#problems. my advice to people trying to write or draw alternative characters is they are People. before they are anything else

[fixyourwritinghabits]

hey, i have an issue when it comes to physically writing things down. i've basically memorised all my worldbuilding, and if people call on me to explain a part that i already know, i can explain it. but the problem here comes with writing these thoughts down. every time i go to type up dossiers of my cultures, i draw up blanks, despite not lacking anything to write about. all my ideas take the form of feelings and vibes that i dont know how to capture. anything i can do to fix this? thank you

The blank page writing dilemma is extremely common and regularly trips up many authors, no matter how many ideas they have. I'm not able to write directly on a Word doc. I'm not able to put my ideas in an Excel sheet, even though I can do that for work, and I'm not able to use Scrivener, as helpful as it is. I can use the computer for everything but novel writing.

And yet, despite in my mid-30s with probable ADHD, I've been able to write a number of novels and short stories. I've got a literary agent, and maybe someday will actually sell a book, who knows? But the point is if I can do this, so can you. In order to get anything done, I turn it into an art project.

Now, I'm not an artist. I can't draw, and I don't have much patience for learning beyond the basics of other art forms. But I can take a bunch of differently colored sticky notes, assign each color meaning, and slap them to a huge project board laid out with an outlined plot structure (I personally use Save The Cat as a starting baseline). I can use some macaroni to make a fantasy map. I can create character flash cards and add vital information to each.

Gather Your Tools - It takes some trial and error to find the method that works for you. You can try flash cards, you can try sticky notes, you can try colored pencils or fancy pens (I have to use Uni Power Tank pens, nothing else works). If laying out your scenes on flash cards doesn't work because you don't like things out of order, put them on sticky notes. Give yourself enough room to expand out - on a table, on the floor, on your bed. As long as you're creating something, you are making progress.

Start Small - You have a big whole world in your head, of course it's going to be hard to write down. Pick one thing - a character, a setting - and focus on that. Make a character sheet, create a playlist, spend way too much time on Canva creating a moodboard. Whatever gets the idea out of your head and onto something concrete that you can see helps.

Your notes can be as detailed as you want - Know how a scene goes to the very last detail? You don't have to write it down in full. Alternatively, however, I find my scene notes tend to be what amounts to my first draft - I get an outline in there, some dialogue, notes on setting and mood. But it's entirely up to you and what suits your needs!

Look, just make those playlists and moodboards - It feels like it's wasting time, it's not. You're getting those ideas flowing any way you can. Use every tool that helps.

This is all good and well, but how to get from preparing to write? Well, this is where it gets challenging. A detailed book, like Book In A Month, can help, writing advice is not one size fits all, and writing books are not rigid structures to stick to, but guides.

Make a reward system - I use stickers . Seriously. In addition to my notes, I have another sheet pinned above my desk with each chapter listed, the goals for each (draft, edited, etc), and a spot for a shiny sticker (also, I used to be a teacher, and you never get over the joy of using stickers). But any system will do, as long as you keep it to something that's easy to maintain and won't break your bank.

Chuck your goals - Can't get a chapter done? Focus on a scene. Can't get the scene to work? Focus on a chapter. Write your dialogue in script form, sketch out fight scenes with notes on details to add later. Everything is fixable, as long as you have something to fix.

Can't write on a computer? Try something else - Okay, look, I can't draft anything if I don't do it by hand. Is this the greatest idea? Maybe not, but it allows my brain to slow down and get the words to where I want them to be. I don't draft fast, but I do draft well because I'm handwriting, and my first attempt often resembles the final version.

Form habits and rituals - I have to write with a certain type of pen (hello, Uni Power Tank I have to buy online because they only make them in Japan). I have to write on a certain type of paper, with specific margins, because any size deviance between pages will drive me nuts. Is this stupid and arbitrary? Yes. Does it work for me? Also yes, which is why I do it. Find that kooky writing habit that works for you, and keep to it. If it works, it works.

There's nothing wrong with you. Your lizard brain knows writing is hard and it doesn't want to do hard things if it doesn't have to, so you have to find ways to trick your brain into wanting to do the hard thing (by hiding the fact that it's hard). It won't be easy, and you'll still have a lot of moments of frustration, but creating the right writing habits that work is the first step to getting those worlds out of your head and onto the page. Good luck!

[antimonarchy]

How to Create Image Descriptions

So I’ve been creating image descriptions on tumblr for about a month, and I wanted to share some helpful guides I’ve found on how to create them as well as my own tips that I’ve picked up. Video descriptions and transcripts are also necessary, but since I mostly focus on image descriptions that’s what this guide is about. This might get a bit long, so fair warning. 

What are image descriptions?

Image descriptions are a textual depiction of what is going on in an image, as shown with the image below. 

[Image ID: A picture of a person with short black hair working on a computer. They are sitting at a wooden table with a large blue pot of pink flowers in front of a grey brick wall. A guitar is propped up against the wall in the background, and there is a string of lights near the ceiling. /.End ID]

Why create image descriptions?

The primary reason for creating image descriptions is to allow people who are blind/have limited vision to experience visual content. Many people who are blind/have low vision use screenreaders, which read text out loud when it is clicked or hovered over with a mouse. A large amount of online content, such as pictures, graphics, or drawings, is visual and so possibly cannot be experienced by someone with vision problems. As a general rule of thumb, anything that can be dragged or dropped most probably requires a description. In addition, if someone has partial vision and attempts to zoom in on an image, sometimes it can become pixelated and impossible to understand. 

Some neurodivergent people might need a description to understand the tone of an image, such as the meaning of facial expressions of a person to understand what emotion the artist is trying to depict

Some people might not have high speed internet or have low computer memory, meaning that they turn off images in order to save space. This means that they as well might require descriptions of visual content

Are image descriptions the same as alt text?

no, alt text and image descriptions serve the same purpose, but they are different in how they are presented. Alt text, short for alternative text, is included in the html of an image and can be read by a screen reader. However, there are many reasons why many prefer image descriptions over alt text. 

There is a limit of 200 words in alt text on tumblr specifically (and not in other contexts, which makes this information only applicable here), which means that detailed images or graphics are unable to be described fully without possibly cutting out important information. 

People who require descriptions, but who do not use a screenreader, must right-click and search through the html of an image in order to find alt text, but with an image description they are saved that work. 

Who should create image descriptions?

Everyone who is able to should create image descriptions. A content creator is best able to communicate the message of their work through text, as they are the one who created it and thus understand its message the best. While of course it takes practice when starting out, over time image descriptions become second nature when posting visual content. Always check the notes of a tumblr post for an ID rather than reblogging without one. 

What should be included in image descriptions?

There is no simple answer to this question, there are a variety of resources and guides on how to create one, and you should not accept my advice as the ultimate authority, as I am by no means a professional, and only create descriptions in my spare time as part of the effort to make Tumblr more accessible. However, here is my information for those starting out. 

First, consider what type of visual content it is. Is it fanart of a tv show, a screenshot of a tweet, or an informational graphic meant to educate people on a particular issue? 

Then, consider what information is most important in the image. If the visual content is an image of a famous building, then in writing the description the focus should be on the building, rather than describing for instance the color of the sky, surrounding buildings, or the clothing of the people walking by, as they are not the information that is being presented. 

Perkins ELearning has an excellent list of things that should generally be included, which I will include here. In my experience, these are the most important elements to describe

The people and animals in an image

The background or setting of an image

Elements that relate to the context specifically, so if it was an image of a congested highway on a news website, the description would mention the packed cars

The colors of an image (don’t overdo it however, a simple ‘light blue’ will suffice, no need to say something like ‘a color blue that is similar to the color of a robin’s egg’ unless it is crucial to the viewer’s comprehension of an image)

Context for an image. For instance, imagine if someone had drawn a version of the Bernie Sanders ‘I am once again asking’ meme, with Eleanor Shellstrop from the Good Place saying “I am once again asking for there to be a Medium Place.” Rather than provide a description to the example such as:                                          [Image ID: A drawing of Eleanor Shellstrop saying “I am once again asking for there to be a Medium Place.” /.End ID] you would instead say                                                                                                [Image ID: A redraw of the Bernie Sanders ‘I am once again asking’ meme with Eleanor Shellstrop from The Good Place saying “I am once again asking for there to be a Medium Place. /.End ID]

If the image is of a social media post, include the username/handle of the creator as well as the reactions (likes/reblogs) if they are visible in the image, as they may be cut off by the original screenshotter. 

If it is a drawing or piece of art, always look for the artist’s signature when writing a description

How do I write an image description?

To start off, here is an example description written for a piece of art I made myself. 

[Image ID: A digital drawing of Suki from Avatar: The Last Airbender over a gold background.  She is shown from the shoulders up facing the viewer, and has a neutral expression. She is wearing metal armor over a light green tunic, and is wearing her Kyoshi Warriors facepaint and headdress. The artist’s signature ‘Astra’ is written in the lower right of the image. /.End ID]

In this description:

I made clear where the description begins and ends, so that someone with a screenreader is not confused. I usually use brackets ([ ]), write the words ‘Image ID’ (or video/gif/other) and finish with a slash, period, and the words End ID. (/.End ID)

I emphasized the type of image, in this case a digital drawing

I said the character’s name (obviously this may not be known if describing a photo or something you are not familiar with)

I described the background and the character’s clothing

I described her expression

I included the description of my signature.

This is my basic process for writing a description

I first say what the content is, such as a drawing, photo, or screenshot of a tweet.

I then use what is called Object-Action-Context for the most part, which UXDesign has a long article on https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-write-an-image-description-2f30d3bf5546. For example, [Image ID: A photo of a person standing in a crowd waving to someone out of view in front of a river. /.End ID] While obviously I would usually provide more information than that, Person = object, standing + waving to someone out of view = action, and ‘in a crowd’ = context. 

I describe the clothing that might be worn

I talk about the position that people in an image might be in, such as leaning against one another on a couch, or standing with their fingers intertwined

I talk about the expressions on their faces, if shown

I talk about their general appearance (if important to the description) such as hair color/length

As said before, I talk about the context of an image if necessary

If the background is a simple color, I usually include it in the first sentence of the description. However if it is more complicated, such as a river winding through a dense forest, I include that at the end of the description after describing the important elements. 

Typically if I am reblogging an image, I do not add on any commentary after creating an image description, as this allows others to reblog my description without my personal reaction. If I want to add on to an image, I usually reblog my description post. 

In general, it is best to remain objective when writing a description, meaning not including your opinion of the content. However especially in an informal setting, say for instance you were describing an adorable cow, I would see it as fine to say [Image ID: A small drawing of an adorable cow. /.End ID] because the emphasis is on the appearance. There isn’t a clearcut answer, and it really depends on the context. 

What are some tips for writing descriptions/common pitfalls?

If there is an element of an image like a line that represents an emotion, or a sound effect like ‘clang’ if something falls, include that in the description. For instance, [Image ID: ...beside the mug that has fallen on the floor, there are the words ‘sploosh’ indicating the sound of the water that has spilled out. /.End ID]

Put image descriptions first. Don’t hide them under readmores or any other text. If you have something with multiple images and you are the creator, place the description under each image in succession rather than all at the end. Readmores are ableist, as they require someone who has vision problems/one of the conditions described above to do more work to access the message of visual content. 

If you are mentioning the skin color and/or race of someone in an image, make sure you describe it for anyone else who might be in an image. Don’t just describe the race of someone who appears to not be white. This doesn’t mean that you have to describe race, such as if the character is one whose race is commonly known, just that if you do, make sure you do it for all characters/people in an image. 

In order to write IDs effectively, I’ve found it useful to download a screen reader. I use NVDA, which is entirely free and easy to use and can be downloaded here: https://www.nvaccess.org/download/. 

Insert + Q turns it off

While my guide has focused mostly on image descriptions, video descriptions are also necessary. However they are not my area of expertise, and differ slightly, so I would recommend anyone interested in them to check out this website https://www.washington.edu/accessibility/videos/

Transcripts, for those who are d/Deaf/Hard of Hearing, are also necessary for making content accessible, and might be required for content that also has a visual format, such as a Tiktok. I would recommend this website https://www.w3.org/WAI/media/av/transcripts/ for anyone interested in writing transcripts

What are some more resources I can check out?

Here are a series of websites that I have found while researching how to write descriptions

UX Design -  I mentioned UX Design earlier when talking about Object - Action - Context, this article is very useful and examines how to structure a description and provides very useful examples for beginners

Perkins E-Learning - This article is very useful in helping someone what to include in a description, such as clothing or background information, as well as providing some additional information on alt text if you are interested

Meloukhianet - This blog post by s. e. smith goes into detail on the elements of an image to emphasize depending on its context, using the example of a picture of their cat sunning himself. 

SOAP - This article by the Stanford Online Accessibility Program (SOAP) provides a large amount of information on the purpose of image descriptions and what content requires them

HubPages - This article by SOTD and Zera discusses the difference between sparse, lush, and overdone descriptions, which is the amount of information included, and if/when each should be used. 

I hope you found this information helpful, I encourage everyone to check out these websites, and my inbox is always open for questions!

[writingwithcolor]

Jurassic period alien interacting with key cultures and historical figures in Middle East & Asia throughout history

@ketchupmaster400​ said:

Hello, so my question is for a character I’ve been working on for quite a while but wasn’t sure about a few things. So basically at the beginning of the universe there was this for less being made up of dark matter and dark energy. Long story short it ends up on earth during the Jurassic Period. It has the ability to adapt and assimilate into other life animals except it’s hair is always black and it’s skin is always white and it’s eyes are always red. It lives like this going from animal to animal until it finally becomes human and gains true sentience and self awareness. As a human it lives within the Middle East and Asia wondering around trying to figure out its purpose and meaning. So what I initially wanted to do with it was have small interactions with the dark matter human and other native humans that kinda helped push humanity into the direction it is now. For example, Mehndhi came about when the dark matter human was drawing on their skin because it felt insecure about having such white skin compared to other people. And ancient Indians saw it and thought it was cool so they adopted it and developed it into Mehndi. Minor and small interactions though early history leading to grander events. Like they would be protecting Jerusalem and it’s people agains the Crusaders later on. I also had the idea of the the dark matter human later on interacting with the prophets Jesus Christ and Muhammad. With Jesus they couldn’t understand why he would sacrifice himself even though the people weren’t deserving. And then Jesus taught them that you have to put other before yourself and protecting people is life’s greatest reward. And then with the prophet Muhammad, I had the idea that their interaction was a simple conversation that mirrors the one he had with the angel Jibril, that lead to the principles of Islam. Now with these ideas I understand the great importance of how not to convey Islam and I’ve been doing reasearch, but I am white and I can understand how that may look trying to write about a different religion than my own. So I guess ultimate my question is, is this ok to do? Is it ok to have an alien creature interact with religious people and historical events as important as they were? Like I said I would try to be as accurate and as respectable as possible but I know that Islam can be a touchy subject and the last thing I would want is to disrespect anyone. The main reason I wanted the dark matter being in the Middle East was because I wanted to do something different because so much has been done with European and American stuff I wanted to explore the eastern side of the world because it’s very beau and very rich with so many cultures that I want to try and represent. I’m sorry for the long post but I wanted you guys to fully understand what my idea was. Thank you for your time and hope you stay safe.

Disclaimer:

The consensus from the moderators was that the proposed character and story is disrespectful from multiple cultural perspectives. However, we can’t ignore the reality that this is a commonly deployed trope in many popular science fiction/ thriller narratives. Stories that seek to take religious descriptions of events at face value from an areligious perspective particularly favor this approach. Thus, we have two responses:

Where we explain why we don’t believe this should be attempted.

Where we accept the possibility of our advice being ignored.

1) No - Why You Shouldn’t Do This:

Hi! I’ll give you the short answer first, and then the extended one.

Short answer: no, this is not okay.

Extended answer. I’ll divide it into three parts.

1) Prophet Muhammad as a character:

Almost every aspect of Islam, particularly Allah (and the Qur’an), the Prophet(s) and the companions at the time of Muhammad ﷺ, are strictly kept within the boundaries of real life/reality. I’ll assume this comes from a good place, and I can understand that from one side, but seriously, just avoid it. It is extremely disrespectful and something that is not even up to debate for Muslims to do, let alone for non-Muslims. Using Prophet Muhammad as a character will only bring you problems. There is no issue with mentioning the Prophet during his lifetime when talking about his attributes, personality, sayings or teachings, but in no way, we introduce fictional aspects in a domain that Muslims worked, and still work, hard to keep free from any doubtful event or incident. Let’s call it a closed period: we don’t add anything that was not actually there.

Reiterating then, don’t do this. There is a good reason why Muslims don’t have any pictures of Prophet Muhammad. We know nothing besides what history conveyed from him. 

After this being said, there is another factor you missed – Jesus is also an important figure in Islam and his story from the Islamic perspective differs (a lot) from that of the Christian perspective. And given what you said in your ask, you would be taking the Christian narrative of Jesus. If it was okay to use Prophet Muhammad as a character (reminder: it’s not) and you have had your dark matter human interacting with the biblical Jesus, it will result in a complete mess; you would be conflating two religions.

2) Crusaders and Jerusalem:

You said this dark matter human will be defending Jerusalem against the Crusaders. At first, there is really no problem with this. However, ask yourself: is this interaction a result of your character meeting with both Jesus and Prophet Muhammed? If yes, please refer to the previous point. If not, or even if you just want to maintain this part of the story, your dark matter human can interact with the important historical figures of the time. For example, if you want a Muslim in your story, you can use Salah-Ad-Din Al-Ayoubi (Saladin in the latinized version) that took back Jerusalem during the Third Crusade. Particularly, this crusade has plenty of potential characters. 

Also, featuring Muslim characters post Prophet Muhammad and his companions’ time, is completely fine, just do a thorough research.

 3) Middle Eastern/South Asian settings and Orientalism:

The last point I want to remark is with the setting you chose for your story. Many times, when we explore the SWANA or South Asian regions it’s done through an orientalist lens. Nobody is really safe from falling into orientalism, not even the people from those regions. My suggestion is educating yourself in what orientalism is and how it’s still prevalent in today’s narrative. Research orientalism in entertainment, history... and every other area you can think of. Edward Said coined this term for the first time in history, so he is a good start. There are multiple articles online that touch this subject too. For further information, I defer to middle eastern mods. 

- Asmaa

Racism and Pseudo-Archaeology:

A gigantic, unequivocal and absolute no to all of it, lmao. 

I will stick to the bit about the proposed origin of mehendi in your WIP, it’s the arc I feel I’m qualified to speak on, Asmaa has pretty much touched upon the religious and orientalism complications. 

Let me throw out one more word: pseudoarchaeology. That is, taking the cultural/spiritual/historical legacies of ancient civilizations, primarily when it involves people of colour, and crediting said legacies to be the handiwork of not just your average Outsider/White Saviour but aliens. I’ll need you to think carefully about this: why is it that in so much of media and literature pertaining to the so-called “conspiracy theories” dealing with any kind of extraterrestrial life, it’s always Non-Western civilizations like the Aztec, the ancient Egyptians, the Harappans etc who are targeted? Why is it that the achievements of the non West are so unbelievable that it’s more feasible to construct an idea of non-human, magical beings from another planet who just conveniently swooped in to build our monuments and teach us how to dress and what to believe in? If the answer makes you uncomfortable, it’s because it should: denying the Non-West agency of their own feats is not an innocent exercise in sci-fi worldbuilding, it comes loaded with implications of racial superiority and condescension towards the intellect and prowess of Non-European cultures. 

Now, turning to specifics:

Contrary to what Sarah J. Maas might believe- mehendi designs are neither mundane, purely aesthetic tattoos nor can they be co-opted by random Western fantasy characters. While henna has existed as an art form in various cultures, I’m limiting my answer to the Indian context, (specifying since you mention ancient India). Mehendi is considered one of the tenets of the Solah Shringar- sixteen ceremonial adornments for Hindu brides, one for each phase of the moon, as sanctioned by the Vedic texts. The shade of the mehendi is a signifier for the strength of the matrimonial bond: the darker the former, the stronger the latter. Each of the adornments carries significant cosmological/religious symbolism for Hindus. To put it bluntly, when you claim this to be an invention of the aliens, you are basically taking a very sacred cultural and artistic motif of our religion and going “Well actually….extraterrestrials taught them all this.”

In terms of Ayurveda (Traditional holistic South Asian medicine)  , mehendi was used for its medicinal properties. It works as a cooling agent on the skin and helps to alleviate stress, particularly for the bride-to-be. Not really nice to think that aliens lent us the secrets of Ayurvedic science (pseudoarchaeology all over again). 

I’m just not feeling this arc at all. The closest possible alternative I could see to this is the ancient Indian characters incorporating some specific stylistic motifs in their mehendi in acknowledgement to this entity, in the same vein of characters incorporating motifs of tribute into their armour or house insignia, but even so, I’m not sure how well that would play out. If you do go ahead with this idea, I cannot affirm that it will not receive backlash.

-Mimi

These articles might help:

 Pseudoarchaeology and the Racism Behind Ancient Aliens

A History of Indian Henna (this studies mehendi origins mostly with reference to Mughal history)

Solah Shringar

2) Not Yes, But If Ignoring the Above:

I will be the dissenting voice of “Not No, But Here Are The Big Caveats.” Given that there is no way to make the story you want to tell palatable to certain interpretations of Islam and Christianity, here is my advice if the above arguments did not sufficiently deter you.

1. Admiration ≠ Research: It is not enough to just admire cultures for their richness and beauty. You need to actually do the research and learn about them to determine if the story you want to tell is a good fit for the values and principles these cultures prioritize. You need to understand the significance of historical figures and events to understand the issues with attributing the genesis of certain cultural accomplishments to an otherworldly influence. 1.

2. Give Less Offense When Possible and Think Empathetically: You should try to imagine the mindsets of those you will offend and think about to what degree you can soften or ameliorate certain aspects of your plot, the creature’s characteristics, and the creature’s interactions with historical figures to make your narrative more compatible. There is no point pretending that much of areligious science fiction is incompatible with monotheist, particularly non-henotheistic, religious interpretations as well as the cultural items and rituals derived from those religious interpretations. One can’t take “There is no god, just a lonely alien” and make that compatible with “There is god, and only in this particular circumstance.” Thus:

As stated above by Asmaa and Mimi, there is no escaping the reality the story you propose is offensive to some. Expect their outcry to be directed towards you. Can you tolerate that?

Think about how you would feel if someone made a story where key components of your interpretation of reality are singled out as false. How does this make you feel? Are you comfortable doing that to others?

3. Is Pseudoarchaeology Appropriate Here?: Mimi makes a good point about the racial biases of pseudoarchaeology. Pseudoarchaeology is a particular weakness of Western-centric atheist sci-fi. Your proposed story is the equivalent of a vaguely non-descript Maya/Aztec/Egyptian pyramid or Hindu/ Buddhist-esque statue being the source for a Resident Evil bio weapon/ Predator nest/ Assassin’s Creed Isu relic.

Is this how you wish to draw attention to these cultures you admire? While there is no denying their ubiquity in pop-culture, such plots trivialize broad swathes of non-white history and diminish the accomplishments of associated ethnic groups. The series listed above all lean heavily into these tropes either because the authors couldn’t bother to figure out something more creative or because they are intentionally telling a story the audience isn’t supposed to take seriously.*

More importantly, I detect a lot of sincerity in your ask, so I imagine such trivialization runs counter to your expressed desire to depict Eastern cultures in a positive and accurate manner.

4. Freedom to Write ≠ Freedom from Consequence: Once again, as a reminder, it’s not our job to reassure you as to whether or not what you are proposing is ok. Asmaa and Mimi have put a lot of effort into explaining who you will offend and why.  We are here to provide context, but the person who bears the ultimate responsibility for how you choose to shape this narrative, particularly if you share this story with a wide audience, is you. Speaking as one writer to another, I personally do not have a strong opinion one way or the other, but I think it is important to be face reality head-on.

- Marika.

* This is likely why the AC series always includes that disclaimer stating the games are a product of a multicultural, inter-religious team and why they undermine Western cultures and Western religious interpretations as often (if not moreso) than those for their non-Western counterparts.

Note: Most WWC asks see ~ 5 hours of work from moderators before they go live. Even then, this ask took an unusually long amount of time in terms of research, emotional labor and discussion. If you found this ask (and others) useful, please consider tipping the moderators (link here), Asmaa (coming eventually) and Mimi (here). I also like money - Marika.

[kraviolis]

i need to make a post abt this bcus 1) i dont want anyone to think im just ignoring kayvan and mark’s antiblackness & racism and 2) writing out my thoughts/feelings helps me to detangle them when theyre in a mess like this.

also please dont reblog this, it’s literally just my personal internal thoughts & feelings. this isnt an activism essay, im not arguing my opinions or trying to tell other people how to feel/act.

ive been trying very hard to process my thoughts/feelings & to carefully seperate actor from character in my head and like. i think im accidentally strangling my hyperfixation to death bcus im accidentally using my main coping skill which is “oh, im having emotions? well not anymore” and i dont know HOW to not do that!!!! that shit has killed my hyperfixations so quickly before and i dont want this one to die but i also dont want to just ignore the problem.

one might be able to tell but i’ve been focusing more on nadja & laszlo & guillermo than nandor & colin robinson and it was at first an entirely subconscious thing up until i thought “oh i should draw nandor from reference so i can get a better idea of his features” and then immediately dismissed it bcus then i’d have to look at kayvan’s face.

i didnt reblog the initial post about it because as important as it is to have visual evidence of kayvan’s antiblackness, if i as a white person could barely stomach seeing those pictures then i cant imagine how a black person would feel seeing them just randomly on their social media feed.

i cant even look at kayvan without seeing the picture of him in blackface. its fully affecting my ability to enjoy watching the show and i wish it wasnt but its just... so hard for me to cope in any other way than full disassociation and avoidance of the source of bad emotions. this is literally my trauma responses working against me again and i dont know how to make them stop.

it doesnt help that im dissociating half the time anyways. just makes it easier for me to turn off my emotions, but turning off my emotions is counter-productive!!!! i need to care about these things and feel anger/disgust/compassion/sympathy when i see racism or else im just going to end up even more complacent than i inherently am or worse. because its always so very easy for white people to let themselves be swept into participating in racism/antiblackness so we can reap the benefits.

i just need to find some way alternate way to cope that isnt anger (bcus i’ll burn out so fast) or full dissociation/avoidance. its killing me like actually bcus im deep in the avoidance mindset so if im feeling a negative emotion where the source of it is ME....... one can probably imagine my instinctual reactions to randomly remembering something embarrassing i did years ago. its not fun!!!

but i haven’t had a therapist in almost 2 years bcus i’m always fucking trapped in a cycle thats like “has problems, need to make appointment > must call on phone > gets intense anxiety about calling on phone > starts to avoid & ignore the source of anxiety including entire subject of why i must call on phone > forget about/normalize my problems > problems continue to get worse > need to make appointment > repeat.”

so like. if anyone has any links to articles or advice from their own therapists/psychiatrists to share with me about this kinda thing, i’d be forever grateful.

but even then it doesnt help with my current situation vis a vis kayvan and mark’s antiblackness. ive been able to consume/interact with stories & media made by racists before in a way that doesnt support them and doesnt ignore their racism but also is enjoyable. for example, i was hyperfixated on HP for months and half of the fun of that was being able to rip apart the really bad writing to expose the baked-in bigotry and then challenge myself to come up with better ideas.

but its very different with wwdits because while theres most definitely some bigotry which is bound to happen when you have a lot of different writers & also a shit ton of improv from the actors (not talking about the satire bcus its pretty obvious when theyre being satirical vs not), its not... to the same level. like fucking at all.

the show is great. it’s genuinely, actually progressive and funny and well-made and its so obvious every single person involved in it creatively has a great deal of passion for the show. there’s so much effort put into it to make sure any representations of minorities or oppressed groups are accurate and positive and not made into unoriginal & boring punch-down jokes while also still remaining a funny ass fucking show.

i guess my main issue is that the way this show is made makes it extremely difficult to separate character from actor. not just because they have the same faces/voices, but also just that they formed the characters around the actors themselves and the actors are encouraged to add onto their characters through improv and such. it wouldnt be the same show without those specific actors.

ive been talking to my mom about it and they suggested that i should watch other things kayvan has acted in just to help my brain separate nandor from him and tbh. that seems like a really good idea. maybe i could watch cruella finally, ive heard its not all that bad of a movie... hmmm....

thankfully mark has like no social media presence so its not all that hard to separate him from colin robinson. theyre two different people to me entirely.

i just hope when the fan pressure for accountability finally gets to kayvan that he doesnt double down again. like i really hope he’s privately realized how much harm he does and that he eventually publicly holds himself accountable.

sigh. yeah making this post was a good idea, i feel way better now that i have my thoughts written down instead of all jumbled together in my head. 

[rpbetter]

Sorry if this isn't the place to ask but I'm in need of advice. I have a canon character I truly adore, but I haven't gotten muse or any opportunity to write them at all. My blog is collecting dust and the fandom is kinda dead at this point. Not to mention, it's hard to find compatible writing partners, especially with how picky I can be. I'm honestly considering deactivating the blog (for the nth time), but I don't want to lose the writing I have. I know I could archive, but I hate having blogs just sitting around.

In short, I really want to write the muse/keep the blog but I'm not getting any incentive to do that.

Hello, Anon, it’s totally the place to ask!

I will say, though, that since finding and keeping muse can be flavored rather personally, I can’t promise that what works for me is going to work for you. I’ll even confess that in over two decades, I’ve never personally lost muse. I don’t know if it is due to underlying, neurodiverse style, fixating, or if it is due to keeping myself continually invested in both my muse and writing regardless of what else is going on. (Probably a combination of both, though, and the things I do to keep myself highly in touch with my muse I’ll be recommending.) I’m definitely happy to try to help, however.

That really is a very frustrating spot to be in, wanting to write the muse and keep your blog active, but logging in every day to be reminded of what little reason you have to do so. Since we’re drawn to the characters we are for reasons of personal appeal and writing in itself is a pretty personal form of art, it can also feel depressing on top of the frustration.

However, that’s also the good news, in my opinion, because your incentive here is, or can be, yourself.

You were drawn to this character because you connected with them. They mean something to you, you can relate to them, maybe they have qualities (good or bad) that you wish you could experience. Whatever it is, there’s a reason why you had this draw. Writing is like that as well, there’s a reason why this is a hobby that drew you, that you get enjoyment out of. Again, though all art (it doesn’t matter if it is a hobby) has personal bits of the artist in it, writing is uniquely personal. When you write, you’re exploring thoughts and feelings, giving them life in a character that matters to you. I know, all of that sounds really convoluted and hokey, but it’s true.

And it’s good! That means you always have a reason to write and that you have the tools necessary to find and keep muse without any outside push necessary.

I’d say, firstly, work on getting muse back.

Get back in touch with your muse the next time you feel a particularly strong urge to write. Instead of spending time trying to find people in a silent fandom or forcing yourself to write something you don’t want to, just do some exercises that will help you get back into your muse.

I don’t know what media type your character comes from, but especially if it is something like movie or show that you can have on in the background of what you’re doing, do that. If it’s a comic or a book, think about your favorite scene and read it over first. If you’ve ever made some playlists for writing/your muse, you can always do that instead or as well. The point is to do something passively inspiring while you actively create. Now, that creating...

You want to do something that requires you to think about your muse so you can get in touch with them, not something that is going to make you feel overwhelmed and shut down. So, maybe don’t pick writing prompts for this - you can work up to that. Try out headcanon and character development memes and other question lists instead for right now. Things you can scroll down a list of, find questions that jump out as interesting (or even simply answerable to you at this point, you’re jump-starting a dead battery, it’s alright) and answer them. You can also do something as simple as write down what you like best about the character or their story, or put down the basics of filling in missing information that has always bugged you.

The beauty of this is that it is all on your own terms, your only objective here is to answer what you want, as much as you want. You can stop any time, but you can also answer a single question for three hours, making it eight pages long if the inspiration strikes you. It’s only about recharging your inspiration and establishing a connection with your character again. (This is also going to help you with getting back into writing, or approaching it for the first time, with a more internalized focus of interest.)

When you feel like you’ve done that, you can branch out on these exercises more. Answer the memes more in-depth, answer more of them/the ones you don’t have immediate answers for. You can also try writing out scenes from the character’s canon from their perspective, if it wasn’t already so, adding in their thoughts and feelings, or changing the scene in some ways that would be interesting to write out. This is the point where it’s a good idea to try a writing prompt or two, as well! Take the prompt as a sort of starter sentence from a mutual, you’ve got the situation, fill in with your muse.

Write when you feel like writing. The RPC is great at saying this when it comes to muns not wanting to write, but kind of ignores the other side of the equation. The side where you want to write, have the inspiration and muse to do so, but it might not be the best time. As in, you’re not home/wherever you usually write, with whatever device you tend to write on accessible. No, you’re not going to be able to get as much done, but you can write without the usual situation and device regardless. You can write a scene or ideas down using your phone or tablet, or go old school and use a notebook. If you’re at work and your job isn’t applicable to being able to get down a single sentence, that still doesn’t mean you have to wait 8+ hours to get home; while you’re taking your break, write a little bit. It is a break, and writing is your hobby, it isn’t work. It’s good to do things you enjoy on breaks, and far more fulfilling to have also accomplished something you happen to enjoy.

Not writing when you have the drive to do, putting it off and holding it in until “the perfect moment,” is a great way to lose your inspiration and never actually have that moment. If you feel like doing it, that means it is the perfect moment. Life is restricting, don’t impose even more restrictions on yourself by having to be at home, in a specific spot, with a specific device, at a specific time, on a specific day. Was that annoying repetition? You’re right, it was. And that’s how your creative mind processes all the crap piled onto it that doesn’t allow for creativity.

Now, the other problem, the fandom situation.

There isn’t anything you can do about that, to be absolutely honest. I’m not going to blow smoke and tell you to be positive, wait it out, maybe the fandom will spring to life again. You know, maybe it will...but you could be waiting literal decades for that to happen. Not cool. Please, take my word for that, it’s personal experience that it blows even more than you imagine it will.

What you can do is take the matter into your own hands in other ways; putting yourself out there with more availability in multiple ways.

Are you a single-fandom blog, or are you crossover friendly? If you’re not crossover friendly, try to think of a single, relatively popular fandom that you enjoy. Don’t look at it like a hassle, but rather, just another creative exercise. A serious pitfall of creating alternate universe versions of muses is to take the simplest route, merely picking something you want from that other universe and applying it to your muse with no relevant changes that would naturally occur from it. It isn’t just reductive as hell, it’s not remotely creative, it’s like sticking a sticker on your muse’s forehead and saying that’s a whole different muse. It’s neither attractive to potential partners nor going to sustain your own interest for long. You want this to be a passionate investment on your own end, for yourself.

What not to do:

Let’s say the fandom you picked to do crossovers with is based around magic, the main characters are witches, and they are divided into factions based on how their magical talents display and develop. Not only do you decide to make your muse a witch, you pick the most badass faction. It’s the one full of assassins and action and (metaphorically or literally) sex appeal. Well, that’s also going to be the most popular faction in the fandom. That means there will not only be plenty of big name canons there but also that there’s going to be a plethora of OCs designed just for this universe...and other crossovers from other currently active fandoms.

While that might sound like it’s great for maximizing interaction chances, it’s really not when you’re just starting somewhere new with a character from another fandom that might not be known or liked. It can also take a minute in another fandom’s RPC to identify where the good partners are. Every now and then, it is the most popular and over-populous era/faction/etc., but most of the time, it isn’t. People who write with considerable dedication and talent fairly rarely are in the popular kids club even in their fandom choices. By inserting yourself into that area, you might be bypassing (and being bypassed) by better partners on the assumption that their characters are simply going to bore you to death since they’re not within the scope of your focal point.

It’s not a situation of not being allowed to be picky, you not only have that right regardless of your situation, you also should be. This is not a “beggars can’t be choosers” situation, you’re not beholden to anyone on the basis of being new and bored. However, some of my best, and longest lasting, writing partners over all 23 years I’ve been RPing didn’t/don’t fit with all the exact surface details that automatically draw my interest. It is as true within my own fandom as it is in dealing with crossovers. Opposites (with enough similarities) really do attract and work out well together!

Don’t judge and write people off for anything that isn’t an issue of compatibility with your muse, your writing, or yourself. Decline someone because they do one line only and you are novella, they write topics that are upsetting to you, you can see no way your muse and theirs can interact without instant murder, or because you cannot stand writing with someone who is pulling 90% aesthetics and purple prose. Not because their muse is a witch who uses life-based magic, loves nature, is a healer, and into their health...while your muse in this AU is all about the death, only appreciates an urban environment and is grossed out by animals, kills as an occupation, lives on cheeseburgers and caffeine. You see what I’m saying? Don’t limit yourself unnecessarily!

What to do:

Did you consider if, in that hypothetical idea of a fandom, your muse based on their purely canon self would even fit into that faction? Or is it just something you wanted to see? If you didn’t consider this, or it was the latter, fix that. That’s bad.

If you’re not absolutely dead set on that and only that, think about what really does fit the muse better. Maybe, they would be better as a healer, someone who messes with the very fabric of reality, or someone who manipulates natural elements at will. Then again, they might not even be a witch. They could be more mundane in terms of power, but more accurate and interesting as a normal, human (or whatever). They could even be greatly opposed to the use of magic and witches. Use your muse’s original canon as a base to decide these things.

If you are absolutely dead set on it, though, you have a lot of work to do making the character into what amounts to a markedly different one while still retaining some recognizable aspects of themselves. Consider what events, in this new universe of fandom, might have happened to alter the character thus. Keep in mind that even small changes can have great consequences in a character’s development, and you might need to think about the myriad ways in which that can display, how it changes still more things for this character.

While that job becomes so much more intense when you haven’t planned out a path that matches your muse’s canon characterization at all, it is still an important part of constructing an AU, of any kind, in general. Ask yourself what experiences led to the character you know as you already know them (including your own headcanons, yes). Then, find similar possible experiences within your new fandom verse that can have the same effect. Again, though, it’s important to understand that you are never going to have an identical set of experiences, so you need to explore relevant changes still.

When you do this, you’re allowing your muse to more seamlessly fit into this other universe in a fleshed out, interesting way. Interesting both new partners and yourself.

Okay, next obnoxious question from me! Do you have multiple verses, or are you single-verse?

Whether you are already exploring new fandoms or not, by creating a variety of verses for others to interact with, you’re increasing your chances for interest and activity. When you have a verse from a different fandom you can then, additionally, advertise your presence in both that fandom’s tags when you do a promo or applicable open starter and on active RPer lists for that fandom.

Every popular fandom has such lists. You can get on them by messaging/sending an ask to the blog or by reblogging their post to be added, following the directions. I haven’t seen one yet that doesn’t allow for crossovers. You simply have to tag it as stated in the post, such as “your canon’s name here - original fandom name - crossover.” By tagging your open starter or promo as “-insert fandom here- rp” and “-fandom here- open starter” you allow people in that fandom to find you to interact. Either way is excellent for getting started in totally new places with a character others might be unfamiliar with.

Please remember that if you tag a promo as “promo,” it’ll not show up in searches off of your blog. You know, where it actually needs to be searched. Thanks, tumblr, for being janky! Being more specific as to the fandom and character will help others actually find you. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by tagging it as “promo.”

Make your verses accessible on your blog itself, in the nature of those verses, and how you set up your page or post that lists them.

Don’t put any page behind an impossible or complicated aesthetic. You really shouldn’t anyway, but when you’re needing interactions, it’s actively hurting your chances. Many people don’t want to have to play a game with your theme, it’s a turn off. Try a pinned post that lists all of your links to important pages like rules, verses, and bio instead. It means that, even from the dash, that information can quickly be found while other muns are first interested, and also that anyone who might be using the app can access it more expediently. (I’m genuinely not a fan or big supporter of doing google docs for rules, verses, bios, etc., as it forces people off site, so I can’t personally say, in good conscious and honesty, that I’d recommend it, but you do you!) You want to keep things quickly accessible is the idea here; when people are interested, you want to catch them right then and there before they have a chance to forget and lose your blog.

As to the nature of the verses themselves, give people real options. Don’t have 20 verses that all read same way. Same themes, plot possibilities, and backstories, or incredibly similar names. Have a diverse list of verses that can act as foundations for a variety of different muns. As many fandoms as you can reasonably have a good portrayal of, and different types of fandoms; not all the same genre (all fantasy, all horror, all scifi). Verses where your muse has substantially different goals, occupations, and other life situations that will involve another muse; don’t make your muse A Warrior™ in every verse, you can keep plenty of those aspects without being that literal. People love “modern” verses set in our own universe and, usually, in our own era. That doesn’t mean you have to go stereotypical or otherwise bore yourself by doing the standard “high school/college verse,” for instance. You don’t even have to designate that sort of thing, let alone make it the focus; simply create the verse by considering what your character really would be like if they existed within your reality.

As a final note on verses as pertains to this point, when you’re doing crossover verses, it’s alright to do some verses where your muse from their own canon existence somehow ends up teleported or whatever to another fandom’s reality, or even our own. Just don’t make every verse like this, it puts the onus of a great deal of creativity and effort onto the other mun by default; your muse has cluelessly dropped into the universe, and while it is high drama time for you, the other mun has to babysit, educate, deal with fallout, etc.

On making the list of your verses accessible, you want to focus on ease of browsing and not being overwhelming. People tend to look through a verse page and not read every verse listed, rather, they look at the titles and breakdowns to see if it is of interest, then read it. Don’t try to make everyone read them all, it isn’t going to happen, and shouldn’t change your effort any as the right people are going to find the verses that interest them...if you make it clear and easy enough.

Have a basic format you stick to, firstly. I do it this way: small verse banner, title of verse (linked to its overall tag so that muns can look through the tag at headcanons, aesthetics, pictures of the FC, and threads), muse age/age range, small blurb, possible triggers found uniquely or just heavily within this verse. In that order, one following the other in a simple, but pleasing way. Below that, is a more in depth breakdown of the “verse canon.” Sometimes, that is giving a brief rehashing of canon itself and anywhere my muse differs, be it in this verse only or overall, ending with where my muse is in this verse. Not literally where. I mean their present occupation, emotional and general state in life. At the very end, I provide any other relevant links and/or an expansion on the triggers mentioned at the top of the verse description if they’re that serious/recurrent so that muns can decide this isn’t the verse for them. I happen to have a potentially triggering muse, triggering verses, and writing triggering topics, though. That’s not something everyone needs to do.

Secondly, group your verses in a sensible way. I do my short list of default verses first. (And, I do mean short, you don’t want this be any more than four or five, it is overwhelming right out of the gate.) For me, that is two default verses of canon at different points on the timeline, one default AU that is a bit of a reversal of canon, and one default “modern” verse. Then, I list the verses that are in line with the altered canon one, just different possibilities, changes, points in history. After that, the different “modern” verse options. Then, verses for other fandoms, the crossover verses. And so on. This way, a potential partner can find the type of verse that might appeal to them and have an easier time picking from those possibilities and getting ideas.

Lastly, don’t be so succinct that you give too little information and underwhelm, but also don’t be so excessive that it takes all of the mystery of interaction away and overwhelms someone. It can be a difficult balance to strike, and some verses require more information than others, just experiment a bit. Additionally, it’s fine to link to pertinent information for the other mun to view aside from this, but don’t just link people to a fandom wiki as your “description/bio.” That isn’t giving information on how you write this muse, approach this fandom, or what another mun can otherwise expect. Keeping your descriptions interesting is important, you’re not giving a boring lecture, you’re trying to inform someone while making them hyped for their choices. It’s more interesting, and informative, to read if you do them with an ear to the “tone” of your muse in that verse. Is it a sad one? Sound that way. These can, indeed, function as snippets of your writing, so be sure you are writing them with the same care you should be giving your replies; spellcheck, good word flow and use, mind the grammar, and read over what you’ve written for common, easy mistakes.

Again, by giving a genuine variety of verses to choose from, you’re allowing for a greater reach in potential partners. Everyone from those still in your original fandom to those in new ones, all the way to fandomless muses will be able to interact with you this way.

Finally, in regards to what you can change or do when you’re in a dead fandom and seeking interactions; make sure you are increasing your reach by using proper tags, being honest about what and how you write, and don’t wait for others to stumble across you.

When you use tags properly, you’re increasing your chances of being seen at all. Every time you post something at all applicable on your blog, tag it with relevant things. Tag as described above with whatever fandom it is and “RP,” your character’s name, “open RP,” character name and RP, indie RP, open starter, and so on. Be sure you are optimizing your tags by placing the most relevant to finding you in the first four, those are what show up in site-wide searches only. Anything after that isn’t going to appear in a search across all tumblr.

By tagging your character’s name, as a canon, you should know that you are likely to get personal blog interaction. I’m pretty against being nasty to personal blogs for no reason, as I don’t appreciate personal and fandom blogs being shitty to me for the sole reason that I am an RPer. Please, use clear, short, attention getting directions for them. If you want no interactions with them, put right in the description of your blog “RP blog, does not interact with personal blogs.” When you say things like, “personals dni,” or “personals blocked,” you’re not doing anyone any favors. Personal blogs often don’t even know what the hell a personal blog even is! They do not denote themselves this way, to a personal blog, they’re just a blog. By designating first that you are an RP blog, you’re making it clearer that they’re the personal; they’re obviously not an RP blog, so that must make them a personal. Follow this up in a pinned post, right on top. Give a note to personal blogs that describes them as “any blog that isn’t an RP blog” first, then either tell them in brief what they can and can’t do or that you don’t interact and will block.

I don’t recommend taking your blog off of being findable, however. That’s alright once you have the RP activity you are looking for, but until then, it’s working against you. Other RP blogs cannot easily find you either, they will only find you if you’re on a list or appear in their recommended blogs, if you interact with a mutual, or are recommended by a mutual. You’re not just lessening your chances of personal blogs finding you, so if you have that turned off, turn it back on.

Don’t entirely rely on others finding you regardless, though. You can’t be 100% passive when you have no interactions, and by relying solely on serendipity you’re far less likely to get them. I know that everyone here is terminally shy, but seriously, you have to do more than put your silent will into the universe that someone perfect find you. You have to make this happen. Once you get a few people, you can afford to be more passive. Not only do you have some people to write with, you will be more visible to their mutuals, and more established as a presence. I’m not saying this is easy, or that it will become easy, not awkward or stressful, if you have a legitimate issue behind the shyness. Just that it is the only way to really proceed, and I believe you can do it!

So, go looking for interesting blogs. Be crossover and OC friendly (again, this doesn’t mean “accept everyone,” there are valid reasons for not accepting people you won’t work out with that have nothing to do with their fandom or being an OC), and search those fandom’s RPCs, following any blogs you think you might work out with upon reading their rules and other pages. Search for fandomless OCs and do the same thing. Fandomless OCs aren’t just floating around in the ether, they just weren’t created expressly for a particular fandom and within its confines. What is excellent about that is their ability to have a wide variety of verses and many possibilities to fit into any fandom or verse. So, don’t count them out solely on the basis of being an OC and fandomless. It doesn’t mean what people seem to think it does!

Do not stop at having followed 50 blogs. I mean, other than that you probably should stop following people for a bit. That you should do, as you need to be building writing relationships here, not following so many people that you cannot get to them. Don’t just stop at the follow, though. Since you’ve read their rules and information like a good RP partner, you should have some idea of what their interests are and where they align with yours, as well as how they prefer to be approached, if they accept memes right away to start, need plotting, have a rules password. When they’ve followed you back, proceed with interaction!

Ask if they’d like to plot when they have time, you’re really looking forward to writing with them. But...have some idea of a plot, please. It is a serious turn off to have someone message you wanting to plot, only to reply and get “lol I don’t have any ideas, anything works for me/whatever you want to do.” That isn’t plotting, it’s one party coming up with ideas and constructing a plot while they’re being told “I’m fine with anything.” That may be true, but it’s disheartening and a red flag for many people. If you genuinely can’t come up with anything, pick verses that match up well and suggest doing something within them.

“When you have the time, would you be interested in discussing writing? I was looking at your verses, and I think your verse -name- and mine, -verse name-, would mesh well.” Is a good way to start. Once you have a discussion flowing about the verses meshing and the muses, it’s typically easy to organically develop some plot ideas to go off of.

If both you and the other mun are alright with plot-free interaction and memes, you can send a meme any time. If you can’t find any memes on their blog, look for a wishlist or navigation page that shows you the tags for memes/wishlist. Still can’t find it? Ask them if they’ve got a wishlist or meme tag you can look through.

Additionally, if open starters are a thing you both do and are alright with, find some of theirs and respond. Post your own, tag it appropriately to be found in general and on your blog, and reblog it once or twice. Don’t excessively reblog it, and don’t get upset on the dash if no one interacts with it or any memes you reblog. Both are demanding to outright guilting, and not a good way to get partners. Just provide them with the ability to easily interact by making the posts available in the first place and by making them findable on your blog search and navigation.

Provide something for potential partners to see. Since you said you already do have writing, that’s great! That’s content on your blog that your partners can view. However, since you’re also having the issues you’ve stated, it’s likely that you haven’t many new posts. Show that you are active, interested in being here, and how you write your muse (and in general) by posting some newer content. For original content, do a headcanon or some meta, or post about new verses you are adding, the changes on your blog, a promo. For reblogs, things pertaining to your muse like canon imagery, fanart, quotes from canon or that generally express your muse, and aesthetics relevant to your muse are all excellent things to queue.

Use that queue. Not only do very few people appreciate having dash spam of similar content for the comparatively short time you might be around, but also, running these things on a queue means you spread that out for maximum view. While there are hours of heavier activity, you’ll have mutuals who are on at unusual hours due to their life and preferences or their timezone. This way, you’re not appearing inactive, if not outright invisible, to those mutuals. It’s not a bad idea to use a queue tag so that people know if they interact with a post that’s been queued, you might be here to quickly respond.

Ultimately, to fix your fandom and lacking partners problem, you just need to up your availability and reach beyond that fandom alone. Be proactive in following and approaching, decline blogs based on not working out only, utilize tags and fandom RPer lists, have everything on your blog easy to follow and not overwhelming, and have your verses meet as wide of a range of people as possible while also not being overwhelming.

Try updating your promo, as well, by the way. They’re not dead, they just really tanked when people kept making them based solely on aesthetic principle instead of being at all informative about the muse. They do seem to be coming back, so it’s a thing to consider.

Yes, make it visually appealing, it will draw people to reading it. No, do not just use a song lyric or quote with words highlighted linking your rules, verses, bio. Tell people basic info like the age of your muse and yourself, if you are multiverse and multiship, your muse’s canon verse and a couple of big interest verses of other major fandoms or themes that tend to be of interest to people, and what kind of RP you write - one line/para/multipara/novella. Absolutely give links to rules, verses, bio, and either memes, wishlist, or open starters, but give them just like that; make it very clear what this link is to. Put a very short statement of interest on there denoting that you’re expanding to new fandoms and looking for writing partners.

Do not sound desperate, demanding, or devaluing of yourself. Don’t say shit like “because my fandom is dead,” “trying this before I give up and delete my blog,” or “I suck at interaction/writing/ooc interaction/being a person but welp giving it a try, so follow and hit that heart.” (Conversely, calling yourself derogatory things and implying that your partners are too, such as the “we’re all just losers here” shit.) All of the above are not attractive, and they’re not even surprising enough to stand out anymore. It’s another reason to scroll right by that promo because nothing at all was different or of interest.

And as a wrap-up/rehash of the first topic, getting muse back: try starting over at the beginning by approaching the media involving your muse that has really stuck with you emotionally over the years, and exploring and developing your muse again.

Don’t tell yourself you can only write, for example, at home, on the laptop, after 7pm, and with a pop toy staring at you. The best thing about writing, as opposed to so many other hobbies, is that you can do it anywhere! So, do that. Do it any time you both feel the inspiration to do so and aren’t going to get fired or expelled for it. This isn’t work, it’s something enjoyable that does take effort (like literally all creative activities and skills do), but approaching it as though you need to follow novel writing advice from someone who has never published anything of note and isn’t you on the internet, with strict rules for success makes it feel that way. So does being frustrated with a dead fandom, no interaction. It’s disheartening, feels as annoying and fruitless as work often does. You probably need to break out of that mindset, and you can only do it by beginning to allow yourself to be creative on your own terms, entirely for yourself.

Do write simple things at first that you are inspired to do (you can’t get a scene out of your head, or a bit of dialogue), and/or headcanon/character development memes and question lists. Build from there as you get back in touch with your muse, writing things primarily or entirely for yourself still. Expanding on headcanons, doing some meta, or maybe writing out a missing piece of canon or what you’d be interested in seeing happen in canon if some event was altered.

Doing this sort of thing, you are getting in touch with your muse again and back into the real spirit of writing creatively, simultaneously.

Whatever you find most inspiring, do it. If it’s watching the movie or show again, do that, have it on while you write or simply think on the character’s actions, thoughts, and emotions during those scenes. If it’s reading the material again, do that, and read snippets of personal importance before you write. Maybe it’s some past playlists you can have on while writing, or even while you’re cleaning, walking the dog, driving or riding somewhere. It could even be your own previous writing! Go ahead and re-read that, it sounds like you still appreciate it, and that’s truly promising. If you find that you’re horrified by some of the things you’ve written in the more distant past, hey...that’s not just valid as hell, it’s natural. You know what else it is? An inspiration. You can clearly see that you could do better, that means you now know how to do better and are ready to do so. Validate yourself, prove it to yourself by rewriting or fixing something.

Don’t delete the blog or archive it. It is unpleasant to have a dead blog around, but don’t keep it dead. Use the same blog and simply transition it into wider things that will net you more partners and the interactions you deserve.

Look, even if you weren’t the most popular blog in your fandom before it went quiet, you really appreciated the blog, muse, and writing you were doing. You’ve defined that it wasn’t something you did to cause this situation, you just had the shit luck we all run into eventually of being in a fandom that ran out of material or interest. People are really fickle, so by taking a wider approach and fixing on the writing and muse instead of fandom now, you’re stopping this from repeating. Seriously, on a long enough timeline, every fandom dies or goes into hibernation. If you make a whole new blog with a different muse, it is going to happen again eventually.

So, don’t feel like you’re ridiculously clinging to the past and need to move on, you’re just sticking to something and can continue to stick to it through the next five fandom deaths. Just because it is the most popular thing to do to drop muses, constantly add new ones, and have this attitude that you can “blog refresh” your way out of recurrent, and inherent, problem doesn’t mean it is actually the right thing to do. It’s not even the most sensible, and certainly not the best thing to do with anything you’ve spent time and effort on.

That’s your incentive; yourself, the time and care you’ve put in, and your continued interest in writing and the muse. You’ll find good people, and bluntly, everyone else can fuck right off when you’re incentivized by yourself. It becomes a self-fulfilling activity at that point, I swear, and it feels really nice.

Just get back in touch with your muse and writing itself so that you can begin to expand and start interacting again!

[todaydreambelieversfic]

Author Spotlight: Coffeegleek Day 3

Author : @coffeegleek​

How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

At least a few revisions. Then multiple editing passes, and even with my spouse as my proofreader for the past 25+ years, and doing more editing passes before posting to AO3, I still find annoying little typos, sometimes large ones.

If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

There was a crack fic I stopped writing years ago. It was a self-challenge during one of those tumblr trope challenges. I was trying to combine all of the tropes into the same fic as they were announced. It got zero traction though so I gave up. I'd love to go back and complete it, make it better. I had the whole thing outlined too.

What do you look for in a beta?

My spouse. We've been together for decades. He's been proofreading my original science fiction work and various fandoms' fanfics since before we were married. He even proofreads my Klaine smut and doesn't blink an eye. (He's a Glee fan too and on tumblr.) He knows what I'm trying to say when I can't find the right words and supplies them. He catches things I don't. What I love the most is for my original work, he's written his own fanfic. It's BAD. It truly is, but it's so heartfelt and earnest. He even came up with a soundtrack should I ever publish my sci-fi novel and the movie or show rights be bought. You really can't get a better beta than that. <3

There’s a number of friends on tumblr that I bounce ideas off of and who give me advice for topics they know far more about than me and google. I try to thank them in my fics.

If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

I’m going to steal another author’s recent answer and say that I could never do someone else’s work justice. However, I would love to see the author’s ideas for their fics even if they couldn’t write a prequel or sequel.

I suck at remembering titles and author names. There were two political fics that I would love to read more of should their authors ever decide to write in those verses again. One was where Kurt and Blaine's dads were running for president and Kurt and Blaine were along for the ride, staying in the same hotels at time (where they first met,) having to do school remotely, having to be the perfect sons for the press and Blaine being fed up because his parents were conservative Republicans. Then there was another fic where Burt was president and Kurt was the First Son living in the White House, along with Finn, and it was hard to date when your every move is watched by the press.

Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

I write AU, so canon is only a word often misspelled by me. :) Seriously though, I try to incorporate as many canon elements and characters into my AU fics as I can. It's the kind of AU I like to read as well. What draws me to read and write AUs is taking canon characters, putting them into a different setting, and seeing how they'll react. At their core, they still need to remain the same in principle and have many of the same traits. Like Kurt will always love fashion and be headstrong no matter what. Blaine is always going to have that spark within himself, no matter how depressed or oppressed he gets. Burt and Carole are always going to be loving and nurturing parents at heart. Even in fics where Burt isn't woke, there's a part of him that means well. (Not one of my own fics, but one I read a long time ago.) Different circumstances will change the canon characters and make them react in different ways though. Like, Kurt could end up more withdrawn and hide his love of fashion as a matter of survival and self preservation. He or Blaine could turn into "bad boys." Coach Beiste will always have a heart of gold. Miss Pillsbury will always have a problem with messes. Things like that. I know canon. Give me all the alternate universe versions of it and I will be a happy camper.

Talk about a review that made your day.

I haven't checked for reviews on my fics in ages (because I'm an insecure chicken) so I don't remember any specifically. I do remember there were many that made my day. There are those who take the time to review every chapter. Ones who write only a short note to thank me for writing the fic - both the angsty ones and the cracky fun ones. I love it when someone mentions something that no one else has that I was hoping someone would notice because I was proud of it. I'm not a popular author and don't get a lot of kudos or comments or reblogs compared to many. So each comment and kudos means a lot to me and I'd like to publicly thank every single person who wrote one or hit that kudos button.

Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

I once got a troll who decided it was his job to complain that I had misspelled hors d'oeuvres in one sentence out of an entire verse where the word was written multiple times correctly. It was a series of Klaine Advent one shots for the Empty Nest verse. At first I was shocked and replied with an apology. Then I was, "F this. The person is a troll who didn't read any other part of the fic or verse, just this one quickly written one shot entry, and if all they had to say was that I'd misspelled a commonly misspelled word, then they aren't worth my time." I deleted the comment. There's concrit and trolling. It wasn't concrit.

What advice do you have for people just starting to write?

Have fun writing, even the hard stuff. Know that it's okay to take breaks. Try your best and know you'll get better the more you write and the more you read. Pronouns are your friend and free. Don't put, "I know this is going to suck, so whatever," in your fic description. We all suck at times. It's a part of writing. But if you want folks to read it, using that as your fic's summary isn't the way to go. Just my opinions, which won't even buy you a cup of coffee.

Which fic do you most like to discuss with other people? Why?  

I think it’s pretty obvious from all of my rambling that I enjoy talking about both of my series - Empty Nest verse and A Very Hallmark Christmas verse.  I'm not a popular author and I know my fics, especially the Empty Nest verse ones, aren’t everyone’s thing, so I never get to really discuss them except with friends that I bug to death in private and via long replies to comments on AO3. (You all are saints blessed by all of the good and patient gods.) I have so much to say about them - the process of writing them, the world building, research, and character decisions that went into every single one. I know they’re not perfect. I know the Empty Nest verse grew miles beyond the ficlette about Burt and Carole that it was meant to be. I know my sense of humor in the Hallmark verse isn’t everyone’s thing either. I still worked really hard on them and am glad that I did. Empty Nest let me release a lot of the fear and anxiety I had for my Hispanic and gay son after the 2016 election. The Hallmark ones were a needed break to put some humor into my life. If others enjoyed them, great. If folks want to know more, my inbox is always open.

What's one aspect of writing fic that gets you really excited?

Writing humor even if I'm the only one that finds it funny. As I said above, writing the Hallmark Christmas movie dialogue and plot and the actors as they were filming it was a blast. Writing the commercials was fun and exciting. In my angsty fics, knowing I wrote a good scene, line, or moment that brought out all the feels. That's more of “satisfaction of a job well done” than excited.

***

Check out Coffeegleek’s Fics

Humorous Spooky Drabbles -  Humorous drabbles to spookish type prompts based on a tumblr post called October Drabble Prompts #1 by hallofceleano. The parts in bold and italic are from those prompts. Characters include Kurt, Blaine, Burt, Carole, and Finn. All fun; only #4 has some mild angst. #4 is for snarkyhag and regarding #5 - I know next to nothing about Twilight and had to look up Taylor Lautner on imdb. The liberties I took are my own.

A Very Sloppy Christmas - lucy8675309 posted to tumblr a series of gifs with Kurt dressed up as an elf. It inspired me to write the following prompt, which CoffeeAddict80 encouraged me to write as a fic:

I now want a fic where real Santa’s elf!Kurt gets drunk and vents to Blaine about all the woes of working for Santa. He’s over 100 years old and the outfits are terrible. Why couldn’t they wear clothes like the elves did in that one movie? Drunk elf Kurt has no idea he’s venting to Santa’s son.

Bonus if he wakes up and realizes he just had a drunken one night stand. He isn’t sure who it was with. Only that he’s naked, the guy in the bed beside him is naked and showing off a really great ass. Then said guy turns over and after Kurt’s done staring at his dick, he looks at the guy’s face and realizes who it is.

It’s a Twisted World -  I decided to challenge myself by combining the posted 5 weekly Klaine AU Friday themes and adding another one of my own. So that means: Farm, Fairytale, Vintage (1900’s,) Super Powers, Zombie Apocalypse, and Harry Potter World Klaine with a splash of a fic idea I thought of while in the produce section of the grocery store. Each week, the story will continue, though each part stands alone. This is not a brilliant work of perfectly composed fan fiction. What it is, is fast-paced, cracky fun, with a large dose of innuendo. At least it had my son laughing his ass off. I hope y'all enjoy it too. :)

[scripttorture]

My setting is a fantasy historical setting set roughly around the late 1800s to early 1900s that focuses on a fantasy species currently subjugated by humanity. They're generally forced to serve on the front lines of an ongoing war, in part because they're seen as "not people" and "repairable". A major antagonist is a human member of the military who is officially supposed to be treating their injuries but who has the blanket approval of the government to do what he feels is best. (medical 1/2)

As a result, he often purposefully lets soldiers die or lie there in agony if he feels they've been disrespectful or disobedient to him- death is not permanent for this species, so he isn't really wasting soldiers. His motivations are both to have a more "obedient" army and some degree of bigotry from being raised with the idea that these beings' lives don't matter. (medical 2/3) Would the withholding of medical treatment by a government official be torture if it were motivated by similar motives to most torturers (ie political difference, belonging to a specific group, wanting obedience/information)? Do you have any advice on this setting or story? Thanks in advance! (medical 3/3)

-

I think that this fits with a lot of the general pattern of how torture occurs but- My instinct is that the legal definition probably matters less in this case.

 In terms of the time period I think this is before our world had international laws against torture. It’s before this sort of thing was codified in a standardised fashion. This doesn’t change the effects but it does change things like- what a culture views as torture.

 In our terms? Yes I think this meets the legal definition of torture. It’s conducted by a government official who has power over/responsibility for, these victims. He knows his actions are causing pain. And he’s doing it to punish them, individually and collectively, which is one of the possible motivations listed in anti-torture law.

 That means that it’s likely the research I talk about is relevant to what you’re writing.

 But we shouldn’t ignore cultural views of particular practices. By which I mean that commonly held unethical views impact your world building and characters.

 This pattern of individual and collective punishment was common in most armies historically and is still used today. Forced exercise as punishment has led to deaths in UK army training facilities and (prosecuted as such or not) this is torture. Whippings, beatings, stress positions and starvation have all been used historically to ‘punish’ members of the military. In fact much of today’s clean torture might come from European military punishments.

 (Side note, the origin of any one particular torture is incredibly hard to trace and since they are simplistic it’s likely they don’t have one standard point of origin.)

 As general advice- I think it’s worth considering what these subjugated people get from being part of the army.

 There have been a lot of historical cases where subjugated people and second class citizens were an integral part of a country’s armed forces. But if violence and threats are the only ‘reasons’ for participation then the results are unlikely to be positive.

 If you’re aiming for a system with a reasonable ‘success’ rate (we are taking success to be a non-human who is an obedient part of this army and makes a reasonable effort to fulfil most of their duties) then I think there should be some kind of benefit to the soldiers themselves.

 It doesn’t have to be a big positive and you can use it to highlight just how shit their general situation is.

 I’ve got a broadly similar scenario in one of my stories: with a fantasy sub-class that’s strongly associated with the armed forces.

 The reasoning that I came up with was that life was genuinely better for them as part of the military. They were systematically barred from ordinary jobs and housing, the other main employment option open to them was a particularly dangerous form of mining and without some sort of patron they were routinely attacked and harassed. The military consistently provided shelter, food and a higher degree of comfort/security then the other options open to them.

 In contrast to the mines, where their kind routinely went unfed and were typically dumped on the street when too injured to work, the military looked like a ‘good’ option. Not so much ‘positive’ as ‘better then the typical alternatives’.

 I’d encourage you to think of similar back-handed ‘benefits’ in your story. Better food, better pay, perks that benefit their family, something that gives an understandable reason for these people to stick around.

 I’d caution against trying to make it completely impossible for them to escape or refuse orders because that’s never the case in reality and doing that makes these people… well less human, less relatable.

 For analogous situations in real military organisations you might want to look up the British Empire’s sepoys and the role of black soldiers such as Thomas-Alexandre Dumas* and the men who served under him in European armies.

 In the sort of environment you’re building up I think that a lot of these supernatural people would know about what this doctor is like. They might not know the specifics of what he does, but the rumour mill is likely to make it clear he does something bad.

 This doesn’t mean that characters will always be able to avoid him and it doesn’t mean every character would hear the rumours. But people in these situations, where an abusive figure is in an entrenched position of power, do try to warn each other.

 It’s common for people in these situations to try and help each other and try to resist. The methods available to them are often small and sometimes ineffective but I think it’s important to try and capture the attempt.

 One of the things I’ve noticed in fiction that uses abusive situations with this kind of hierarchy is that there’s a tendency to ignore any action that isn’t obvious and violent. You occasionally write about the victims attacking abusers or enablers and we write about escape attempts. But we generally ignore other smaller acts. Sabotaging equipment or plans, victims educating each other, helping each other, prayer, ‘magic’, keeping illegal traditions alive.

 I think cutting out these smaller acts can flatten the portrayal of victims. It presents a false binary of responses: passive acceptance or violent resistance. And that makes resistance appear much rarer then it is in reality.

 In situations like the one you describe survival and self expression can be forms of resistance.

 If you’re not writing about a real world group of people then I think concerted historical research in that area is less important. By which I mean: if you’re showing a fictional group then you want to capture the kind of responses that happen in this situation rather then say specific aspects of Cuban culture and history.

 I’ve found reading about the history of black resistance to slavery in the new world a really good starting point for understanding… well how people respond in systematically awful abusive situations. That’s partly because it is really well studied and recorded. (And also available in a variety of languages). I’m not sure what to recommend as a good starting point though. James’ The Black Jacobins is traditional, I also liked Barcias’ West African Warfare in Brazil and Cuba but it’s been a while since I read it and the focus was violent resistance.

 People keep their humanity even in terrible environments and I think it’s important to try and capture that.

 For the doctor himself there are two sources I’d suggest looking at. The first (somewhat inevitably) is the appendices of Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth where he describes two torturers he treated for mental health problems. The second is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

 I’m suggesting that as well because of the examples it gives of doctors who were definitely not acting in the best interests of their patients. The focus of the book is the origin of the HeLa cell line, the standard cell line in all medical testing. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that Henrietta Lacks’ cells changed medicine and the production of pharmaceuticals forever. Research on these cancer cells has done immeasurable good.

 They were also taken from a dying black woman in America without her consent. People have made billions off of these cells while the Lacks family never received a penny.

 And doctors have done indefensibly dangerous things with them.

 I think having a look at both will help you find a way to frame this doctor’s personality and the way he justifies his actions. Because while he is a torturer there are more discussions of that in a policing or military context then there are in a medical one.

 I’ve found that discussions of doctors as torturers tend towards a different set of tropes. They’re more likely to assume that the abuse is an experiment, without questioning whether the record keeping, accounting for variables etc is strict enough to yield meaningful results. They also tend to portray the torturer as ‘charming’. And there can be significant ableist ideas (anti-disability and anti mental illness prejudice) built into the story.

 The kind of situation you’ve outlined is already pretty realistic in a lot of respects: this is the kind of situation where you see doctors acting as torturers.

 But it’s also not how authors tend to approach writing doctors as torturers. Which means I’m not sure what to add. I think you’ve already avoided most of the usual traps by virtue of how you’ve constructed the setting.

 Overall I think this a pretty solid idea. It has enough similarities to real world historical situations that it feels ‘real’. And there are plenty of sources to draw from. It brings in fantasy elements in a way that I think is really interesting, almost playing out generational trauma within the same generation. And it feels like an original situation. I don’t often see doctors used in this way or the combination of period and fantasy elements you’re proposing.

 I think it’s going to be a very interesting story and I wish you the best of luck. :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

*No not that Dumas, his dad. The other one.

[fallen-hero]

LET’S TALK PACING

Let's talk pacing, because it's a nebulous thing that I think deserves to be talked about more. BUT in order to talk about pacing, we need to talk about structure.

Writing a book is a thing. Most people who start out writing one, never finishes. They get stuck halfway, or they get a better idea, or they run out of steam, and even if they do finish it, they take one look at it and realizes it is not what they wanted and despair.

I get that. I really do. Most of the things that people write are short stories. Why? Because they are short, fast, fun little snippets. They might be a fanfiction filling out an established story, or just a scene that got stuck in your head, or even a carefully structured piece meant for publishing. It's still short. It's in the name. So you write it, check the grammar, maybe send it off to a beta, make sure that the language is good, and that you get across what you want to. Then you're done, publish and move on. The majority of time is spent actually writing, and most of the editing is done on the fly.

Why? Because it is short enough that you can keep everything in mind. It's a song, not an album.

This is what many people try to do with books, treating each chapter as a short story. Write, fix, edit, next chapter. Books... doesn't work that way.

One of my favorite illustrations of this is an author I am following on twitter (V.E Schwab, the structure of Vicious is -chef's kiss-) posting a picture of her and her editor trying to fix her latest (at the time) book before the deadline. The picture was of the floor filled with yellow papers detailing what happened in the scenes, and they kept moving around scenes to find the flow of the book. Because with a book, writing 'the end' is not the end, that is just the beginning. Because only when you've got the text down can you start making sense of the flow. Do you need to add scenes? Remove them? Move them around? These are the parts that are impossible to fix on the fly, because you don't know until you've got the end. It's too big. Too complex. It changes too much from what you've originally planned.

This is why I am so adamant about not fixing grammar or bothering having nice writing until the alpha is done. I don't know if the scenes will stay. I don't know if they need to be rewritten. I can't know.

In Rebirth, the scene where you steal the Rat-King was in a different place, and a lot more simple and dry. It was the part playtesters skipped through to get to the good stuff. I had to move it, rewrite it, add a lot of scenes to it just to make it fit better into the narrative and be fun. I have already done one round of changes to Retribution because I knew they were needed (moving chapters around, adjusting the timeline) but I can't look at it until I'm at the end,

If there is ONE advice I have to ANYBODY out there writing a book is to FINISH it before you start to edit it. Don't go back. Don't fix things. DON'T REWRITE THE START. JUST DON'T. Not until it's done. Otherwise it's wasted work. Take notes, but don't write it.

Just finish the damn book first.

It's taken me a lot of courage letting other people see my unfinished work. It's harder than I pretend, because I'm a perfectionist, but I also know that the end result will be the better for it. So I will suck it up. The biggest issue is that I can fix coding errors, but I CANNOT go and fix the pacing. Not yet. It will just sit there and annoy me, and I have to try to ignore it. It's not easy.

And here we come to the BIG problem with pacing.

PACING IN A BLOODY CHOICESCRIPT GAME.

It is a nightmare. In a book you have control. Here, the more choices you give people, the less control you have over the pacing.

Let's take a simple book. A is for Action, I is for Interaction, and R is for Romance.

A - I - A - I - A - R - A is a common pacing. A mix of action/plot and character interaction ending in a romance and a climax. No, not that kind of climax, get your mind out of the gutter.

In Rebirth I had a pacing like this, because the Interactions were separate, Ortega for the hero side and the past, Mortum for the villain side and the future. No complications. Simple. Easy to pace. And then we started to add love interests.

A - I - A - Ia/Ib/Ic/Id - A - Ra/Rb/Rc/Rd - A

Not that much more complicated. More alternative scenes, sure, but still straightforward as games go. Talk to person A or B. A lot of games that locks in your romance does this, choose the same interaction to build romance points, enough and you'll get the payoff at the end.

But some of those scenes were so nice, and would also work if you are friends. And I wanted a platonic playtrough as well. It's just that well, the friendship scenes are already there, and you can care about more than one person so why not be able to romance one and be friends with the other?

A - Ia -Ic - A - Ia - Ic - A - Ra - A

And all of a sudden those action/plot scenes are a lot further apart.

But some of those interaction scenes were cool, and kind of plot related things were revealed so maybe everyone should have those not to miss out on content, right? And that also helps with not having to choose one out of five options and feel shut out from the cool things in there for no good reason. In real life, people have time to do more things, right? Not to mention that you need more interactions to do more groundwork for the romance, which some people want to happen right now, and other people draw it out.

A - I - Ib - Ia - A - Ia - I - Ib - A - Ra - A

By now our plot/action A scenes are getting further and further apart... and all of a sudden someone says, well, there's a lot of talking and not much action in this game? Because we can have one playthrough that is:

A - I - Ib - Ia - Ic - A - Ia - I - Ib - A - Ia - Ra - A

because they talk to/wants to romance everyone, while another playthrough is:

A - I - A - I - A - R - A

because they are playing a depressed loner who would rather skip at least two of those I scenes because that would be in character.

And these are the things I'll have to sit and balance. Because there is no canon playtrough. Because some people will want to talk to everyone, and I have to make the decision if I should let them, and risk them complaining that the game is slow and too talky, but if I don't, they might complain that they get cut off from content for no good reason because realistically in the game they would have time.

And on the other hand I have to decide if I should allow people to skip content because it would be in character, and risk players missing out on content, information and maybe even think it was a short and boring game if they only played it once. I made the Lady Argent mind dive optional in Rebirth, and I think it was the right call. I did not make the Ortega argument in the park optional because I wanted that interaction there, though it was against character for some mc's to meet up.

These are the things I have to juggle, in addition to the pacing.

I am taking a big risk with Retribution, but I've allowed myself the possibility of failure, rather than taking control. I am giving the players/readers more variation/control and choices than I had planned. It's going to be very hard getting a decent pacing at the end, for all the varying playthroughs. But I'm gonna try.

We'll see if I'll manage to pull it off.

[rpgmgames]

September’s Featured Game: Turovero: The Celestial Tower

DEVELOPER(S): Queenie ENGINE: RPG Maker VX Ace GENRE: RPG, Adventure, Psychological, Dark Fantasy WARNINGS: Violence, Light Horror Elements, Sensitive Themes SUMMARY: Turovero: The Celestial Tower is a freeware, dark fantasy role-playing game created with RPG Maker VX Ace. Players take on the role of four young adventurers - Sigurd, a brave and kind-hearted knight, Leilia, a gentle and motherly cleric, Edric, a gifted yet sharp-tongued mage, and Ruby, a cheeky, fun-loving thief - who have no recollection of their lives prior to meeting one another. Determined to free their world from the influence of an ancient evil, the Dark One, the group sets forth on their most perilous journey yet as they climb the mysterious divine tower, Turovero. However, as the heroes ascend the Celestial Tower, they begin to realize that not everything is as it seems. Just what is the Dark One that plagues their world so, and what truly happened to the Four Gods of legend? The answers to these questions lie in wait for them at the top of the tower… but do they truly want to discover them?

Play the game here! Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! I'm Queenie and this is my second game that I've developed, written, and composed for (my first game was Prom Dreams: A High School Love Story, a horror / dating sim game available whever you can download Turovero from). I've been making games in earnest for about 4 years now, but I did use to muck around in the old bootleg version of RPG Maker 2000 when I was a kid I guess. Because one of the main complaints about my first game was the artwork, and because I, er, can't draw very well, I also enlisted the help of @genkaiko, @caffeineandcarpaltunnel, @pleasedrawmore, and @meakersneakers to draw the character artwork, title and ending artwork, enemy artwork, and cutscene artwork respectively. Check them out too if you've got the chance!

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *Queenie: I've always enjoyed horror games and games that started out normal / cute / cliched but slowly turned into something darker as they went on. I also really love RPGs and adventure games. So, naturally, I figured I'd combine the two at some point, and thus the initial concept for Turovero was born!

How long have you been working on your project? *Queenie: Total development time was around 2.5 years.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Queenie: Considering every games I've made so far is essentially cobbling together various ideas from games and anime I love, you bet your ass it did LOL. Gameplay involves a mix of classic Final Fantasy-esque battles and Zelda-style field puzzles, whereas the story and atmosphere takes inspiration from other RPG Horror games and anime such as Madoka Magica and Higurashi. Essentially, dark psychological drama wrapped up in a nice little JRPG shell. Or something like that.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Queenie: Besides my complete and utter lack of art skills (which I thankfully had my team to help me with!), I also really struggled with the field skills due to RPG Maker's admittedly shoddy collision detection. I was eventually able to make the mechanic work around 90% of the time (and if it doesn't, protip: push up against the object before activating the field skill), so it's thankfully playable, but it sure was a pain to work with :T

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Queenie: I actually try to fully create a solid outline of my games and then stick to it, for the most part, so that I don't lose track during development. So, to be honest, not a whole lot changed besides some minor details, such as names, battle skills, and combat balance adjustments. Although, I did originally envision the theme and look of the final "dungeon" a bit differently (which I obviously won't go into details about), and only went with the current design because I couldn't get the sprites to cooperate with me and I was like "well, eh, this is the next best thing I guess". :P

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Queenie: I did about 80% of the game myself, but I did have an interview/portfolio submission process for artists. I knew many of them previously, and the title artist I'd already had a working relationship and internet friendship with, so that made things easier as well. It also helped that I could share my ideas (and memes. lots of memes.) during the development process so I didn't have to keep the game 100% secret, haha.

What is the best part of developing a game? *Queenie: The music!! I freakin' love composing okay. I also love writing emotional or comedic scenes, then see other people's reactions to them as they play. Speaking of which, my jar of Player Tears seems to be running a little empty lately... :3c

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Queenie: I usually just go with the kind of gameplay my story needs and that my developer's skills will allow; sometimes I see another game and go "oh, that's possible?", and might keep that knowledge in handy, but I don't actively seek out gameplay inspiration or anything.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Queenie: My boy Edric and his grumpy yet adorable tsundere ways LOL. I have a thing for characters with love problems okay ;;

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Queenie: I do kind of wish the game had a way to do something like unison attacks from the Tales series, since it'd be thematically consistent with the game's ideas of friendship and unity, but at the time I wasn't willing to fudge around with the battle engine too much, so I shelved the idea.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Queenie: I have ideas for some prequel stories (in an e-book or even a visual novel format) that expand upon the characters and world a bit, but I'm waiting to gauge interest in them.

What do you most look forward to upon/after the release of a project? *Queenie: Player reactions and Let's Plays, definitely. I feed off of player reactions. I crave them like a zombie craves brains. If you play my games please tell me how much you suffered - er, enjoyed it, it really makes my day!

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Queenie: Honestly, only that it'd attract the wrong kind of fan - you know, the ones who harass people over fictional characters and over a work not being 100% to their particular standards. Thankfully that hasn't seemed to happen yet, and most people who've played my games are super chill and awesome.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Queenie: Use outlines and try not to shovel features into your game just because you can! Figure out what kind of game you want and then focus your energy on making it the best version of that image that you can. Sure, my games may not take advantage of everything RPG Maker can do, but I don't think they need to - I only needs the elements that will help me tell my story the way I want to.

Question from last month's featured dev @Teal Crown: If you're working on a team, how do you manage to keep organized? (Otherwise: If you could meet your favourite dev, the one that inspires you the most, what would you ask them?) *Queenie: My artists and I kept up via Tumblr messenger and Discord mostly. I also made a beta testing server when the game reached the testing phase, which was very helpful and also loads of fun. :)

We mods would like to thank Queenie for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Turovero: The Celestial Tower if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[thearkhound]

Drama CD Metal Gear Solid interviews

The following is a series of interviews that were published in the booklets for the Drama CD Metal Gear Solid series. The booklet for Vol. 1 contains an interview with Hideo Kojima himself, while Vol. 2 contains interview with Motosada Mori (the series’s military advisor, who served as the audio drama’s screenwriter as well) and illustrator Yoji Shinkawa. The scripts for the Metal Gear Solid radio drama has been translated for quite a long time now, but the interviews have not until now.

The Metal Gear Solid radio drama is a non-canonical continuation of the game in which Solid Snake, Meryl Silverburgh, Roy Campbell and Mei-Ling continue working for the U.S. military following the events of the Shadow Moses island takeover as they become involved in new missions set in various conflict zones. You can read a translated transcripts on the following links: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.

Hideo Kojima

It seems that the story for the Drama CD is set after the events of the game itself.

Don’t think about it too deeply. (laughs) That was my biggest concern when it came to discuss the radio drama. There are quite a few inconsistencies if you think about it seriously. More importantly, I don’t think they [the main characters] would be willing to return to the battlefield after the ending of the game. You’re better off thinking of this audio drama as an alternate story using the same characters.

Mr. Motosada Mori, who worked on the game as a military advisor, seems to had been in charge of writing the script this time...

Originally I was told to write it myself but I wasn’t able to due to various circumstances. So when it came on deciding a writer, it had to be someone who was not only be knowledgeable of the Metal Gear universe, but also be familiar with military and world affairs, as well as firearms... I was wondering if there was such a worthy candidate. Not only does Mr. Mori has the expertise and experience, but he is also a published author. On top of that, he provided entertainment advice on the game itself, so I was confident to assign the job to him. At first I wanted Mr. Mori to employ his own unique gimmick and we thought a lot of what he could add to the script. But then the amount of technical terms he added to the script became too much for the average listener to understand, so we ended up reducing them. (laughs)

By the way, the character of Allen Iishiba was based on someone we knew... When we went to the United States for research, we were able to observe a tank in person thanks to a friend of Mr. Mori in the U.S. Army, so he became the inspiration for that character. [Translator’s note: The person in particular is Tomoaki Iishiba, who is credited as one of the military advisors alongside a Michael Allen.]

Were there any difficulties when it came to the difference in expression between a videogame and an audio-only CD?

Perhaps this is the fate of videogames as a medium, but there is a chance that if you only hear a line of dialogue once, you might not understand it the first time, so we have to repeat things like a parrot during conversations. [Translator’s note: This is why most conversations in the MGS series end with Snake repeating what the other person said in the form of a question] As a result, we end up writing dialogue that would seem out of place in a normal conversation. We had no choice but to write like that in order to make the game easier to understand, but because this is purely an audio drama this time, it covers more acoustics than the game itself. Therefore, the difference between the mediums was not a problem at all.

Finally, can you give us any last words?

I think that the Drama CD will depict a lot of things that could not be done in a videogame. Give Mr. Mori my regards. (laughs)

Motosada Mori

You worked as a military advisor in the original Metal Gear Solid game, but this time you’re writing the screenplay...

I actually played Policenauts when it was first released, so my feelings are rather complicated. I became a fan of Kojima because of Policenauts. While observing the game’s development process, I thought many times about how it would be like to be one of the players anticipating its release. Putting it in another way, I might be wondering if it was going to be a good game and I would wish to play it without knowing anything about it... (laughs) If there is ever a next game, I want to be just a player.

This time you’re working on an audio drama. Did that present any difficulties?

How to depict the world of Metal Gear without the use of visuals? That was the biggest challenge. Moreover, whether you’re listening to just one episode or the one that comes after, you have to write them like a single storyline. On top of that, I intended to write a drama that would appeal to both, people who played the original game and those that didn’t. Nonetheless, it was difficult. Writing the screenplay was an everyday hell. Basically, the story takes place after the events of the game, but like Mr. Kojima said, writing a story that follows the ending of that game was the best opportunity to show off my skills. To what extend can you demonstrate a unique worldview? The results is a kind of progression that proceeds from the video game to the audio drama and vice-versa.

Were there any instances where you based the story or characters on your experience?

Most of the incidents, including the characters who appear in it, are fictional, but some of it is partly based on my own experiences. For example, is it possible to distinguish between good and evil on the battlefield? The characters in this story, like Schultz, Cortez and Ivanovich, all act in their own interests, believe in themselves and try to justify their means. It’s a rule that doesn’t work at all on a normal society, but somehow you can get away with on the battlefield. Those with power seize everything. This is a drama about tragic men who were drunk on a power struggle and were conversely swallowed into it.

Finally, can you give us a few last words?

Enjoy this audio drama and let us know what you think! I want to make the best use [of your feedback] next time... Will there be even be a next time, Mr. Kojima?

Yoji Shinkawa

There are many characters being drawn for the first time for the Drama CD. What kind of mood do you usually have when you design a character?

My creation method varies depending on the character. For Allen Iishiba... well, he was modeled after a real person. (laughs) He was actually a gentle guy, but he became a bit scary in the artwork that I drew. 

For Sergei Ivanovich, I originally drew him as an older man in his 50s or 60s, but then Mr. Kojima requested him to be “a younger and cooler type.” When I asked him what kind of feeling he wanted from the character, he answered “someone like Tony Redwood [a character from Policenauts].” I then drew him younger, but he still didn’t stand out, so I wanted him to hold a small arm. I asked Mr. Mori if it was alright if he was holding a knife and he answered that was fine. It’s the same feeling I had when working with Mr. Kojima.

The image of Marc Cortez was that of a brave soldier with a decisive military history. However, since he is a character of questionable allegiance, I gave him a hat that obscured his eyes in order to make him look very suspicious. Maybe it’s just like Roy Campbell and his beret or Master Miller and his sunglasses. Can you recognize a character with just that [an accessory] alone?

The familiar characters from the original game all appear in new outfits here too. Especially Meryl Silverburgh, who looks cool in her sneaking suit!

After the Metal Gear Solid game finished development, I wanted to have [Meryl wear the sneaking suit] and did a drawing. It felt quite right, so I asked Mr. Mori about it. She’s armed with just a single Desert Eagle pistol, so she would need the infinite ammo bandanna to match Solid Snake... (laughs). Just kidding about that. I wanted Meryl to be depicted much closer to her namesake from Policenauts.

Speaking of weapons, there’s seems to be quite an elaboration on them in this Drama CD...

That’s right! Even the AKM assault rifles wielded by the bad guys was chosen by Mr. Mori. I’m pretty sure it was his choice. I always think of the visuals first in my case. We had a few meetings before producing the Drama CD and I was surprised when they brought in an AKM without any prior announcement, as it was very different from how I was imagining it. But it was fun to collect reference materials. I was grinning while drawing them.

[bigskydreaming]

I mean, here’s the thing....

I’m more than capable of writing positive Batfam posts, meta deep dives that don’t dwell overlong on negativity, serious content, light hearted content, content about each and every one of the Batfam....anyone familiar with just a few different samples of my posts knows I do not lack for topics to happily ramble on about for absurd lengths. Hell, I’m pretty sure there’s a direct correlation where like, the less negative emotions I have about the content I’m writing, the LONGER it ends up being.

So its not like I particularly need or want to be the ‘loud angry scary adult cis white man yelling at kids’ to have something to say or talk about. Or that I particularly like that state of mind. I’m certainly not unaware of my privileges or that I can be off-putting or not someone everyone wants to be around on here. Its actually something I put a lot of thought into regularly, as personal accountability is such a big deal to me, and that certainly includes my own. There are times where I’ve looked back on something and thought yeah, I definitely could’ve dialed it down there.

But not gonna lie, given that personal accountability is kinda My Theme and I DO put a lot of time and effort into being self-aware and taking care not to cross certain lines, whether you believe me or not or agree with where I draw my lines or not....

Its more than a little obnoxious to regularly see my positive posts and my emotion-neutral meta posts and even my negative critical of canon posts take off and get hundreds of notes in just a couple of days....

But without fail, any time I so much as suggest that fandom’s perpetuating some of the very same toxic tendencies I criticize canon for, with the extension of that thought being hey fandom, unlike canon and how its written, we actually can do something about how we write these very same matters and slowly but surely normalize reader resistance to canon still perpetuating those ideas in the future, and maybe someday even they might buy a vowel and realize hey, our audience does not like what we’re selling here.

*Shrugs* Or maybe not. But even SOME changes to how specific problematic tropes and dynamics are being written in fandom currently could still only be an improvement, is all I’m saying.

Except, every time, without fail, no matter HOW I go about saying it, how polite, mild, civil, non-accusatory....its either crickets or immediate heels dug into the sand as often the very same people who commented on my neutral meta with variations of ‘this is pretty insightful’, like at the mere SUGGESTION its worth taking a more critical look at their own content to see what they might unknowingly be perpetuating and like....the very idea of asking fic writers to be more accountable for what toxic tendencies we perpetuate within our own creative works, even just among our own far more limited platforms....

Its like... HOLD UP! I AM BEING ATTACKED! WITHOUT CAUSE! WHY DO YOU HATE THE FANS? WHY AREN’T YOU SAYING ALL THIS STUFF ABOUT THE ACTUAL COMICS???

And its just like....uh....I did. I do. You were there. You were saying I was making some really good points. But without calling any individuals out or making specific insinuations or personal attacks....I am suddenly just the most unreasonable of the unreasonables, because I dared say “hey, we can’t do anything about what canon writes, but we can do something about the things we write, and actually transform some of the more problematic tendencies and dynamics from canon into things that benefit all the characters and all the fans.”

But nah. Without exception, those posts either get nada or they get vitriol, no matter my own linguistic volume....and meanwhile, posts I made just before them and just after them are now hitting the thousand notes mark. So I kinda can’t help but wonder, is the problem really that I magically lose all ability to grasp supremely basic concepts and start spewing irrelevant gibberish anytime I’m critical of fandom specifically? Or.....just spitballing here....is it at ALL possible that maybe I’m not as much of the problem there as you want to make me about to be?

Like, say what you will about how toxic my more negative, angry posts can be, but personally, I think artificial positivity is just as toxic....plastering a ‘I see nothing wrong here’ sign with a smiley face over a bunch of mold doesn’t actually accomplish anything but allow that mold to fester and grow even further, without notice, until it becomes too widespread to ignore anymore at which point its usually rooted so deep its impossible to get out.

So yeah. I get angry, the all caps come out, and the volume level of my posts on those subjects rises. Its something I’m aware of and something I’m okay with and stand by with certain posts and that I decide I’m not okay with and keep an eye against repeating with certain other posts. Its a process, it doesn’t have an endpoint or finish line, and I’m okay with all of that.

What I’m NOT okay with though, and never will be, is the heat I draw for that and the condemnations and criticisms of my behavior and how toxic and unpleasant I make fandom with those posts....as though the tendencies I’m pointing out in them, by virtue of already being present throughout fandom, don’t already make it toxic and unpleasant in a lot of ways, for a lot of people.

But for all the times I have someone respond to me or call me out specifically for one of my angry posts that very deliberately are made with no specific individuals in mind, just generic references to fandom wide tendencies as a whole....there’s a whole lot of ‘helpful advice’ for all the things I should do different or better to avoid making fandom a more toxic place.....and not a hint of awareness that there’s anything at all they could be doing differently to make fandom less toxic than it already is in various ways.

So just saying, I’m kiiiiiinda not super keen on being lectured for my shit by people who are committed to the belief that their own shit doesn’t stink....WHILE AT THE SAME TIME, I have a good half a dozen positive or neutral meta posts still making the rounds through fandom and consistently picking up notes that according to the tags, generally seem to be viewed as adding positively to fandom in their own respective fashions.

Which basically from my perspective, makes things look like this:

Me: regularly contributes positive content that’s received positively by lots of different parts of fandom, not just the Dick Grayson stan corner of it, with zero negativity attached to these posts....regularly contributes meta content that’s deemed insightful and adding fresh viewpoints by lots of different parts of fandom, not just the Dick Grayson stan corner of it, again, with zero negativity attached because it doesn’t rely on putting down any other characters to make whatever points I’m after.....

....but then contributes posts that are critical of certain specific characterizations and viewpoints within fandom itself, without actually having a twelve step powerpoint presentation attached detailing ALL FANS MUST DO THIS INSTEAD....and instead I usually just include a spectrum of possible alternative takes.....

But wait! Nooooow comes the pushback. Which usually sounds like various forms of this:

Stop trying to police us! La la la la can’t hear you over the sound of your moral superiority complex! You just want us to do exactly what you want us to do which is gaslighting and the very same abusive behavior you talk about which makes you abusive!

And also, a bunch of changing the subject or avoiding addressing various points I raise completely.

Maybe you see my issue? I don’t need tips on how to be a positive fandom presence, I actually don’t have any trouble creating positive content or meta, a large amount of which is deemed insightful and humorous and otherwise well received....but the second I make a criticism of fandom and suggest there’s things fans could be doing differently to address the toxicity existing around various characters in various respects, instead of just keeping everything about DC’s flaws which none of us including me have any kind of platform to even reach DC with......

Suddenly I have ZERO idea what I’m talking about, I clearly don’t get the point of fandom, period, I’m obsessed with my own moral righteousness, and am like, so out of the ballpark misguided its not even funny, and I need all of this explained to me like a five year old, because everyone obviously should get that ‘we’re just fans, why are you blaming us for things we write specifically instead of DC who are getting paid as if that’s even the point?’

So yup. I get ticked off, I make more posts venting about being ticked off, rinse and repeat and my volume goes up.

And that’s it by the way.

You’ll notice, that’s kinda the worst that ever happens, because I literally have never done anything but....type posts with lots of capitalized letters. I don’t target specific individuals, I don’t harass people, I don’t @ specific fics or fic writers or urge people to flood their comments or ask boxes with callouts. I’ve never called anyone in this fandom names or made personal attacks other than the posts various people have felt targeted by because my description of specific tropes or tendencies I have a problem with apparently made them think I was talking about them I guess? Hmm. Weird.

So what’s the point of this post? Idk. Nothing really. Not trying to accomplish anything, just putting my thoughts out there as a way to work through them because like....that’s literally what I have this blog for, lmao. And FYI, I super don’t appreciate the tactic of condemning me for my quote unquote rage issues and framing all this as me yelling at kids on the internet....kids, specifically, and oh right, just screaming at people rather than addressing my own abusive behavior.

Since abuse is a hugely personal and important topic to me, let me just say accusing me of abusing generic fandom in general (since again, I haven’t actually made any of this personal about any individual with my fandom criticisms)....like, I’m quite willing to consider and address flaws in my own behavior when raised, but I’m not a fan of being called abusive in a context that demonstrates a complete lack of awareness as to what abuse actually is.

You don’t like me yelling on my blog? Fine, you don’t have to like it, or me. But abuse is the exploitation of a power differential, taking advantage of power one person has over the other, or that the other person just doesn’t have period. The fact that I am an adult cis white man does not make me aggressively capitalizing stuff in my own posts the same as “the same triggering position of the cisgender man who screams and makes kids feel scared and wince and hide from your posts.”

Like, lol, nice. Classy. I mean who cares right, that yeah, even acknowledging that we can legitimately sense tones and moods through even written text.....a person ranting on their internet blog is not remotely interchangeable with the physical presence of an adult cis white man loudly screaming in your face and with the potential for immediate consequences and harm. Does that mean the tone of my posts is above criticism? No. It means exactly what I said. The one is not the same as the other. 

Secondly, the repeated insistence on me yelling at kids...and this person I’m quoting isn’t the only one who’s done this, FYI, and its crap. Am I unaware that there are a lot of minors in fandom? No, I absolutely am not. Its why I make a point to check the blog of someone I’m replying to heatedly before I respond, to make sure they’re not a minor, and if they are, I don’t engage. So that I can categorically state, with complete certainty, I have never yelled at a kid in this fandom. Do my generic yells about ‘fandom’ not include kids then? Yeah, you could say kids are included there, though again I’d have to question why my criticisms of specific handlings of specific subjects somehow equates to me yelling at specific individuals, whom apparently are all kids and only kids. Like, framing my posts as being all about me screaming at kids specifically is a deliberate choice with a clear aim of making me look as bad as possible. This isn’t subtle.

Third, as an abuse survivor I’m keenly aware that doesn’t exempt me from being abusive myself, but it does mean I find it really fucking gross to be labeled abusive because my posts make kids feel scared and wince and want to hide from my posts. As someone who as a kid absolutely had to hide from their abuser in fear, I really, dearly would love to know what exactly it is about the capitalized sentences written by a man who couldn’t even pick a stranger’s URL out of a lineup, that’s so scary that kids, specifically, want to run and hide from the big bad posts. No, seriously. Go on. Please tell me what exactly it is about my screaming rage issues as conveyed by my posts, which pose any kind of threat or even the potential of threat for someone who I’ve never interacted with and only feels personally attacked by my posts by virtue of associating themselves with the behaviors or tendencies I’ve centered in those posts as the things I’m specifically angry about.

I also apparently am abusive because that’s what you call it when I gaslight or attempt to gaslight a fandom....which is apparently what you call it when my fandom policing tries to get everyone to do exactly what I want them to do. Which again is pretty interesting to me given that I’ve literally never told even generic ‘fandom’ at large to do anything in specific other than....’hey this thing I think is shitty and thus am criticizing shouldn’t be a thing, stop doing it.” Oh wait, I’m sorry, I also ask people to consider their creative impact and not insist on pretending everything we write exists in a vacuum and has no potential to carry harm, and just keep this in mind when making our creative choices. Still not sure how that’s demanding everyone do things exactly the way I want them, since the only clear and actionable request or demand in all of that is...omg....HE ASKED THAT WE THINK ABOUT THE STUFF WE WRITE, HOW COULD HE???

Like, literally, that’s the furthest any of my angry, rage-borne DEMANDS have gone: I’ve asked people apply more personal accountability to their own creative works and not take their potential impact for granted just because they’re a fic writer rather than a published one....and oh yeah, not engage in perpetuating certain tropes or dynamics I consider toxic.

Now, anyone is certainly welcome to disagree with my take on any or all of those tropes, tendencies or dynamics being toxic....but to do so, like, you need to actually DISAGREE AND MAYBE EVEN TELL ME WHY. But the overall refusal to engage with any of my posts criticizing certain fandom tendencies regarding the characters, other than to make it about my overall toxicity and RAGE.....like, that means that I keep making posts that include specific examples for what I’m describing and why I think they’re toxic, and nobody’s actually made any kind of case for me being wrong in any of those posts? So.....its not actually gaslighting to try and convince people these things I bring up are toxic....when I’m actually including reasons and examples of the things I’m talking about in order to convince people, and I’m not actually ignoring, evading or misconstruing counter-arguments....because nobody’s actually making counter arguments in the first place!! That’s not fucking gaslighting, that’s called EXPRESSING MY VIEWPOINT ON A MATTER.

And for the record, like I said earlier, abuse is the perversion or exploitation of a power differential. Try all you want, but you can’t claim I have power over myriad specific individuals I don’t even know EXIST without them interacting with me directly....power that I’m then exploiting just by yelling at stuff on my blog. Yes I’m aware of my overall privileges as a cis and white man. But none of those change a damn thing about the fact that I’m not actually yelling at anyone in specific and people reading my posts have to decide for THEMSELVES whether the thing I’m pissed about is a thing they do before they can even CLAIM to feel at all ‘targeted’ by my RAGE (with me still not being able to tell from that who any particular individual this might apply to is, and also, THATS NOT EVEN THE POINT OF ANY OF MY POSTS)....NOR do any of my privileges negate the fact that every single one of you exists in varying physical distances from me, unknown to me, and I have ZERO power to compel you to even read my posts in the first place, or to keep you from exiting your browser or app or even just going ahead and blocking me to be sure you’re ‘safe’ from the big bad abusive boogeyman and his posts of Gaslighting and Rage.

Me venting on my own damn blog, even knowing that other people can see what I post and share it if they want, is NOT the same thing as screaming in your face and making you want to wince and hide, no matter WHO you are. It just literally isn’t. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a problem with my posts or my tone, it just means what it says. Its not the same thing, they’re not interchangeable or even comparable, because NONE OF YOU ARE A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE. There are NO possible consequences to ignoring, disagreeing with or just scrolling past my posts, firstly because THERE’S ZERO WAY FOR ME TO EVEN KNOW THAT, IF I EVEN CARED. Nobody, kid or adult, can ever HIDE from my posts, because that would first require MY POSTS EVER BE ABLE TO FIND THEM. Whatever the hell THAT even means.

You’re not my prisoners. You don’t have to be here. You’re not even ACTUALLY HERE. Nobody owes me an audience, and honestly, the lack of one wouldn’t change all that much because I babble on all the time about shit none of my followers actually care about, because I post for ME first and foremost, and people from there are welcome to do whatever they want to do with my content, or do nothing with it at all. I literally don’t care, other than thinking its shitty that so many people find my content worthwhile except and until I get critical of fandom behaviors at which point they only engage with it to make it all about ME and MY toxicity instead of anything I actually posted about. Which I then...gasp...vent about. How dare I be angry in the space I cultivated for myself online and other people chose to look in on by their own choice because rather than being threatened or bullied into doing so, they found at least something I’d said interesting enough to be worth listening to hear what else I might say.

I HAVE ZERO POWER OVER ANY OF YOU. At most my posts hold some weight for the people who think I generally have interesting or insightful things to say, but that’s literally it, and that’s the result of me having said things they find interesting and insightful overall. I can’t MAKE anyone do anything, if I’d ever even tried to make anyone do anything other than actually LISTEN to what I ACTUALLY am saying on certain subjects and CONSIDER IT. So if we’re going to throw words like gaslighting around so carelessly, we might want to hold that one up next to the phrase ‘fandom policing’ I so often get accused of....as though I’m any kind of actual authority with actual power to actually enforce any actual agenda I even actually have.

Which brings me to the last thing I want to touch on, which is my supposed moral righteousness, that oozes all over everything I post and drowns out any good points I have to make, which again, apparently is just in terms of fandom criticisms, since every other point I’ve ever made in fandom seems to come through just fine.

Like.....tbh, I don’t really know what to do with the many times I’ve heard people say I’m self-righteous and obsessed with my own moral righteousness. Considering like...I’m not shy about acknowledging my flaws, I know perfectly well I can be loud and angry and aggressive in my posts and have talked plenty before about not being super proud of that, I’ve never claimed to be a saint and I don’t think my actions and choices are the gold standard everyone should adhere to. In fact, the only time I make a point to state what *I* do or did or what *I* think or believe....is when its directly relevant to something critical I’m saying.

And you think that’s because I want everyone to be aware of how moral and righteous I am? Fucking please, if I were as self-absorbed as you people make me out to be when giving me shit, I just wanna know when you think I’d have time to squeeze out 10K of random Batfam meta every other day, instead of being busy finding new things to say about myself.

Literally the only reason I make a point to bring up my own behavior or choices when criticizing others is because PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY IS THE CORE THEME OF LITERALLY EVERYTHING I SAY IN THIS REGARD.

And you know what personal accountability requires? A willingness to acknowledge and address your own behavior. Which is why its kinda hilarious the consensus seems to be I’m too up my own ass to even be aware of my own behavior or actions, given that the literal actual reason I bring up examples of what I did or think when making posts about personal accountability....is to stress that REGARDLESS of what those things were, I think its important to not just be talking out of my ass. But rather to emphasize I hold myself to the same expectations I’m asking other people to consider, I’m putting it out there and on the record, here’s what I did relevant to this matter I’m talking about and why I made that choice....see, I’m not asking anything of anyone else that I don’t expect to be held to myself. ITS NOT ABOUT TRYING TO IMPRESS PEOPLE WITH MY MORAL RIGHTEOUSNESS, ITS LITERALLY JUST ME TRYING TO ESTABLISH I’M NOT LOOKING TO BE A HYPOCRITE IN THIS REGARD, SPECIFICALLY.

Like, is maybe that unnecessary and counter-productive? Could be, its something for me to think about some more, but gotta tell you, its a little hard figuring out what will and won’t work when I’m STILL waiting on the first time someone actually engages me on an actual criticism I’m actually voicing about fandom.

*Shrugs* Whatever. Like I said, I don’t even know if this post has a point beyond just getting this all out of my head, so whatever. Make of it what you will. People will likely still just keep viewing me however they already do, for better or worse. Oh well. C’est la vie. Its not the end of the world anymore than any other post I make is, no matter how much RAGE I imbue it with. As I’ve always said, that’s literally the only reason for any of the posts I make ever...I’m just getting them out of my head and down on paper, so to speak, in whatever mood I’m feeling while thinking about that topic. Yeah, I phrase things for a generic fandom audience most of the time, other than when I’m talking to someone directly, but never have I made a post with an entitled and expectant belief that people will take every word I say literally and regard it as a directive for what they should do and how they should live their lives. Since, y’know, I don’t actually think I should be the ruler of everyone’s choices. 

Over and over I keep repeating, I just want people to put more THOUGHT into their choices, and keep in mind various contexts that yeah, I think are relevant to certain topics, sue me. Because the vast majority of creative choices I take issue with, I actually fundamentally believe are just the result of a lack of thinking critically or with a broader awareness of various implications or repercussions. Shocking though this may seem, I’m actually a big believer that humans are inherently good or at least have the capacity to be.

The thing that amps up my frustration and ticks me off so often is how much time and effort I end up wasting trying to get people to address the actual things I’m asking them to consider, instead of dancing around it and evading it in every way possible, not even like, as an attempt to counter it, just willfully refusing to let it be about the topic I ACTUALLY raised.

And yeah, just FYI, to whom it may concern, since this is so often relevant it seems.....gotta say, I find it particularly odious that WITHOUT FAIL, the very same people who carelessly throw out ‘don’t like don’t read’ as the catch-all solution to every issue anyone ever might have with something in fandom, as though its that simple.....

Time after time demonstrate a COMPLETE refusal or inability to take their own damn advice, since NONE of this would ever even come up if the loudest advocates of that system actually APPLIED it themselves. 

And simply....didn’t read my posts.

I fail to see why I’m expected to do what they don’t consider worth doing themselves, to spare themselves the aggravation (or fear) from reading my posts. Let alone interacting with them.

But whatevs. When do I ever know what I’m talking about anyway, lol, on account of all this RAGE I’ve got mucking with my head and objectivity.

Oh well, gotta go. KALEN SMASH!

[prettysoldierprojectarchive]

1:4 – Usagi Will Teach You How To Lose Weight!

[Original Post 19/08/2013]

Alternative Title: Body Issues? LOSE WEIGHT, SAILOR FATTY

First aired: 28th March 1992

Usagi is suffering from severe body dysmorphic disorder. Despite being obviously perfect (physically at least – her brain is another issue), she’s become obsessed her weight. Like most women, she is subject to the unrealistic and harmful expectations of feminine beauty in society. Usagi’s family attempt to help her overcome her imagined weight issues by calling her fat. Upon the advice of her classmates, she visits a brand new totally-not-evil gym. Little does she know Jadeite is now trying to sell his brand new not-evil P90X workout, which is TOTALLY EVIL. How dare you take advantage of women’s image problems, Jadeite!?

The episode opens well enough – Usagi in a bath towel. This is probably the most overtly sexualised Usagi has been up to this point in the series and you know what? It’s a little more awkward now that I’m older and wiser and in my mid-20s. It becomes even more awkward when Usagi has to be given a “talk” in the dining room after she’s worried that she’s fat.

You know what her family says to her? “You’re chubby, but that’s OK” – what a lovely sentiment! Things quickly turn sour when they discuss why she’s so fat – all the eating, they suggest – and poor Usagi is left feeling like a goddamn hippo. It’s not nice.

Great parenting, guys. Really top-notch work here. This is totally normal behaviour

Luna doesn’t help the 14-year-old’s image problems. Although she normally takes the role of guiding-mother, in this episode she frequently reduces Usagi to tears by commenting on how fat she is..

Wow. This episode is a little messed up. Body image problems were becoming a major issue for the health of women, and this episode was obviously trying to discuss the issue. Unfortunately they do this by making everyone fucking crazy, even for Japanese people. It must be an early 90s thing. It’s just not that fun.

Not pictured: a balanced psyche

Aside from the uncomfortable subject matter, the episode was written and drawn by the crappy studio. I’ve decided to give the 3 distinct studios involved in the making of Sailor Moon names, just for parsimony.

1) A-Grade Studio: These guys do the important stories with the best writing, and their episodes are just gorgeous.

2) B-Grade Studio: These episodes are well written on the whole, but the drawing style is obviously different. Not totally bad, but characters tend to look a lot more hastily drawn and a little squished.

3) Ass-Grade Studio: Some animations are only 2 or 3 frames, faces look flat and sharp and the writing BLOWS. This episode is the archetype for this.

“Hey, Yoshi, your shitty 4-year-old slipped a drawing into the episode again”

ANYWAY. Back to the episode. Usagi and Naru are discussing their non-existent weight issues with 2 classmates I don’t think we’ll ever see again. Let’s call them Kermit and Miss Piggy. I think this scene attempts to vocalise the self-conscious worries of teenage girls, but things quickly become sidetracked as Miss Piggy goes on about pineapple and Kermit rambles on about how nice it would be if love made you lose weight.

Yeah, keep dreaming Froggy. Maybe you’ll burn some calories off your brain.

Hey guys, guess what? Miss Sakurada has totally gotten thin by going to this new gym, and Umino has pervert pics to prove it. The eeriest thing about these pictures is not that Umino took them, or that Sakurada clearly didn’t need to lose weight, but that she’s clearly looking into the camera and smiling in one of the photos. Maybe 14-year-old losers with behavioral issues gets her off. Oop, just made myself barf in my mouth a little.

“OK Umino, hand over the roofies and no one has to die”

The girls decide to visit the same gym, in which Jadeite is posing as a fitness instructor called Jed (BRILLIANT!). After a poorly-drawn work out featuring large beefy men instructing little girls in tight bloomers how to sweat more, Usagi decides to get the hell away from Jed’s evil workout regime, opting instead for a nice jacuzzi. Clever girl! It’s this laziness that saves her from the fate that awaits her friends – energy sucking pods in the basement! 

“Don’t worry, these ominous condom-pods definitely won’t kill you”

Quite frankly these pods are amazing. Apparently the pre-cursor state of the “Energy” that Queen Beryl loves so much is human fat. If she’s willing to give me a free liposuction, then I really don’t see the problem of donating a few pounds to the Dark Kingdom.

Unfortunately the pods are killing Ms Sakurada and Usagi’s classmates – they’re too thin! Ahh the evils of self-improvement! The real shame is that if Jadeite took only a bit of energy and kept his shit on the down-low, he’d be a billionaire.

“Billionaire? Do you know how many purple-tinted glasses for that!?”

Usagi, meanwhile, hits rock bottom after drooling after a small child’s dumpling, scaring him so that he runs off crying. She’s so hungry that stupid-lame Motoki has to revive her after she faints. Motoki reveals himself as a perverted feeder who gets off on fat chicks, and Usagi is happy to eat again! 

“I find childhood obesity hilariously attractive. Eat this dumpling.”

…Until the mysterious handsome awesome stranger calls her fat. And then Luna calls her fat. And she goes all diet-crazy AGAIN. This episode is all over the place. Actually this whole middle section is rather fun.

Usagi goes exercise-mad in the evil gym, freaking people out with her zeal. She only comes to her senses after Luna threatens to slice her face to shit – her one weakness! – and finally transforms into Sailor Moon.

“Bitch I will cut yo’ face unless you Moon Prism Power right now.”

The final fight is noteworthy for one reason – the big beefy gym instructors have been brainwashed and attack Sailor Moon when she tries to destroy the miracle thinning pods in the basement, and our heroine must kick the living snot out of them with her bare fists, all the while counting how many calories she’s losing. It’s really rather cool, or at least it would be if the animation wasn’t so crappy. Cheers, Ass-Grade Studio!

The episode ends with Usagi’s little brother Shingo playing a trick on her, leading her to believe she’s gained 300 pounds, and she succumbs to a self-destructive eating disorder. That’s a pretty good joke, Shingo.

Episode Score: 2/5 (It’s pretty bad, you guys.)

Monster Freakishness Level: 0/5 (Eating disorders are the real monsters)

Naru-chan Attack Count: 3 (That girl needs to start carrying a gun or something)