#like sometimes i can just see the writers' mind map of why they put that character in and i'm like. hm. and all i can see is the plot devic

[angelsdean]

there are a few side characters i just find so boring, uncompelling, or only relevant in the era they exist / only enjoy from my personal interpretive lens but if you express any of that some people will act like you've committed a murder. but sometimes a side character is just a side character there to fulfill a specific narrative purpose! and that's fine. like i don't hate any of them, but i also don't particularly care abt them beyond their narrative purpose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[greenerteacups]

Hey GT, glad to see you're back! I'm still halfway thru Lionheart (just read the world cup chapter, what a delight) and your notes got me wondering.

I'm sure you've probably answered this before but how do you manage to make the world feel so rich? I'm not that into the fandom so I don't know If there are some things fanon agreed upon or if it is your own musings about the magic world. Like Draco explaining to Hermione about portkeys or how many languages Krum speaks.

How do you decide what's important enough to get a mention? Where do you go when you need answers and Canon is not enough to provide it?

Thanks for the kind words, and for the question! It's a matter of personal taste, like anything. Some writers prefer an athletic, streamlined plot, with only as much worldbuilding as you absolutely need (how does Panem run a command economy of 4.5 million people primarily on fossil fuels when its coal district has a population of less than 10,000? fuck off! who cares! they're Y/A dystopias about a TV show where teens beat each other to death!). Some writers, on the other hand, won't bother to start the story until they know the pH of the soil in every region of the world they're writing about. I'm somewhere on the second half of the scale, in that I'll give details that aren't strictly necessary to the plot, just because I like to feel like I'm writing about a world where real, extraneous things can happen. Some details are foreshadowing; some details are Special Mouseketools that will Help Us Later; and sometimes, you just get to know a cool fact about portkeys.

I guess part of the fun of building out a world is getting to think about Everything, which is what my brain normally does. I have a pretty broad body of literature as a starting gate, so there's plenty of room to play. E.g., when I started writing Krum, I thought about how he's not super fluent in English in canon, and that naturally made me ask why, because he clearly has taken English, so either he only started lessons recently or it hasn't been a priority for him; and then I went "wait, what's his first language? Bulgarian, right? But Durmstrang isn't — hang on—" and then I pulled up an actual map of Europe, which led me to realize that he wouldn't likely be speaking his first language at Durmstrang, which means he already had to become bilingual just to start his wizarding education, and that explains part of why he doesn't have a ton of time/effort to spare for a third language, plus he'd probably have a translator available whenever he traveled with a team because he's a B.F.D. — etc., etc. And then you keep thinking about that until you remember that you're supposed to be writing a fic, and you scramble to get back to doing that. Only now, you have worldbuilding! Congrats.

To try for an even halfway useful answer to your question: worldbuilding becomes most important when it creates limitations, because limitations define your characters and give them chances to develop/reveal themselves. So the details of portkeys become important because they explain the limitations of magical travel, which is a big nebulous ??? in the original series, since the introduction of teleportation via Apparating means that all other forms of transportation become inefficient by comparison. It also means the limitations introduced by travel — that is, not all characters can be in all places at once — also go away, because anyone can be anywhere immediately. From a narrative perspective, this sucks massive horse ass. Hence: I dumped a shit ton of limitations on Apparation (i.e., (1) it requires a ton of energy, (2) it's really fucking hard, (3) it's really fucking dangerous, (4) it's more of both the farther away you're going, (5) it's more of both the more people you take with you, (6) you can't Apparate without a clear destination in mind which means (7) you need to have been there already, and so (8) some people prefer not to do it). Hence, I also put limitations on portkeys (i.e., they have to be set up well in advance, you need to identify out both destinations precisely beforehand, and the calculations are difficult to do). Those limitations, and the Watsonian explanations you create for them, are your worldbuilding. They're what make the world feel real, because they give it grit and character. They give you a more complete sense of what you can and cannot do.

The rest of it is taste and preference, really; it's what interests you, and what parts of the world you want to explore. That's going to be unique to every author, and that's the beauty of worldbuilding — it reflects the parts of the world that you like to think about.

[luffyvace]

Nami x female reader ☆

This gif is so high quality?! And she looks so beautiful here⁉️⁉️😍

I’m writing this with anime nami not opla but I just had to use this gif 😋

shopping w her WILL take hours!

not that you mind! It’s fun!

you guys laugh, make jokes, buy snacks and try on clothes

you two hype each up and “no! Your butt looks fine in those jeans!”

you two are fashion icons

anyone who says otherwise is jealous~

sometimes you do fun challenges where you buy each other clothes and see if you like them

(You always do)

if your silly like luffy/usopp

she doesn’t get as annoyed with you as she with those two but she still scolds you

at least you don’t get hit 🤷‍♀️

”WHY are you going along with those two MORONS’ plans?!”

”why not namiii? It’s fun, you should join us!”

*huffs and turns to get robin instead* “Robiiiin! Could you help me raise the sails?”

your more likely to convince her to goof off than luffy and usopp so they always make you do it

and sometimes she goes with it!

only because she loves you and your silly little smile 🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️😒(😊)

if your a more serious person though she low key appreciates that!

and by that I mean the fact that you are sane

you might’ve got together because your romantic

like as in you know how to go on an actual date and don’t have a nut for a brain 💖

you buy her paper and pens as gifts

and also clothes!

especially after pirate payday 😉😋👌

you guys likely talk about your past together and if you were there for hers you comfort her

vise versa as well if you joined after her

If your an affectionate person she doesn’t mind but she lowkey prefers to be in private

like little kisses, linking arms and hugs are more than fine (as long as you don’t overdue it)

but being straight up sappy?

no.

That’s not how she rolls..

if you have a lot of energy…..

”calm down y/n! Enough with the kisses!”

”okay okay! Not now!”

never in a mean way or anything

Just do this later will you?! 😅

Stress Sunday <3

where you both vent your feelings to each other weekly (or monthly if chaotic circumstances happen-)

this started because Nami’s stubborn independence and somewhat wack communication skills (LOL)

you initiated it

she agreed because she needed it more than she wanted to admit and knew that

mostly just strawhat stress (luffy, usopp, chopper, sanji and zoro)

you guys go in the girls room, the aquarium (if luffy and usopp ain’t there) or the library on every Sunday you can

you guys talk about the past a lot (as well as some of the straw hats as well)

you both welcome robin with open arms if she wants to join too !!

she pours tea or lemonade and serves the snacks sanji made!

she’s an excellent advisor so listen up👂‼️

doing/washing each other’s hair is a thiiiiiingg!!! 💥💥💥

it’s so relaxing and goes hand in hand with stress Sunday 😍

you both take turns scrubbing the luffys and headaches away

really massaging the scalp and making the other melt in comfort 💗💥💗💥

then you put it up in a cute style for the day/night

and btw when this happens it’s it RELAX time

which means it doesn’t matter if the ship is sinking, flying or doing back flips the navigator is OFF limits

Whatever the straw hats do just don’t let zoro take charge 🤷‍♀️

Nami’s love languages are quality time and some gift giving<33

quality time doesn’t have to be special

as the one who enforces peace around the merry/sunny she appreciates any quiet she can get with you

although a refreshing hot spring/beach date would be ideal….

again it can just be doing simple things;

walking on a new island (that’s not chaotic)

reading

creating maps while you do your hobbies in the same room

watching the ocean/sunset

chatting and eating lunch

all of those little things matter to her 💛

for gift giving 💝

It depends if you like flashy materialistic things or gifts with deep meaning

for flashy gifts she gets you luxurious dresses/suits (if your a more masculine female)

lots of rings

anything of the highest quality for your hobbies

your a writer? A pen that doesn’t hurt your fingers just for you! :)

a artist? Lots and lots of high quality paint!

for more sentimental gifts it’s bracelets with your birthstones

pictures of previous vacations you enjoyed

she’d honestly prob still get you stuff for your hobbies too

and tangerines 🍊🧡

you being a female doesn’t fluster her much or anything

she’s quite content before and after she realizes she loves you/when you start dating

if anyone wants to insult you they can try it-

it’ll only land them in a world full of hurt

and by that I mean Nami’s version of fist of love 😜

Robin is your biggest supporter

Luffy is like the most carefree guy ever

if anything you’ll get a “huhhh?? nami why are you dating a girl?”

😬😒 ✊ 💥💥

he never mentions it again..

zoro really doesn’t care

none of his business 🤷‍♀️

usopp supports! He’s aware of lgbtq+ and doesn’t mind at all<3

sanji is………utterly crushed and disappointed….(ROBIN-CHWAAAAAN~ [he’s going to vent and plead for her love])

chopper is a reindeer….so once you explain it he’s okay with it! c:

franky also knows about lgbtq+ and is probably one.. supports!

brook (♡) is educated and has no qualms<3

(dudes’ like 90 how could he not know?)

jinbei knows what lesbians are, he supports!

for the record if you tell luffy that two girls liking each other = lesbian = lgbtq+ = the thing bon clay is = queer…..he might get it !!

LOL

;3 -Brook

[marypsue]

what has griffin mcelroy taught you about the dreaded middle of a story, if you don't mind me asking? i've listened to taz and i feel like i have the barest memories of this being mentioned, but for the life of me i can't remember the details

So I have to apologise, because it wasn't something that he said directly or a piece of advice that he gave, exactly. And I don't know that I can say that everything about what I learned came directly through TAZ Balance, or if TAZ Balance was just a lens through which I could finally see and understand some things that had been building up for some time before that.

BUT.

For the longest time, I had a bad habit of getting hung up in the middle part of any story I was working on. I had a vague sense that Something had to happen between the inciting incident and all the 'ooh, what's going on?!' of the first third, and the big reveals and explosions and fanfare of the final third. But I had absolutely no idea how to map out what actually had to...happen, in that middle third. So I mostly just...didn't.

This, as you may have realised, is an excellent way to get hopelessly lost and mired in the Dreaded Middle, and never make it to that fun exciting ending that you have in mind.

I'm not sure why it was TAZ Balance that unlocked something for me. Whether it was the fact that I was listening to Griffin's Baby's First Long-Form Narrative unfold as it was written, or if it was the collaborative TTRPG format, or what. But there were two important things that I figured out about the Dreaded Middle as a result of listening to TAZ Balance.

First, that I had some secret rules about the Dreaded Middle, that even I hadn't realised I had. One of those rules was also a misconception about outlining - I felt like I had to know exactly how everything in the Dreaded Middle was going to go, how it was all going to play out, before I could write it. I felt like I couldn't put a problem in front of my characters that I didn't already know the solution to.

But listening to some of the big TAZ moments - the train crash in Rockport Express, Hands Outstretched - and The The Adventure Zone Zones about them, and realising that Griffin set up an interesting problem and then let his players figure out the solution, and that sometimes the solution they came up with was not the solution he'd had in mind, but actually ended up making the story better, really illuminated it for me. I didn't have to be all things to my story at all times. I could break it down - come up with a fun and interesting problem to put in front of my characters, and then come at it from the perspective of my characters and try to figure out how to solve that problem and get to the next big interesting thing to happen in the story.

(Jettisoning this secret rule has also really helped me embrace outlining, which has helped me improve hundredsfold as a writer. With my previous secret rule in place, of course outlining felt boring and soul-draining and like it sucked all the fun and spontaneity out of writing! Because it did! Because I was trying to plan out every single little moment, down to the last detail, in chronological order, instead of figuring out what my big problems were going to be first, and then going through and brainstorming what possible solutions there could be to them and what I would need to add to or remove from the story to allow each solution to work!)

The second thing that I learned from TAZ Balance was that I was thinking of a story in three parts: beginning, middle, and end. And I had a sense of The Middle as a place where stuff had to happen in between The Beginning and The End, so that the story would be long enough to feel satisfying. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I had this sense of The Middle as...well, basically filler.

I cannot put my finger on why, exactly, TAZ Balance was the thing that broke me out of that mindset. Maybe it had something to do with how each individual story arc was, well, its own story with rising action and a climax within the larger, overarching story? Maybe it was just that everything that happened was so much fun, even if it didn't necessarily feel...connected to the larger, overarching story in a way that was easy and natural to parse? Maybe it was the fact that Griffin threw everything and the kitchen sink, genre-wise, at it? I don't know.

But for some reason, listening to that show was the first time I really got that the Dreaded Middle was not really a separate, discrete, modular piece of story, but just...the beginning and the ending running into each other. Yeah, it has its own fun problems - and they can get weird and apparently unrelated to the Big Overarching Story! - but it also is just the place where all the 'ooh, what's going on!?' of the first third flows almost invisibly into the reveals and explosions and fanfare of the final third.

I had a secret rule here, too, about how long the story had to go on before certain types of big reveals and dramatic moments could be 'allowed'. And, while I didn't identify it and jettison it immediately after finishing TAZ Balance, I know that TAZ Balance contributed. No part of the Dreaded Middle needs to be filler. Stuff can just happen. This isn't Disneyland, you don't have to hang around waiting for your FastPass time. The story doesn't have to have boring stuff you have to get through to get to the interesting bits. The interesting bits are the story.

So! In a nutshell, that is my advice for dealing with the Dreaded Middle, thanks to Griffin McElroy and the shenanigans of his family. 1) You don't need to know the solution when you come up with the problem, that's what the writing part's for, and 2) if you're getting bored and bogged down in the Dreaded Middle, make one of the things you're looking forward to happen.

[itsfirecat]

20 questions for fanfic writers tagged by @graham-cracker-guillotine I'm so sorry I missed this for like 2+ weeks XD. I forget I have a tumblr except for those few moments every few months when I spam reblog a bunch before crawling right back under my internet rock.

How many works do you have on AO3?

67! (Which is wild to think about, considering I've written all of them in the last two and a half years I think?)

What's your total AO3 word count?

I'm still a little astounded by this, but it's 203,676 as of December 15th 2023

What fandoms do you write for?

I largely write for DC at the moment, though I regularly write crossovers w/ Marvel, and I've got a not insignificant amount of Danny Phantom, White Collar, and Criminal Minds crossover fics too

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Falling Like Dominos (2363 kudos, Gen, a DPxDC crossover fic I wrote for DPDC week in 2022)

2. In the Pits (1914 kudos, Gen, again a fic I wrote for DPDC week 2022

3. Echoes of the Past (1755 kudos, Teen, More DPDC crossover stuff, but this time in 7 chapters)

4. Without a Compass, Without a Map (1452 kudos, my current longest fic, and main WIP, Teen, A Marvel/DC crossover, Tim Drake/Peter Parker)

5. Mass (1230 kudos, Gen, White Collar x DC crossover, Birdflash)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I haven't really in a while. Not because I don't want to, but because I look at my inbox and I feel overwhelmed XD. I really just need to set aside an hour or two sometime and go through to respond to them all. University has been eating a lot of my time this year.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I really don't end up writing a lot of angst, and when I do I really like making sure I know they're all going to be okay, but I think of my finished fics (because there's one I know the ending is going to be angsty as hell for, but that's yet to be written XD). But if I had to pick something from the limited selection I have, I think I'd choose Legislation, which is a White Collar x DC crossover fic, though I think you could argue it's bitter-sweet rather than angsty.

What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Happy endings in a fic are hard for the opposite reason that angst was XD. I have so many. But right now I think if I had to pick a favorite I'd have to go with my most recent fic, Sunflower, just because I'm still really happy with how that one. It's Superbat, and just pure fluffy getting together.

Do you get hate on fics?

I've had one or two, but tbh those comments were so cartoonish they made me laugh before I deleted them. In general my readers are pretty great, and I'm really happy with where I am in writing and posting online.

Do you write smut?

Not normally, I have one smut fic posted, and another floating in my drafts, but it's not normally what I go for. I like tooth rotting fluff most of the time, and being ace-spec I always feel like the "how do you do, fellow kids" meme when I write smut XD.

Do you write crossovers?

So many XD. So so many. I mean, all my top fics are crossovers, I think that speaks for itself

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of, but if anyone happens to see my stuff floating around outside of Ao3 please give me a heads up, I'm proud of the work I put in, and don't really want others just taking it and claiming it as their own.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I haven't, mostly because it's not something I'm generally comfortable with. As someone who grew up bilingual, I'm keenly aware of how much meaning can get lost in translation, and while I'd be flattered if someone wanted to put in that tremendous amount of effort, I would struggle with not being able to check that the intent behind the words stayed the same.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I haven't, and tbh I don't think I'd be too great at it. I have pretty strong ideas in my own head for where I want something to go, and I'm not always the best team player XD.

What's your all-time favorite ship to write for?

There's too many fun ships to pick from, I really enjoy switching it up and trying different things. Such is the curse of a multi-shipper I fear.

What's A WIP that you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I- I'm not sure. I know I have so many ideas in my notes for my Marvel irondad fic series, and while I really do want to still execute all those (especially because it was those fics that got me to posting my work in the first place), my brain is too deep in the DC headspace to write anything purely Marvel at the moment.

What are your writing strengths?

I like to think that I'm pretty okay at setting up story lines, and hinting at/building up towards a finale. I see people try to guess where my plot is going to go later on in the fic, and it always makes me happy when people are able to guess accurately. Ideally I don't want a reader to read a decision I make at the end of any of my fics and be confused as to where the idea came from, I want there to be things readers can find when the go back and read for a second time that they missed before.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I get pretty wordy, especially in moments like this when I'm also doing a lot of academic writing (because I kind of need to be). I'd also like to work more on my dialogue, and I'd like to get better at planning/plotting my fics before hand and gauging how long they'll be before I start.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I think it's okay if it makes sense, and you can still understand the fic without knowing what the dialogue says. I've done it for Tony and Peter, and had them speak to each other in Italian, but I usually did that more-so to show familiarity and comfort, what they were saying wasn't particularly important (and it was also in part so I could practice my own Italian XD)

First fandom you wrote for?

I think it depends? First on Ao3 was Marvel. First in posted fanfic was years ago on Wattpad, and a PJO/HP crossover fic. And before that back when I was like 11 I wrote Harry Potter fanfic without knowing what fanfic was.

Favorite fic you've written?

Picking a favorite fic feels a little like being asked to pick a favorite child. I think I don't have a definitive favorite, and how much I like any of my fics really depends on the day, my mood, my headspace, and any number of other invisible and unknowable factors. But I think for the purposes of this, I'm going to go with either, Assuming Makes an Ass out of You and Me, which is a White Collar x DC crossover fic, Gen, with minor JayRoy, or Half a Secret which is a Criminal Minds x DC crossover, Teen, and was one of my longest ever writing projects when I posted it.

Now to pass this along (though feel no pressure to do this if you don't want to ofc) @cassandrasdreamworld @notherdeadrobin @marirah

[obstinaterixatrix]

so something sondheim did was he’d sometimes ask the book writer to write a monologue that sondheim would use as inspiration for a song, and that’s what happened for ‘talent’ and it’s really cool being able to see that in execution, here’s the monologue that weidman wrote for paris in an early draft of the script:

Ever since I was a boy, I've had a passion. For the arts. The theater, the ballet. When I was still at school, I was convinced that I'd grow up to be a painter. Turned out I didn't have the—I don't know, the talent, the dedication, it doesn't matter. Because when I stepped off that train in Palm Beach and looked around, I realized what I was meant to be. Not an artist, but a patron of the arts. I had a vision. I saw it all, right there in front of me. An entire community, spread out along the seashore. The finest artists colony in all the world! And do you know what had revealed it to me? It was the light. The light off the Atlantic. It was like no light I'd ever seen before. Hard-edged. Unsentimental. It was ours. It was American. And in that light—in that luminescence—I saw painters, sculptors, artists of every type, working at the absolute height of their powers, laboring to bring forth a new art for a New World. And I saw myself, too. Wandering among them, urging them on, setting their genius free. Me. Paris Singer. Savoring the satisfaction of delivering their brilliant work into the brilliant light... That was my dream. It still is.

I'm linking the version from wise guys because I'm biased, here are the lyrics for ‘talent’, unchanged through all three iterations of the show:

When I was a tyke I said, "What I like Is art I know I'm a boy But what I enjoy Is art."

Looking at paintings, going to plays Music and books informing my days Filling my mind Flooding my heart With art!

I had this dream of becoming an artist A painter, a poet, who knows? I had a nice little talent for drawing And a natural feeling for prose I even began to compose

So many talents Wasn't I blessed? All of them good A few of them better None of them best

Just enough talent To know that I hadn't the talent So I put my dream And my self-esteem To rest

I couldn't decide Then one day I spied Palm Beach A speck on the map No more than a gap Palm beach

Jungle and seashore, muddy and raw But in a flash I suddenly saw What it would take What I could make Palm Beach!

I had this dream of a city of artists Versailles by the Florida sea A sort of world congregation of artists All encouraged to set themselves free I knew what I wanted to be!

I'd be their host and supporter The patron saint Of the things that they'd write And compose and paint

I shall wander among them with lavish praise As they carve their statues Construct their plays Design their buildings Recite their rhymes Making modern art Fit for modern times!

So many talents Gathered en masse! Painters and poets Artists and dreamers Watered like grass

And if the talent I have Is for nurturing talent Then succeed or fail I will see they sail First class

And my father can go stick it up his ass!

I think it's really interesting to compare the monologue with the lyrics, and it's super cool to get the chance to... weidman's monologue briefly touches on the talent aspect but mostly centers The Vision whereas sondheim spends a lot more time on that idea of lacking A Certain Something to truly achieve (perceived) greatness in art. another thing that sticks out to me is that the song is composed to evoke a train, so it makes sense to me why sondheim would center more of the momentum of paris' dream rather than the visuals or american ideals. (sidenote, it's interesting that both of sondheim and weidman's shows has a deeply American(tm) core to it, assassins links the various assassins through the [distortion of?] american ideals they represent while wise guys has the dogged pursuit and--to some extent--failure to realize the american ideals expressed by their parents) (actually, tangentially, when I say 'distortion' of american ideals, I don't think it's a *true* distortion per se--manifest destiny is a core american ideal and the assassins essentially carry out the logical conclusion of the idea that Everything Belongs To Me As Is My Divine Right) (so 'distortion' as in going beyond the 'benign' or any positive interpretation of american ideals) ok as I was typing this, I think rather than de-emphasizing the american ideals exhibited in weidman's monologue, sondheim works it into the music and lyrics (train motif, emphasis on forward momentum)--which is ALSO interesting because while paris is initially presented as a down on his luck ex-heir striking out on his own to follow his dream, when things get tough paris goes back to his father (lol). I really like this song, it's a great introduction to a character that's completely sincere but also. a huge misrepresentation by the character of himself.

[incalculablepower]

two questions! 1. would you mind sharing a piece (or type) of feedback that makes you feel good about your work (and why), and 2. feedback that you wish you'd gotten on something but didn't? please be as specific or general as you'd like.

my favourite kind of feedback to get is when people tell me they've cried or laughed out loud or gasped or what have you... i love it when my writing can trigger a physical reaction in another human being somewhere else in the world. i also really like it when people write a comment that basically says like... "i get it!" the kind of fics i like to write aren't procedural or plot heavy, like, this happened and then this happened and then something else happened. i think about my writing very visually, sometimes i feel like i am drawing the edges of something and hoping the reader can fill in the negative space. it's tough and i always wonder if it's successful. so when someone writes a comment like "oh, i saw exactly what you did here" and can spell out the thing i refused to spell out in the fic, i really like that

i suppose this is par for the course, but i do notice that popular ships get more of a response than gen, rarepairs, minor characters, etc. it makes sense, i mean, it takes more for me to read something out of my comfort zone... but now as a writer i'm very aware that the amount of work i put into something, or how proud i am of it, or the risks i feel like i'm taking with it, don't map to that popularity either. (it's not like i phone in my less-popular stuff and put more work into something with juggernaut ships). so i guess the feedback i'm missing is just... more! lol. oh and this isn't about MY fic but sometimes when i rec a fic i will go back and check the kudos/comments to see if it's gotten anything new. and it kind of bums me out when it doesn't! when i rec something i feel is underrated i really want to know if someone else loved it as much as i did.

[technowoah]

Dick and Jason w League of Assassins!reader

What life would be if you were apart of the LOA [aka my personal headcanon]

- not requested!

- fem!reader

- reader headcanons!

- slight enemies to lovers

An// this has been on my mind for a while and I personally love hero/vigilante/villian!reader trope so I decided to do this! I got inspiration from other writers who did this as well 🤭 so thanks to them

Long headcanons below for Dick & Jason

Dick Grayson

Meet Cute (intentions)

Dick has a thing for strong women as you can see from his history

First time yall met he was stand off-ish and you were too.

You met when you were in your league outfit and he was nightwing. From then you two kept meeting eachother on various rooftops

"What are you doing here again?" Dick asked from behind you.

You kept your gaze on the skyline of Gotham hoping he would go away soon.

"A job" you stated.

"Nothing else?"

"No, not yet."

Silence fell over you two begging for someone to speak.

"If you ever need help navigating this place let me know" he offered still standing behind you.

"Why are you being nice to me?" You asked facing him finally.

He had this small smirk on his face, you couldn't tell if he was being serious or not when he spoke. "Cause that's what heros do."

You scoffed at that and turned around to the skyline. "See you around Nightwing."

From there on out you two kept an eye on eachother. When Nighwing was doing his job you were around and vice versa.

He knew you were following him, sometimes, but you always knew when he was around.

Dick was too intent on following you so he took himself to the bat cave and searched up your name. And when he found out you were from the Leauge of Assassins he fliped his shit

He printed out your files and placed them infront of Damian who already had a slight frown on his face, probably because he was doing homework and Dick just had to interrupt him.

"Do you know who she is?" Dick pointed to the file

"Why do you assume I do?"

"Cause you both are from the same place."

"She's older than me though." He reasoned with Dick and he frowned, but Damian spoke again. "But yes I have heard of her."

Dick was more careful around you now. Still keeping his distance, having small conversations, but trying to figure out the reason why you're here.

One night you had met again, but instead of him approaching you, you approached him.

"I need help." He noticed you avoided his eyes, well his mask, when you said that. Like you were ashamed of yourself.

"Took you long enough! What do you need help with? You need a map? I know every place in this-"

"Tell me where Damian Al Ghul is." You interrupted him and his heart dropped.

"Why?"

"Tell me. I know you have ties with him."

"You're positive I-"

"Dont make me hurt you." Your hand started to trail towards your back reaching for your sword.

He put his hands up saying he meant no harm. "I do have ties with him, but I need to know your intentions first."

"I know you already know Im apart of the Leauge of Assassins, so you should put 2 and 2 together." You stated but he still looked confused, you can tell even behind the mask.

You sighed and spoke again. "I was Damian's caretaker. I was- I am tasked with the duty of protecting him, courtesy of Talia Al Ghul."

Now It all made sense to him.

The beginning of this relationship started out with him not taking you to Damian but slowly realizing that you meant no harm.

You two worked together for a bit (doing missions together, learning about eachother, spending time together learning about eachother intentions/relationships with Damian), him not mentioning anything to Bruce about having someone from the Leauge of Assassins with him.

He knew he was prolonging your mission to make sure the kid was safe and okay. He knew he was keeping you away from your home, but he became selfish.

Sooner or later you two became attached to the hip, not leaving eachothers side.

You both made frequent trips back and forth between Bludhaven and Gotham doing yall own thing.

Slowly the masks came off and he realized you meant absolutely no harm. Caring for your family and protecting the ones that you love.

Also you realized that he cared for his family as well. He was a kind soul that you appreciated.

"I will take you to Damian."

You two were laying on his bed. You had came through his window that night in need of some comfort, you would never admit that, but you just needed someone to talk to. You claimed that you were wounded, but he saw through your lies.

He gave you his clothes to wear so you wouldn't have to lounge around his house in your uniform. So you were sitting there in a tank top and sweatpants cut to make them into shorts. It was comfortable, being with him was comfortable.

"What?"

"I mean I can't take you to him, but Ill let you see him."

"Why cant you let me talk to him?" You asked facing towards him.

"His father, his father isnt the.. ya know, biggest fan of the Leauge." Dick tried to reason with you. "But I can see what I can do."

That night he took you to another rooftop to see Damian.

Well see Damian from a distance.

He sat on the edge of the rooftop while you stood watching Batman and Robin leap their way across the night sky.

"There he is." Dick stated.

"Is he happy?" You asked quietly.

"What?" He asked.

"Is he happy?" You asked more firmly.

Dick scoffed at that question, but then he realized you dont know everything about him.

"I would be a bad brother if he wasn't."

Jason Todd

Anything you can do... (time spent)

He met you when Talia assigned you to train him.

He resented you at first because when you would spare he would get knocked on his ass more times than he could count.

"AGAIN!" Jason yelled from the floor. You just knocked him down again with a sword pointed to his throat.

"Tell me that once you get up from the floor."

He hated how snarky you was. But he also found it hot that you two used to fight all the time.

Jason loves to spar against you, its his favorite hobby. Hes always striving to get better. He also thinks its really hot how you can beat him up within seconds.

He can handle you and you can handle him its a nice balance.

You make him a better person. He'll follow you to the ends of the earth.

"I want to go somewhere." You blurted out.

You two had to stay in a hotel to perserve your identity while in Gotham and because Jason hated being stuck in his apartment. You had just came out of the shower with a towel around your body and your hair wet/tied up.

"Where do you want to go?" He was lazily staring at you from his spot on the bed.

"Somewhere not in Gotham." You chuckled trying to mask the truth.

"You miss the Leauge?" He asked.

You sat down next to him while changing your clothes. Him lying down while you were comfortable enough changing infront of him. Once you got your robe on you sat back down and sighed.

Before you spoke he beat you to it. "I hate that place. They treated you horribly."

"I learned a lot from that place."

"Lets go learn some place else then." He sat up next to you getting closer. He placed a soft hand on your cheek. "I know thats your home-"

"Jason you're my home."

He smirked. "How does Iceland sound?"

You both teach eachother different things. Different outlooks on the world, how to use different weapons.. You taught him how to use a sword and a staff and he taught you how to shoot a gun.

Jason challenges you, mentally and physically. He loves your mind. Your smart attitude, how you are never afraid to talk back to someone and stand your ground. You two are so alike.

You both are vulnerable with eachother, even on nights where he seems like he cant deal with the life he put himself in. He would never let someone else know his deepest thoughts except for you.

You met Jason's family before, but it was on accident. You had a stand off with his family as their superhero personas first, but then "officially" met them at a gala.

"Do you really want to go to this gala?" You asked tentatively.

"Bruce's gala isnt going to crash itself."

"So you're going with the intention to ruin his party?"

"Of course! Who do you think I am?" He chuckled.

By "official" I mean Dick coming up to you and introducing his family one by one by pointing them out across the room.

Damian noticed you but didn't come up to you at first.

Tim was lowkey scared of you.

Remember that one scene from Wonder Woman where she had that big ass sword in the back of her dress? That was that moment.

Jason didn't want his family in his buisness, but slowly realized that he cant get rid of them. (Especially Damian)

You both were headstrong. You followed him on his patrolling days and vice versa.

He went back and forth between Gotham and wherever you went. He claimed he didn't have much in Gotham so traveling around with you wasnt bad at all.

Again Jason would travel to the ends of the Earth. No matter where the League would send you. He'll always be there.

It would be the days where he misses the Gotham smog where he would beg you to leave the League of Assassins and live a free life with him.

"C'mon."

"No."

"Babe-"

"Dont so that to me Jason you know this is important to me." You snapped at him.

"Yeah and you're important to me too, I dont want you going on this damn suicide mission."

"I've dealt with MUCH worse."

"I bet you have. Thats why I dont approve."

"I dont need your damn approval!"

"Im your fucking boyfriend!"

"Well im your fucking girlfriend! Respect me!"

He stopped and dug his nails into his forearms. You were right. He was right.

"We'll talk about this in the morning." You reasoned.

"No. We're gonna talk now." Jason demanded.

"Its 2 am-"

"I dont give a flying fuck. We're gonna talk like adults."

And so you both did.

Jason was right about how the League treated you, but you were right about him respecting your decisions. Instead you both talked it out and the League ended up giving you a different mission anyways

He loved you, he didn't want to see you hurt, see you mistreated.

He wants the upmost best for you. Even if that means realizing that you have to leave the people who made you.

Hes your protection and your his protection.

He dosen't need his family when he has you, you understand him, you love him and you want the best for him, no matter what

That dosent mean that his family wont be in his life, they're detectives for petes sake.

And you both will run away to the ends of the earth together.

"Let's go somewhere." Jason smirked.

"Where do you have in mind?"

"Space." He grinned

"Outer space?" You questioned.

"Tameran specifically. I know someone there."

These two are gonna be the death of me 😮‍💨

[maxwell-grant]

Excuse Me what is pulp and why is it importan?

Good question! And probably one I should have answered sooner. Time to put on the historian hat for this one.

"Pulp" is a term used mainly to describe forms of storytelling that sprang out or were dominant in 20th century cheap all-fiction American magazines from the 1900s to the 1950s. The pulp magazine began in 1896, when Frank Munsey's Argosy magazine, in order to cut costs, dropped the non-fiction articles and photographs and switched from glossy paper to the much less expensive wood pulp paper, hence the name. The pulp magazines would mainly take off as a distinct market and format in 1904, when Street & Smith learned that Popular Magazine, despite being marketed towards boys, was being consumed by men of all ages, so they increased page count and started putting popular authors on the issues.

It was specifically the 1905 reprint of H.Rider Haggard's Ayesha that not only put Street & Smith on the map as rivals to Argosy, but also inspired other companies to start publishing in the pulp format. Pulps encompassed literally everything that the authors felt like publishing. Westerns, romance, horror, sci-fi, railroad stories, war stories, war aviation stories. Zeppelins had a short-lived subgenre. Celebrities got their own magazines, it was really any genre or format they could pull off, anything they could get away with.

Nowadays, although they came quite late in it's history, the American pulps are most famous for it's "hero pulps", characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage that are viewed as a formative influence on comic book superheroes. The pulp magazines in America lasted until the 1950s, when cumulative factors such as paper shortages, diminishing audience returns and the closing of it's biggest publishers led to it dying off, although in the decades since there's always been publishers calling their magazines pulp. That's the American pulp history.

But pulps are a phenomenon that spans the entire world and has a much bigger history to it, because pulps have become synonymous with cheap fiction magazines and those have a much bigger history. In America, before the pulps, you had the dime novels, the direct predecessors of the pulps, as well as the novelettes. England had it's penny dreadfuls and story papers, and continued publishing pulp-format magazines past the American 1950s, and that's how we got Elric of Melniboné. France and Russia arguably got to it first with it's 1800s coulporters, chapbooks and particularly the feuilletons which lasted all the way to the 20th century and created characters such as Arsene Lupin, Fantomas and The Phantom of the Opera. The Germans published pulp under the name hefteromane. Japan also published pulp magazines both original as well as imported, and the current "light-novel" phenomenon started off as an equivalent of pulp magazines (it's even on the Wikipedia page). China has wuxia, Brazil has cordel, Italy has gialli. There were Indian, Persian, Ethiopian, Canadian, Australian pulps and much more. Look anywhere in the world and you'll find examples of "pulp" happening again and again, under different circumstances and time periods.

Even if we stick to American fiction, it's impossible to state that all pulp heroes must come from the 1900s-1950s pulp magazines, because that forces us to exclude some of the most popular pulp heroes like Indiana Jones, Green Hornet, Rocketeer and The Phantom. Pulp may have once been a term meant to refer to pulp magazines exclusively, but it's morphed and lost structure and it's become the closest thing we have to a general umbrella term that allows us to try and consolidate these under a shared history. It's a lot, as you can see, and it's why several pulp historians that broaden their scope outside of 1930s American fiction have adopted Roland Barthes's definition of pulp as "A Metaphor With No Brakes In It", which is still the closest thing to a true working definition we have.

Why is it important? You tell me. I don't like to stake claims about stuff being "important", everyone's got their own priorities in life. Surely a lot of people would scoff at the idea of old populist fiction published in what was functionally equivalent to toilet paper having any sort of "importance". On the other hand, some people definitely want to talk big about the pulps as a cultural bedrock of fiction, something that's baked into the lifeblood of all fiction as we currently know it. Which it is, mind you, but I don't like to talk about pulp fiction's value being derived mainly from merely the things it inspired.

There is definitely a historical importance to be had in cataloguing them. According to the US's foremost pulp researcher Jess Nevins, 38% of all American pulps no longer exist, and 14% of all American pulps survive in less than five copies. Many libraries have very scant, if any, records on them, many collectors are hard to locate and are uncooperative when it comes to sharing information and letting outsiders view their collections. A lot of them are bound up in legal complications that prevents them from taking off in the public domain, and a lot of them ARE public domain but are completely inacessible as research material. And that's the American pulps, foreign pulps have fared far worse in posterity, with records inaccessible to people unfamiliar with the language or locations, many existing merely in mentions on decades-old records, and hundreds if not thousands of them being completely gone beyond recovery or recall.

Gone, dead, wasted, destroyed. They can't be found in barbershops or warehouse or bookstores, not even in antique stores. Hundreds, thousands of characters, stories and creators, gone. Time and posterity have crushed them to dust, forgotten and ignored by their successors. Unfettered by pretenses of respectability that repressed their glossier counterparts, in packages meant to be destroyed after reading, proudly announcing itself as trash. Things that should have never even lasted as long as they did have died many times now. It's heroes peripherical shapeshifters, nearly all of whom seem dead, quite dead, as dead as fictional characters can possibly be.

But they do not die forever. Many of them have, maybe most of them have, but many of them linger on.

"The strange red flickering of 1930’s fiction seems distant now.  You hold in your hand the product of a time too remote to recall, and feel a slow stir of wonder.  The smell of pulp pages, an illustration, an advertisement, these fragile things mark the slow hammering of time and display what it has done.  About you are today’s machines, today’s shadows.

Outside the window, leaves hang against the sky, as did leaves during the 1930’s.  The sound of voices are no different then than now.  You hold the magazine and feel something quite delicate slipping past. These solid forms surrounding you are all insubstantial. Time’s hammer will also pass across them, leaving little enough behind." - Spider, by Robert Sampson

Many of the things people call dead are just things that have been sleeping for a while or haven't had the chance to be born. Pulp fiction is dead on the page, inert, unless your imagination breathes live to it, and every now and then, one way or another, these characters dig themselves out of dustbins. Maybe it's a brief revival, maybe it's a successful reboot. Maybe they find publishers, or maybe the public domain allows them to find new life. Maybe new creators do interesting things with them, and maybe, just maybe, they live again because some won't shut up about them online. Some curious impulse led you to me, did it not? 

We all have our Frankensteins to obsess over, and these are some of mine. As someone who's lived a life perpetually restless over pursuit of knowledge, pulp has lured me like a moth to flame, because I literally never run out of things to discover within it, I never run out of possibilities. As the years pass and the public domain starts being more and more open to the public, more and more narrative real state is brought forth for writers and artists and creators to play around.

Pulp is the dark matter of fiction, the uncatalogued depths of the ocean, the darkest recesses of space. It's the box of your grandfather's belongings, the treasure you find in an attic, a body part sticking out from an old playground. It's the things that don't work, don't succeed, the things that don't fit, that are out of place. That shouldn't live and succeed, and did so anyway. The things that slither in the cracks, the shadows behind the curtain.

Aren't you interested in peering on what's behind the curtain?

The exquisite workmanship of the head, of a pre-pyramidal age, and the hieroglyphics, symbols of a language that was forgotten when Rome was young–these, Kane sensed, were additions as modern to the antiquity of the staff itself as would be English words carved on the stone monoliths of Stonehenge.

As for the cat-head–looking at it sometimes Kane had a peculiar feeling of alteration; a faint sensing that once the pommel of the staff was carved with a different design. The dust-ancient Egyptian who had carved the head of Bast had merely altered the original figure, and what that figure had been, Kane had never tried to guess.

A close scrutiny of the staff always aroused a disquieting and almost dizzy suggestion of abysses of eons, unprovocative to further speculation. - The Footfalls Within, by Robert E Howard, quoted by Stuart Hopen’s The Mythic American Culture

[relaxxattack]

Someone's probably asked you this before but how long did it take you to plan out the plot for knifetrick? What did you do to come up with everything and do you have any tips for other writers who are struggling to put together their own fics?

after checking out my history lol,

it seems i did serious brainstorming and research for about a week before i started writing.

what happened first was that i had in my head the funny idea of ran failing to kill jackie and them getting tax-benefit married (to make ran feel guilty and admit his plot)

and once i realized i wanted to make it into an actual story, i had to change some of it and come up with plot and reasoning.

the first thing i did was ask my followers for song requests, lol. i asked specifically for “songs about futuristic settings or being married to/loving your assassination target”

i listened to a lot of that music to get my brain juices flowing. i had to put together a couple of Reasons for why things happened. i also knew i couldn’t just write the fic on the assassination alone, or else ran would have nothing to distract him and be the overarching plot, lol

the music helped me picture scenes and concepts. i then just jotted down a bunch of stuff i thought would be interesting to happen (possible scenes)

a couple thoughts on this image— for one you can see that i originally wanted to name my fic after a movie. i looked up ones where assassins grow endeared to their targets and fail to kill them. but i realized i didn’t want to name the fic after a movie in case it was controversial or something, so i ended up going for a song instead. ALSO, as you can tell, some of these points got dropped! again, this was just brainstorming for things i wanted to include

the next thing i did was ask for ranjack classpects, lol. for those unfamilliar with classpecting, it’s sort of like personality types for really sad nerds (/lh). aka, hogwarts houses but more complicated.

@dyketubbo wrote some INCREDIBLE classpects for ran and jackie. it was based off what we knew about their personalities (which wasn’t much) but it also helped us infer a lot MORE about their personalities by figuring out where they could go or how they probably think in their minds.

if you don’t know classpects you can probably do this with personality types. or, just, figure out your characters personality some Normal way. i wouldn’t know.

there was a lot more brainstorming i did (where i came up with ms. laramie, scoots, and clementine) and tried to come up with a basic plot of what would happen and what they would do. during this i did some research on a proper three-act story structure so my plot would hit just right.

during all of this, i watched a bunch of spy and futuristic flicks (not too intensely, just had them on in the background to absorb the vibes).

i then made a plot map once i figured i knew what was gonna happen

(the last few chapters are on the other side of the paper, so you don’t get to see them haha)

a lot of this stuff got switched around or dropped completely as i was writing. honestly, the details don’t matter too much— the FLOW of the story is what’s important.

i’m very flexible with my scenes— literally what happens in a chapter is completely up in the air until i FINISH the chapter. sometimes they’re entirely different from my original ideas. it’s not too important to me what exactly happens, as long as it makes sense and i like it and it fits in with the rest.

in my mind, the events themselves are not as impressive as the characters in them. as long as i’m still developing the characters the way i need to throughout the story, and they eventually get to the plot points i need them to, i don’t worry too much about the specifics! as long as they’re fun.

i also didnt write chapter-by-chapter— i mapped the plot first, and then drew little dividing lines where i thought it would be good to end the chapter after. chapters are useful to me as pacing tools, but i didnt want the plot to seem too episodic by Planning it as chapters.

after i wrote the plot map, i did research on deserts, cities, and fantasy politics for DAYS. (i also watched videos on how fantasy militaries should work.) i ended up not using most of that information i came up with, but the parts that do leak through into my current writing do wonders to make the world feel real and alive. each character has a personality and a life, they aren’t just there to be background characters for ran and jackie.

then, i re-read a few books by authors who really inspire me. to get their narration voice fresh in my mind and feel really inspired

eventually we got to where we are now— i write the chapters and i post them!

as i’ve mentioned, i’m very flexible with my plot— so while i’ve foreshadowed certain things since the beginning, some parts of the story have only come perfectly together towards the end. and i have @shrugofgod to thank for that!

my wonderful editor is always willing to chat with me about what scenes and bits work and are most satisfying story-wise. of course lyssie also EDITS my chapters after they’re drafted — to make them more polished, and also ask me questions about things that are going on to clarify them.

many thanks to lyssie shrugofgod for making the story so much better :D

because my chapters have a tendency to get away from me and do whatever they want, if there’s certain plot things i need to hit in a chapter, i’ll outline the chapter before i write it.

also, recently, (after coming up with one too many REALLY COOL scenes and lines in my head while cleaning, but then completely forgetting them later) i’ve implemented a protocol for myself to jot down anything that comes to mind WHEN it happens so i don’t forget.

these are unprofessional and have spelling errors and all that, because i just wrote them really quickly, often while doing the dishes or laundry, lol.

so in conclusion:

um yeah that’s how i write knifetrick! i’ve never done this much work for any other fic though, so don’t feel like YOU have to. i did so much research for knifetrick because it was very out of my wheelhouse.

at most all i think is necessary for a good story is a plot map, and a hell of a lot of inspiration. (i got mine from music, movies, books, and drawing ran and jackie a lot, haha!)

make sure you’re having fun with your plot. writing won’t always be fun, but you should at least like your PLOT. because if you don’t then you won’t be inspired or enjoy it at all!

[helpimhyperfixating]

A Writer’s Trouble - Jotaro x Reader

Word Count: 3353

You were a writer. Quietly in class just writing whatever scenes came to your head when the material being taught was too complicated for you to understand or too boring. And at home, you busied yourself with fanfiction every now and then. When you enjoy shows, why not write some fan content for them right?

"Miss Y/N!"

The sound of your name being called made you shoot up in your seat, eyes wide.

All eyes of the class were on you, the teacher holding a stern expression. "That better be notes that you are taking." She crossed her arms and your cheeks started to burn slightly while you frantically nodded, not finding your voice to verbally answer. Clearly the teacher was not convinced by the look she gave you, but she just let it slide and continued on with the lesson.

After what felt like forever, the bell rung for lunch and as you were starting to pack up, suddenly two people surrounded your little table. Looking up, you saw two girls who were notoriously popular standing next to you. One sat down in the seat next to you while the other dragged a chair in front of your table and sat down right in front of you, a sweet smile on her face.

"Hi!" The one in front started and you leaned back a little.

"H-Hi?"

"We noticed you were writing something in class and we were just curious what."

This made you blink a few times in surprise. Why would they be interested in what a random girl is writing? "Why?"

This time, the one sitting next to you spoke up. "Well you see, I've been having trouble finding books I like recently. The ones in the school library are not really what I want but I snuck a peek of what you were doing in class just now and your writing seemed really good!" This caused a small blush to erupt on your cheeks. Not only because of the random compliment that came out of nowhere, but more so because of the fact she read what you had been writing. During class you were bored and your mind had drifted so you had written a random romantic scenario, and now she had read that?

"O-Oh?" You squeaked. She gave you a grin and you swallowed. "Uhm, thanks I guess."

"Could I read more?"

The question caught you off guard and to be honest, you just wanted to have lunch. But it seemed like you were going to have to eat it here with these two cause they didn't seem to have any intent to go away.

"Sure..." You weren't too comfortable with sharing most of your writing but there were a few random scenes and scenarios you thought these two would enjoy that you didn't mind sharing. You saw them every morning in the gaggle hanging around Kujo so you figured they'd like some cheesy romantic stuff. Bending down to sift through your bag, you got out your map/folder filled with pages that held the scenes and sifted through them, pulling out a few. "Here but do-" they were snatched from your hands before you could finish your sentence. "...be careful with them."

"Of course, of course." They both just dismissively waved and started reading them. At least they didn't run off with them, that was a plus.

You still had no idea what they were up to and you figured it wasn't to suddenly make friends with you. But you always had a hard time turning people down and they were acting nice to you, so why shouldn't you act nice back?

While they read you just got your lunch out of your bag and started eating it. You had nothing better to do anyways.

Lunch was slowly coming to a close and both girls finished reading.

"Ohhh, that was so romantic~" The one in front of you wistfully mused out, holding her chin in her hand as she dreamily stared at the ceiling.

"Yes, it was so good!" The one next to you said. Maybe you should learn their names instead of referring to them as 'girl' and 'girl but sitting next to you'. "It almost makes me wish for more."

Raising a sceptical eyebrow, you looked at her, urging her to continue because you figured this was the whole reason they were here. "Well, since you write this I was wondering, do you take requests?~"

You hummed a bit, looking between the two. They shared a look and there was a glint in their eye that you recognised but couldn't recall where you had seen them look like that before. "I've never done so before but maybe. What would you want?"

"Could you write me in such a scene with Jojo!?" The one next to you blurted out all of a sudden, making you visibly flinch back from the sudden burst of noise.

"No no! Please write it with me! My personality fits perfectly with the one in this story already!"

You were now being barraged with requests of romantic scenarios and begging to write them, all the while you just sat, blinking.

Of course. Of course. They were Kujo fan girls #1 and #2 so of course they would want this. You never understood why they kept trying to win his affection when he oh so clearly showed he was not interested.

I mean, you could see the appeal. He was tall dark and handsome, and the thought of a stoic man who loves no one making an exception for you was prime romantic material. But even you - who was as dense as an oakwood plank - even you knew when something was hopeless. You had never pursued the man. You respected his privacy and wishes. To you, he was just another classmate who just so happened to be hounded by half the female population.

"Ehh..." You started, trying to stop the girls from losing their mind and drooling over the delinquent - who wasn't even present - right then and there.

It took a second but both girls stopped and expectantly turned to you. The pure stars in their eyes made it very hard for you to say what you were about to say but you had to.

"I don't mind writing something for you. But I can't write something with Kujo in it. It just makes me very uncomfortable to write real people into a romantic scenario without them knowing of it. It just feels wrong." You put your hand up in a surrendering and calming gesture, hoping that would help defuse the bomb that was surely being built judging from their expressions. "If you had his permission and you both wanted it then it is a different story, but-"

"I have his permission! Jojo loves me, so of course he would want this!" The girl in front burst out, only for her 'friend' to turn to her.

"That's not true, he loves me!"

"No, me!"

"Me!"

"Me!"

This continued on and you slowly slunk back in your seat. You would have sunken under the table and made your escape that way, but one of the girls was sitting right in your path of exit. You were literally caged in between two fighting tigers, getting more and more ready to bite each other's heads off.

Just then, the door slammed open and both girls instantly shut up. In stepped the precise person of discussion and you only sunk further down into your seat, just wanting to disappear and be left alone.

"Oh! Jojo!~"

"Jojo! Why don't you come sit with us! I missed you!"

Jotaro viewed the class, seeing just you three in it, only for him to stride over to his desk, grab something he had left behind, and walk back out. He only spared you all a single glance and dread settled in your stomach. You were sitting with the two girls he probably hated most since they pestered him day in day out. What if he thought you were part of them now as well? What if he started to hate you too? Would he beat you up if you happened to run into each other outside of school?

Just then, the bell rung and to your surprise, both girls just sighed and stood up, starting to walk back to their own spots and leaving you without any further begging or questions. It left you a bit confused and wary of why they so suddenly seemed to forget you turned down writing about their dreamboat but just shrugged it off, hoping that was that.

- - - -

Three weeks had passed just like that. The girls had left you alone after that weird lunch and thankfully enough, Kujo seemed no more aware of your existence than before. Life continued on as normal and you just stayed your happy, quiet self.

"Hey, Y/N!"

You smiled at your best friend who was sitting at a table in the cafeteria, obnoxiously waving at you.

Quickly hurrying over, you grabbed her hand and yanked it down, sending apologetic glances to the people who had turned their heads to see the commotion. "Do you have to be so loud every time, B/F?"

"Of course." She grinned before pulling you down to sit with her. The unexpected action caused you to yelp and lose your balance. Instead of sitting down as intended, you were now splayed over B/F's lap who was cackling loudly at you.

"Oi, this is your fault! Shut it!" You laughed back and playfully hit her shoulder, making her let out an obnoxious 'oww' and rub it as you sat up.

"Y/N, you're always so mean to me." She pouted and you rolled your eyes. If there is one thing you certainly weren't it was mean.

"Well how can I make it up to you then, my dearest?" You played along, clasping your hands in front of you in a begging manner.

"Let me read your latest brain creations." She grinned and you drew your lips into a thin line. She knew you preferred to keep most writing to yourself because by god, sometimes you would create some abominations you wouldn't want anyone in the world to see. These of course, were the ones B/F loved most, cause she could make fun of you for them. You didn't seem to have another choice for now though, since B/F would most likely do something way worse if you didn't comply.

"Alright, alright." You sighed and hoisted your bag up, pulling your map with writings out and starting to thumb through them. "Huh." You remarked, a bit surprised.

"What?"

"It's not there. I could have sworn I put it in here." You hummed, grabbing your history notebook. You had written this piece in history class and thus it should be in there. But when you reached the most recent page, it was torn out, an indication that you should have already put it in your folder. "Oh god. I must have dropped it somewhere..." You went absolutely pale and B/F burst out laughing.

"Sucks to be you I guess!"

You only groaned and let your head fall to the table. Now there was a cheesy romance scene lost in the school! You just hoped someone would pick up the random page and throw it in the trash.

- - - -

~One week later~

You were the first one sitting in the cafeteria for once. Just patiently waiting for B/F, you twiddled your thumbs as you were mindlessly tracing the grooves in the table in front of you.

A hand suddenly slammed down right in your vision and you jumped in your seat. Quickly tracing the arm up to be met with an angrily glaring pair of aqua blue eyes.

"Get up." Jotaro said in a deep and demanding tone but you were frozen in your seat, just staring at him in slight fear.

"Do I have to repeat myself, bitch?" He harshly stated and you quickly stood up, going to grab your bag so you could let him have this table and find a new one for you and your friend, but instead, his hand clamped down on your shoulder, bunching the fabric there and dragging you off with him, leaving your bag behind.

By now, all the people in the cafeteria were staring and you were just scared shitless. What the hell did you do for him to want to beat you up?! He dragged you with him out of the cafeteria, through the halls and out the doors, moving to the back of the school before throwing you in front of him.

You stumbled a bit but luckily stayed on your feet, quickly turning back to look at him, taking a few steps back until your back hit the wall behind you.

"What-"

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" His voice cut you off and you shut your mouth. He seemed absolutely seething, towering over your tiny form as he glared from beneath his hat. It was quiet for a second, you just staring at him with wide eyes. "Well? Do I have to beat the shit out of you to get you to stop?" He threateningly raised his fist and you finally snapped out of your scared state, going defensive.

"No wait! I have no idea what you're talking about!" You frantically blurted out, waving your hands in front of yourself.

Jotaro, no less annoyed than before pulled something out of his jacket before slamming it right next to your head, holding it there. You squeaked at the action, now fully trapped with no escape.

"This is what I'm talking about." He was leaning down to be eye to eye with you now, caging you in with his arm right next to your head. His free hand was pointing to where he held his other hand and you turned your head to see what he meant.

Beneath his fingers lay a piece of paper, clearly crumpled up and unrolled several times. Unsure of what it was, you lifted your hand and took hold of the corner, making sure not to touch Jotaro's hand in fear that that would make him deck you.

Thankfully, he removed his hand from the wall and took a step back, giving you some personal space again and allowing you to grab the paper and read it.

Smoothening it out, you started reading.

Jotaro kept a close eye on your reactions, a little wary of how clueless you were appearing to be. As you started skimming the page, your eyes widened, almost immediately followed by a furrowing of your brows. You looked confused, but as your eyes got further and further down the page, it turned to angry.

Jotaro squinted his eyes at you, only to be surprised when you suddenly crumpled up the paper, pure hate radiating off of you. "Those goddamn bitches..." Of course, he never showed any surprise, keeping his stoic facade but to say Jotaro was intrigued was an understatement.

Turning to look at him, all fear you previously had was gone, replaced by anger. "This wasn't me." You held up the paper. Hitting it once, you ground your teeth. "Those girls stole my work and put your name in it."

Sceptical, Jotaro raised an eyebrow, still glaring down at you. But his stance was now more aloof than it was threatening and you took it as a sign to explain what you were talking about.

"Your fangirl number 1 and 2 asked me a while ago to write about you, I refused and it seems they took matters into their own hands." You turned around as you said that, looking at the school and glaring at it, as if that would do any good.

"So you didn't write it?" Crossing his arms, Jotaro was still looking down on you and you turned back to face him.

"Oh no, I did." You said and un-crumpled the paper, holding it up for him and pointing to a very specific point. "That's supposed to say 'B' though, not 'Jotaro'. I never write character names, just A and B cause honestly? fuck coming up with names."

Jotaro scoffed a little in amusement and then let out a heavy sigh. "It seemed too competent to come from them indeed."

You couldn't help but laugh loudly at his statement, accidentally causing you to drop the paper. "Woops." You said through laughs and picked it up, calming down as you stood up straight again. "Sorry this happened by the way." You then said and Jotaro sent you a questioning look. "I don't write about real people for a reason and this is exactly why. It's just wrong to do without permission."

Jotaro hummed and you suddenly realised who exactly you were talking to.

Awkwardly clearing your throat, you just put the paper in your pocket. "I'll make sure they won't be able to steal any more of my writing so if it works, you won't have to worry about seeing terribly written cheesy romantic scenes anymore. Apart from maybe their own attempts at it." You chuckled at that last bit and looked up to cross eyes with Jotaro.

There seemed to be a somewhat amused glint in them, putting you at ease.

Just then, you remembered a thing and you opened your mouth before abruptly closing it. Following it up with a deep breath. "Okay maybe you will still see some come by for the next few days. I left my bag in the cafeteria, unmanned and unsupervised. Prime chance for some grubby hands to go through it."

"Let's go make sure they fuck off before they plunder the entire thing then."

Jotaro simply turned around while you blinked, pleasantly surprised before you sprinted to catch up with him.

You both walked around the school in quiet, moving to the front doors so you could re-enter again and make your way to the cafeteria.

"I don't mean to pry," You started after a little bit and saw Jotaro glance at you from the corner of his eye, a somewhat wary look in his eye but you just continued. "But how do you keep yourself from punching that entire gaggle of screeching sheep? Honestly I already feel like punching them when I hear them next to me for more than two minutes. And you have to deal with it every day for way longer."

Jotaro visibly relaxed and you heard him let out an amused exhale. "Wouldn't have guessed I have better patience than you." He said back.

You let out an offended gasp at that. "Excuse me my patience is amazing. And let's be fair, I can hear you across the school every day when you yell at them."

He sent you a small side glare, quickly returning to stoically looking forward. "Yes but I haven't ever punched them."

"Neither have I." You smirked. "See? Good patience."

"How about you practice some of that good patience and shut up." His tone of voice was harsh but you could tell there was no anger behind it, so you just let a small smile of victory take over your features as you both walked into the cafeteria.

To say heads turned in surprise when you walked in side by side with Jotaro, unharmed, would be an understatement.

Walking up to the table you had been sitting at, you were relieved to see your friend sitting there, looking at you in disbelief with your bag next to her.

Waving, you walked up and turned to the tall delinquent next to you. "Thanks for not beating me up. I'll see you around." You gave him a weird mock solute before giggling slightly at your stupidity.

Jotaro just hummed and gave you a nod, stuffing his hands in his pocket and turning around, walking out of the cafeteria without a word.

That went way better than you ever could have thought.

[shepherds-of-haven]

Okay Lena, that secret santa ask was so funny that I have to ask for more... how would the ROs fare in a white elephant party?

Hi anon, you're in luck because I just went to a white elephant party last night, so I can totally put myself in this headspace! However, you're also not in great luck because I'm a little bit hungover from said party and trying to understand the hypothetical logistics of a white elephant with all of its swapping and trading is confusing me... but I'm going to give it my best shot! 💪😤

For those that don't know, a white elephant party is a party where everyone brings a secret, anonymous gift to the gathering, and people randomly pick gifts out of a pile. Sometimes it's an actual desirable gift, or sometimes it's something completely absurd, or something the giver just wanted to get rid of: sort of depends on the flavor of your party. After the first person unwraps the first gift, the next person can either pick a new random gift from the pile (not knowing what it will be) or steal a gift that someone has already opened. Gifts can be stolen twice before being taken out of play.

So, moving on to what each person would bring to the white elephant...

What They Would Bring

Blade: he would bring a good-quality compass in a plain paper box. In his mind, everyone needs a compass at some point, especially when out in the field or in an area where you can't see the sun or stars. What if someone like Riel or Shery gets the compass, Blade? "They can use it to guide them if they get lost." "In the city where they live?" "Or instead of just asking for directions?" Blade, irritably: "Yes."

Trouble: he would bring a nice deck of playing cards, sloppily wrapped in brown parchment paper and twine. One always needs an easy form of entertainment while on the road, or even just for game nights in the Shepherds' lounge!

Tallys: a nice bottle of Elvish red wine in classy, neat red wrapping paper. Sure, the Mages say in the group say they don't drink, but she's watched Ayla pound back too many shots to know better...

Shery: a very sharp writing set, complete with enameled case, fresh bottles of ink, and very high-end quills and a fountain pen! It even comes with some sealing wax and parchment! She reasons everyone has to write their reports, so why not do it with some very pretty writing utensils? Comes wrapped in a gorgeous silvery paper!

Riel: a very handsome pocket watch in a sleek little black shopping bag that seems like it definitely went over the budget of this party... (but he technically abided by the rules because it was a gift from some business contact that he no longer wanted, so he didn't really pay money for it...)

Chase: a homemade treasure map that he claims leads to an incredible prize, untold riches and secret rewards... if the recipient is willing to undergo the formidable trials of The Hunt... Comes inside a huge box, within which is a slightly smaller box, within which is an even smaller box, and etc. until you get down to the scroll...

Red: a pair of enchanted, self-heating wool socks in a neat paper gift bag. Like, okay, the spell woven into them is cheap because probably a student from years past made them, and they might singe your toes, but they're also super comfy socks!! (They're also hideous, though)

Ayla: a truly tiny iron pot (like palm-sized) that one can hang over a fire and melt cheese in. Because sometimes you want to melt cheese but how do you do it over a campfire without it melting and dripping everywhere?! Chandry pushed it on her as part of a promotional sale and she sort of chucked it under her bed and forgot about it until she remembered the party... Hastily wrapped in a free blanket she has lying around!

Briony: a single sheet of paper that supposedly--supposedly--will turn the ink on it red if a lie has been written on it, and gold if the writer is telling the truth. She sort of got tricked into paying a handsome sum for this sheet of paper, and it is extremely unlikely that it will work the way the seller claimed it would, but she can sense that there's some magic worked into it, and it supposedly will only work once; ultimately, she got too nervous to waste it and ended up overthinking the whole thing, so now she's more curious to see if anyone else will take it off her hands and try it instead! She secretly wants to see if anyone will use it to reveal if someone has a secret crush, but she's also nervous that it's total bunk and will like derail someone's relationship LOL

Lavinet: a basket of sumptuous bath items (like bath oils and bubble bath) and luxury goods like scented candles and soaps! Certain parties in this group need to relax for once, and this is something most people would never buy for themselves but she thinks could sorely benefit them, so in her mind, it's a very desirable gift! Comes wrapped in very sophisticated, gorgeous holiday wrapping!

Halek: a novelty cup that will supposedly change color if it comes in contact with most poisons. Its origins and make are dubious, but that was what he was told when it was given to him! He got as a free souvenir from somewhere and never brought it up to anyone because he knew he would catch shit for the whole "poisoning the group" thing, so this is his ideal chance to get rid of it anonymously...

Okay, let's see if I can get the exchange right...

The Exchange

I used a random number generator to try and simulate what people would select! Here's how it shook out...

Riel goes first and opens Shery's gift: the very nice writing set. He absolutely loves it!

Briony goes next and opens Ayla's gift: the cheese pot and blanket! She likes it because she wants the blanket, which is very soft and comfy--the cheese pot is a nice novelty bonus!

Lavinet goes next and opens Chase's gift: the homemade treasure map! She knows instantly who gave it and declares that she's not going to risk life and limb on one of Chase's "mad misadventures." Chase smugly tells her that she is unworthy of Haven's greatest treasures.

Ayla goes next and opens Halek's gift: the poison-warning cup! She dryly remarks that she needs it with Halek around, not knowing that he himself is the one who gave it lol. Blade quietly asks to examine the quality of the cup and she says protectively, "No!"

Chase, unable to hold back his thieving impulses, steals the poison-warning cup from Ayla, which is very shiny and made in the semblance of a tawdry gold goblet. Ayla, after much indignation and threats, proceeds to open a new gift and receives Red's self-warming socks. She proceeds to howl in outrage and fury at the unfairness of this transaction. Red meekly suggests that cold feet can be just as deadly as poison.

Tallys opens Briony's gift: the truth-telling sheet of paper! She is quietly amused, if a bit skeptical, but also properly intrigued. Ears prick up around the room.

Red goes next and steals Riel's writing set. Riel, having expected this, steals the truth-telling sheet of paper from Tallys. Tallys, a bit miffed, opens up a new gift and receives Trouble's deck of playing cards.

Shery opens Tallys's gift: the bottle of Elvish red. She doesn't really drink wine, but she bravely says that perhaps she'll start!

Halek, to be kind, steals Shery's gift because he'll drink and enjoy the wine, and he knows she won't. Shery opens Lavinet's bath set and is delighted! (Blade breathes a sigh of relief because he was going to pick that one and would have hated it. Briony is a bit green with envy.)

Blade steals the poison cup from Chase. Chase heavily contemplates stealing the truth-telling paper from Riel, who gives him his classic snake glare, but Chase is ultimately unable to resist the lure of the unknown and opens Riel's pocket watch. As with most things shiny and expensive, he loves it!

Trouble steals the treasure map from Lavinet, predictably being one of the few people in the room willing to go looking for it. Lavinet opens the final gift: Blade's compass in the plain box! She isn't super enthusiastic about it, but it is better than the treasure map, and she probably will find some use for it!

The Results

Blade wound up with the poison-warning cup. He is very intrigued by it and it was probably the best gift for him in the entire exchange!

Trouble wound up with Chase's treasure map. He is going to spend the next 36 hours looking for that treasure, even to the point of crawling through an underground crypt... Chase, not having really had any treasure in mind to begin with, uses those 36 hours to procure an extremely rare and one-of-a-kind gun to place at the end of the treasure trail, just in time for Trouble to actually reach it! He takes Trouble out to dinner as a bonus!

Tallys wound up with Trouble's deck of cards. It's not super relevant to her, but it's also not entirely worthless: overall, she had a good time at the party, and she can find some use for the cards!

Shery wound up with Lavinet's bath set. She's over the moon with it!

Riel wound up with the truth-telling paper. Who knows what he's going to use it for... (Later, further examination from Neon informs him that it doesn't quite work that way, but it is good for checking the accuracy of math calculations...)

Chase wound up with Riel's pocket watch. He loves it!

Red wound up with Shery's writing set. He loves it!

Ayla wound up with Red's self-warming socks! She loathes them! Briony offers to trade with her, but Ayla declines because Briony has the cheese pot she just got rid of 😂

Briony wound up with Ayla's cheese pot and blanket! She is happy with her outcome, though there were a few things she would have liked more! The cozy blanket does make her very happy, though...

Halek wound up with Tallys's red wine! He is pretty happy with this; he can make a nice charcuterie board and have some wine after a long day!

Lavinet wound up with Blade's compass! She's indifferent towards it, but there's not much in the gift exchange that she would have desperately wanted anyway, so she's fine either way!

Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed this!

[cinderridge]

Discord Roleplay Help

We’ve been asked a few times how a group roleplay on Discord actually works, and so we’ve put together a guide to let you know what to expect, and what is expected of you as a writer in a group roleplay on Discord!

What Is Discord?

Discord is a free application for deskptop, web, and mobile, that is used to host detailed chatrooms, called servers, for any size group, as a space to chat, share pictures, and build a community. It’s a brilliant communication tool, and is the perfect platform for managing a roleplay. It looks a little intimidating at first, but is incredibly easy to use, and very user friendly. Don’t hesitate to reach out to the admin team if you’re having trouble navigating! 

You can find a more in depth guide on how to use and set up Discord here. 

Why Discord?

Long story short? Community. Everything happens in the server, from plotting to OOC chatting, to roleplaying, and it means the roleplay as a much tighter sense of community than on Tumblr, or a forum. You can easily keep up with what everyone is doing, as well as your own plots, and it means you have everything you need in one place. The actual roleplaying isn’t dissimilar to roleplay on a forum or Tumblr, writing is exactly the same, and in some cases, it’s actually easier to reply to your partner(s) on Discord than it is on other platforms. It’s also a lot easier to organise group scenes, with lots of writers, for example fun party scenes, or big, dramatic finales. 

What To Expect When You Join Our Discord Server

You won’t be able to see all of the channels (chatrooms in a server) in our server immediately, and so it might look a little empty, or like you’ve done something wrong, but we promise that you’re in the right place! 

When you join the server, you will only be able to see our Foyer, and Application Centre. Here you can read our rules, say hello, and put in your application. Our applications are for writers, not characters, so it’s even easier to get started and gain access. Our application process is pretty similar to standard, so it should be an easy way to ease into the Discord style. 

Once you’ve been accepted, you’ll gain access to the majority of the server. This may look a little bit intimidating, but we have a map of the server to help you navigate. You can collapse sections (demonstrated below) to make things less overwhelming, if you need to. 

From here, you can read all of our roleplay information, and submit your character. The process is almost identical to the application process, except we don’t require a writing sample/audition for your character, just their info! 

Once your biography has been accepted, you’ll have access to everything else, including the chanels that you will be roleplaying in. We have different sections for the different parts of Cinderridge, and then individual channels for each location/building. You can see an example below. 

Nicknames & Role Assignment 

When your biography has been accepted, we ask that you change your nickname on our server as your ooc/ic name(s). For example, my name is Lottie, and I will be playing Abel, and so I change my nickname to Lottie || Abel. We don’t mind exactly how you do this, and you can even include a cute emoji if you want to, as long as the format is ooc name, then ic name. You can see a tutorial on how to do this below. 

We have a channel called #role-assignment, which is where you can self-assign roles to let other members know your age, pronouns, and writing style. A role is a tag/label you are given on a server, which changes the colour of your name, and, sometimes, what access you have to channels. Users can hover over other users names to see what roles they have. There’s a guide on the server as to how to do this. 

Roleplaying On Discord

Roleplay threads happen in location channels. Writing a response on Discord works exactly the same as a semi-literate/literate roleplay on other platforms. At Cinderridge, we write in third person, and ask that our members are comfortable writing at least two paragraphs (including lines of dialogue). You can see an example of a thread below from two of our staff members, Lottie and Bec, playing Abel and Rafi. 

Discord Tips & Shortcuts

Here is a list of shortcuts and general tips for Discord formatting!

You can use *words* to create italicised text. You can use **words** to create bold text. You can use ***words*** to create bold & italicised text. You can use __words__ to create u͟n͟d͟e͟r͟l͟i͟n͟e͟d͟ underlinedtext. You can use >words to create a | quote block. You can use >>>words to create | multi-line block. You can use ~~words~~ to create strike through text. You can use ||words|| to create a spoiler (your text will be  shown as a black box, which is clicked on to reveal the text) You can use _ _ to create a blank space.

!!!! You can press shift+enter to create a new line. Be careful when starting a new line, as pressing enter without shift will send your message. !!!!

That’s it for now! If you’re still confused, or need to know something we haven’t included here, feel free to send us an ask and we’ll be happy to answer.

[wordsnstuff]

Guide to Drafting

Patreon || Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress

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Planning v. Discovery

The first thing you must decide when you embark on the journey of drafting a story is how you’re going to get it done. Typically, there are two groups you can fit into, though most writers are somewhere in between. There are writers who plan meticulously before they begin writing to create a very clean first draft, or there are discovery writers (otherwise known as “pantsers”) who find more success in choosing a premise and then using a zero draft to explore the idea before gluing down any details. You are most likely someone who falls between those two methods. Some initial planning to feel familiar with your idea before you do some of the planning through the writing itself. Having some semblance of a method will help you narrow down your own process, which is immensely important if you want to get any substantial project near completion.

Consistency

Drafting is a difficult process because it’s either the revisitation of ideas you’ve already had, or the generations of ideas in quick succession. If you want to have a draft in a reasonable amount of time, you must develop a consistency in your writing. I won’t say that it must be a strict routine because time management can be a luxury, but you must make the consistent effort to write, and keep it in the forefront of your mind. Even if you don’t write every day, it should be something you try to make time for every day.

Know What You’re Trying to Accomplish

To get a draft done, you need to set expectations for yourself and they must be realistic. That doesn’t mean they have to be easy, or an amount of work you’ve been able to accomplish in the past. Considering how much time you dedicate to writing and your skillset, it should be a goal within reality. In addition, you must accept that you cannot create a masterpiece in one draft. For each version of your story that you write, you must have a focused goal, such as maintaining consistent characterization, making the plot concise and engaging, or making the prose more fluid and efficient. If you have a specific and attainable goal that you can accomplish in a reasonable amount of time with a fair amount of precision, each draft will be better than the last.  

Designate Work to Phases

As mentioned in the last section, it maximizes your time and effort to have specific and attainable goals for each draft. This doesn’t mean that you rewrite the draft each time (though that is very common amongst writers), but that you designate tasks to draft versions. I find it very helpful in clearing my mind and soothing my perfectionist anxiety to make a “schedule”, outlining what I’ll accomplish in each version following the zero draft. For example, my draft schedules usually end up something like this:

Zero Draft: Main plot line, basic characterization, key world building

First Draft: Finalize Timeline, research for world building, structure

Second Draft: (Rewrite) Plot Development Fine Tuning

Subplot development

Foreshadowing

Build up to climaxes

Tone & Pace

Third Draft: (Intermittent Rewrites) Character Development Fine Tuning

Backstory

Subtextual Development

Making sure motivations are clear

Relationships between characters

Reinforcing character arcs

Checking dialogue

Fourth Draft: (Give to Beta Readers) World Building & Prose

Descriptions & Flow

Finalize settings

Checking grammar & punctuation

Reader Immersion

Fifth Draft: Incorporate Beta Reader Feedback

Write for Yourself First

In what some call the “zero-draft”, there are no rules. This draft is purely for your eyes. It’s you telling yourself the story for the first time. So, you don’t have to write in chronological order, or know the right word you’re looking for, or take a break every time you run into a problem. The purpose of the zero draft is to get a rough idea of as much of the story as you can and avoid getting snagged on minor details. This part is important. A lot of writers like to outline meticulously before they begin drafting and if that works for you, that’s great, but the majority of writers who attempt that get stuck in the planning phase, or burnt out on their story before a word of it exists. The easiest way to avoid those two situations is to do a zero draft, which can be as long or short as you want if it provides a skeleton for you to add meat to later.

Common Struggles

~ How do you estimate the number of words/chapters?... That depends on the genre, mostly. However, that’s usually something you decide in the second draft and beyond, and it can vary because of factors you haven’t got locked down until the plot and character arcs are firm or final. This is also something you’ll probably do a lot of tinkering with, and receive feedback on, especially from beta-readers, who can advise you on where natural breaks could occur from their perspective.

~ Why, after planning everything out, do I always struggle to write the draft?... 99% of the time, it’s because you’ve either burned yourself out, or accumulated too much pressure. When you put that much effort and time into a story, you can either slip into a headspace where you feel little excitement about it because you’ve already done all of the problem solving and had all of the revelations. It’s usually beneficial at this stage to take a step back (even if you’re not burnt out) and give your story some space, so that once you come back to it, you’re enthusiastic enough to fully realize your vision. If instead you’re struggling to write because you feel a lot of pressure to do justice for a story you’ve put so much love into already, take a step back, remember that the first draft is just for you, and work on letting go of the idea that the zero draft is meant to serve any purpose beside simply existing. 

~ How do I come up with the necessary scenes to move the story forward between major plot points?... Most writing problems can be solved by asking yourself the right questions. When you’re trying to figure out what your reader needs to see next in order to effectively set up the next major event, ask yourself “What would happen between event A and event B that would add context or make event B more impactful?”. Treat it like a real situation and try to map out all of the tiny, notable moments that would take place between the major plot points, and then assess those moments on the basis of how impactful they would be to the coming scenes, and whether they can add context, set the tone, or aide in the rising action.

~ How do I balance sticking to the draft and following my own creative instinct in the moment?... This is a judgement call. Sometimes you’ll realize that maybe you should have just stuck to the outline, but remember that you can always go back, rewrite, test things out, etc. Always save every version of every scene, just in case, and go wild. Don’t be afraid to take detours just to explore. The writing process is anything but linear. 

~ How do I maintain momentum in my writing progress when I constantly have distractions or other responsibilities that take priority?... Work at it. There’s no magic trick or piece of advice I could say that gets rid of your personal responsibilities. Write when you can, don’t make excuses on top of the reasons you have no control over, and remember that you create your own deadlines and expectations. Be kind to yourself, do what you can, and don’t spend potential writing time punishing yourself because there isn’t as much as you’d like. 

~ How should I designate space (words/pages) to specific scenes/description/conversations, etc?... Trust your instinct and remember you can always cut/add later. In the earlier drafts, I’d advise you try to create as much material as possible to work with, and in the later drafts, be ruthless when determining what is necessary and adds value, and what doesn’t.

~ How do I finish a draft if I regularly lose motivation or interest in my projects?... Accept the fact that motivation is fickle, and that no writer in history has ever maintained “inspiration” for any project from the beginning to the end. There are going to be days where you’re like “ugh this is not what I want to do right now”, probably more than there are days where you’re stoked to work on your project, but that’s reality. If your goal is to finish a draft, you must recognize that writing is work, and nobody wants to work all the time. Try to supplement the lack of motivation by setting a positive and enjoyable routine so that, even when you’re not particularly motivated, you still know that your writing time will be peaceful and comfortable. 

–

Masterlist | WIP Blog

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[drabbles-mc]

Date Night

Angel Reyes x F!Reader

Warnings: language, mentions of alcohol

Word Count: 2.6k

A/N: I wrote this fic when my boyfriend and I were on a big Warzone kick so be warned that a majority of this story uses that as the base of it haha. This one-shot got away from me pretty quickly, and I’ve been super hesitant to post it (it’s literally been sitting in my ‘finished’ folder for months without me posting it because ~anxiety~) But I figured it’s not doing any good sitting unpublished. I know I haven’t really been creating a whole lot of Mayans content lately, but hoping to get back into the swing of it soon! xo

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You were sat on the couch in your apartment, headset on as you started another round of Warzone with Angel, EZ, and Coco. The four of you tried to band together at least twice a week when their lives would allow for it, all playing from your respective apartments. Coco heard you mention something off-hand about Call of Duty one night and he didn’t let it go, and somehow that evolved into the four of you running quads together in your free time. Coco and Angel were always getting intermittently suspended from the game for the things that they said when they were winning, and you and EZ found it endlessly entertaining.

“Thought you weren’t going to be on tonight, Y/N,” Angel commented as the two of you waited for EZ and Coco to get back to their headsets, each of them having gotten up to grab drinks.

You tried not to sigh, “Didn’t think I was. Plans got cancelled so I got some unexpected free time.”

“Glad we’re your second choice,” EZ’s voice founds its way over the stream with a chuckle.

“Second place ain’t that bad, EZ,” you laughed, “Don’t bitch about it.”

“Homeboy bailed again, didn’t he?” Angel asked, already fairly certain of the answer.

“Yuup,” you stretched the word out, letting your annoyance shine through, “Fuck it. Doesn’t matter,” you paused, “How long does it take for Coco to grab a fuckin’ beer?”

“Ay, I’m here,” he spoke up, finally, “Let’s run it.”

Considering the fact that the four of you were constantly talking amongst yourselves about things that had nothing to do with the game, you did pretty well as a team. You’d get a few wins together every week, and of course one of them was always trying to take all the credit. It didn’t matter enough for you to get involved, so you let them argue it out amongst themselves.

“Fuck!” Coco groaned, “Team on me. I’m down.”

You laughed, “Damn, hope you’re a better sniper in real life or Angel and EZ are screwed.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he shot back at you with a laugh.

“EZ how do you always end up in a completely different part of the map?” you chuckled, “We can’t revive you if we don’t know where the fuck you are.”

“When have I ever needed you guys to revive me?”

“This motherfucker,” Angel mumbled under his breath, trying not to sound as amused as he was.

“It doesn’t bother your man that you’re spending your night with three dudes who are, objectively, way better than he is?” Angel asked with a laugh as he trailed you in the game.

You shook your head, glad that he couldn’t see the smile on your face, “Your humility never ceases to amaze me, Angel.”

“Didn’t answer the question, Y/N,” EZ piped up.

“You guys trying to hold an intervention right now or something? Fuck,” you laughed.

“You think you need one, querida?” Angel’s tone was baiting, and you were trying not to feed into it.

Luckily, before he could keep pressing you about it, the two of you started getting lit up by another team in the game. Normally it would’ve been frustrating but you were glad to have the distraction. It was bad enough that Angel was always looking for any excuse to give you grief about your boyfriend, but you had to admit that your boyfriend gave Angel decent amounts of metaphorical ammo to use against him. You hated conceding to that, though, so the onslaught of players coming after you was a welcome distraction.

You managed to get out of it unscathed, but Angel wasn’t so lucky. You chuckled, “Have fun in the gulag, sucker.”

“We’re on the same team, you know,” he laughed.

“Not when you’re talking all that shit, we aren’t.”

“You’d still buy me back though, right?”

You scoffed, “Nah if I’m gonna drop four grand it’ll be on Coco.”

“Damn straight,” Coco’s laugh rang through the chat.

“Seriously where the fuck is EZ?” you shook your head as you sprinted across the map.

“Safe and sound unlike you fools,” he chuckled.

“Can you stop camping and come drop me some ammo?” you couldn’t hold your laughter in, completely undoing any work you had been putting in to sound annoyed.

Despite all the shit the four of you talked, you managed to clutch a win at the end of it with EZ and Coco. Angel was pouting over not being bought back, but you were a woman of your word and when you were able to Coco was the first player you brought back into the game. The four of you stayed on for a little bit in the lobby, just talking amongst yourselves before EZ and Coco got ready to sign off.

“Tell your man we said wassup,” Coco snickered.

You sighed and rolled your eyes, “Goodbye, Coco.”

“You two gonna play nice if I leave?” the smugness in EZ’s voice was palpable.

“No promises,” you laugh.

“Beat it, Boy Scout,” you could hear the smile in Angel’s voice, “Go clean your one set of silverware or something.”

“I have at least three sets now, but fine,” with one last laugh he left the lobby, leaving just you and Angel behind.

“Wanna run another one?” you chuckled, “Promise I’ll buy you back this time.”

“Fuckin’ liar,” he laughed, “But fine.”

It was silent between the two of you for a few minutes and it was almost eerie, solely because Angel was notorious for never keeping his mouth shut. A couple times you wanted to point it out, but something in the game would always distract you and you never quite got around to it.

“Boy Wonder still not home?” Angel asked.

“Something tells me that I’m flying solo tonight,” you paused, letting a half-hearted laugh fall from your lips, “Besides you, of course.”

“Of course,” he chuckled but you could tell that there was something more behind it.

“Whatchu thinking, Angelito? Hm?” you tried to coax it out of him.

“What kind of fuckin’ idiot,” he paused as he reloaded his gun, the brief pause making your stomach knot slightly, “doesn’t use dead silence? I hear your heavy feet from miles away, querida.”

You huff, knowing that he was deflecting, “That’s what’s weighing on you, Angel? Really?” your fingers nervously drummed against the back of your controller.

“Speaking of idiots,” he continued, and you wished that you could see his face, “what the fuck is your man doing ditching you again?”

There it is.

You let out a sigh that shifts into a hollow laugh, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Never thought to ask?”

You scoff, “You know, it actually never crossed my mind. Blowing my whole world wide open tonight.”

“Alright, alright,” he chuckled, “Clearly a touchy topic.”

“I don’t even know if I want the fucking answer, at this point,” you shake your head as the two of you slowly but surely make your way towards the safe zone of the map, “I don’t want another bullshit excuse.”

“Why do you even bother sticking around, then?”

“I dunno,” you chuckle quietly, “Why do you still pick up the AK when you could grab the M13? Sometimes people just do dumb shit.”

“I’m nasty with the AK and you know it,” he laughed. There were a few beats of silence as the two of you battled it out in the game, covering each other before Angel continued, “I’m just sayin’, you should not be spending your date night playing fuckin’ Warzone with me.”

“My company that bad, Angel?”

“You know that ain’t what this is about.”

You sighed, “I know. It’s just—fuck!” you laughed and let your controller drop into your lap, “I’m down. Fuck.”

“C’mon, gotta keep your head in the game,” he laughed.

“You don’t get to grill me on my relationship and then give me shit for being distracted.”

“Wanna back out?”

You nodded before you remembered that he couldn’t see you, “Uh, yea sure. I’m tapped out for the night, I think.”

Both of you backed out of the match but you stayed on the line with each other. The silence that filled the space between you almost felt heavy. Part of you felt like you should be saying something but you didn’t quite know what.

“Wanna come over?” you didn’t know what possessed you to say that, especially given how late it was, but it was out there now and you couldn’t take it back.

“Now?” he couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t surprised.

“I mean…yea?”

There was a pause before he laughed, “Fuck it, why not? I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“Real fifteen, or Angel fifteen?”

You could easily picture him shaking his head at you, “Real fifteen.”

True to his word, fifteen minutes later you heard a knock at your door. You let him in and for some reason, things felt just a little bit different. It wasn’t anything that either of you said or did, but there was definitely a shift. You grabbed a couple beers for each of you before plopping down on the couch next to him.

The two of you got wrapped up in conversation, bantering back and forth about one thing then another. It was the hardest that you’d laughed in a long time and you had to admit that you needed it. Not that you didn’t love shooting back and forth with him and the guys, but there was definitely something different about sitting on the couch together and joking around as opposed to doing it over a headset from your separate living rooms.

At one point he bet you that you couldn’t win a round without your headset on. You were fairly certain that he was right, but once he made a bet out of it you needed to prove him wrong. Loading the game and taking a long drink from your next beer bottle, you got ready to hopefully make yourself twenty bucks richer.

It was about as futile as you’d assumed it would be, but the commentary from Angel made the repeated defeats worth it. The two of you were shoulder to shoulder on the couch, Angel doing everything except reaching over and snatching the controller from you in an attempt to throw you off. You playfully nudged him to try and put some distance between you as you played. Both of you were erupting with laughter when you heard a key turn in the lock of your door.

Both of you paused and looked over as your boyfriend walked in. Despite the fact that neither you nor Angel were doing anything wrong, you still felt like you were supposed to be explaining yourself. He only looked at you for a moment before his eyes locked onto Angel’s. The two of them had only met briefly on a few occasions—he never really hung out with the guys from the MC.

“Sorry. Didn’t know you had company,” he was still looking at Angel rather than you.

“Uh, yea,” you closed out of the game and leaned back on the couch, “Kind of a last-minute thing.”

“If you’re busy, I can leave,” his eyes darted back and forth between you and Angel.

“She shoulda been busy a few fuckin’ hours ago, bro,” Angel spoke up before he could stop himself.

“What?” his tone had more bite to it than you were used to.

“Angel, don’t,” you kept your voice quiet.

“No, let him say what he’s gotta say,” you could tell by the way your boyfriend shifted his weight that he was going to turn this into more than it needed to be.

“I’m just saying,” Angel shook his head slightly, “Me and my boys have spent more time with your girl on your date nights than you have lately,” he sucked his teeth, “No reason that she should be stuck playing fuckin’ Warzone with us jokers when you’re supposed to be taking her to dinner and a movie or some shit.”

“Fuck,” you whispered as you ran your hands down your face.

He stepped forward towards the couch, “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Angel stood up off the sofa, effectively dwarfing your boyfriend without even having to try, “Who the fuck are you?”

Your boyfriend looked over to you, “Y/N, why do you le—”

“Nah, nah,” Angel shook his head, “This is between us now,” he motioned back and forth between them, “Say what you gotta say.”

“What gives you the right to come in here and tell me what to do with my relationship? Don’t you got biker shit you should be doing?”

“What do you think I’m doin’ right now?” there was a cocky smirk on Angel’s face as he spoke and you knew that you shouldn’t have found it as amusing as you did.

You must’ve been worse at hiding your amusement than you thought, because when your boyfriend looked over at you, anger instantly took over his features, “This shit funny to you, Y/N?”

All of the care in you disappeared, “I mean,” you sighed and shrugged, “honestly? A little bit.”

He scoffed, “You know what? I don’t fucking need this,” he shook his head, “I’m not gonna stay here and just be disrespected. I’m fucking, I’m done. I’m out.”

You knew that you should’ve felt something, but you just didn’t. You didn’t even bother to get up off the couch, “Leave your key on the way out, then.”

Both he and Angel looked at you with surprised expressions on their faces. Your boyfriend shook his head slightly in disbelief, “Wh-what?”

“If you’re done,” you leaned forward, elbows resting on your knees, “then leave your key to my place. I don’t want my ex to be able to get into my place whenever he wants.”

He sputtered a few fractions of words before tossing the key onto the table and turning to head out. He slammed the door behind him and Angel looked back to you, shock written all over his face. A smile crept across his lips and he shook his head at you.

“That was fuckin’ cold.”

You chuckled, shrugging, “Was a long time coming though, right?”

“I mean, yea, but still,” he paused, really looking at you, “You good?”

You nodded, “Right now? Yea. Maybe it’ll hit me tomorrow or something. Or maybe it won’t,” you had to laugh.

“Sorry I kinda brought this on,” you could tell by the look in his eyes that the apology was genuine.

You shrugged, “You and your big fuckin’ mouth certainly didn’t help,” you chuckled, “But none of that was on you.”

“You wanna talk abou—"

“No,” you cut him off with a shake of your head, “C’mon,” you motioned for him to sit down next to you again, “Time for you to lose without a headset on.”

He laughed as he sat next to you, “I ain’t gonna lose.”

You smiled, shaking your head as he took the controller in his hands. Without thinking much of it, you found yourself settling against his side. He froze up for a moment before reaching around you, lightly wrapping you up as he held the controller in his hands. Neither of you said anything about it for a few minutes while he got himself set up.

You chuckled as you watched him loot for weapons, “Still gonna use the goddamn AK?”

“The gun isn’t what’s gonna make me lose, querida,” he chuckled as he chanced a glance down at you cozied up against his side.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you smiled up at him knowingly.

He chuckled, shaking his head, “Nothin’, nothin’.”

[carpisuns]

thoughts about chloé/her potential for redemption

thomas recently made some interesting comments about chloe on twitter (which you can read in this post). i’ve been thinking about chloé’s potential redemption arc for a while now, so i wanted to respond to those comments that seem to shut down the possibility of redemption

i have to start by saying that by no means am i a chloé stan, and i am the furthest things from a marinette salter lol (just clarifying because thomas’s points call out those two groups in particular, which are usually the same group). i am also generally supportive of thomas/the writing team and like the direction the show is going. but this is one case where i am hoping it will turn out differently than he’s implying.

what thomas says totally makes sense—that people have a tendency to cling to any good deed in a bad person in their desperation to prove that they are good deep down, and that sometimes people are just Bad, even if they occasionally do a good thing (usually with the wrong motivation). OP also has a good point about people getting angry because the story is going a different way than what they think it should be.

here’s my thought, though: one of the things i like about ML is that it continues to surprise me—not just for the sake of shock value, but so that it can develop in new and interesting directions. but i personally wouldn’t consider “class bully remains a bully forever despite multiple episodes devoted to her character development” a new and interesting direction lol. maybe a chloé redemption would not be “new and interesting” either, but it at least would be meaningful.

i don’t want to overfocus on chloé’s few good deeds when they are so clearly outweighed, by her bad ones. but from a storytelling perspective, they tend to hold extra narrative weight as behavior that is distinctly different from the norm. And tbh i guess i just don’t really understand why they were put in the story if they were never going to amount to anything. i’m thinking of moments like these:

if chloé was never meant to have a meaningful character arc ending in self-redemption, why were they included? you could argue that these were all flukes or that her motivation was corrupt, which is true, but doing good with the wrong motivation is still a start. (I just rewatched the Good Place so I’m thinking of that, lol. “Remember, that's the road map. First, we change the behavior. Then, we work on motivation.”)

maybe chloe was merely intended to be a foil for marinette and adrien—to force marinette into test moments to help her grow and to emphasize how different adrien turned out from chloé despite having similar “tragic backstories.” but so much thought and planning seems to have gone into her development that i have to assume there’s more to it.

from what i’ve seen, most good redemption arcs have the same key ingredients:

establish that the character is Bad

create audience sympathy early on

introduce a secondary villain that people hate more

force them into growth opportunities that show glimmers of their redemptive potential

just when it seems like they might be changing, have them make a terrible choice and hit rock bottom 

allow them to experience the consequences of that mistake and finally have the wake-up call to inspire true remorse and a conscious choice to change

show them actively trying to be a better person

the redemption arc that comes to mind most easily for me is Zuko from Avatar—and i actually see a lot of similarities in how his story and chloe’s are told. so far, chloe has hit all the checkmarks except the last couple—the final steps to seal the deal. obviously she’s been marinette’s enemy and a totally bully from episode 1, we get audience sympathy through her mother’s mistreatment and her insecurities about it, we have lila to win the Most Hateable award, and all the scenes i showed above are examples of her buried potential.

what i’m saying is that everything is set up perfectly for a redemption arc, if that’s what the writers choose to do. they may not, and if that’s the case, i accept that (albeit with some disappointment). but i also can’t help but wonder why would go through all this trouble to set up an arc they didn’t plan to see through. it honestly seems like a waste to me.

maybe they originally planned to redeem chloe and decided later to drop it. i almost hope that’s the case if we don’t get a redemption because the alternate explanation is that they are sending a very intentional message of, “some people are simply irredeemable.” which is is definitely true and could be a poignant message for a more mature audience, but we have to remember that despite the considerable number of adult fans, Miraculous Ladybug is still a children’s TV show. And that seems like a pretty bizarre and disappointing message to send to children. thomas is of course correct that children don’t root for the villains, and they’re obviously not going to be sitting around analyzing her redemption arc like i am right now, lol. but i also think that they would absolutely pick up on the significance of the scenes i listed above, and if chloé started making good choices on her own, they would embrace that and find it meaningful.

as someone who also makes a living creating content for children, i will always be on the side of a positive message rather than a negative one. i don’t want to tell children that people suck and there is no hope—i want to empower them and inspire them. at its core, miraculous is a story of two kids who overcome all the obstacles to keep choosing love and keep fighting for good no matter what—who choose to be heroes every day, whether they’re suited up or not. we hear that message in the intro before every episode: “the power of love always so strong.”

so where does chloe’s story fit into that, if redemption is not in the cards for her? obviously, she is a side character and her arc/development is not nearly as important as marinette and adrien’s. but it’s been given enough focus/screentime that it feels important, and whatever the resolution is will send a message, either positive or negative.

the thing is, there have already been a ton of positive messages worked in around chloé:

if chloé ends up being Irredeemable™️, that would seem to contradict all of these messages—because it would turn out that some people are useless, that setting a positive example has no impact, that some people are simply incapable of change. and that just leaves a sour taste in my mouth, especially when it comes to children’s content. on the flip side, if she does redeem herself, these are the messages the writers would be sending:

Everyone has potential to become a better person, no matter their past. You can always grow from your mistakes.

Your example is powerful. Kids can make a difference! Ladybug/Marinette was a role model for Chloé, her childhood bully, and that influenced Chloé to want to be a better person. (I’m ofc not meaning that any expectation/burden should be placed on Marinette to forgive Chloé or give her more chances that she doesn’t deserve—but this point would still be a powerful one if a Chloé redemption did happen.)

Heroism is not about your abilities; it’s about your choices. Having superpowers is not what makes you a hero—you’re a hero when you choose to do the right thing every day and treat other people with kindness and love.

That last one is the most significant for me, since it would support the core message of ML—something that is emphasized over and over again throughout the show

And, interestingly, it could even be achieved without Chloé ever getting back the bee miraculous or any miraculous at all. In fact, I think that could be a really meaningful resolution to her redemption. Showing her choosing to be a hero without a mask just by doing good things on her own.

In the end, I really have no idea whether a Chloé redemption will happen. If I were only looking at what’s been presented in the show, I would be pretty confident that they were following the usual redemption arc formula. But Thomas’s comments seem to contradict that and imply that Chloé is just there to be an obstacle and a symbol of the ugliest parts of humanity. I’m trying my best to keep an open mind and accept whatever the writers have planned—after all, this is my favorite TV show and they have managed to create a story that I’m really invested in, so they’ve earned a pretty certain level of trust from me and I’m excited to see what’s in store in season 4. I’m definitely pulling for a redemption for all the reasons above and will be disappointed if it doesn’t happen, but at the very least, Chloé has served a purpose to challenge and develop both Adrien and Marinette, and the fact that she had a few small moments of hope makes her a more interesting and developed character, even if she ultimately remains an antagonist.