#i'm entitled to a veteran's discount for this one.

[gontagokuhara]

THE WORLD BUILDINGG omg I'm so happy I asked. Also, I appreciate that you kept the spoilers out of the response, I really want to experience the story without knowing the surprises! I was tiptoeing around my questioning to try and avoid spoilers. I'm gonna be so honest, these asks are mostly self indulgent questions to get rid of my own brain worms😭

Like what was Rantaro's tattoo of!? Those kinds of things! Speaking of rantaro, I'm sorry, the funniest part of the previous response was hearing how Rantaro is the shining light of naegami's life, and then remembering that one response where you wrote that Rantaro terrorized Byakuya for years to show off to Shuichi 😭 I just know he's spoiled to all hell💀 I'm kind of curious what their household looked like, especially when shuichi's mom was still alive 💔

Also I think it's hilarious to imagine the gods putting up with their children's Gen-Z shenanigans. Like how is a literal immortal mystical being supposed to react and relate when their mortal child starts singing kirkalicous 💀

im so late answering this im so sorry 😭 i choose to blame tumblr's absolute dogwater notification system. but ANYWAYS! some questions have been asked and some answers are in order. customarily under the cut for anyone who doesnt care <3

i ALSO love the little silly details like that, even when it's very hard to develop them properly in the confines of the fic itself. like rantarou's tattoo; a very shitty stick-and-poke he did himself in the jankiest, unsafest way at age 14 while the parents were out of town and with shuuichi as his only witness. of a smiley face, his own handiwork, badly imprinted just above his ankle where he figured it would be easiest to hide from his dads (so far, it's worked). it's definitely what would terrorize makoto and (ESPECIALLY) byakuya the most, though his attempts at dyeing his own hair and piercing himself across the years have keyed them into his antics by now.

he is very spoiled, they both are, and as i've mentioned even before shuuichi moved in permanently with rantarou, they treated him like family long before he ever officially was. makoto and shuuichi's mom were especially close, definitely spent many an afternoon by the pool or sitting in shuuichi's old apartment or monitoring their sons together and gossiping like southern old ladies between laughter at the kids' antics. even before their households were forced to properly merge, they were common fixtures in each other's lives. initially because makoto caught wind of another demigod child in rantarou's vicinity at school, but the more time passed, and the more makoto/byakuya learned about the child and his mother (though unforthcoming with details about shuuichi's parentage), the more organic the friendships between the parents became. in that sense they were genuinely devastated by her death (an odd feeling for two ancient gods) but also genuinely passionate about taking in shuuichi because they love him, he's already family in everything but name, it's an absolute no-brainer in the aftermath of the loss.

also your last little comment about karkalicious 😭 immediately reminded me of kokichi. imagine being the parent of that and having to deal with his bullshit. good thing he's not got any, huh? (though hajime and nagito certainly deal with enough bullshit as his guardians/at camp that they're practically entitled to a veteran's discount atp)

[goose-books]

hi max!! i'm the anon who asked you about amt- i promise i'm not ignoring you, i'm just very busy rn and want to message you once i have time to read it :) i have another question: you have quite a lot of projects on this blog but you've also had this up for a few years, how long did it take you to finish each work?

like i've been looking through your project pages and am wondering what your typical process + finished work looks like because i think it's SO impressive that you've got all these organized laid-out lists of your works, with so many character development and plot details. like with amt, you said there were 16 episodes; how long was each and how did you develop the plot through a podcast format divided by episodes?? what about love, h or valentine van velt which (i think) are shorter than your other works? also do you have any tips for committing and working on & finishing a project?

and ditto that i am not ignoring you, just! school. < falls over and dies. anyway this got really long so i'm going to answer your last question first and then put the stuff specific to my projects under the cut so i don't bloat everyone's dashboard

committing to and finishing things is also hard for me, in part because i have a really terrible attention span (and in part because editing scares me, so i tend to draft things and then immediately move onto the next shiny project while the old one flounders messily). but some things that work for me:

i have multiple projects, but i only draft one thing at once. at all times i am thinking about four or five stories. this is because i am insane and everything in the world is about my writing. this actually works pretty well, because i spend a lot of time letting ideas marinate in my head. i tend to get struck by inspiration, write the first chapter or few pages of a project, then spend the next, eh, six months?* just listening to music and Thinking About It Really Hard. but eventually i hit a point where my google doc of scattered notes is substantial and i feel brave enough to actually draft the thing, and when this happens, i put my other projects aside. i mean, i'll still think about them sometimes, but i put my concerted effort toward the Current and Present Beast, because otherwise i will never do it.

(*my process with AMT was the least typical here--usually i draft in a mad dash for the end, but AMT was episodic in a way that let me drift in and out of it, so a lot of my marination time took place between episodes. but it still kind of counts if you consider that i had the original idea of lesbian high school romeo and juliet, like, two years before i figured out how to make it work as a story.)

okay, so when do i start drafting something? used to be "never," because i was convinced i needed an airtight plot and setting before i could actually do anything. my oldest oldest projects (if you remember Quark and TMR, you are entitled to a veteran's discount--) have existed for AGES because i was, like, fourteen and convinced i needed to write a plot that would make blake snyder cry. this may work for some people! but in my case i've learned that i need to just... go at the first draft, even if there are holes in it, because i usually patch up those holes along the way with sudden bursts of genius. and, worst case scenario, i can go back and fill extra info in, which i cannot do to a blank page. (i've also learned that a too detailed outline takes the fun out of it for me; i need to be able to surprise myself along the way.)

i figured this out because i realized i like to give myself external timeslots. things like nanowrimo have been hugely helpful: they have a set start date, so i cannot putter around forever fretting that my worldbuilding is thin. obligatory statement that i know nanowrimo has some problems, but it could be anything--you could even just go, "okay, i'm gonna start this in october," or, "i'm gonna start this the next time i'm on break from school" (unless you work year round and then i don't know, i'm sorry, i'm not a real adult).

extra points if there is an end to this (eg. the end of the month; the point when you have to go back to school)--not because you have to finish by that deadline, because nobody's gonna sue you, but because 1. you know you are not in drafting mania forever and will soon do something else, and 2. you can set goals more strategically than "uhhhh i want it to be done." of all the projects i have drafted successfully, i would say 60%? were nano efforts that just spilled over into december and january, because by that point i had enough momentum to keep going (at a slightly less mad-dash pace).

throughout the whole process of marinating and drafting, i try to find comparable/inspiring media! this doesn't have to be as specific as a publishing comp title; it's literally just anything that gets me excited about the project. that way, when i'm chilling and not actively writing, i'm still turning over ideas, even if it's just with half of my brain. for example, with darkling, obviously i read a bunch of king lear retellings/adaptations, but i also focused on: books with similar worldbuilding vibes (eg. Nghi Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful); books concerning autism and schizophrenia (for representation reasons & just to get my brain going); and books on abusive relationships (surprise surprise; darkling is about king lear).

because i have a huge boner for lists and organization i have a google doc where i have put some media comps for each of my projects (most of which i haven't read yet, but also some books that inspired me or hit the tone i want. or books i hate that inspired me via spite). i consult it fitfully

but how do i know which project to work on when i have so many? great question. i don't have good advice here. a lot of my projects coincide with intense hyperfixations (obviously darkling was my lear era; godsong started with the start of my roman history... thing...), which makes it easier. beyond that, i try to figure out which projects have the most groundwork laid. although perhaps groundwork is the wrong word, because i find that for me personally, it's not a matter of how much i know about characters and plot, but how crazy i am about the stuff i do have. the main reason i write as much as i do is because concepts seize me and thrash me around. this is why i have never tried to do story commissions, because i worry that i won't ever finish something if it isn't living in my mind rent-free 24/7 when i should be doing homework.

this is not something i can really advice about because it's just how my brain works, but i will say that if you (general; not necessarily you, anon) have had trouble finishing things in the past, it might not be a problem of structure--it might just be that you haven't had Your Absolute Favorite Idea yet. and at some point you will have an idea that obsesses you so thoroughly that you have no other choice. i mean, external structure is also really important, don't get me wrong. but sometimes you have to start twenty things to find the thing you really want to work on.

(and sometimes you have to start the same project four times to make it work. i rarely fully Give Up on something; i just tuck it into my back pocket in case i figure it out someday or cannibalize it for parts. in fall 2022 i started a short story, then realized i didn't have a plot or even a series of events and ran out of steam, but i kept thinking about it occasionally. and then almost exactly a year later, i went, "oh!," and went back to it and finished it and i'm pretty sure it got me into clarion west. so. nothing is ever lost!!! you can always repurpose characters or plots or lines from unfinished projects!!! you can always revive them like frankenstein!!! it's always morally correct!!!)

ok maxproject nonsense under the cut

re: "how long do they take?" this is the worst possible answer but. It Depends. some of the projects i have up still aren't finished. once i start drafting, i'm pretty fast, but the marination part can last months or years. i also think my outlining has been getting increasingly detailed, mostly because i've finally sort of figured out how story structure works.

i wrote valentine van velt in the summer of 2020 (and yeah, comparatively, that is really short for me), and with that i had a vague idea of the plot and sectioned it into eight (okay, seven) "parts," and then i just... started typing. (re: love h: i actually have not written more than a few scattered scenes from this yet. it's lying in wait. someday it'll grab me by the hair again)

darkling (drafted late 2020) and AMT (2019-2020) came out roughly the same: i started with a big-picture plot (easy; shakespeare gave them to me), then plotted out each episode or act before writing it (darkling is split into seven acts), but i was also actively writing as i was doing that plotting so it was sort of a cartoon of a guy putting railroad tracks down in front of his train at lightspeed. like, "oh, i'm gonna start act five tomorrow, better figure out what fucking happens in it [beyond 'the plot of king lear']!" with darkling i would figure out roughly what was going to happen in each act + which POV would go in which order, and i would do this literally the night before i started typing the next chapter, and it was like a beautiful desperate puzzle. with AMT, i had a vague list of "this stuff happens next" and i would try to squash closely-related events into the same episode. don't ask me how long the episodes are. we can't talk about this

my more recent writing has been a little more structured--godsong is the longform thing i'm working on right now, and the outlines have gotten to the "i know how many chapters there are going to be and who does what in them" stage of neuroticism. though, granted, i still need that element of surprise, so a lot of the time it looks like this

i left my typos in there because i'm an honest man.

anyway so "how long did it take" depends on whether you're counting just the drafting or the whole marinating part. i started thinking about godsong in 2021 and i started writing it that nanowrimo, and i finished the draft in january, but godsong2 (there are gonna be three of them. pray for me) took longer because it was more complicated and i was busier (that was summer 2022--summer 2023). darkling is my fast freak of a son because i read king lear in march 2020 and then finished the draft 2021 and ignored it forever after, amen. AMT secretly goes back to, like, 2017, because that was when i first thought, "hey, what if i wrote a high school romeo and juliet with lesbians," so some of the characters were bobbing around my brain before i started writing, but the actual writing was... two years? three? something like that. i wrote the first pages of VVVID in summer 2019 (guess who was in... [jazz hands] exposure therapy!), but i didn't write any more of it until summer 2020, when i was like, "okay, i'm now 17, this is the book about being 17, i'm just gonna chug after it until it's done." my old old bastards (quark & TMR) still exist in fragmented pieces, especially because it's hard to try to figure out which parts to retain or discard from a story you invented when you were Fucking Thirteen, but they remain in my head so i feel like it counts.

holy shit this is such a long answer. i am so sorry. thank you so much for the kind words and questions. gently applies a sticker to your forehead

[erlkoenige]

still can’t believe tumblr turned fucking. kylo ren into a social justice issue

[papillon-de-porcelaine]

Listen. I've been through Sherlock. I watched every single TJLC video (yes, I'm not kidding)

I've been through supernatural. I watched the last few seasons as they aired and I was obsessed with the show.

I've been through Voltron. I watched the whole show as it aired, lived through the worst fandom experience of my life, read the klible (you're entitled to a veteran discount if your remember that one). KICK was all over my dash.

So God help me, if the suffer brothers got me falling for yet another queerbait, I am ready. Come at me.

[cuddliestbear]

Ummmmmm....

Kay....sooooo, whiney entitlement? Okay, what about the people, who DON'T let themselves foolishly buy luxuries they can't afford?

I agree, some of the younger generation, and a lot of my own are not great with money. Not sure still if I'm a millenial or Gen Z cuz I'm 20 and websites differ on the matter. But, I digress.

Most of us, myself included get low bank account notifications because I just barely managed to afford my everyday bills.

Bc idc, I'mma give you MY math.

Job: Makes 12.50 an hour, avg about 40 hrs a week, then I have to have my taxes taken and my health insurance taken because I have a policy with my work.

Avg around 600 to 800 depending on if I am allowed to work the full eighty hours per payperiod. In the summer, we barely are able to work five hours a day because we don't get any work, if at all. So, that sucks, because central air costs go even higher in the summer, considering I live on florida. Electricity, water bill, mortgage, car insurance. (Managed to buy my car used for 1000, so I avoided a car payment.)

Okay, water is 100 a month, electricity is a little less or more depending on usage.

Add that to 700 dollar mortgage payment per month(only cheap because our house is under my father in law's name and he is a veteran. His own condo get a discounted mortgage payment and the overall cost is less too) Plus food, which is a good four hundred a month. Plus clothes, and other necessities.

AND THAT'S NOT COUNTING MY ANIMALS.

Which tbh are the cheapest things on the list to take care of.

Me and my boo get by because we don't buy stupid shit and don't treat ourselves often. Maybe its weird of me to think, but I would hazard a guess that wanting to treat yourself if you can afford it isn't a crime or something shameful. You worked hard for that damn money.

I am so FUCKING sick of the older generation saying how EVERY single person under a certain age is ungrateful or doesn't know how to function in society and be the same type of adult they were. Teach us your wisdomly ways, then and try to get and keep a job with your sour attitudes and rude demeanors in this day's climate, I beg of you.

Another issue with this is that Some people SIMPLY don't make enough. Some people have to get upwards of three roommates to help pay bills and make end's meet, and even then it can be a gamble.

I am in no means well off, but I make enough combined with my Jonathan to live. Every once in a while we can afford to have a nice dinner, we can afford to buy a dvd, we can afford to go to fun things. But that's only because we plan ahead for it. Only because we use our brains.

Whiney Entitlement....

The only fucking humans I meet who are entitled are ones raised by entitled people, and those are raised by the boomers who think that they(the boomers) are a gift from the gods, can do no wrong and deserve everyone's respect and admiration and compliance even when undeserved. Not all boomers are like this, but enough are for me to make the comparison.

Younger generations are tired of being treated like garbage by the older ones. The good younger gen people, not the entitled ones, they will think you're wronging them no matter what you do. But the good ones? They just wanna do their best, they want to have good lives with a house and a family and pets and friends and a steady job.

The problem isn't whiney millenials, it's the assholes who raised them and the assholes who fucked the economy so badly that people have to work three jobs to afford basic human needs.

So, please, come at me for my "entitlement".

Wanting a good life is a human ideal. And not a crime, for boomers once called that ideal the American Dream. Those same people decimated that dream and still expect us to reach it the same way they did.

Sorry for the sudden midnight outburst, but I have very strong feelings on this matter, and hate people who accuse an entire group of people of something based on a few outliers. I only accuse when I see an overabundance, like with the boomer gen. Again, not all of them are like that, but, more are than there should be.