#he's just not a character I jive with i can't describe it

[oldandkindasad]

Okay, I'm going to say something controversial. While he's one of my favorite characters in the game, I cannot jive with the fics that portray Hosea as a perfect parent.

Don't get me wrong, Hosea is a great character, but to listen to his campfire stories and who he was, I don't think he just took on these kids and was like "I know what to do." I can't help but feel like he'd have had the paternal instinct of a pencil sharpener. And I don't mean that as in Hosea was cruel or abusive or did anything negligent or had any harmful intentions - I just think Hosea would have zero ideas what to do with a kid.

I do have a head cannon that he was totally against bringing Arthur along for a multitude of reasons. Most of them ending in "he's just a kid!" And anything he tries to explain to Arthur starts either way out of his age range and super complex, or over simplified to where Arthur thinks he's making fun of him and gets frustrated/angry until Dutch (who's is close in age as Arthur) or Bessie (who just seems like she had those sort of instincts from the way Hosea describes her) finally look at Hosea like "why are you like this?"

[endlesscacophony]

Do you ever just think about how Serah deserves better than Snow?

[peachiipark]

characters who remind me of each other for some reason

.. genshin impact + hunter x hunter ..

.. shalnark & tartaglia (childe)

being the nice bad guys that they are, these blue eyed fucks will take you out to eat, put poison in your food, and rub the antidote on their lips just for a kiss

seeing as their tones are always so.. positive.. you can never if you'll agree with their next statement

"dinner on me?" possibly

"best watch yourself! don't wanna wake up fingerless, do we?" maybe not

"i wonder how much i could get for this on the black market.." NURSE!! HE'S OUT AGAIN‼️

also i feel like shalnark would say comrade

switch their english dubbed voices around and they SLIGHTLY fit each other's faces

shalnark and childe are men that i baby who should not be babied

criminals

.. kurapika & dainsleif

pretty blonde men out for blood

they both lost their homes/families and frankly i don't think they're that happy abt it

kinda cold people but they're nice to those that deserve it

i think about them all the time

they're both pretty mysterious characters

no regard for their own wellbeing

both listen to classical music

the silence that would be emitted from the two of them if they were to be stuck in a room together is actually SICKENING and i don't want to be there

.. amber & yoimiya

pyro archer girlbosses

they both have chihuahua energy i can't describe it

are both quick to help everyone no matter the difficulty of the job

similar personalities! they would really jive with each other and be the bestest of friends

red is their color

should i start a genshin masterlist ?? :)

[theggning]

Who is your least favorite Fallout companion, and why?

Important information: I am one of those goody two-shoes players who cries if I am mean in a video game, so my RPG playstyle can be described as "all good all the time" or at worst, "puckish occasional thievery when nobody will disapprove of me."

I don't feel qualified to answer for 3, because the dumb karma-gating system means the only companions I ever got to spend any time with at all were Fawkes and Dogmeat, so I know basically nothing about any of the others. I also don't really have any least favs in NV... I stick with Boone and Lily a lot and don't really dislike anybody.

So for FO4, It's going to end up coming down to fundamental differences in my playstyle/morality versus what the companions approve of.

I don't really care for Strong. With Fawkes, the joke was that although he's a super mutant, he's extremely moral and refined. With Lily, the joke was that although she's a mutant, she's an adorable old grandmother. For Strong, the joke is that he's just a regular ol' super mutant. I admire the chutzpah of this character decision, but for me, the joke wears thin really fast. And Strong's morality is so weird he ends up hating you for doing really basic gameplay stuff like picking locks or being diplomatic, so we are destined not to get along. I leave Strong outside Trinity Tower and we're both happier that way.

But I've never actually shot Strong in the face, so I guess my actual answer to your question is Gage. Basically, fuck raiders. I absolutely cannot jive with the raider worldview and I don't have fun playing a cruel or evil character, so Gage is destined to hate me. I don't like him either. I don't find him sympathetic or interesting, and I'm really not interested in befriending or impressing him. So Gage inevitably ends up dead in the explosion of raider limbs that occurs when I finish Open Season. Whoops!

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad there's an "evil" companion option and I think the game's better for it. I guess I can understand why people might find Gage attractive or interesting, and more power to 'em. He's just one of those characters that I find completely unappealing in every way.

(For the record, I don't hang out with X6-88 very much either, but I appreciate him as a character and what he represents in the narrative. Can't say the same for Gage, hahaha.)

[cyb-by-lang]

So far, you're one of my favorite authors and I'd really like to know how to write well （≧∇≦）I can't seem to describe things/feelings/events all that clearly and I would appreciate it if you would leave a tip! Arigato *\(^o^)/*

Warning: This post is going to be a giant pain to read if you’re on mobile!

The easiest way to start describing things is to try to dig into the character’s perspective. “What would this particular person notice?” is the single biggest question when writing from a limited POV.

Kei, for example, likes riffing on other people/things when not focused on assessing threat levels. Also, it’s a lot of fun to utterly ruin language with extended metaphors that derail halfway through, because that’s how the character thinks. She notices details around her because almost everything is a simile to her, and there’s nothing she can’t gently mock.

Contrast, say, Hamlet. There’s a guy who’d literally pick up a dude’s skull while hanging out in a graveyard to wax philosophical about the guy it belonged to, while at the same time later managing to stab his almost-father-in-law by accident while trying to murder his uncle. He stops the entire play multiple times for a soliloquy, and that still jives with how much the plot itself calls him on not acting on his concrete knowledge.

There’s a joke on this site that Hamlet’s thoughtfulness is what ruins his life. Othello, over in another Shakespeare play, is destroyed by his impulsive nature. Swap their relative positions, and they thrive. But the way they think is demonstrated through what they point out in monologues and dialogue. 

But, if instead you are focusing on just getting the raw details out and plan to fuss with characters’ observational skills later, see below:

Per Beta:

Practice. Find what’s missing from your descriptions, then write shit intentionally focusing on that element until you do it naturally.

Then isolate the next element and repeat.

Also, there’s sharing your stuff and getting critique… but that’s scary.

But also: if you’re critical enough of your own writing you can get to where i am with minimal input from others.

Critique is the scariest part, tbh.

Per @abalisk

Telling yourself your bad at something is going to make you bad at something. You gotta fucking own it.

But also what does the POV character see? Taste? Smell? Feel? Describe the senses and draw from personal experience to help you paint a picture.

Like think of a forest and describe what defines a forest to you. The smell of pine and sweet odor of rotting leaves. The taste of cold air… obviously you don’t have to describe every scene like this but it can help set a mood

And the way you describe things only matures with time and practice. Reading other fics or books can help because you can study up on descriptive language, even as you are enjoying a story.

There really is no do or don’t in writing, just write what feels good and correct to you.

Side note: Going into too much detail about too many things is called “purple prose.” Using too few details is “beige prose.” Most writing exists comfortably between the two extremes, and it sounds like you’re worrying you’re on the latter end of the bell curve.

Another thing I do is roughly work out a scene, assigning dialogue to characters or whatever. Then I go back over it later (usually about a day after) and add in conversational details or character’s narration asides afterward.

Example:

“You seem to be adjusting well,” Ayame said.

“I’m used to grunt work like this,” Kei replied, hefting the second, equally-insensate demon(?) onto the oar.

“Are you sure you don’t mean ‘other humans’?” Ayame asked.

Kei shrugged. “Anyway, gambling ring busted. What’s next, Ayame-san?”

Bit scant on the details, eh? Let’s go back over that with more attention paid to how the characters think and act.

“You seem to be adjusting well,” Ayame said, as she dragged Kei’s most recent arrest into an alleyway. Her oar hovered nearby, and this particular apparition wasn’t strong enough to break plastic zip-ties during the trip back to the Spirit World. 

“I’m used to grunt work like this,” Kei replied, hefting the second, equally-insensate demon(?) onto the oar. Sure, they were a little denser than humans of the same size, but neither Kei nor Ayame paid much mind to that. “Teeth aside, I don’t think either of these two were really much of a threat to humans.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean ‘other humans’?”  Ayame asked.

Kei shrugged, then readjusted the drooping shoulder of the shirt. Urban camouflage was such a pain. “Anyway, gambling ring busted. What’s next, Ayame-san?”

I didn’t really go around and describe the entire landscape around them, because the focus was on character action. The environmental details were relegated to paragraphs without dialogue elsewhere.

But yeah! A couple different approaches you can take a stab at.

Have fun!

[redheadedbrunette]

Ahh sorry to bother you with the last ask. The “lesser than” thing came mainly from the way Ben seems to compare himself to Mike because I remember him saying some stuff along the lines of “Mike is cooler and more attractive then me” - but I could totally be reading too much into stuff lol. As for the middle school part, my recollection is that, in cannon, Ben talks about getting beat up a few times which to me seems like it could hold a little more weight then just standard social isolation, but I may be misremembering things and/or confusing them with my own head-cannons (it’s been a minute since I read some of the earlier books). Regardless, you’re totally right trauma isn’t really the right word to describe it so I apologize for that, it’s my bad. However regardless of what it looks like, bullying can be really impactful on a person’s mental health and I still think that Ben’s experience with it could be linked to the cannon character we see in the books. Again I’m sorry if I offended you in any way, I hope this clears some things up :)

You're not a bother at all, and I'm so sorry if I came off like that. I really truly do love discussing these books and people's headcanons, it's just that some of them don't really jive with canon, and the way it was phrased made it seem like you thought that was the canon characterization.

I've been re-reading the old books recently (month-ish ago), and the thing with Mike as I understood it was that Ben had spent his whole life being uncool with Mike being the cool one, but now he's a spy and is doing really cool things, but because he can't tell Mike about them, Mike still thinks he's a loser nerd (affectionate). Basically, Ben knows he's cool he just wants to be able to tell Mike that he's cool now but can't.

Bullying absolutely can be detrimental to someone's mental health, you're preaching to the choir on this one. It's just that since Ben got *out* of that environment in the first book, he's had plenty of time to live without it, and mostly just seems to regard it as an unpleasant experience. Additionally, given the fact that's it's never referred to outside of times when they're actually in that school, I think it's safe to assume that it's not that big of a deal with his character.

[julystorms]

What do you think should be done with Annie? Should she just stay in the crystal for the rest of time? Should the author have her be punished somehow? Should she switch sides? I can't remember where I read it - but someone had a theory that since Armin is the narrator - he was telling Annie the story after she woke up.

That’s one hell of an interesting theory. 

If the curse can be broken without Annie, I think it might be interesting to have that happen. Of course, then I have to wonder where her character would go from there; she’s been pretty callous about the suffering of others thus far in the series and while I do think she feels some upset--in particular over Marco--and probably isn’t proud of herself, she’s also too weak to challenge the status quo (basically her own words when she cites that Marlowe and Eren are, in that regard, special). I find Annie to be a fairly intriguing character for all of these reasons, not to mention the fact that she had fun destroying the Survey Corps, but at this point I don’t think I can be convinced that she’ll get an arc that allows her character the possibility of redemption (or perhaps more accurately, a chance to feel badly about everything she’s done). 

The joke about Annie being “conveniently in pill format” amuses me, but it doesn’t jive with the series. Consuming Annie (having someone else do it, having a current shifter do it) would be the smart thing for Paradis to do. “But it’s a waste” aside, at least that power is then out of the hands of someone we know could and probably would use it for their own gain/escape/what-have-you.

Years ago I kind of hoped Annie would get something like a redemption arc; I felt sure she was the most likely candidate for side-switching, especially with Hitch around. But now I fully doubt it’ll happen, or if it does happen, I doubt it’ll be done believably enough for my tastes. If Annie emerges from that crystal I think the fate Armin spoke of to Bertholdt and Reiner is close to what we’ll get. Perhaps something less extreme than what Armin seemed to be describing (because they can keep her underground and therefore under their thumb), but still obviously unpleasant/terrible.

It seems reasonable to me that Hange (but perhaps going way over Hange’s head, Zackly [/shudders]) might realize the best way to counteract Marley is to find out more about them, and yeah, Eren has some memories, but Annie knows. They might try harder to get her out of the crystal alive to get answers out of her.

Everyone in this fandom felt that Hitch’s attachment to Annie was meant to be played up for a solid purpose later but I’m less sure about that now than ever. There isn’t a whole lot of time left in the series and I’m not convinced that Hitch will end up mattering much now that Marlowe is dead and she’s had her Sad Moment. (At least we got that, I guess? Anyway...) It’s possible Hitch’s initial perceived connection to Annie (my interpretation of this being that Hitch sees Annie is the kind of person to “wear a mask” and she herself is also that type of person) is actually meant to be wrong, or right but not comparative (i.e., Hitch is hiding who she really is to blend in and make friends while Annie’s actually hiding idk that she’s a titan shifter who was complicit in murdering a fuckton of people). Either way, I feel if Hitch gets to interact with Annie, it’s going to be on a more depressing note than not--and I don’t think that Hitch will be able to forgive her even if she can see the whole picture.

TL;DR: I feel pretty sure Annie’s going to die and just like Ymir we’re going to have all this tenseness leading up to what her final fate is just to find out that either she’s already dead or about to die with the former being much more likely at this point in the series (see: timeskip). 

As far as what I think should be done with her... Honestly, I don’t know at this point. I sure as hell hope Isayama knows what he’s doing and that he has some kind of a plan for her.

We should have just gotten more of her in general, because if we get more of her in hindsight, post-death (or right before her death), I’m going to be annoyed. She has potential and I’m tired of seeing potential get wasted due to higgledy-piggledy storytelling.