#ofc the other way would be to make them NOT likable or justifiable

[fallout-fallen-knight]

The reason that the Silver Canary is my only Pre-War OC is because I find it hard to write a likable and justifiable pre-war citizen without making them a radical, direct-action anticapitalist. 

[inyoursheets]

11. Describe your writing process from scratch to finish.

oh my goodness i WISH i had clear insight into my own writing process from start to finish, but honestly? im not that methodological, i think.

i usually start out with a collection of ideas -- and these ideas can be VERY vague. it can be a collection of random objects to scene ideas to themes. i throw them in one document and keep adding things until something of a plot emerges.

it depends on the nature of the fic a little -- most of my PWPs just start out from three bullet points, for example something like this:

jealous!rio

beth showing up without panties

rio’s chain makes an appearance

and then i just start writing, wherever, whatever. but warm water in particular started out with a list of descriptions of their apartment! that entire fic was inspired by me seeing an illustration of an apartment with a lot of blues, but it somehow still conveyed a lot of warmth. that made my mind go *bing* ROOMMATES FIC. so i started out by thinking about the apartment itself. the initial apartment list included:

Floor pillows (beth insisted)

Lots of blues

Long standing mirror (scene)

Tiny, messy kitchen with a fridge filled w/ left-over takeout and Greek yoghurt (for protein), cupboards full w/ rio’s protein shakes

Plants on stacks of books

Big windows, lots of light, one window that creaks

Lights draped places, definitely candles around

One leather couch, kinda worn, needs blankets

some of these things changed -- no floor pillows made it to the final cut, the greek yoghurt has become skyr, idk if draped lights are a thing or not but later on i realized it would clash too much with rio’s aesthetic. so it’s really just a collection of random details that helped me get a sense of the space.

then i made a list of scene ideas. mind you, at this point i had 0 plot in mind besides “ok so it’s gonna be friends-to-lovers”. some examples:

Beth getting ready for a date, standing in front of the long mirror, Rio helping her get her necklace on (top-tier romance)

Working on the couch together, Beth’s legs in Rio’s lap, him rubbing her feet at some point?

rio coming home w/ a pierced nose and beth driving him mad by not even mentioning it

beth lotioning her legs while rio bursts into her room to ask something but getting distracted by All That Leg

falling asleep together on the couch?

again, some of these never made the cut, and some of these grew way beyond their initial idea. then i made a list of plot points, which includes zero actual plot points, a list of “symbols/motifs” -- demonstrating that idk what those mean -- which has only two things on it:

Blue -- the apartment; the hottest part of the flame like the romance inside their friendship

Windows and doors – cracked open, closed off, indicating their closeness? Movement? Transformation?

and a list of phrases i wanted to use in the fic; and a list for each OC. aria’s original list was:

Likable pls

Great humor – maybe her and beth already have a good thing going before she asks rio out?

Never connected how well beth and rio knew each other bc they never show up to the coffee shop together

that first bullet point was very important to me hahaha, as ive talked about here, tho i wanna emphasize again that likeability is not that important.

from then on, i just started working on whichever scene idea sparked the most inspiration that day, kept adding onto different scenes until it started to come together a bit more, and then as i was working on the scenes i suddenly drew connections between them and could build the bigger story.

THEN i listened to hozier while the sun set in my apartment and i wrote the final scene in one go, which changed the ENTIRE fic. i initially wrote this fic as beth not being in love with rio yet, but with the final scene i realized -- nope, wait, actually i want the feeling to be mutual from the start, but they’re both just not gonna know and not talk about it and miscommunicate for chapters on end. this whole incident made me consider the emotional truths of the story instead of just the fluffy, rom-com-esque scene ideas i had, which forced me to do a lot of rewriting and planning and thinking that, as you can probably tell, i hadn’t done from the start. the start was just “omg big windows!!! floor pillows!!!! let’s go!!!!!”

the oh-i-should-consider-emotional-truth realization made me write with a lot more depth and throw in a bunch of reflections in different scenes. i went back to different scenes to look at: ok but how can i add some more... depth here? how can i show where beth’s at, here, in terms of headspace? bc initially it was just “haha, he sees her in panties and is AmazedTM” whereas now it’s also about...idk. friendship. communication. boundaries. the fear of being known, whatever.

im still in the process of writing this fic -- it terrifies me, but there’s a gap somewhere at the end of the fic where i need to justify something else ive written later in the fic -- so this isn’t start to finish, but here’s how it goes for me! there’s ofc also a very tedious editing phase for each chapter which is NOT my favorite part, lemme tell you.

the instigator had a pretty similar process, though warm water takes the cake bc it is not as “contained” as the instigator. the instigator had a clear prompt and then developed much like warm water -- it started out with a list of random lines/interactions/details/sex positions i wanted in the fic, then i made the infamous sex schedule, then i just started working on whichever position i felt like working on, and every now and then work on the prelude to the sex (which was, of course, the hardest, bc how does one get from point one to point threesome?) and the aftermath.

so yeah! that’s how i do! it has a hint of chaos, but i like it, bc i just go with what sparks the most for me in the moment, then figure out the connections later. sometimes that part of the process is less fun bc i don’t always know how to connect all the random writing i did, but once i do figure it out, it’s sooooo satisfying!

thank you for asking!!!!!! writer ask game

[au-tumn-al]

TTGC has been out for 2 weeks now and since it’s been enough time for me to stop crying and actually do the post-game stuff, I want to get all my thoughts out about it. It’ll be under a cut because it’ll be long, and I’m not sure how many of my followers are actually interested in what I have to say. Which is ofc fine, I just like talking about it and I’ve been sitting on some of this for a while.

To start off, I loved Torna ~ The Golden Country. It’s the best expansion DLC we’ll be seeing from Nintendo, and probably from most other games in general, for a while. 

I like its core cast of main characters than base XC2, and I think I like it a little more than XC1’s as well. I didn’t actually like any of the characters more than my favorites from base XC2, but as a whole, they were all really likable and never felt like they were falling behind in the background. I never felt like “yeah, I like them I guess” to any of the cast members like Sharla was for me from XC1, and a pretty decent chunk of the protagonists in XC2. ...Because XC2′s cast was way too huge with too much focus on the antagonists and somehow not enough at the same time, but that’s neither here. Technically Team Hugo isn’t really as important to the story as Lora, Jin, Addam, and Mythra, but the sidequests very easily fixed that for me. All the characters were very present in the side-content so I never forgot about them. I regularly did sidequests when they popped up so it felt like a natural part of the story.

I would say that it delivered in everything that I was hoping for from a story standpoint but it really, really didn’t. One of the things I was looking forward to the most was seeing more of Amalthus and Malos’s dynamic before Malos left to start his rampage. Their relationship is only told through subtext in the core game and what we saw was interesting. Even in some of chapter 8 and 9, it almost felt like they were trying one-up the other on how much destruction they could cause. Malos’s “Amalthus, you never disappoint” line delivery even makes it sound like he was looking forward to what his driver would be throwing at Alrest.

The only thing we got from Torna about how they were initially with each other was

Malos shows up and Amalthus’s knee-jerk reaction is a deadpan “oh god, it’s this asshole” look. I enjoyed it probably more than I was meant to, but I wish we got to see more. Maybe it was a little unrealistic to expect it, but considering how much of the story depends on their relationship with each other, was it really?

Another thing I was hoping for was more backstory for Minoth. I wanted to know if he knew Malos (which was actually answered though, so that was nice) since they shared a driver, and I really wanted to know how he ended up becoming a flesh eater. Judicium was already destroyed by the time TTGC rolled around and we barely went into what a flesh eater even was, so that was lame. That said though, the game did go into his relationship with Amalthus and it told us all that was really important, on top of giving us some other stuff I wasn’t expecting (a North American wild west motif, Spanish, a weapon deadass called “gunknife”, and Elma’s specials except more stylized) so you certainly won’t hear me complaining. I loved what we got with Minoth even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, and I think he’s great. 

Another thing that I was expecting was for Malos to have more screentime. He was heavily advertised so I think I’m justified in expecting this. There wasn’t necessarily anything about Malos I wanted expanded upon, I just wanted to see him more since he makes everything about a billion times more entertaining just by being there. He completely stole the show in every cutscene he was in and I loved every second of it. He was kicking everyone’s asses in his first boss fight and even won, but I was loving his script, animation, and voice acting far too much to care. 

there was a nice little detail to his animation too

After he punches the ground for the Monado Cyclone(?), you can see him shaking his hand off because like damn, that probably hurt. ,,,I just liked it. Don’t ask me why. 

He’s probably the main reason I only play in English to be honest. His voice actor sells the script and character so perfectly. I seriously don’t know if I’d like Malos as much as I do if he was played by someone else. He might be the only Xenoblade character other than maybe Shulk and Lin that I can say this about. 

OH

and his monologue to the party right after his first boss fight where he says “they see the divine flame of life and piss all over it” while sauntering away was actually the best scene in the game. We didn’t see as much of Malos as I would have wanted, but every scene we did get was the best so like with Minoth, I can’t complain. I love this man. He’s the most entertaining sack of shit I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying.

My ruined expectations and Malos aside, what the game actually gave us was so good, I can’t even complain about the things I wanted to see because they gave us plenty of stuff I didn’t know I wanted. The two biggest ones, for me anyway, are Mythra and Addam.

I had no idea that TTGC would flesh her out the way they did, and I am not disappointed. Mythra was amazing in TTGC, and really made me appreciate her and her character arc in the base game a lot more. I loved how generally unbearable and unlikable they made her. She’s completely self-absorbed and full of herself, and just overall extremely similar to Malos. The way the game handles her attitude was really well done too. Because the other characters are constantly calling her out for her bad behavior (esp. Jin and Brighid. Lora chips in too sometimes) and lack of awareness on top of being the verbal punching bag and the butt of a lot of the jokes in the game, she’s not obnoxious to the player. She could have been really annoying, but she wasn’t. On the topic of the jokes though, I laughed at more of TTGC’s comedy. They relied less on anime tropes and were more character focused, which are usually the jokes I like more. The game felt a lot more like XC1 in that aspect, and that was really great.

Moving on, I loved Addam. He was my favorite character in the game. Making him act like Mythra’s dad was something I wasn’t expecting and I loved it. I have a pretty big post in my drafts where I talk about him extensively so that should go up at some point. It’s mostly about how he’s a really good foil to Rex and how he failed as a driver rather than about his pretty fabulous dynamic with Mythra (even if he ended up rejecting her as his blade, he did accept her as person for him to take care of, and he did everything he could in that area) though. Oh, and because there’s no way to shoehorn this in that Addam post, I want to bring something up. I don’t know if there’s any good footage of this (if there is, please send it to me so I can edit it in), but there’s a post battle conversation between Mythra and Lora that goes kind of like this:

Mythra: “Hey, Lora, what do you do when the going gets tough?”

Lora: “Just think about the people I care about.”

Mythra: “Think of loved ones, huh?”

Lora: “Yeah. If I do that, I’m usually grinning like an idiot.”

Now, let’s look at Mythra when she’s at one of her lowest. She’s scared and feels alone. Malos is attacking her with everything he’s got, and she’s is looking for anything to hold on to. ...You see where I’m going with this.

She flashes to memories of her friends, and thinks of both Addam and Milton specifically. The thing is though, for all she knows, Milton could be dead from Malos’s initial attack, and Addam is doing everything he can to hold her back from fully transforming into Pneuma because of his distrust and fear of her. Mythra trying to think of all her loved ones wasn’t enough, and then all she got was a confusing vision of a person she’d never met before. She’s completely alone, confused, and hurt, and she doesn’t have anything there to ground her. That’s when she breaks down in tears, and then starts sinking Torna in a daze because she can’t control her power. 

...on a more positive note, two of the visions she gets of Rex is of him accepting her in chapter 7. 

So that was finding comfort in a loved one, but it was just too soon. Like Jin told her, her true driver and real time to come as her own as a person wasn’t in Torna. It certainly didn’t help at the time, though.

At that point in chapter 7, she was in a similarly low state as she was in TTGC, except she had Rex that time, and then was fully able to achieve her full power as an Aegis. It should be noted Mythra’s “I just...want...to save...” line was apparently horribly translated, and the original was more along the lines of her begging for someone to save her. That’s what I hear anyway and I can believe it. It makes more sense that way. 

Good God, was this a great expansion. It was already pretty fantastic with just its setting and premise alone, but it does an even better job in making me appreciate a lot of the scenes in XC2. Even the already-amazing scene in chapter 7. sPEAKING OF ALREADY AMAZING SCENES MADE BETTER BY TTGC

Rex: “I don’t even know what I’m doing here anymore... Did...did I go wrong somewhere...?”

This is one of my favorite Mythra scenes in the entire game, TTGC included. It’s so small but it’s so good. I don’t think I even need to explain why this is made better by TTGC. 

XC2 is very loud, and unabashedly anime, but it has quiet scenes like this and dammit, are they the best parts of the game. I think they’re even made better by the fact XC2′s tone is generally so upbeat and anime.

I said this before, but TTGC didn’t tell us anything new. We already knew pretty much all of the events of the game before it came out. Maybe we were missing a few details, but in the end, we knew how things were going to go down. Mythra becoming a much more interesting character because of the expansion pass just by being able to see her growth just shows how important the “show, don’t tell” rule is. 

I love Haze a lot. I hate how she’s a third wheel in Team Lora, I hate how Addam and Jin are the only people who really pay any attention to her, and I hate even more that no one hugs her when she’s crying at the end of the game.

oh yeah, Lora and Jin were the main characters. They weren’t very interesting to me (Lora barely had an arc and all of Jin’s intricacies mostly come from the base game) so I don’t have a lot to say about them other than I really liked them. The ending would have completely broke me if the game forced me to watch Lora die so I don’t even care that it was left out. 

People consider the lyrics of “A Moment of Eternity” a message from Lora to Jin but I like to pretend that it’s Addam to Mythra because it’s less depressing that way. The singer is encouraging their loved one to find someone to help them move on and if it was to Jin, that meant that Lora’s last wish for him never happened. He met Malos and then

R

E

G

R

E

S

S

E

D

but seriously though, it could be both. The song ties in pretty well to “One Last You”, and that was very obviously from Pneuma about Rex. It was probably supposed to be up to interpretation anyway. ...a little off-topic, but there’s a line in the song that goes “time flowed differently for us/not to say it was all bad” and then there’s a scene where Addam talks about how he doesn’t have enough time to adapt to Mythra so...idk, maybe that’s something? I mean, Lora got 17 years with Jin, so she didn’t exactly have the short one year Addam had with Mythra.

i’m done now. 

Half of this was me gushing about Mythra. I don’t even care because I loved her. Please forgive any of the obvious signs that I didn’t spend very long proofreading this thanks--