate in a way that doesn’t make much sense for an ally of the Beast. I also think it’s more meaningful for Greg to truly have the choice between happiness and responsibility, between the possible peace of rest and the definite struggle of life, and for him to choose the latter right as his brother is giving in. But I’ve got no beef with folks whose interpretation of the show is enhanced by this theory, so believe what you want to believe about this ambiguous situation.

Either way, we cut back to Wirt instead of Greg when the dream ends, and he’s still annoyed as he’s trying to sleep. Greg’s strange new seriousness is already cause for concern, and asking Wirt to take care of the frog is even more alarming, but even that doesn’t compare the horror of realizing where he’s actually going. Or rather, with whom.

This is another reason why I think the Queen is an ally: while it’s obviously dangerous for Greg to go with the Beast, that’s what it takes for Wirt to snap out of his funk. It’s a hell of a gambit, but as soon as he starts to awaken, he’s immediately concerned for Greg’s safety despite whatever anger or resentment he had, sparing no time or thought to the branches creeping over him as he runs after his brother.

The quiet distortion as we follow his frantic search is soon met by the Beast’s song, but even as he blames himself for Greg’s plight, Wirt is no longer content to wallow in despair. Because it turns out that these brothers are more similar than they seem, and neither is truly capable of letting the other suffer. In the folk tale for which this episode is named, two children abandoned in the woods eventually die and are covered in leaves by small birds (with some versions seeing them enter heaven), but as we’ll see in our next episode, this isn’t a folk tale.

The thrumming noise intensifies as Wirt slips on the ice, then we add visual distortion as he plummets into the freezing water. He’s saved, but this isn’t water that sees him reborn: the distortion finally breaks as Beatrice asks the episode’s terrible question, and we’re left in the cold.

Every even-numbered episode of Over the Garden Wall, perhaps by virtue of airing twice per night, ends in a mood-setting cliffhanger that grows tenser and tenser with every iteration (or at least it does until the end). First we got a leaf symbolically caught in a fence, then the Beast’s introduction, then the fallout of Adelaide, and now the capture of Greg. Getting trapped has always been a threat for these roving heroes, but the greatest threat of all, that of Wirt trapping himself, has been handled. Things look bleaker than they ever have, but despite the glee of Greg’s dream contrasting with the harshness of reality, Wirt’s ability to climb out of the pit of despair keeps hope alive: even in absence, Greg’s influence looms large.

Rock Factsheet

Dinosaurs had big ears, but everyone forgot because dinosaur ears don’t have bones.

Where have we come, and where shall we end?

Most of these were mentioned in the main analysis, but it’s great that we hear Wirt’s description of Into the Unknown right before the episode itself shows us what happened.

#babes in the wood #over the garden wall #otgw #steven universally #winsor mccay #little nemo in slumberland

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toxicsquad · 4 years

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There is no better way to get to know someone than through a good question tag. In this case we have decided to make an Indie game dev question tag with the responses of our four developers. We hope that it will reveal many unknowns, but if you are left with any questions, do not hesitate to use our ask.

What part of game development are you responsible for?

Athe: I write and write, I melt in my seat, I correct, I cry and then I program. It’s an endless cycle. Occasionally I laugh like crazy while I eat Pringles.

Sam: I draw and color without leaving the lines (almost always) the sprites, the illustrations and the ravings that usually occur to us past 3 in the morning.

Illy: English translations.

Sher: I draw BGs

What tools do you use (hardware / software)?

Athe: Recently my desktop PC has passed away, so I’ve had to rescue my old PC from the garage. I also have a laptop that saves my life more times than I would like to admit. As for the software, I need, above all, drive documents, video editing programs, image etc (I have an Adobe package) and of course Renpy and Atom.

Sam: My main friend and companion is my tablet, a wacom intuos S (pistachio color, so cute). As programs I mainly use the Paint Tool Sai, because there is nothing in this life like its stabilizer. And less frequently than I would like (for details, texture brushes, effects ...) I also use Clip Studio Paint, which I only know how to use at about 2% of its capacity ... If someday I have time I would love to stop and learn seriously what can be done with it.

Illy: During the school year I live in a residence, so I use an old laptop, and when I return home I use a desktop computer that never has memory space. I translate the chapters in the same Atom where the complete script is and I keep them in google drive files where I share them with our beta reader. I also use editing programs like photoshop when I have to translate comics or procreate for when my artistic skills are required.

Sher: ipad+procreate+some final tweak in photoshop, I don't need much more

What is your favorite part of the job?

Athe: Would it be wrong if I say that is when we released the episode? During the whole production time everything is very stressful, there are times when it’s really uphill, but when we release a new chapter it feels soooo good. It's like saying to yourself, yeah, dammit, I can do it. Look at everything you've climbed by yourself. You're doing it right.

Sam: In general, my favorite parts are when the first scenes start to be programmed, and I can see the sprites with the backgrounds, the texts, and how the illustrations look. Everything always looks so much better when viewed in-game… I also really like being able to check out the script as it is written. And from the artistic part that concerns me, when I see that my hands capture the idea that I had in my head ... Especially in character designs.

Illy: Having to find a way to translate very spanish expressions into English, research vocabulary that I have never had to use and commenting on some translations with our beta reader (which we adore) to make it understandable without losing the original meaning.

Sher: I like to do the lineart when the sketch is complete, if I no longer have to think about anything else and it's just going through it, I find it very fun and relaxing

What is the most difficult part for you?

Athe: Offf, yes, I admit it, sometimes writing is the WORST. Other times I love it, especially when I can expand on the descriptions or stop at a part that is intimate or that I find interesting (for example, Hasiel's conversation from 6.3, small spoiler: P). But, I HATE having to paste scenes, often the protagonist moves between scenes and you always have to add lines to those transitions that really do not interest anyone, but that otherwise the text would be confusing. Anyway... It is a very wide world, with a lot of history, I have to deal with what I need readers to know to understand the facts, although sometimes it gets a bit boring.

Sam: What part does not... Rather who e.e Zihel and Ariel are a thorn in my side. Especially Zihel. I know it has to do with the fact that it has never been my strength to draw boys, and much less if they are more masculine in appearance... That's why I also suffer a lot from drawing muscles. Another thing that brings me a headache is the perspective of the illustrations. Every time I try to get out of the typical shot or poses a little... It doesn't work out.

Illy: Doughy’s stuttering ¬.¬

Sher: chairs, sofas, tables... anything with four legs is my enemy

Anything to help or encourage you while you are working?

Athe: I need music, no, seriously, I NEED IT. I’m unable to focus without it. If, on top of that, I can get what I hear to act as a sounding board for what I write, the text is a thousand times better... But the muse is a pretty bad person.

Sam: Having a show/movie in the background that entertains me. The longer the better, so I don't have to stop to think what I want to put on next.

Illy: Eating sunflower seeds to trick my brain and not be tempted to do something else that distracts me.

Sher: I try to see other artists to motivate and inspire me before I start drawing, what I find most difficult is that initial push and that is where I need the motivation, then I usually have something in the background but it is not necessary

Something that’s a pet peeve or discouraging?

Athe: Some narrative climax moments. Generally, they are not important plot moments (that is almost entirely decided), they are often small decisions to go from scene A to scene B, but I can spend a LOT of time deciding which is the fastest and best way to tie those two ends. I'm the worst.

Sam: Many times when starting, I can't get the poses to fit the way I want, for example.

Illy: Finding many parts in a row that I find especially difficult to solve and that make me believe that I have forgotten how to English properly. And looking at how many lines I still have left.

Sher: When I don't know how to fill in some area, if I see something very empty but I don't know how to solve it, I can spend days looking at the screen without being able to advance, even if I have other areas that I could do in the meantime

What is required on your table or work surface?

Athe: Notebooks, sticky notes, pens… I’m a person who writes everything down, especially the tasks, but I also order the story by color schemes. The stack of sticky notes have 9 different colors, each one represents a character and I play a lot with them for a lot of nonsense. Besides, even though I have been writing on the computer for many more years than I wrote by hand, I still have a preference for the analogical.

Sam: Coffee, sweets, chocolate, cereals... And cats.

Illy: My phone, the sunflower seeds, a Capital America: Civil War 1L water cup, sticky notes that remind me of tasks.

Sher: I have nothing really lol all my things are for decoration

Your most productive hours?

Athe: Owl. Totally nocturnal. Although I have several crises a month to force myself to work at other times that always end... Wrong.

Sam: Also at night for the most part, although I can no longer stay awake as long as I endured before having a job (the good old days...) However, in the middle of the afternoon, when the zoo that I have at home is still taking a nap, I also manage to go a long way.

Illy: From when I finish eating until 7 or 8 in the afternoon, when I don't have to cook, clean, run errands...

Sher: I take over for Illy apparently, from 7 or 8 is when I start to get into the mood until bedtime

Do working hours make you forget to eat or make you eat twice as much?

Athe: It depends, in the past I ate a lot, now if I have stress I don't eat anything. If I'm in a normal productive phase and I'm not on my nerves, I'm probably eating by inertia.

Sam: They make me eat more, but especially junk food e.e And they make me forget healthy meals, especially dinner at night.

Illy: It depends on my mood, but I usually eat twice as much.

Sher: I'm generally a VERY distracted person so I don't usually get to focus on a task to get to either of those two modes but I guess when I am sooooooo much on the task, I forget. But that happens like a couple of times a year and "forgetting" is "I delay an hour."

What part of your set up would you improve / change (in aesthetics or functionality) if you had no money limit?

Athe: I'm trying to match some of my peripherals with the rest. They are all a damn different color, apparently I'm cursed... Now seriously, I wish I had a better graphic card that would allow me to make video captures, some speakers and a quality printer.

Sam: Actually, I don't think I need anything more complex than what I already have… But if I had to improve something, I'm curious about the most professional tablets, the big ones with the included screen and all that stuff.

Illy: A new laptop that lets me open 4 chrome tabs, Atom and photoshop at the same time without dying.

Sher: A pc screen that will not change the colors I use on the iPad would be nice, really

Which character are you most like? And why?

Athe: Phew I think the easy answer would be to say Akane ... But, Akane is a better person. : P

Sam: This is very difficult... They are all very different, but still I do not think I look much like any of them. If I have to say something, I could identify with Maske's tendency to avoid problems, and his more homey and calm side. And well… Since Akane has been an OC of mine for many years, surely I have something of her too.

Illy: I think I partly have Maske's instinct to stay out of trouble, and on the other hand Joe's shallowness, although tbh I wish I really did look like any of our awesome babies.

Sher: surprised because (unpopular opinion around here) is one of those who I "least care" about really but I would say that Pin because he is a little dumb, happy and probably has a Satanic room and proud of it

Favorite CG/art.

Athe: AT THE MOMENT. Maske chapter 1. It couldn't be more predictable. I know.

Sam: I quite agree with Maske in chapter 1. But I would also put Pin in chapter 5 and Akane in chapter 6.2 on the top.

Illy: Kyeran in Coco's tank ?? Is he even real? Being basic is my brand.

Sher: surprised again and disappointed but I would say that of angel Hasiel because I like pretty dresses, pretty hairs and pretty wings

Favorite BG/scene.

Athe: The Red Light District amazes me. I already liked the life of that place, its history, but the way of expressing it... Uggg Sher took it to another level. The dirt on the street, the night, the constricted buildings...

Sam: I think I’ll say Raziel’s square, I like it a lot from the first day.

Illy: I don't know if I can choose just one T__T but I would say that the Red Light District and Valefar's pub are at the top.

Sher: for not repeating the red light district that I also like very much, I really like the areas of Coco's laboratory, including the “main” area although the perspective is horrible and makes the characters look tiny, but I like how it looks :(

Your favorite chapter to date?

Athe: Ufff... The first and second one I assure you no, hahaha. I will say that the third one, but also for things that are not necessarily from the chapter, but of the production. It was a good moment. I felt that everything was flowing with ease. We all assumed a clear role, they were times that made us feel comfortable and capable of assuming what came next, I think it was a qualitative leap also, both in texts and in art.

Sam: Oh. Well let's see... Chapter 5 is amazing for me, for everything that happens but also because there are many personalized interactions and choices. I can't say I have a definitive favorite, but it could come close… Also from the last ones I really like the 6.2.

Illy: Chapter 5 has so many details, so many things happen, it's hard not to be my favorite. But the last ones with the specific routes are so great that if I stay with the 5 it’s with the pain of my heart to have to choose one.

Sher: I would say 5 also because in the end when a lot of things happen is when you remember the most

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No hay mejor forma de conocer a alguien que a través de un buen tag de preguntas. En este caso hemos decidido hacer un Indie game dev question tag con las respuestas de las cuatro desarrolladoras. Esperamos que os aclare muchas incógnitas, pero si os quedáis con alguna no dudéis en usar nuestro ask.

¿Qué parte del desarrollo del juego llevas a cabo?

Athe: Escribo, escribo, me derrito sobre mi asiento, corrijo, lloro y después programo. Es un ciclo sin fin. Ocasionalmente me río como una demente mientras como Pringles.

Sam: Dibujo y coloreo sin salirme de las líneas (casi siempre) los sprites, las ilustraciones y los desvaríos que suelen surgir a partir de las 3 de la mañana.

Illy: Las traducciones a inglés.

Sher: Hago fonditos

¿Qué herramientas utilizas (hardware/software)?

Athe: Recientemente mi PC de sobremesa ha fallecido, así que he tenido que rescatar mi viejo PC del trastero, también tengo un portatil que me salva la vida más veces de las que me gustaría admitir. En cuanto al software, necesito, sobre todo, documentos de drive, programas de edición de video, imagen etc (tengo un paquete de Adobe) y por supuesto Renpy y Atom.

Sam: Mi principal amiga y compañera es mi tableta, una wacom intuos S (color pistacho, muy cuqui.) Como programas uso sobretodo el Paint Tool Sai, porque no hay nada en esta vida como su estabilizador. Y con menos frecuencia de lo que querría (para detalles, pinceles de texturas, efectos…) también utilizo el Clip Studio Paint, el cual sólo se usar como a un 2% de su capacidad… Si algún día tengo tiempo me encantaría pararme a aprender seriamente todo lo que se puede hacer con él.

Illy: Durante el curso vivo en una residencia, así que uso un portatil del año que reinó carolo, y cuando vuelvo a mi casa un ordenador de sobremesa que nunca tiene espacio en la memoria. Los capítulos los traduzco en el mismo Atom en el que está el guión completo y los guardo en drive donde los comparto con nuestra beta reader. También uso programas de edición como photoshop cuando tengo que traducir viñetas o procreate para cuando mis habilidades artísticas son requeridas.

Sher: ipad+procreate+algún retoquito final en photoshop no necesito mucho más

¿Cuál es tu parte de favorita del trabajo?

Athe: ¿Estaría mal si digo que es cuando sacamos el episodio? Durante toda la producción todo es muy estresante, hay veces, que se hace realmente cuesta arriba, pero cuando liberamos un nuevo capítulo sienta taaaan bien. Es como decirte a ti misma, sí, joder, puedo hacerlo. Mira todo lo que has escalado tú solita. Lo estás haciendo bien.

Sam: En general, mis partes favoritas son cuando se empiezan a programar las primeras escenas, y puedo ver los sprites con los fondos, los textos, y cómo se ven las ilustraciones. Todo queda siempre mucho mejor cuando se ve dentro del juego… También me gusta mucho poder cotillear el guión conforme se va escribiendo. Y de la parte artística que me toca, cuando veo que mis manos plasman la idea que tenía en mi cabeza… Sobretodo en diseños de personajes.

Illy: Tener que buscar la forma de traducir a inglés expresiones muy nuestras, investigar vocabulario que no he tenido que usar jamás y comentar algunas traducciones con nuestra beta reader (a la que adoramos) para conseguir que se entienda sin perder el significado original.

Sher: me gusta hacer el lineart cuando el sketch está completo, si ya no tengo que pensar nada más y es solo ir repasando me parece muy divertido y relajante

¿Cuál es la parte que más te cuesta?

Athe: Ufff, sí, lo admito, escribir a veces es lo PEOR. Otras me encanta, sobre todo, cuando puedo explayarme con las descripciones o detenerme en una parte íntima o que a mí me parece interesante (por ejemplo, la conversación de Hasiel del 6.3, pequeño spoiler :P). Pero, ODIO tener que empastar escenas, a menudo el protagonista se mueve de escenarios y hay que agregar siempre líneas a esas transiciones que realmente no interesan a nadie, pero que de lo contrario el texto quedaría mal montado. En fin… Es un mundo muy amplio, con mucha historia, tengo que lidiar con lo que necesito que los lectores sepan para entender los hechos, aunque a veces se haga un pelín peñazo.

Sam: Qué parte no… Quiénes, más bien e.e Zihel y Ariel son mi espinita. Especialmente Zihel. Sé que tiene que ver con el hecho de que nunca ha sido mi punto fuerte dibujar chicos, y menos si son de aspecto más masculino… Por eso también sufro mucho dibujando músculos. Otra cosa que me trae de cabeza es la perspectiva de las ilustraciones. Cada vez que intento salirme un poco del típico plano o poses… No sale bien.

Illy: El tartamudeo de Doughy ¬.¬

Sher: sillas, sofás, mesas… cualquier cosa con cuatro patas son mis enemigos

¿Algo que te ayude o anime mientras estás trabajando?

Athe: Necesito música, no, en serio, LA NECESITO. Soy incapaz de concentrarme sin ella. Si ya consigo que lo que escucho haga de caja de resonancia de lo que escribo, el texto es mil veces mejor… Pero la musa es bastante mala gente.

Sam: Tener alguna serie/peli de fondo que me entretenga. Cuanto más larga mejor, así no me toca pararme a ver qué es lo que quiero poner después.

Illy: Comer pipas para engañar a mi cerebro y no tener la tentación de ponerme a hacer otra cosa que me distraiga.

Sher: intento ver otros artistas para motivarme e inspirarme antes de empezar a dibujar, lo que más me cuesta es ese empujón inicial y es donde necesito la motivación, luego ya suelo tener algo de fondo pero no es necesario

¿Algo que te corte el rollo o te desmotive?

Athe: Los nudos narrativos. Generalmente, no son nudos gordos de la trama (eso está decidido casi en su totalidad), a menudo son decisiones pequeñas para pasar de la escena A a la escena B, pero puedo tirarme MUCHO tiempo decidiendo cuál es la forma más rápida y mejor planteada para atar esos dos cabos. Soy lo peor.

Sam: Muchas veces a la hora de empezar, no conseguir encajar las poses como quiero, por ejemplo.

Illy: Encontrar muchas partes seguidas que me cueste especialmente resolver y que me hacen creer que no tengo ni idea de hablar inglés. Y mirar cuantas líneas me quedan todavía.

Sher: cuando no se como rellenar alguna zona, si veo algo muy vacío pero no se como solucionarlo puedo tirarme días mirando la pantalla sin ser capaz de avanzar, incluso aunque tenga otras zonas que pudiera ir haciendo mientras

¿Qué no puede faltar en tu mesa o superficie de trabajo?

Athe: Libretas, post-its, bolígrafos… Soy una persona que lo anota todo, sobre todo, las tareas, pero también ordeno la historia por esquemas de colores. La pila de post-its tienen 9 colores diferentes, cada uno representa un personaje y juego mucho con ellos para miles de idioteces. A parte, a pesar de que llevo muchos más años escribiendo a ordenador de los que escribí a mano, sigo teniendo querencia a lo físico.

Sam: Café, chucherías, chocolate, cereales… Y gatos.

Illy: El móvil, las pipas, un vaso de 1L de agua de Capital America: Civil War, post-its que me recuerdan las tareas.

Sher: no tengo nada realmente lol todas mis cosas son de adorno

¿Tus horas más productivas?

Athe: Búho. Nocturna totalmente. A pesar de que tengo varias crisis al mes para forzarme a trabajar a otras horas que acaban siempre… Mal.

Sam: También por la noche en su mayoría, aunque ya no aguanto trasnochando tanto como antes de trabajar (qué tiempos aquellos…) Aunque a media tarde cuando el zoo que tengo en casa aún está echando la siesta también consigo dar un buen empujón.

Illy: Desde que acabo de comer hasta las 7 o las 8 de la tarde, cuando no tengo que cocinar, limpiar, hacer recados...

Sher: le tomo el testigo a Illy aparentemente, a partir de las 7 u 8 es cuando empiezo a entrar en el mood hasta que llega la hora de dormir

¿Las horas de trabajo hacen que te olvides de comer o te hacen comer el doble?

Athe: Depende, antes comía mucho, ahora, si tengo estrés no como nada. Si me encuentro en un rango productivo normal y no estoy de los nervios, probablemente, esté comiendo por inercia.

Sam: Me hacen comer más, pero sobretodo porquerías e.e Y hacen que me olvide de las comidas sanas, sobretodo de cenar por la noche.

Illy: Depende de mi estado de ánimo, pero normalmente comer el doble.

Sher: en general soy una persona MUY distraída así que no suelo conseguir centrarme en una tarea para llegar a ninguno de esos dos modos pero supongo que cuando estoy muuuuuuy dentro de la tarea, me olvido. Pero eso pasa como un par de veces al año y “olvido” es “lo retraso una hora”.

¿Qué parte de tu set up mejorarías/cambiarías (en estética o funcionalidad) si no tuvieses límite de dinero?

Athe: Estoy tratando de que alguno de mis periféricos peguen con el resto. Todos son de un maldito color diferente, al parecer estoy maldita… Ahora en serio, desearía tener una mejor gráfica que me permitiese hacer videocapturas, unos altavoces y una impresora de calidad.

Sam: En realidad, no creo que necesitara nada más complejo de lo que ya tengo… Pero por mejorar, me llaman la atención las tabletas más profesionales, las grandes con la pantalla incluida y eso.

Illy: Un portátil nuevo que me deje abrir 4 pestañas de chrome, el Atom y photoshop al mismo tiempo sin quedarse tieso.

Sher: Una pantalla de pc que no me cambiara los colores que uso en el ipad seria bonito la verdad

¿A qué personaje te pareces más? ¿Y por qué?

Athe: Ufff Creo que la respuesta fácil sería decir Akane… Pero, Akane es mejor persona. :P

Sam: Esto es muy complicado… Son todos muy distintos, pero aún así no creo que me parezca mucho a ninguno. Por decir algo, me podría identificar con la tendencia a evitar problemas de Maske, y su lado más casero y tranquilo. Y bueno… Dado que Akane es OC mío de hace muchos años, seguramente tenga algo de ella también.

Illy: Creo que en parte tengo el instinto de alejarme de las movidas de Maske, y por otro la superficialidad de Joe, aunque tbh ojalá parecerme realmente a nuestros bebés geniales.

Sher: sorprendida porque (unpopular opinión por aquí) es de los que “menos me importan” realmente pero diría que Pin porque es tontito, feliz y probablemente tenga una habitación satánica y orgulloso de ello

Tu CG/arte favorito.

Athe: DE MOMENTO. Maske capítulo 1. No podría ser más predecible. Lo sé.

Sam: Coincido bastante en la de Maske del capítulo 1. Pero también metería en el top la de Pin del capítulo 5 y la de Akane del capítulo 6.2.

Illy: ¿¿Kyeran en el tanque de Coco?? ¿Es siquiera real? Ser básica es mi marca.

Sher: sorprendida de nuevo y decepcionada pero diría que la de Hasiel de ángel porque me gustan los vestidos bonitos, los pelos bonitos y las alas bonitas

Tu BG/escenario favorito.

Athe: Me flipa el Barrio Rojo. Me gusta la vida de ese sitio, su historia, pero la forma de plasmarlo… Uggg Sher lo llevó a otro nivel. La suciedad de la calle, la nocturnidad, los edificios constreñidos...

Sam: Creo que me quedo con el de la plaza de Raziel, me gusta mucho desde el primer día.

Illy: No sé si puedo elegir solo uno T__T pero diría que el Barrio Rojo y el bar de Valefar están en el top.

Sher: por no repetir el barrio rojo que también me gusta mucho, me gustan mucho las zonas del laboratorio de Coco, incluida la zona “principal” aunque la perspectiva sea horrible y haga a los pj parecer diminutos, pero me gusto como quedo :(

¿Tu capítulo favorito hasta las fecha?

Athe: Ufff… El uno y el dos os aseguro que no, jajaja. Diré que el tres, pero también por cosas que no son necesariamente del capítulo, sino de la producción. Fue un buen momento. Sentí que todo estaba fluyendo con facilidad. Todas asumimos un rol claro, unos tiempos que nos hacían sentir cómodas y capaces de asumir lo que venía después, creo que fue un salto cualitativo también, tanto en los textos, como en el arte.

Sam: Ay. Pues a ver… El capítulo 5 es una pasada para mi, por todo lo que pasa pero también porque hay muchas interacciones personalizadas y elecciones. No puedo decir que tenga un favorito definitivo, pero podría acercarse… También me gusta mucho de los últimos el 6.2.

Illy: El capítulo 5 tiene tantos detalles, pasan tantas cosas, que es difícil que no sea mi favorito, pero los ultimos de rutas específicas son tan geniales que si me quedo con el 5 es con un poco de dolor de tener que elegir uno.

Sher: Diría el 5 también porque al final cuando pasan muchas cosas es cuando mas se te queda grabado

Twitter | Instagram | Itch

#chr 4012 #Chronicles from 4012 #otome #otome game #visual novel #vndev #vn #indie dev #indie game #gamedev #tumblronday

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fivour · 4 years

Note

1/2/3/4/5/11/12/13/15/16/24/25 i don't think i will ever stop asking you things about your writing hehe (=^･ｪ･^=)

youre keeping this blog alive bro keep askin’

answered 4 in a previous ask.

1. was being a writer a dream of yours when you were little? or did it spring up when you were older? or is it just a hobby?

I never thought about being a writer as a kid, it was always something like an artist/teacher/musician aka rock star. I think it’s just a hobby for now although I would like to begin freelancing/commission work at some point. With my career plans, I’ll more than likely have to publish a research book at some point, though, but that’s many years off.

2. overall, would you say you are more driven by plot or characters in writing? (what makes you more excited about an idea?)

Characters 100%. If they are little toy soldiers, then I am the nine year old boy’s shithead cat that knocks them into the register vents. I wanna play with them and mess ‘em up.

Plots do not interest me in the slightest and I do not like making them. It’s part of why I don’t usually write longfic, only oneshots and short multi-chapter work.

3. give an overview/description of some of your past stories. (only if you are willing, of course!)

Here’s a... fun story: One of my first fanfictions was a story about Percy Jackson family feud. I was sick at home a lot, so I had daytime television brainrot. Anyways, I got multiple reviews telling me I spelled "feud" wrong, some constructive some not. However, I was a spoiled brat and I couldn’t handle not being the smartest person in the room, so I doubled down on "Family Fued.”

I am now an honors English kid and still cannot spell feud, field, or chief without autocorrect. It is my punishment for being an asshole on the internet in 2014.

5. do you have an idea for a story you don’t feel you can write at this current time? (whether it be because life is busy right now, you need to do more research, etc.)

Yes. I have a concept and outline for a long DioNilla fic inspired primarily by The Guilty by David Baldacci and this one podcast episode about partners in crime. At this point, there’s two different versions of it and I don’t know which I like more (one hit wonder for revenge or a totally romantic murder spree?). Both would have drastically different legal outcomes, but I’m not law-fluent enough to write either and the courtroom is an unavoidable scene I can’t just gloss over.

I also have an AU inspired by a movie that I’m not sure if I will ever write.

11. share a passage from one of your works and tell us why you liked it so much.

This is difficult because I have no recollection of anything I have ever written before yesterday. So I’ll just pick a recent one.

“His shoes are not thick enough to stop his leg from feeling jarred and his toes from feeling smashed, but the pain is enough to distract from the anger bubbling in the pit of his stomach. His heart races, pounding furiously against his rib cage, as if it were a prisoner beating at cell bars. It feels as if it’ll explode right from his chest, and his stomach quickly follows suit, churning with the pure agony that his newfound fury is putting his nerves through.

Fugo is miserable.

Fugo is miserable of mind and body and he wants to hurt something.”

Mabye I cheated a little. But I really like how this fic turned out in general (props to you for requesting it). This passage especially, because I used my own issues with and response to anger as a basis for Fugo’s reaction.

I think this is the most accurately I have ever described how it feels to be enraged and full of adrenaline. Not necessarily wanting to harm something or even yourself; you just need to get rid of the excess of energy that’s exploded inside of you all of a sudden. It’s an itch for action in a situation where it isn’t appropriate.

12. what is the worst writing advice in your opinion?

I’ve seen people totally against pantsing/not plotting a work (like, you-aren’t-a-real-writer against it), but I think the only thing I have to do to describe how foolish it is to discredit that method is point towards Stephen King.

An especially bad piece of advice that I’ve seen is to not write things that are not your lived experience. EX: if you are not a cis woman, don’t write a character that is. It defeats the entire purpose of writing and is ass backwards if you want any diversity within a work. Also... research is a thing that most authors do? And it teaches you to be more understanding of that lived experience???

There’s a lot I could say about it, but that sums up my biggest issues with it.

13. what is the best writing advice?

Again with Stephen King but... In a Q&A, he says something along the lines of not writing a character, by letting them write themselves. This comment was in reference to a question about Pet Sematary, I believe, which I would call the best and most alarming descent into madness I have ever read, so you bet your sweet cheeks that advice is always on my mind.

As for more general advice, creating/filling out a character sheet (x) is a really good way to figure out who your character is. I used them while writing Art & Pain and it made me realize a few holes I had to patch.

15. do you tell friends/family about your writing, or do you keep it a secret?

IRLs: they know I write. All but one or two of them do not know my handles nor that I write fanfiction.

I write original pieces which I don’t exactly hide, but no one knows those handles either.

16. what are some of your favorite words to use in writing?

enigma

superstitious

flabbergasted

superfluous

wonder

coursing

ecstatic

24. best compliment someone has given you about your writing.

One of the best ones I’ve ever gotten was on a fic under a separate handle, so I won’t share it lol. But it was about how I write emotion and that means a lot to me because emotion is very difficult for me to articulate.

It kind of blows my mind that people actually binge read my work, too... even if it’s just a longfic that would take maximum two hours to read, it’s really flattering that they like my writing that much. Repeat commenters/readers are also one of the best things ever and I love them.

25. five years from now, where do you see yourself as a writer?

God, I don’t know. I’ll hopefully be in college by then, so I have no idea what my life will look five years from now (other than the fact I will definitely be worked to the bone). I’d like to think I’ll keep doing it as a hobby, at least.

#writing #ask #writeblr #i hope the keep reading works this time..

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unordinary-analysis · 5 years

Text

Episode 162

Honorable mentions:

Small bit on John up here concerning what I said last episode because I didn’t want to ruin the flow of this post with this, but when John kicked the Joker impersonator, I knew that the old John is back. Like for certain, I just got this feeling. John may still feel like he’s running from himself or that he might be able to fight back like I brought up last time, but the thing is: John’s already lost the battle. You can’t run from yourself and you certainly can’t fight your true personality with one that’s entirely false. I’m not sure if it’s better that John doesn’t understand this or not.

Honestly, can we go somewhere with the Leilah thing? It’s just sitting there and, I don’t know, it’s not interesting anymore

Sera (as promised):

Ok, I know a lot of people have been getting worked up recently over Sera and her whole perspective of the situation at hand. And I have literally not talked about it yet. So. Yeah. Here we go

If you read the top comments, you know that people are upset and sympathetic towards Seraphina, more so than any other character currently. And that’s for a reason. Seraphina has had a rough couple of months. She lost her powers, got bullied, got harassed, got kidnapped, and then soon after, she finds out that her best friend for a long time, someone who’s she’s probably connected with more than anyone else before in her life, has been lying to her about himself. And not a small lie either. A lie that totally changes the entire meaning and foundation of their friendship. Not only is John not a cripple, but he is currently the most powerful student at Wellston and is using his power to anonymously assault other students. And it’s not like John shares anything with Sera, like his issues with the hierarchy (excluding a few comments here and there) and the majority of his thing with Arlo. Sera knows the truth, but she doesn’t actually have an explanation, which honestly is so much worse.

And the thing is, John still hasn’t actually told her himself. He’s still putting on this facade for Seraphina, not knowing that it probably hurts her the most. Because if he didn’t tell her about this, then there was this whole possibility that he was lying about other things that he also didn’t tell her. I don’t know, just… things are looking pretty shitty for Sera atm.

In this episode particularly, when Seraphina interacts with John, she seems angry and cold. Not in the way that she used to be before she met John or even when they were friends, that was a different, more apathetic feeling. Now all I’m getting from Seraphina is attempted indifferent anger, but even here you can tell that her emotions really are acting up in this. She isn’t able to pretend she doesn’t care.

Anyway, Seraphina gets really vague when talking to John, hinting however she can that what Tuesday is doing is foolish. One line in particularly is aimed at John. “Nobody’s safe anymore. So much for trying to live a peaceful life, huh?” It’s calling out all the times John has said all he wants is to be left alone by the other students, that all he wants is peace. Because, like I said, Seraphina hasn’t talked to Arlo yet (something that better be a thing soon. Maybe next episode. I don’t know. I’m not reading it until I’ve finished). Sera doesn’t know that the whole reason John is acting as Joker is because Arlo dragged him into this (not exactly, but both John and Arlo feel this way so).

All she knows is that her friend has been lying to her and still is about something so earth-shatteringly huge. The whole basis of their friendship is being stripped apart because of this secret and John doesn’t even want to tell her.

So: Sera also tries to get a reason out of John for why he’s doing things as Joker by asking some random, suspicious questions like “Was all this intentional?” About the consequences of Joker’s existence. And I don’t know I guess John doesn’t really suspect anything too bad with Sera, but honestly, are you dumb. Anyway. This is about Sera. And since we are at the end of that hallway scene it means we’re moving on to that infirmitory scene, the one that really had the comment section bawling.

I know I’ve been making a big deal out of how John has impacted Sera in the last bits, but honestly the loss of her powers seems to hold an even deeper significance to her, I feel. Sure, she cries for John and he’s on her mind, but below all of that we always see her thinking about her powers and I really think that that is really the thing that turns everything sour for Seraphina. Ever since she lost her powers, she’s had to get used to feeling helpless and less than before. Seraphina was raised to believe that her power made her special and that because of it, people would expect a lot from her and she would have to deliver. Sera was told that her powers meant that she would always come first, in everything.

This involuntary loss of her powers has in a way stripped Seraphina down of everything that made her special, that made her her. She had always identified with her ability, even when she decided she didn’t want to be queen anymore and started to hang out with John. She still walked around like she had purpose and like she could fuck up anyone she wanted. And she could. That was just who Seraphina was. In the beginning of the comic, the only way students would refer to her would be in whispers or calling her “basically a god.” That’s. Who. She. Was.

This bit isn’t articulated very well, but I’m just trying to stress the meaning Sera got from her powers, and now that they’re gone, it’s like everything in her life has suddenly become unsteady. Like even though she’s faced so much, it was only after her powers were taken that everything became so much more harsh and real. Now, there’s no safety net. In this episode, Sera thinks, “I was able to stay strong because I thought John would always be there with me. But now…. After seeing the truth… I’ve never felt so hopeless.” This quote emphasizes her hurt about John’s betrayal and her hollowness because of it. But the fact that the only thing holding Seraphina up was John after her powers got taken away is astonishing. It’s hard to believe, when I read her in the earlier chapters, that she would need someone other than herself for anything. And it’s because her powers are gone.

One of the more substantial pieces of evidence is when Seraphina asks herself, “What am I even supposed to believe anymore?” She doesn’t have anything left. She had her powers. And then she had John. What Does she have left?

Anyway I know I should talk about Sera more and what she’s growing through, but the thing is: I think I have an answer to my question and I would much rather talk about that. I’m no good at talking about feelings sorry ;-;

Theory:

Okay: I’m very excited for this. And when I thought of it I was smiling and stuff ok.

So: you know how the comic is called UnOrdinary? The flashbacks in this chapter of when John and Sera were talking about the actual book UnOrdinary make me think of something.

Is the comic re-enacting in a way the story? The book of UnOrdinary has always been so puzzling to me. It’s existence, it’s reason. Because why would uru-Chan name her comic after this one book? At first, I thought it was because it was John’s inspiration and he was going to use its morals to make the world a better place like he talked about, but that’s clearly wrong now.

I think that the book UnOrdinary itself, as an object, is not important. And it won’t be very much so for the characters. I don’t think we’ll see much more interaction with it in the future. I think, however, that the content, and not just the moral message of the book is directly guiding the story of the comic.

Every once in a while, I’ll say, “Why don’t we know how the protagonist dies in UnOrdinary,” and I’m sure by that sentence alone, it’s pretty clear what I’m thinking. Anyway, I was always confused as to why such important details were kept out of the story because if this book really is important to the story, which it has to be, why is there like no information about it. All we know is that the main character, “was the most powerful yet he still listened to others. And through that he realized everyone has something valuable to offer.” (Direct quote from flashback John in this episode). So: that was suspicious.

And that’s what I’m here to talk about. UnOrdinary as UnOrdinary.

The thing is, all this emphasis has been put onto John in regards to the book. His father wrote it. He’s read it countless times. He admires the hero. We’ve been tricked for so long that the protagonist John, but its not. That literally screams anime cliche and the whole concept of UnOrdinary is that Uru-chan wanted to write a comic that would make fun of anime stereotypes.

I believe that Seraphina is the protagonist that represents the protagonist in the book UnOrdinary. It makes sense because in John’s words, “He was the most powerful… yet he still listened to others. And through that… He realized everyone has something valuable to offer.” And as the story goes on, it’s obvious to see that Seraphina is progressively identifying more with these traits. She’s teaching low-tiers how to fight, trying to convince John that violence is bad. All John ever did was ignore the other “low-tiers” despite apparently trying to act like the UnOrdinary (book) protagonist.

Also the way that Sera thinks of John’s betrayal as if he was playing a part suggests that he himself was trying to be the main character.

This does bring other questions though. Will Sera get her powers back? What about the whole idea that in the book, the protagonist is the only person in the world that has powers? Is that some cruel twist of the current situation?

Is Sera going to die like the protagonist of UnOrdinary?

Okay I’m tired so I’m leaving this here. Because my writing is really bad today and I have homework.

I just want to bring something up quickly that’s a little more short-term. I know Seraphina has been watching John. John’s been dropping hints, but his actions don't align with what she’s saying. I’ve already said she can’t trust anything he says now and she should figure that something else is up that she doesn't know about yet.

I think that Seraphina is going to finally uncover John’s past. The stuff we know from Arlo and Isen, but maybe even something more. I want Seraphina to meet Claire.

That’s it because I can’t properly explain my ideas, but yeah. See ya soon for the next episode review. Probably won’t be tonight but who knows.

#unordinary #uno #official #episode 162 #episode review #webtoon #unordinary webtoon

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hallie-fics · 5 years

Text

author spotlight - still_i_fall

He wants to forget how it felt to be hers for just one second.

- remember it’s all pretend @in-my-head-i-do-everything-right

one of the most prolific writers in the hallie fandom, @in-my-head-i-do-everything-right (still_i_fall) has graced us with classic after classic. i had an absolute blast talking with her, and hope you all enjoy the interview!

q&a

Hey! Thanks again for including me in this! Very excited to answer the questions. I love talking about myself.

Favorite of your stories (and why)

I almost got stuck on this question. I really want to say remember it’s all pretend because I am so incredibly proud of that one. It was the first multi chapter fic that I ever properly finished and I feel like that really means something to me. I also really love that concept, and how it was able to fit in slowburn and enemies to friends to lovers and mutual pining plus a million other little tropes. And, most of all, it was really fun to write. It happened really easily. It’s something I’ll go back to sometimes if I’m ever in the mood to reread my own work.

But I also love this new thing that I just wrote called i just wanna dance with you. I think if I can pull it off, it could be something really amazing. I was able to write the first chapter in about a week and had a ton of fun doing it. And I really love writing Harry’s pov and just switching things up a little. Ugh, I really love the idea of hallie meeting/knowing each other as little kids and I think that’s pretty apparent in these two fics.

Easiest story to write

I’ll stop the world (and melt with you) happened really quickly which I guess qualifies it as easy to write. I thought it’d be more difficult just because so much of it is dependent on canon which is something I’m not entirely used to, but it ended up going to fast. I think somewhere I still have a page of notes on that Prom episode and everything that happens to Allie and Harry. I really wanted to include pieces of dialogue from the show.

I also think it was because I used to do this thing when I was bored where I’d think about who I’d want to be trapped in a Groundhog day like loop with and what’d I’d do. It was just this recurring thought/ daydream I had when I was younger so it’s definitely a situation that I’ve thought through a little.

Hardest story to write

The taste, the touch, the way we love has been a pain in the ass to write right from the start. Sometimes it’s really fun, but I think I’ve been sticking way too close to the outline I drew at the very start and have been avoiding writing it for too long. Sometimes I absolutely love to write it and have the time of my life, and other times I hate it. There’s not much of an in between. Still definitely want to finish it. Just waiting on that final bit of inspiration.

Pre-writing process

I’m all about doing a full outline. Usually. With most longer fics (anything I think will be over 6,000 words), I do a full outline where I plan out the progression of the fic and specific scenes and pieces of dialogue. Usually, the plot hits me all at once and is usually the easiest part of the writing process for me. From that original outline, I usually have at least a few specific scenes fully planned out with pieces of dialogue and/or exposition. For example, for i’ll stop the world I started out the planning process with the introduction piece of the fic. That first paragraph is straight out of the note apps on my phone. A lot of the time it’ll end up being a bullet point list of main bits. I’ll use parentheses to specify the tone of a scene or little details and then use brackets for things that I want verbatim in the fic.

But sometimes I end up with very little pre-planning. The skating au is kinda the only good example of this. I only had the roughest of outlines for that one (how i wanted the first chapter to start and end) and everything else just came together as I tried to get from point A to point B.

What drew you to Hallie

The potential. They could have a really great story and I think that’s fun. There’s a lot of chemistry there and their dynamic is fun and, yeah, I think I’m a little too far in to get out now.

Favorite line (or lines)/ section you’re proud of

God, I have so many. Hope you don’t mind me going through them. It’s incredibly self indulgent but also gives me an excuse to go through my old works.

From the very first hallie fic I ever wrote, how you wish it would be all the time:

“And Harry's not perfect. He's not what she wanted before this all started or even really after, but everything's different now.”

Sometimes I forget about this fic, but I really shouldn’t cause there is a solid chance that this was my peak. And this line is really fun.

From we kiss and we keep busy:

“The stars may have moved a little bit, but they’re still there, and they still look the same, and that’s good enough for her.”

I promise I’m not going through every hallie fic I’ve ever written but god I love this line.

From i saved a picture where your hair was braided:

“It’s late nights and long talks and video games and cookie dough. It’s almost kisses, then definite kisses, and then not wanting to wake up anywhere but his bed. That’s how she starts to fall in love with Harry Bingham.”

Just that last part. That last line. The rest is just there for some fun context. Fun fact: this entire little mini fic was a desperate attempt to stave off writer's block and is based entirely around that single line in the song Donna by the lumineers. Still had a lot of fun with it, though.

From remember it’s all pretend:

“He wonders when she’ll realise that this hasn’t been pretend for him in years. Probably never. (He’d still run away with her.)”

“In the back of her mind, Allie wonders why she didn’t try harder to stay with Harry, why now she can only seem to fall in love in front of a camera where there’s the promise of pretend.”

“She likes to think that they’re still friends, that they’re just friends who don’t talk anymore, two people who drifted because one couldn’t handle the idea of change.”

This fic has a million little bits that I love. I could literally go on forever. It’s just full of that mutual pining angst that I live for.

From but i close my eyes and i’m somewhere else:

“She did not mention this earlier because she was trying desperately hard to ignore it, but fuck, she’s really missed him calling her Pressman.”

“She wonders if Cassandra has any travel sized neck pillows.”

This fic is surprisingly good seeing as I don’t remember writing it at all. I was very much high on some sort of flu medication while writing this and I think that explains a lot about this fic. It’s fun, though. I really love the tone.

From the taste, the touch, the way we love:

“She starts to feel like she couldn’t avoid Harry if she wanted to (and somehow, as the days turn into weeks, she finds herself not wanting to more and more).”

“There’s saltwater in her eyes, hair, and mouth. Harry’s leaning back in it, floating. She is too. The water is blue, and warm, and the sky is clear. Sometimes his hand will grab hers just to pull her closer. When she thinks of calm, of happiness, and vacation, she’ll think of this moment.”

“They’re quiet for a moment. Maggie Rogers can be heard in the background, faded and slow. Harry’s tapping his fingers along to it on the wheel, eyes staring straight ahead. The road is lined with trees, and it all feels like home.”

“For a half a second, she thinks she loves him. She pushes that away and watches him throw wrapping paper behind him dramatically. She pushes it away and she smiles and she laughs and she tries not to think too hard about what all of this means.”

This fic definitely has its moments. I’m really excited to get the last part done and out, though. I just feel like I’ve spent too long on this fic. I want it done.

From i just wanna dance with you:

“Allie met Harry the same day Cassandra did. It was early in the morning and she was four and now, when she looks back, all she can remember from the moment is the vague outline of wild hair and a smile so bright and wide and carefree that it really can’t be anyone else’s.”

“She tries to remember that she likes skating with Will, that there’s no point in wondering what it’d be like if things were just a little bit different.”

“She lied earlier; gold, silver, bronze, doesn’t matter. Harry always looks good.”

“The first time he ever placed first in a competition, she was skating with him. He wonders how long he’ll associate the feeling of a gold medal around his neck with her hand in his. He hopes it’s not long. “

I’m so excited to finish this fic like you guys don’t even understand. It’s really fun and it feels easy to write (so far; knock on wood) and I love the concept.

What type of Hallie stories do you like to write/read?

I only write au’s just because I think the rules are little different, everything’s just a little bit more relaxed. You’re allowed so much freedom when it’s a completely different universe and I really love that. I went through a phase recently where I was obsessed with canon divergence and this whole idea of a history of contingency. Just there being these points or moments where if one thing was just a little different, everything would’ve changed. I love that and I think that’s really apparent in my drafts/ unreleased wips.

I’ll read anything, though. Especially with the Hallie ao3 page being so small. I do definitely have a preference still towards au’s, though.

How long have you been writing

For forever. As a kid, I’d fill up entire notebooks with story ideas. It was my favorite thing to do. When I was twelve, a teacher complimented my writing, and I think that really stuck with me. It’s just something I’ve always enjoyed doing.

Do you ever worry about how your stories are received

Not really. A little bit with multi chapter stories just because I really want every chapter to be better than the last. I just really don’t want to disappoint anyone.

What’s the hardest part of writing for you

The middle bits. I usually have a very clear idea of the beginning and end so it’s everything in between that I have trouble with. I think that’s why I’m so big on outlining.

Do you ever get writer's block and how do you deal with it

Oh my god all the fucking time! Right now, for example. Usually, I just try to work through it, especially if I have a project in progress. I also do a lot of reading to try to force some sort of inspiration. A lot of what I write is based on what I’m reading. I’ll also listen to music. And, recently, I’ve been making mood boards for my fics which has been so much fun. I really like looking at pretty pictures.

Biggest risk you’ve taken as a writer

Lol I don’t really take risks. I think the riskiest thing I do is post the first chapter of a story with none of the second chapter started. I do that a lot.

Favorite Hallie trope

Reluctant friends to very good friends to lovers. Also, living together without establishing a clear relationship. I write that a lot. Mutual pining is always fun too.

Favorite Hallie headcanon

That Harry calls Allie ‘Pressman’ which forces Allie to call him ‘Bingham’. I just think there’s something so fun about calling someone by their last name. Plus, then you get that moment when the first name is used and that gets to be significant. Oh, also that they both swear like sailors, but that’s mostly self-insert on my part.

This felt very self indulgent, but I hope it was at least somewhat enjoyable for someone.

I am forever waiting to read whatever @in-my-head-i-do-everything-right writes next. It was great to see some of the behind the scenes and I would definitely recommend her latest release cities you’ll never see on screen.

#the society #hallie #author spotlight #in-my-head-i-do-everything-right #still_i_fall

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raymondshields · 4 years

Note

1, 4, 5, 6, 11, 15, 21, 22, 23 for the writers ask?

1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

Currently, I’m working on a fic titled A Monstrous Manifesto, which is a fic entirely inspired by Cat Valente’s poem of the same name. Every line is a chapter, every noun is a part of that chapter, and every single beast named corresponds to a Spectre, allowing me to dig directly into their heads and demonstrate their full psychology.

Progress stopped unfortunately back in July on part four - a fiend, which I picked Deadly Beetle Stand for, because I just couldn’t get into his head. Kiril played soundboard for it and I’ve been humming and hawing over him trying to figure it out, but let’s be real it’s gonna come to me in a dream.

Because see here, most folks who’ve read my works, if told to point to my best, it’ll either be a) my breakthrough with Armour Adventures (which tbh if I redid I’d do better on), b) In Kismet Marcescence (which I need to sit down and plot out properly before I continue), or c) rather unexpectedly to me, Green Grows The Asphodel. Guess everyone likes that soft MiAlba where Alba gets his bastardization arc, but also I let him speedrun it in Broken Shine The Stars and people seem to like that one too, so.

The thing is with AMM is that this would be my greatest work. Like AA, it’s gen, but here’s the one advantage I’ve realized I actually have over pretty much everyone else in this fandom: I am myself a monster, fictionkind and all. I’m a Devil and a feral little beast, which means when you offer me Spectres - warriors of the dark and death who are all based around animal motifs - I take one look and go “oh! You’re like me!” and proceed to write them as actual monsters while having some unspoken and long-winded conversation about what it means to be human, what it means to be shunned, and what it means to belong among the broken.

It means that I write Spectres wildly different than anyone who isn’t Kiril (who is on the same wavelength as me and we argue back and forth about the inner details of everyone’s monstrosity), which means when I do it, nobody’s seen this shit before and apparently people seem to think it’s cool. So AMM is the very epitome of that style, of that psychological and philosophical discussion. I don’t really have a background of research in either of those things, so any similarities to works or theories already out there is entirely coincidence. Cat Valente’s poem was the first stepping stone I ever took to accepting myself for who - and what - I am. I owe as much of my identity and confidence to her as I do Zamorakian philosophy, which built my personality and is a major part of how I survived the middle school era of my life. The least I can do in return is offer the best of me out into the world.

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

“Somewhere deep below conscious thought, below his training and the life and this Lemurian body, buried under lifetimes of war, buried under the idea that a Spectre was a fighter, his blood remembered how to love the memory of the fallen.” - Beneath Blood Ties

BBT is one of my most unappreciated fics, which makes sense as it’s set almost two thousand years prior to Classic, starring a fourteen-year-old Lemurian Minos and the Saint who raised him, Aries Kirien, whose name is probably still spelled Kiriel at least once in the fic because no beta we die like Gold Saints.

The original inspiration comes from Seanan McGuire’s Once Broken Faith, and the line in question is Toby reading the Luidaeg’s blood memories after the latter told a young Karen that she couldn’t speak Faerie even in her dreams - she speaks it in her blood memories, and Toby notes that her blood remembers.

It stuck with me, though I’ve read OBF approximately a million times. It, along with A Killing Frost and An Artificial Night, are my three top Toby books. And it responded to me as someone who’s fictionkind: I couldn’t speak the language I spoke as a Devil in my dreams, or in the waking world, but I know some part of me remembers it. Would know how. The Chaorruption filters all of that into English because it thinks it’s helping, but if I were a magical creature right now, in this world, I’m pretty sure my blood would remember.

So I wrote about Minos, and the sorrow he carried. The premise of BBT is that a Pope realized some Spectres come back, went around before they became Spectres, and kidnapped the lot of them to train as Saints, leaving them all traumatized as fuck, unsure of who they were or who they followed, and messed up for lifetimes. I also wanted to show more that Spectres were more than what the Holy Wars made of them, and about digging through that exotrauma to remember that they could be kind.

Spectres, originally, would make sense as really just Hades’ servants and the ones who keep the Meikai running. Pretty sure that means they know every single death rite that’s existed in the past three millennia. Pretty sure they know how to be respectful of the dead. Pretty damn sure that below all that soldiering and war, they’re all really exhausted librarians who want to do their job and also dig graves.

But I like this sentence here best, because that’s pretty much the climax of the plot here: that there is, in fact, something underneath all his exotrauma, all the current trauma he’s been dealing with. That below all of that bitterness and war, he’s a better person than what Athena made of him.

Idk, I just think it’s neat and no I’m not projecting being ‘kin on him again. /j

5. What character that you’re writing do you most identify with?

Albafica, to nobody’s surprise. I mean, come on. A guy with a fuckton of traditionally-feminine beauty whose looks keep getting brought up, is very introverted, has seen some shit, just wants to kill people who hurt what he cares about while also not hurting the people he does care about, really wants you to keep your damn distance, is super touchstarved, and holding onto his humanity with his fingertips? Come on the only things he’s got that I don’t is an actual male reproductive system and naturally blue hair.

Once you realize that especially in TLC Athena’s actions are pretty damn horrific, especially to her Saints, Albafica has the perfect setup to become a Spectre. Seriously, if he’d been offered Luco’s deal but while holding a dying Lugonis, do you really think he wouldn’t have taken it? I explore that more in Broken Shine The Stars, but like. Albafica is the perfect fallen angel of a character. He has genuinely good intentions. He’s hurting so damn bad and only fucking once in his entire onscreen performance is that acknowledged (shoutout to Luco for that one), and if you take his sorrow and let him turn it into anger, he’s a glorious monster indeed. Albafica’s descend into monstrosity and Spectrehood is exactly what would happen if I got angry and also hadn’t been fucking nerfed physically.

I love him way too much.

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

Surprisingly, Aiacos. Alba’s hard as fuck to write. Aiacos, though. You’ve heard me go off about Aiacos at length, but like. He’s the very embodiment of the worst person you can become while still loving, still surviving. Aiacos is the type of person we’re all capable of becoming, and we all should be terrified of becoming, because every single choice he’s ever made is completely understandable and that much more horrific for it.

It’s somewhat unsurprisingly easy to get into his head. He’s fun to write because he scares me. Because if I let him do all the dumb, selfish, sadistic-looking, survival-focused things, then I don’t have to worry about doing it myself. I let him look out for only himself when the pieces are down, so I can do better.

Also I haven’t seen anyone else write him that way (Kiril being the obvious exception here), so it’s double the fun because new territory.

11. What do you envy in other writers?

Hey. Hey you fuckers who can plot shit. Give me the number of the demon you sold your soul to. Let me PLOT SHIT.

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Summaries! Titles are easy, I steal them from songs and Toby books. They’re just fancy wordplay and I have literally a list on my fic spreadsheet of titles I want to use. Summaries, though, are very important. People don’t pick fics based on title and tags, they pick based on summary. They’re your hook into the work, so you’ve got to give the audience your premise short and sweet and actually sounding appealing.

Sometimes I can write them no problemo. Other times, they’re a fucking nightmare. I try to imply the tone of the ending in my summary, because I have absolutely been blindsided by the ending in a way I really didn’t like because I thought the summary was hiding the ending. (Example - there was this one fic that made it sound like my OTP was going enemies to lovers, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it needed the fucking dead dove do not eat tag, stopped just short of serious nonsexual noncon (which wasn’t tagged at all), and ended very unhappily and it messed me up for days, I did not like it.)

So for my summaries I set the scene, set the tone, and imply the tone of the ending so you have a vague idea of where it’s going. Easier said than done.

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

Anime, probably! Manga wouldn’t lend itself too well to my style, but I’d enjoy short anime episodes, I think. I honestly don’t know. Someone tell me what my stuff would work good as. I dunno.

22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?

For fic, all the time! I write what I want to read, and since six out of seven of the Dohko/Kagaho works on AO3 were my fault, I’d better get used to reading my own writing for pleasure. Fortunately, I like most of my writing recently, so that’s pretty all right!

Don’t ask about what I had up on ff.net. Don’t. It’s old and bad and I didn’t know how to write.

23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?

Hmmm... I want to rephrase this better as ‘what fic exists only as a concept and has done so for the longest out of all the concepts of fics currently in my head’, and hmmmm. Honestly, it’s either Shion and Aiacos’ romance fic where they also get a daughter (which has a title actually, The Lost Sea Fantasia, but still hasn’t been written); or it’s Wyvern Rose and the Trials of Lightning, which is about 15th century Rhada’s two daughters, the elder of which is surprise-given his surplice and his job when he dies right before Hades does, and the younger of which is kidnapped by a spiteful goddess who doesn’t like the elder of the two.

ToL is a fic that I have somewhat plotted out, but really needs a lot of work. I’m not really sure how to go about writing it, because whenever I sit down to sketch it out, it never comes to me. It does, however, lend itself well as a bedtime / campfire story that Albafica tells Regulus while they’re out on a mission together, as part of Alba sneakily teaching Regu how to be a Spectre without anyone knowing. It’ll stay a concept for a long while until Rose crashes into my headspace and actually fucking tells me more about herself other than “oh yeah btw I’m fucking Julia” like thanks, already knew that from Julia herself, tell me more about you you awful little Judge of a dragon princess.

[ask game here!]

#asks #saint seiya #dorksmithery #thank you!!#i'm gonna go answer the other one now #but ofc send me more if yall want!

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