#really pushed myself to do some more complex stuff

[8cfc00]

augh who up feeling like they should be humanely euthanised for liking media the wrong way... sorry for fandomising certain characters but not fandomising others enough in the right way.

[starryjoy]

hi! why is tme/tma terfy? /gen q

anon I'm really glad you have taken the time to ask me this and inform yourself with ideas that, probably, aren't like those you are used to. I do absolutely suggest you take what I say and what other people may add to this post and then come to your own conclusions.

But first of all I want to make sure something is understood: under no circumstances I would say that those terms are terfy. Those are simply terms that help the view of Radical Feminism, which is the RF part in TERF. The terms were made on purpose to try to make the ideas of radfeminism as trans inclusionary as possible. sometimes people like these are referred to/refer to themselves as TIRFs.

They still are exclusionary terms, don't get me wrong. If anything they are Intersex-Exclusionary though, which isn't an acronym that i have ever seen used, but we'll get to it later

The ideas of Radical Feminism are based on Bioessentialism, an idea that, essentially (and please people who know more about this stuff correct me and expand on this I am not an expert), males are all one way and females are all a different way. You can see that this is the fundamental belief of terves, saying that males are all brutal and full of anger which they will always take against females.

TIRFism instead takes this idea and changes it from being something inherent to how one person was born to something inherent to how one person identifies; essentially, their gender.

These people think that women instead of females are the ones that will always be The Most Oppressed of all, because men instead of males will always want to be oppressors.

The terms TMA/TME specifically work under this assumption, that people who identify as women (specifically trans women) have The Most to be Scared about, because everyone else has power over us and will use it.

This is... at best, a very reductive way to see anything. No one is truly exempt from transmisogyny in the current world, and sure some people could not be the intended target of a transmisogynistic insult or they might not be systematically oppressed under transmisogyny, but saying "exempt" is so incredibly reductive that I have to repeat myself. Also, I really don't think any trans and intersex person isn't systematically oppressed by transmisogyny, but this post is already too long.

At worst, the terms are actively hurting people. Pushing people into neat categories that can then be observed. Making nonbinary people admit to their AGAB without their consent. Completely ignoring intersex people who have a much more complex life than something that can be put in these simple terms.

In conclusion: not terfy, radfemmy; have been used to silence trans people that do not agree with the radfems, and to hurt nonbinary and intersex people.

[donelywell]

how does your version of the Phantom Ruby work?

Oh buddy you're in for one hell of a ramble.

I don't care that this is stuff I wanted to reveal in my Forces retelling- I'm babbling about it neow! Besides, I have no idea when I'll be motivated enough to continue my actual canon adjacent au, SO WE CAN HAVE FUN WITH THIS!

Tw: blood

Okay, so the Phantom Ruby is an ancient artifact hidden in a pyramid in Regal Ruin Zone (Sonic R Stage because I really do hate it when zones are just a one and done thing, not overused like Green Hill Zone per say, but I want to actually explore the zones instead of just zooming by them for about 4 minutes total).

A legend says that if you sacrifice some of your blood to it, it will grant you the power to make your wishes a reality. Zero (I'm going with the headcanon that Infinites name used to be Zero) was a huge fan of this legend, he heard about it when he was doing some bounty hunts near the zone.

When you give the Phantom Ruby your blood, you and it are locked together until the blood supply is used up. Only the blood user can use the Phantom Ruby.

The Phantom Ruby is a sentient gemstone (haha, watch me make every single gemstone in Sonic sentient gods), but it lies dormant until someone feeds it blood. Because the Ruby doesn't want to go back to sleep for who knows how long, it starts whispering things into the users mind, feeding thoughts into their head to make them use the ruby more. To give it more blood, to be consumed by the lust for power.

The legend told of a god who was banished and imprisoned into the ruby. Centuries later a crow mobian found the ruby and brought it to their travel group an echidna, a leopard, a tortoise, and a scorpion. They were ambushed later that night and the crow bled onto the ruby in the battle. They realized it had the power to grant wishes, and the crow grew insane with it's power, becoming consumed by the ruby.

The other members of the group realized they need to stop the crow and cut its connection with the ruby, so they begged the gods to give them a way to save the crow. In turn, the gods gave each member a gemstone blessed by different gods a citrine, jade, amethyst, and an onyx. With the gemstones powers, they managed to save the crow from the ruby and lock it deep in a pyramid covered in complex traps and curses as to keep people away from the cursed Phantom Ruby.

Eventually, the group disbanded, with each of the members who helped save the crow carrying the gemstone they had with them as they all scattered to the different corners of the planet.

Ehem- now past this goes into the plot I have for Infinite in my Forces retelling, so you can skip this if you want.

Zero managed to get past all the traps in the pyramid and capture the Phantom Ruby for a bounty he accepted from a mysterious person who wouldn't reveal their identity. This however led to him getting the Phantom Ruby inserted into his chest and have it drive him insane with the whispers it constantly had speaking in his head. He snapped, going completely insane and mindlessly following the voice. He became Infinite, the vessel for the god of illusion.

The legend wasn't lying, as he continues to abuse it's power, the Phantom Ruby slowly started to consume him. Literally. The Phantom Ruby slowly turns his body into it as he uses the power. The process is accelerated when The Resistance begins to be able to push back after the 6 months, making him use his illusions more.

It's up to The Resistance to find the legend of the Phantom Ruby, get the citrine, jade, amethyst, and onyx (names still deciding on), and stop Infinite (and Eggman).

Thank you for letting me ramble about this! I tried to hold myself back a little bit at least from spoiling some of the plot I have for the retelling because I don't wanna ruin the story (if it ever gets made) by spoiling everything about the Phantom Ruby.

[cinnamonest]

Hiii I absolutely adore your work!! You're legit my favorite fic writer, every word you put down is gospel amen 🙏 If youre still doing requests, maybe what about albedo x tall reader? I love how you write him so much, im 6ft tall myself and am fiending for yan stuff for tall girls since tall women are always written to be strong and dominant which kills me inside since im the total opposite...

Luckily he's not really insecure about it or anything, not like one of those people who gets all neurotic and has a complex. It's just. You know. He wouldn't mind getting a bit taller, is all. But if he ever starts getting too hung up over it, the feeling then loops back to feeling embarrassed over being insecure over something like that, so he tries to just ignore any feelings on it entirely.

He does handle your greater stature than himself better than some other, more insecure short boys, though. So long as you don’t bring the matter up, he won’t either. He genuinely doesn’t care about having others poke fun at him, which some of the knights he works with certainly do, given that it’s not everyday you see a guy with a girlfriend so much taller than himself, but he has very little regard for the opinions of those he doesn’t care much about and is thus largely unaffected.

He does, however, care what you think. He’s the sort of person who buries any insecurities he may have and ensures he never brings them up or makes them known, but he does worry just a bit that you wish he was taller, that it compromises the respect you have for him, or worse, that you’ll get wandering eyes… he feels sick to his stomach if he sees you talking to some tall guy, even more so than the sickness he already feels seeing you talk to anyone.

And even if you tease him about the matter, he handles that very well, albeit with a twitching to his smile that you may notice if you look carefully. He wants to give off the impression that it doesn’t bother him, even if it kinda does, just a little.

This also ends up accelerating his obsessive tendencies, the insecurity gets to him and he acts more impulsively and more recklessly than he would normally, and you’ll find that the situation between you escalates much faster to the point of captivity.

Regardless, you have no need to worry. The man does not have a submissive bone in his body… unnaturally so, even.

Like you know how, as a general rule, most men tend to lean towards dominant tendencies and aren’t really submissive per se, but are still gonna salivate and get into it if you “take charge”?

He’s not even like that. The notion of you having any sort of control or autonomy in the matter sort of… bothers him. He’s too obsessively fixated on control, and uses sex as a catharsis by which having control and seeing that control actively exerted on you brings him satisfaction and comfort and assurance, so any bit of said control being taken away gets under his skin fast.

Enthusiasm would be a pleasant surprise, sure, he likes you participating, but any time you attempt to actively control the steps and movement, or gods forbid try to push him to do or move in the way you want, he gets a little… twitchy. He’s not one to vocalize his thoughts too much, but you notice pretty much immediately, you can tell it irks him that you’re moving too much on your own, based on the firm grabs to your sides and wrists and efforts to quietly contort your body the way he wants you to, and a heavy huff of frustration when you fail to comply or try to go back to the position you were in before. It feels wrong, you should be bending and moving to the way his hands and words guide you, and failure to abide by it only strengthens the intensity of the impulse to force you under it by any means necessary.

Should you be a particularly bratty type, you can use this to your advantage by intentionally continuously breaking out of his hold or pushing back against the way he tries to push you into certain positions and outright disobeying… but that’s one of those “playing with fire” type of behaviors, and it stops being so amusing when he’s got you on your knees, held up by a fistful of hair, looming over you with an ominous, icy stare… and you may find yourself regretting your defiance, and up may be the only direction you get to look at him from now on.

[bluedalahorse]

I think I’ll say this once, since I need to say it before I can move on to more excited posting about promos and things:

Obviously Young Royals means a lot to me. It’s become another way for me to connect with my hyphenated-American heritage and to start teaching myself Swedish again. It helped me survive a pretty brutal year of bullying at work. It made me confident enough to start the process of getting formally evaluated for autism and ADHD. I’ve been writing a 200k+ historical AU fanfic for YR—the kind of fic I always read and adored back in fandoms when I was younger, the kind of fic I wanted to write myself. I’m proud of the way that Heart and Homeland has made me a better writer, and I’m glad for the way it’s deepened my friendship with @heliza24. It is Young Royals in part that inspired by thesis on restorative justice in YA literature. When I was in the hospital last fall because I almost had a literal stroke from stress, I was comforted and kept calm by the fact that I was wearing a YR t-shirt and had a plush doll of a YR character sitting in my lap. And all of that is the short list.

As we come close to the release date, I hope that every single member of the fandom gets something they enjoy in the new season. I don’t think every person is going to get everything they want, but I genuinely hope there’s a moment, a scene, a line that brings them joy. We’ve all stuck with this series for a while, and I want us all to have something we can take with us. A little bit of sparkle for the road, if you will.

There’s of course the possibility that some of us get a lot of what we want, and others of us are let down. I know this was the case for season 2, and it feels naive to imagine that everyone in the fandom will be equally satisfied by season 3. I’ve got my fingers crossed that I’ll enjoy the hell out of it, but I’m also trying to prepare my heart in case it’s not what I wanted. I’m trying to gently talk to myself right now and say that even if the third season leaves me upset and unsatisfied—even if the writing takes a nosedive or it’s good writing but it’s just not what I wanted—that I still learned a lot about crafting stories and being myself and surviving hardship and thinking about systems and whatever else, from this show. That my experience with the first two seasons still matters, that my work on my fic is something to be proud of. If season 3 is a disappointment, Heart and Homeland will be my new canon. I’m sure there are other people out there talking themselves up in this way too. I know we’re all pushing through the pre-season jitters.

The other thing I’m trying to reconcile right now is how I feel about the promotional material that’s come out, and the conversations around that. Like on my own, I actually feel pretty great? It’s fun to see the new stuff come in? But then I think about the ratio of Wilmon to other things and some of the responses I’m seeing to that. And I see people say like “oh the show is back to focusing on what’s actually good about it” and “it’s great that they’re doing this because the audience doesn’t really care about characters who aren’t Wilmon.” And… hello? Aren’t I the audience? Tumblr isn’t too bad (most of the time) but then there’s like, Instagram, where the Netflix Nordic posted whole set of photos of different pairs and friendships from a whole bunch of shows, and there was one (1) picture of Sara and Rousseau and I saw enough comments where people were like “ew! Vomit! Give us Wilmon instead!” that like… y’all. Frida Argento is a human being and a damn good actress, and Lisa is a good writer of female characters, and like. We can celebrate that, once in a while. We can create space for her too. It’s not Frida OR Omar and Edvin. It’s Frida AND Omar AND Edvin AND Nikita AND Malte AND Nathalie AND Mimmi AND Fabian AND Samuel AND… look I could keep on listing but I’m going to get distracted if I do.

Like, man. I love Wilmon. Don’t get me wrong. I love the complexity their relationship can run with. There are lines heliza has written for them in fic that make me swoon and I am giddy about the part where I get to read them first. I love the glowsticks. I love Wilmon’s sense of humor and the part where they cheated at Vincent’s rowing race thing and their utmost commitment to being dumbass teenage boys against the world. The first week I saw the show and came into work (where we have an athletic field) I went and took a selfie on the field after covering my hands in those gross fake dots. Look. I am all in.

And also… I came to the show for Wilmon but I stayed for so much more. I would have watched Young Royals once or twice and said “that was pleasant” without ever getting back into fanfic after a decade away, if the show was only Wilmon. I do like Wilmon, but it wasn’t Wilmon who inspired my thesis on restorative justice or made me a better writer overall. I survived that year of bullying at work because I could come home and write my ensemble fanfic, especially the parts where I focused on the non-Wilmon pairing I was in charge of writing. I finally felt confident enough to be evaluated for AuDHD because of a connection I felt to a character who wasn’t Simon or Wilhelm. It was a plush doll of a non-Wilmon character who sat in my lap and kept me calm while I was hooked up to those scary machines in the hospital this past October.

I guess my one humble request is that people be thoughtful about how they use phrases like “everyone thinks” or “no one wants.” Not every member of the fandom has the same opinion, and not every member wants the same things out of season 3, and there are some of us who are happy about the new Wilmon content but who are still feeling a little hungry for more of our most beloved characters, and hope they’ll get meaningful storylines (and not get ignored) in season 3. I do know we probably won’t all get what we want, and that some of us will probably get more of what we want than others. I hope that whatever happens, we’ll all get something we want, and we can all be gracious about it, and continue to find meaning in the canon.

For the people here on tumblr who are already including me in their everyone… thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope you know who you are and I hope you know how much I appreciate you. And I do hope this Little Fandom That Could can keep going into all sorts of new creative places.

[thesnailtail]

hello neutual (new mutual). the idea of your MMJ -> Niigo genreswap is eating at my brain . I'm incredibly interested

;; hello neutual!!!!

;; is this an invitation to infodump? im taking this as an invitation to infodump :3

;; more more jump! the anonymous music circle who's members hide away from the public.

;; jist of everything is that minori "rinrin" starts composing to improve her abilities in idol auditions (don't question it), then (in order) airi "riri" gets roped in as the mv maker, then shizuku "rook" as the artist and after a whole lotta plot and sekai shenanigans, haruka "ruka" as the lyricist.

;; their personalities and whatnot are mostly the same. minori is super energetic and hopeful, for all except three hours of the day where she's the opposite (luckily she's usually asleep), haruka is haruka except sleep deprived and the guilt complex is worse, talking to airi is a 50/50 on whether she'll glare at you or walk away and shizuku... we'll get to that.

;; their sekai is the fairytale sekai and it's basically a massive forest, except for the one massive clearing that has a stage. except the stage is not in good condition..

;; each vocaloid is based off of a different fairytale thing. miku (princess) and luka (witch) are their starting vocaloids, but (in order) rin (some sorta forest spirit-esque thing) shows up in colour of myself, meiko (mythical creature tamer) shows up in you deserve it! break time!, kaito (royalty) shows up for worldwide wander and len (also some sorta forest spirit-esque thing) shows up at some other point that i haven't decided.

;; the order of events is slightly shuffled, only because colour of myself needs to be first. because colour of myself is the "shizuku quit your job" event. did i mention that she didn't quit during the main story? yeah she never gets the push she needs to quit and stays there. -> because the cloverdamned turning point quote is haruai

;; which leads back to the "and shizuku... we'll get to that." comment. yeah she's not doing well. she's been balancing work and these meetings (one of which she enjoys and finds comfort in. hint: it isn't the one involving her groupmates who hate her) so she's stressed, dealing with perfectionism and all that.

;; at some point in colour of myself, minori gets really sick and shizuku is very iffy about it. (her and rin were witness to minori starting her "sekai research", part one of which was to eat plants in the sekai. something bad happened.) that's the most random fact anyway continuing on

;; minori solves her problems in every event by getting a whole lot of sugar in her system, acting like 'normal' then sugar crashing at about four am. which is when she sleeps for three hours or just cries for no discernable reason. then she repeats this at seven am.

;; group relationship wise is funny because. minori is more chill about being in a group with the other three (having worked out their identities way before they all worked out each others and having time to process that).

;; so minoharu is along the lines of "ruka-chan responds to my kindness with trust issues. what do i do"

;; minoai is airi daring minori to do dumb stuff and minori doing it then airi getting incredibly concerned as she injures herself in more and more unhinged ways

;; and minoshizu is "[says anything]" "yeah, same".

;; haruai are attempting to murder each other at any given point. i would be joking but one of their first interactions (that ive written) in sekai is: "oh are you not gonna say hello to your groupmate momoi?" "go fuck yourself." "id rather not."

;; harushizu are looking at each other's situations and going "at least mine isn't that bad". <- they are both bad in different ways

;; shizuai is shizuai. airi is the main encourager for shizuku getting out of cheerful*days and shizuku is the number one fan of airi.

;; all of them are clingy, in very different ways. minori just needs to be able to hear them over call or see them and she's happy. shizuku will just grab onto people (airi or minori usually). airi and haruka act like they aren't clingy but panic if they haven't heard anything from one of their groupmates in a day.

;; this au is where the minoshizu part of this fic came from!

[bunnyswritings]

ur blog is soo helpful !!!! ive been looking into writing more lately and this is like a godsend <3 i was wondering if u could do some starter tips?? like stuff to avoid as a new writer :o ps. hope ur having a wonderful week!!!

ahhh, hello!! this is such a sweet message, and thank you, i hope you have a fruitful week ahead too ♡ i'm so glad you're writing more lately- i'll def do my best to provide some starter tips (though i'm really also a starter myself 😅 so i hope you like these, and feel free to let me know what you think!) also, just to put it out there that these are what i found helpful personally / what i think will be helpful, and may / may not resonate with everyone. Also, this topic is soooo broad and there are a million things that can be covered, but for now I'll just keep it short and go with stuff to avoid (or rather, approach differently) as per request. if you / anyone else would like another post for more specific writing tips, feel free to drop it in my ask box!

Some general writing tips — stuff to avoid; little things to not overdo

over-planning

overusing fancy vocabulary

over-describing

over-criticising your work

over-comparing

more details under the cut!

Over-planning — plan the general outline, direction of your plot, message of your story, characters and their rough personalities; yes, do all that well! good planning makes for a good story, but i think it's helpful to remember that sometimes things don't pan out the way we envision them to. and it's important to let certain things go, appropriately of course. if your initial storyline doesn't quite fit the characterisation of the protagonist etc (and vice versa), then perhaps it's time to rethink things — and NOT be too hard-up about it. [tldr: be flexible!]

Overusing bombastic vocabulary — i'm sure you've come across millions of writing advice pieces that aim to spruce up your vocabulary with bombastic phrases. by all means go ahead and pick a few that fit the mood and style of your writing. otherwise, i'd say that sometimes, less is more. throwing in fancy words for the sake of it may not be as helpful as you think. there should be a fine balance between using words that add flavour + help to illustrate nuances and using words to make your piece seem complex. simplicity goes a long way, as i've learnt. but having said that, building up a solid repertoire of vocabulary / good phrases is always helpful, the key thing is using those phrases in the right context. definitely easier said than done, so i suggest reading your favourite author's works couple of times through and pick up their way of using language to their advantage.

Over-describing — narration, descriptive language are great, and can really help to nudge your story in the right direction. it helps set the scene, the mood, and all these are critical in writing... BUT! not the same can be applied to describing actions. not every single action has to be written out explicitly — an example: she walks over to the kitchen, turns around, and opens the refrigerator. she then takes out a canned drink, and places the drink on the countertop... etc — you get the point. some things can be left implied, rather than explicit.

Over-criticising your work — ahh, the age-old piece of advice. i do it all the time, and you probably do too... sometimes, being harsh on yourself and on your work may seem like the only way to better yourself and push your limits, but often times, i personally find that this is counter-productive both on the physical and mental front. it wears you down, it is a nidus for dejection and negative vibes. i think the way i try to get round this is by taking pride in my own work; telling myself that 'this is something i wrote, these are my ideas put into prose, these are my thoughts written on paper'. the caveat here is that avoiding being over-critical of your work DOES NOT and should not mean avoiding proofreading. proofreading is extremely crucial to check for grammatical and structural errors (i recommend doing it once or twice yourself, and if possible, getting a fresh pair of eyes to do the same).

Over-comparing — this ties in nicely with the previous point. take pride in your work! this is something original from you and you only, written in your unique style. having authors/writers whom you look up to is essential in moulding your writing style and habits, but should not be the sole focus when you write. remember that every writer is different, every piece of writing is different; this goes even for pieces with similar plots / tropes / character personalities. nuances, subtleties and underlying messages can come through very differently when written by different people. after all, our life journeys are all personal, which is a factor influencing the way we convey messages across through the written word.

and... that's it for now! i really hope that this helps. honestly, i'm scratching the surface here, and there are lots more i can talk about when i have more braincells >_<

feel free to drop any other requests or questions in my ask if you'd like ♡

[aotopmha]

I'm around level 82 Endwalker MSQ and I know that some really hate the Garlean section of the story, but I really like it.

Above all I really like the nuance in it all.

Firstly, I think they spell out the intentions of the expedition really well – the goal is to help the regular people who are suffering, but not excuse the system they live under.

Secondly, they spell out the really important detail that a bunch of the characters do not support the Ilsebard contingent.

As an example, not all of your job mentors might show up, as was my case with the RDM mentor because of his history with Garlemald, adding important nuance in terms of varying perspectives regards to helping Garlemald.

Reading some takes you'd think everyone agrees that Garlemald is all okay and cool now, but this is not the nuance/subtext I see in the text itself myself.

This was also not the sole objective of the expedition. The towers needed to go for the world to not end.

So it isn't just randomly barging in there to self-righteously "help" another nation. Everyone needed to be on the same page at least somewhat to survive.

Thirdly, I think they gave Gaius and his group enough nuance back in ARR (and Regula in HW) and we had enough decent and more complex good/less villainous Garlean characters across the game (Cid, Nero, Lucia, Maxima) for me to not feel like asking to see them as people was rushed or too late.

The key to me is that even the Garleans who were villains had defined, substantial perspectives and sometimes had non-villainous aspects to them.

The humanity itself was always there.

Fourthly, I see people say it is a thematic mess, but I don't see any of that, either.

The entire zone is full of nuanced perspectives on how fascism can hurt people and not once are we told to push everything the empire did under the rug – if nothing else the horrors of the system are only emphasised.

I agree with the system itself being the central enemy, which to me has been the entire thematic point of Garlemald from the start.

Licinia and her sister, the ceruleum workers from other provinces, Jullus and Quintus all represent very important aspects of how the empire's principles and its own self-made "faith" affected the people of Garlemald and to see it reduced to "oh some of them are just sad now", I think really misses the point considering the foundation of some of their stories.

Genuinely believing you're right, making nationalism almost a core of your identity and being distrusting of your enemy due to far-reaching propaganda are very real struggles under systems like this.

Finally, I've seen people say we are done with Garlemald now and it's so rushed because of this and I'm just not sure about that because to me that has never been the identity of this game.

It's really rare something is dropped and never brought up again, so I always disagree with almost any claims like this.

This is why I think Sky Pirates and Four Lords will also eventually have larger significance.

(And so will the 6.x series.)

I still feel the framing is very much "there is a long way to go here."

Doma and Ala Mhigo both had restoration arcs in various content and are still in progress, really, as the 6.0 role quests, literal "restoration" content and also patch content itself (4.1-4.3, 5.4-5.5 in particular for Ala Mhigo and Doma) attest.

I think we will still see more of the aftermath of Garlemald's collapse in the yet occupied provinces as I still think we will have to open up the huge cloud in the middle of the map in some form, I even think there still would be room for a Garlemald expansion, it just wouldn't be "as" urgent anymore and mixed with other stuff because the empire is an husk now.

As much as Bozja might seem like it was dropped suddenly because of the field notes, I do not think it is like this story to not address important aspects like this until we are unquestionably, completely done.

I know there are some reveals in the role quests and material in 6.x quests that people are also iffy about, but to me most of that seems pretty okay, too.

Garlemald has to reestablish proper trade connections, they have to fight the remainder of their old guard and they can never be complete victims. They also need an entirely new governmental system.

It's the old guard that holds them back, but also crumbles when threatened.

So I think where we are now narratively, we still need more time with Garlemald and I think we are not quite done with them yet and if there is something I personally would dislike from here on out, it *would* be getting no follow-up at all.

I think we need to actually visit Dalmasca, Corvos and Nagxia in some form and put a final end to all of those regimes.

Now, do I think more could've been done here?

Absolutely. As I said, we have whole occupied provinces we have still not seen and a whole massive cloud right in the middle of the map still uncovered.

(And I think revisiting Ala Mhigo's and Doma's struggles against specifically Garlemald in some form also needs to happen.)

So as much as I really liked the zone, it is still clear to me there might have been more done there (in fact it was confirmed because we know about a potential Garlemald expansion).

So I actually do share a criticism I see around, I just think what we got still turned out to be really good and really important nuance to go into regarding Garlemald.

Something about asking to somewhat empathise with an enemy faction just destroys any nuanced discussion on the internet, be it the heroes doing something bad (for good or bad reasons) or villains doing something good (despite having really awful views otherwise).

You see an enemy faction just even dip toes into nuance and the story automatically must be excusing them.

You see the heroes not be completely, unconditionally respectful and thoughtful and the story must be disrespectful itself.

It's such a boring way to discuss art (which is also made by people, who are flawed like anyone else) in my eyes.

[ezgee-badally]

-PINNED POST- (This entire Post is OOC)

-PLEASE READ WHOLE POST BEFORE INTERACTING-

18+ NSFW

MINORS GTFO

Actual Real-Life Homophobes, Transphobes, Racists, Rapists and Misogynists Fuck off and die! This is fantasy only. I’ll find out who you are and block you.

Asks are welcome from anyone. If you’re a curious Dom looking for tips or a Sub who wants to have some kinky interactions but want to stay anon, anyone with pussy is welcome for kink interactions too regardless of gender. Read more about my boundaries and limits below before submitting any questions or you may be ignored.

28 Cis Male, Canadian, Dom

GENERAL TRIGGER WARNINGS: I regularly include in my stories kinky and MADE UP/NOT REAL/ FANTASY depictions of Sexual Assault, Misogyny, Homophobia, Verbal abuse and Physical abuse. I add specific trigger warnings to my individual stories. If you feel triggered by something you read and I forgot to put in a warning please DM me and let me know.

I call myself straight but My sexuality is that I like pussy and I’m not really picky about whether the person who has it is a man or a woman. I do like Tits but also don’t care if you’re flat. Really, I have no set “Type” I like both femme and masc presenting people. Tomboys are just as hot to me as girls in cute dresses or tight outfits as an example.

My Boundaries are firm with strangers, I understand if you make mistakes or misread the pinned post but you get 1 warning before I block. Friends and Mutuals I’m a bit more forgiving with. But will still block if they push too far.

This blog just gives me a place to get shit out of my system. I volunteer a lot of my free time to support 2SLQBTQIA+ spaces and programs, but there’s been some internalized misogyny that has come up that I’m trying to deal with in a healthy way so it doesn’t get in the way of my volunteer work. Part dealing with that includes this blog.

I don’t have a crazy sexual history it’s just very diverse and I’ve experienced a variety of things. I’ve played out some Dykebreaking scenes a few times with consenting adults IRL it’s intense and takes planning and it is very draining but intensely hot and rewarding. I’m into more than just into Orientation play but that’s mostly what this blog will be.

I like writing, and I sext a lot. So this kink blog thing was just a natural extension of that.

NOW FOR THE IMPORTANT SHIT!

✅Into Roleplay, CNC, Orientation Play (Dykebreaking, Misgendering, and occasional Acebreaking), Humiliation, Cuckolding other men and/or Cuckquean, Abduction, Anon kink, Public Sex, Drugged/Intoxicated, sometimes Hypno is fun, Breath Play, light Impact play (No tools), Light Bondage and occasionally Anal. Very hot when women/girls call me “Daddy” but I’m not seeking out a DD/LG dynamic or into age-play. I’m sure there’s more, will edit as things change.

⚠️Soft Limits (Things I’m not actively Into but will explore with a TRUSTED partner or TRUSTED mutual.) are… Somno, Foot Stuff, Heavy Impact Play (w/tools such as whips or paddles) Complex Rope Play (Needs practice), Object Insertion, Lactation, Kigurumi, Impregnation

🛑Hard Limits:

Forced Feeding, Scat, Piss Play, Snuff, permanent Injury/disfigurement, Infantilism, Haematomania, Knife Play (I’ll use a knife or scissors to cut off your clothes if you want just don’t ask me to cut you.)Furry Play, Necrophilia, Beastiality, and Age Play.

When I begin a post or DM with “OOC:”it means I’m talking “Out Of Character” as a human being outside of the fantasy.

When I begin a post with “IC” it means I’m talking “In Character” almost all my posts are In Character, you will only see me specify this if It is a post where I switch back and forth between OOC and IC and have to clarify.

Example:

OOC: Be safe, Practice Rack. Fuck homophobes.

IC: Dumb dyke whore. How does it feel cumming on your rapists cock?

I will only share Private messages/DM’s on my blog if it has been previously agreed between me and the person on the other end of the DM’s.

If you don’t tell me a specific safe-word when we start interacting we use the stoplight system by default. If you have a preferred safe word then tell me.

GREEN = Yes keep doing that

YELLOW = Take it easy or be careful.

RED = IM SAFEWORDING STOP RIGHT NOW

LAST OF ALL! BE SAFE!

Safety Tips:

- Subs, Learn boundaries from more experienced Sub’s so you can learn the difference between abuse and kink.

- New Subs should read “The New Bottoming Book”

- New Doms should read “The New Topping Book”

- Don’t doxx yourself for any reason.

- Stay anonymous online

- Be aware of the risks of sending pics and giving out your name.

- Practice RACK (Risk Aware Consensual Kink)

- If you are going to do something potentially dangerous then be aware of the potential dangers and put safeguards in place to minimize them.

[streetkid-named-desire]

uwu @luvwich tagged me for a writer interview (?!) so let's get to the navel gazing

i tag @wanderingaldecaldo and @medtech-mara

When did you start writing?

Since I was like 8. I'm not joking. When we were selling the condo after I'd moved out my mom and I pruned the "kid art" boxes together because she kept nearly everything creative we ever did. There was this assignment where we had to write our own version of the tortoise and the hare in second or third grade and it was honestly pretty witty. Like, it was still very much in the voice I still write with today.

Then in middle school I wrote vampire rescue stories (girl is mid-assault or nearly assaulted and near death, vampire rescues and has to tun her to save her life, she wakes up in a castle) but it was way more gory. I never finished one. As I got older I dabbled here and there but again, rarely finished something. I've written a variety of short fiction and you can read some of my stuff here.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

Nooo. Even with movies I generally stick to horror and sci-fi which is also what I enjoy writing. Although, I do enjoy like literary fiction? Satire? Idk I really love Chuck Palahniuk and Doug Coupland.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

I don't think I've ever been compared to anyone, no. I know my style is influenced by Weird Al, John Scieszka, Chuck Palahniuk, Stephen King, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson. Probably some others but I can't think of their names.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

GOD either my phone in bed or at my desk. My desk is messy and there is a cat bed on it so the cats can be close to me without being fucking pests and walking over my keyboard. I bought a new desk in like June of last year when I first moved into me new place and I...still have not put it together.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

Watching horror movies. Also just starting to write. I have to remember to trust and just write, just start writing.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

I will say I was SO shooketh when I picked up A Streetkid Named Desire again, especially for how much of myself, my past, my experiences, my history I put into Bea and VG. Otherwise, recurring themes are cynical optimism, push and pull love, autism, kinda antiheroes, body horror, and complex characters. Not to toot my own horn on that last one.

What is your reason for writing?

I have to. I have to get this story out of my head. I play in my imagination. It's actually the only way I can really daydream, that's why I call it my imagination playground.

Mostly because it's part of who I am. I write. I'm a writer. That's all there is to it.

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

I have...so few comments. The best ones are about my characters and emotions. But any comment is motivating. Mostly because I'm just putting all this out there and it would be so nice for other people to read and share in this experience because it's not just a story it's kind of baring my soul.

I want someone to see me through my writing.

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

Eeeehhhhhsgghasgbdf I don't wanna think about being perceived. I think just a good author.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Snappy dialogue and character dynamics.

How do you feel about your own writing?

I feel very neutral until I re-read it on AO3 and go "damn, I really cooked." I kinda get excited when I am re-reading for the first time and it's actually good.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

Completely and purely for myself. My story and characters are very close to me and I feel just compelled to tell it. I mostly let the characters decide as I write. I write for myself because it's fun and I like seeing the story in my imagination in my head. I want other people to enjoy my writing too but unfortunately I am not likely going to cater to readers lol

This is why I likely will only ever be self-published if I do publish an original story because I could not fathom or tolerate an editor wanting to cut certain things or make it more marketable or something. My writing is all a part of me and part of my soul and not staying true to that, not writing what I want or how I want is crushing.

[feyspeaker]

Hii me again. I'm not sure if I sent the ask I'm talking about on anon, so maybe that's why you didn't see it? It partially got answered with a recent ask you got anyway so no worries. I was just wondering if you use 3d in your process and if so, how? I've seen other illustrators use it to varying degrees and it seems like a really helpful tool to push your work.

Oh that's so weird! No I periodically go through my asks in chunks and I didn't see anything like that. I've had a few people in the past few months send me asks that looked like the second half of something else with no context, so maybe it's Tumblr fuckery. Sorry!!

I recommend learning Blender so you can help sculpt shapes and render lighting onto them in order to get the weirder/more complex shadows right. You can also apply colors onto the things you sculpt in order to see how the colors act in different lighting. It's pretty much an invaluable tool to me as it keeps me from having to problem-solve too much. I did a lot of digging around in my house to build references to photograph but it was just impractical to achieve the things I want to a lot of the time. I still do that, and you would not believe how many goofy photos I have of my husband in the poses you've seen me paint Astarion in lmao...

I do think that it needs to be used in moderation if you are a more beginner artist- I think that using 3D is DANGEROUSLY close to becoming a massive crutch for a newer artist and improper usage or over reliance on it can lead to stiffness or artificial looking colors. You need to be able to train your eye to create compelling compositions by bashing things together, and train your hand to replicate/add/subtract as needed from your references with an organic feel.

I will say this as a total committer of this crime myself in the past, it's VERY easy to tell when an artist relies too much on, for example, Clip Studio Paint posed models as bases for pieces without a good enough grasp on their fundamentals. And I also used to prickle when I saw more advanced artists warn of this, so I do think maybe it just has to run its course sometimes, because I know that using 3D for reference seems like an easy-button.

I've taken a lot of in-person classes for live figure drawing and painting, as well as just totally done drills, basically, on sketching and painting from life before relying too much on static imagery/3D/etc.

I often fret over every piece I do looking too stiff even still.

You have to do a LOT of the boring hard stuff the old fashioned way. And I regularly go back to it over and over when needed.

For example, I recently did a stupid amount of rose petal/flower studies deconstructing and painting ugly little paintings/doodles over and over because I know that I've been horribly weak at painting flowers for years (actively avoiding them). And I've been doing a lot of floral stuff lately due to that.

Whenever I start a new piece in new territory, I know it's going to mean several 3AM nighters where I have two other tabs open on Photoshop where I test out different textures or do a couple of studies. I'm working on a piece of my OC right now that has a lot of gore/medical instruments and I've been working on testing out different methods for shiny metal painting and some anatomical studies. I'll come to a snag in a painting and go "here we go" and work through it one piece at a time.

My Halsin piece, "Secret Spot" in the hot spring, was a massive undertaking with a lot of these moments. The Karlach x Dammon piece took 3 times longer than it should have due to me just having to go back and fix things knowing I could do better after doing some studies.

Ultimately I personally find art tutorials to be quite useless overall once you get to a certain point, unless they are teaching the use of a tool/software because you HAVE to figure out what works for you. And even then I use Blender like a monkey with a keyboard, I suspect, because I've just bruteforced through it, so I could probably use a tuneup from a good teacher on that haha. I hope this helps some, and sorry if I overstepped if I sound preachy.

[hoardlikegoldenirises]

*leans casually on wall* hey,

i will take ANY excuse to design an outfit, especially wedding outfits, idk why— I just think they're fun.

there were originally two tuxedos involved in this (on the hair timeline drawing), with Flash's white and Peter's blue, but as I was editing my notes I ended up moving some stuff around and shunted Flash's transition forward by about a year and a half because it made more sense to happen around the time they get married instead of nearly 2 years later...

So like any reasonable person, I thought to myself, "oh boy! time to spend four days on a wedding dress!" (the drawing didn't take four days, i just spent a lot of time looking stuff up)

💐

closeups and thoughts under the cut:

in my head the top part of the dress is at least partially some kind of soft, flexible fabric, like a stretch satinet or whatever, or one of those really soft matte stretchy fabrics, but i honestly wasn't sure how exactly to handle that considering I'm not a tailor myself... like there should probably be a waist seam where the top meets the skirt, though probably hidden by the embroidery at least a little bit... though i guess it could also be that there is a layer of already-embroidered georgette over the top of a slip...

i did not hand draw this embroidery by the way. i almost tried. and then after .5 seconds i said, "oh this doesn't look good and i don't know what i'm doing." so then i used some brushes in clip studio paint and colored in colors i liked and added some beads that are basically not visible at 100% zoom (lmao)

they're there, i swear. i just think it would be cute if there were some very small beads adding a bit of sparkle...

Anyway, I just thought the flowers and colors would be nice. And I know you're probably thinking "huh, where'd they get sheer fabric that's only embroidered on part of it?" considering all those pre-made fabrics w/ the flowers all over... or "where did they get that dress custom-made? did one of their friends pay for it?" to which normally I would say "yeah lol they know at least a half a dozen rich people" but in this case... Well, this is a wedding that involves Peter. and Peter is nothing if not extra, impulsive, romantic, and a masochist—

Peter hand-sewed the entire dress, including the embroidery.

I figure, if he can embroider spider webs onto his suit then surely he can handle this ,as long as he has something to go off of. the dress itself isn't exactly the most complex, except maybe the skirt part falling in a specific way, so this is just another idk how many hours for him to spend futzing around with a needle and thread and insisting he can finish it in time. point in favor, because he does, but only because they have to postpone the wedding from March to May for other, unrelated reasons LMAO

also i just think it's romantic... and i like the idea of him making things with his hands all the time... he takes up woodworking a year or two before this iirc lol (the reasons for that are more morbid though... 😅)

anyway, i wanted the skirt to look nice in a wheelchair without getting in the way of things like the brake grips or the push-rims, so Flash can still move herself around (esp since she doesn't have handles on the back of her wheelchair lol) so that was another thing i was looking at pictures of. I really like georgette so I think it's probably layers of georgette, but drawing that is... hard.

probably looks a little more like this?

but plain ivory obviously, not plaid. drapey with a soft hand, not too fluffy or stiff. probably a satin slip or something underneath.

elegant... backless... I mean if Peter is the one designing it (though presumably Flash has SOME input, I mean, she's the one wearing it) how could he possibly resist the opportunity? (i just think backless dresses look nice) (also it shows off her back muscles, probably)

lmao

as it says in the pic, i figured this should be designed so it's comfortable to sit in and doesn't get tugged around a bunch but I will be honest. i did not have a lot of luck trying to research that so I gave up. I'm sure there's a way to do it but I have no idea how to draw it so I'm handwaving it along with the mysterious missing waist seam LOL

but also it's a wedding dress and most wedding dresses are wildly inconvenient even if you have absolutely no disabilities whatsoever.

at least she doesn't have to go commando...

though i'm sure going to the bathroom is a real nightmare lol

the bouquet and the veil are both on the back of the wheelchair—this was already true even before I decided Flash was gonna use this as an opportunity to be way more girly than usual, but it's still true here too. Though I did end up changing the flowers cause I realized I didn't like what I had, so the final bouquet is a mix of peonies, flowering dogwood, and some kind of wildflower that would be in season in May. Plus the red ribbon to match Peter's accessories.

oh and there's Flash's makeup too. Simple, not too dramatic. I don't imagine her ever being a red lipstick and dramatic eyeshadow kind of person, whether at a wedding with colorful dress or not, but some lip gloss and a little bit of shimmery eyeshadow that you can barely see sounds nice... maybe copper mascara or whatever but nothing dark.

her hair is also not super complicated or fancy, and she has no jewelry or anything like that, aside from the engagement ring... just a nice low bun with some pretty wisps 💞 Courtesy of MJ almost definitely!!

And the yarmulke is for a multitude of reasons. "Technically" Flash is not "legally" a woman at this point, isn't even out to her family yet (lol. lmao.) and hasn't legally changed her name yet either (she's going to after they get married), and I don't even know what the rabbi would think (i mean, i'm sure they've discussed by the time the wedding happens lol) but women wear yarmulkes these days too (these days is... 2014... btw), and Flash will have converted like 4 years before the wedding already (for reasons unrelated to Peter) so it's important to her... so, ultimately, regardless of requirements or level of reformness, I think she just wants to wear one.

Peter gets one too.

isn't he handsome?

lbr he probably wouldn't have even thought about it if Flash didn't bring it up. too busy thinking about what color of tiny beads to sew onto her dress XD

I DID loosely base some elements of Peter's tuxedo on the one from the iconic PeterMJ wedding cover—

—but mostly in ways I probably would have done anyway (dark blue tux... red cummerbund... etc.) (actually now that i think about it, the comic tux is probably meant to be black, huh) and I didn't want to make it actually the same so I gave him a pleated shirt and I didn't use a carnation for his boutonniere. Instead, dogwood (to match the bouquet obviously)—all the flowers I picked I'm PRETTY sure are in-season in May in NYC. as if they couldn't just go to any random garden and get some damn roses but I wanted to be more specific.

Peter doesn't make his tuxedo XD He also doesn't buy or rent it—Johnny Storm is the one in charge here because he insists, Peter. It's a special occasion!! He'd never let his best friend who he's totally not a little bit in love with wear a rental tuxedo to his own wedding! God Forbid. Peter eventually allows him to do so under the stipulation that Johnny keeps it tasteful and classy and "not too expensive."

Which to Johnny means "expensive silks and wools."

he's probably wearing suspenders. i didn't bother drawing that.

also these fucking shoes

NO idea if Peter keeps these. I only came up with them today. He was just gonna wear normal shoes before... but again, this is tasteful a la Johnny Storm. But Peter doesn't usually have occasions to dress fancy so having weird pseudo-spat dress boots is like. "What do I even do with these?" ("Wear them!!!")

I almost made the top part white (thus, pseudo-spats) but I think that kind of requires more of a white tie look... it looks nicer black. and hides his spidey-tighties (except he's not wearing his costume under this). Snaps, too! easy on, easy off!

(vaguely based on (these shoes) btw but not 100%)

wedding rings 💍

i already drew the rings a while ago (though i did slightly modify the coloring) so that's still the same. the engagement ring is essentially Flash's very first step into admitting who she wants to be... Peter doesn't even have a proposal planned, he just asks one day over breakfast lmfao but Flash has to think about it a lot so by the time Peter gets a yes (after a serious conversation with Flash about it) Flash is also like... can I have a ring??? and Peter is like OF COURSE (and actually he did have some money saved for this but he didn't know what to do...)

he'd probably make the ring himself if she asked—he doesn't though, they get it from a jeweler. it's... not cheap but it's less than $1000 at least? benefits of being very small and discreet.

Peter probably also offers to get himself one so they're equals here esp since power dynamics is part of the serious conversation and why Flash has to think about his proposal, but it's just not practical for Science Teacher Spider-Man to have an engagement ring and also they do not have money for that many rings.

in my notes Peter is wearing his uncle's wedding ring btw 🥹 i don't think they have Richard and Mary's rings so that's probably not an option. so, resizing Uncle Ben's ring instead.

anyway...

that's everything

here's Flash again, look how pretty she is

normally she just wears comfy athletic clothes and no makeup lol

[sword-dad-fukuzawa]

could you explain your writing process a bit? i adore your fics, like everytime ive tried writing smut (or mostly any fic, oc writing seems to be more my forte) ive struggled a lot with staying motivated or staying focused. your fics are so interesting and complex character-wise despite centering around sex or sexual acts. id love to just hear you explain your full process, any struggles youve had with writing in the past, any advice, or anything else really. thank you and have a good one!

oh wow yeah okay sure, i can do that! pretentious soliloquizing ahead. i will talk about sexual preferences. mine, specifically. sorry. and thanks :]

writing smut is two things to me, and which of those things takes priority just kinda depends on the day or my mood. first, it's stuff that i personally find hot and enjoy thinking about/jerking off to, plain and simple. secondly, i see smut as a vehicle for character development or interaction, as a vector through which i can express facets of a character that can't really be demonstrated in other scenarios/are best expressed through sex. i'm a literary analyst first and a writer second, so i approach it from a character-driven lens rather than something scenario-driven.

light yagami, for example, is a control freak who likes dominating others but is repulsed by people who cave too fast (misa, mikami). what gets his blood pumping are people who challenge his dominance and he gets really flustered when control is taken from him (see: the Lind L Taylor breakdown). from this, i extrapolate that he would get a kick out of being forced to submit sexually, and would find it both humiliating and arousing; these are all things that spring from his character but also things i personally find hot.

from there, i'd think about what kinks or scenarios could force this kind of submission out of him and make for an interesting dialogue. again, as an example, a noncon scenario where L practically jumps him might be something i'd consider. a plot to justify this scenario spirals from there.

writing smut is really fucking hard, by the way, so don't beat yourself up about it. the fic i publish these days is hugely informed by a ridiculous amount of practice and purposefully pushing myself out of my comfort zone. i find that writing and posting some smut, then looking back on it and analyzing it with a fresh eye sometime later, can help me sus out where i want to improve and what i'm currently doing fine with. writing for me is both a fun hobby and also an exercise to become a better writer, though that is not the kind of grind everyone wants, and that's totally fine.

as far as advice goes for smut writing: write what makes your dick hard. i am so serious here. being extremely horny about [insert scenario] is the secret to getting your ass in the chair and writing. i too will get extremely distracted midway through a porn scene so i will just pause writing it, go do something else/write something else, and then come back to finish the fucking. it's really about following what makes your brain light up in sparklers and explosions.

like. you know what i love? blowjobs!!! i love !! blowjobs!! i inflict this on light yagami and the blowjob smut just pours out of me. it's magic.

it is very, very hard to write porn about kinks/scenarios i'm not personally excited about. this is because writing porn is ridiculously hard. i'm walking a wire's edge of "keep this in character or at the very least, somehow justify this out of character action within the narrative" and "make sure the scene is sexy" and "make sure the mechanics of everything make sense and that they haven't switched sex positions impossibly while i wasn't looking." it's a lot to juggle! i struggle to write the scenes all in one go.

a couple of times i've had to write a commission for kinks/scenarios i'm not personally interested in and whew, those were tricky. i have to do more mental gymnastics to get myself in the headspace of someone who would enjoy those kinks. for example, i'm not hugely into toys. i was paid to write a fic that centered around a vibrator once. i had to sit there, delude myself into a headspace where i thought vibrators were hot, and then write as fast as i could before the headspace vanished. this is where the analysis brain helps because instead of me personally being horny about a scenario, i'm looking at it through the lens of someone who would be.

i also do a lot of field research. this means anything from sucking and fucking (god bless my partner, who is about as adventurous as i am and usually down to field test scenarios for me) or going to kink fairs to watch demos of things i am personally not about to try (recently saw some fantastic shibari suspension scenes that i will be stealing, thanks). more than anything, talking to people helps. the "yes, and..." of spitballing with other folks about a horny scenario really helps the writing juices start flowing. i cannot emphasize how much easier it makes writing porn to have someone you can hit up like okay, i have this idea, what else can i do to make it sexy?

so i'd say, anon, my best advice for you is to figure out what really gets you going and then just. roll with that. stare at a character and try to think about if they'd like the kinks you like. extrapolate from there, and talk to as many fellow freaks as you can find. sit down and just write something that you find personally very exciting. and just keep doing it. my first pornfic was from 2021 and quite frankly it is bad. i've started (but not finished) a hundred other porny scenarios that i just didn't have the energy to complete. but for every thirty half-baked thoughts about penis i have at least one that i can get so manic over i end up finishing it.

let me know if you have any other questions, and i hoped this helped T-T explicit scenes are genuinely the most difficult thing i write these days, but they're also....lowkey some of the most fun...so i hope you got some use out of this :]

[neitherabaron]

just wanted to ask because i thought the answer might be interesting— what’s been the hardest part of working on the death of byron von raum (and/or any other projects!) so far? and conversely, what’s been your favorite part?

thanks!! hope you’re having a good day :-)

TW: Mental health

I'm gonna try and give you an in-depth answer because I'm super aware that it's been a long time since I provided any real updates on Byron. Your question's very apt because there are things about the project that I absolutely love, and others that I'm really struggling with.

To start with the good stuff - my favourite part by far is the music. I really believe in these songs and the ones I've written so far are killers. There's one about Byron's childhood sung by his parent. It's got an ostinato on violin (and maybe Uillean pipes? budget depending) that runs through it and evenually builds into a sweeping instrumental section with a chord progression I'm a little bit in love with. And the standout song is the one that probably would have been Marius' signature song with the Mechs if we'd gone in that direction back in the day.

But on the other hand, it is very, very difficult for me to work on Byron right now. For a while now I've been searching for the right way to explain that even though I believe in the project, it's not coming anytime soon because of that.

The thing is, the story is bleak. Way, way beyond Mechanisms-bleak. Like, I don't know how it will be recieved by other people beyond the friends I've shared it with, but it's bleak enough that I actually find it really distressing. Somehow I've written a story that pushes almost every one of my triggers and speaks to everything that personally frightens me.

But it's absolutely Marius' story. I can't change it and try to keep it light - everything that can go wrong for these characters has to, must go wrong. I care about them and they start with so little and they lose everything and they're awful to each other in between.

I still work on it, but I have to handle it and myself with care, so there's no timeline or work schedule I'm keeping on it right now. When I have a good idea, I sit and write for an hour if I can. But (and I've mentioned this on my Tumblr in the past without naming the project) every time I do that, I have a panic attack, and I'm on edge for the next 24 hours after. Always. I want this story to exist, but at the moment I don't want to put myself through the experience of making it. It's just me and I have nobody else to back me up. The Mechanisms covered some upsetting stuff sometimes, but we had friendship and support and camaraderie. To make this story happen, it'd probably need to be the main thing I do for about a year. And I don't think I can do that as long as the plot and themes are affecting me like this.

I think I'd also need the plot and characters to have more nuance than I'm likely able to convey in a Mechanisms-adjacent song-narration-song album format. I think I've mentioned in the past that I don't think it's a particularly effective way to convey complex themes, but some elements of the plot demand a deep look at the characters, because they do some truly horrible things and we need to see what brings good people to that point. So if I reach an emotional place where I can work full-time on Byron, I'll probably explore other ways to tell the story. One possibility is doing it as a mini-series with a song in every episode, so I can explore the characters through dialogue. An episodic release might give me a way to work through it at my own pace while looking after myself, I don't know.

I also have to be honest, when I started work properly in January 2020, the world felt like a very different place. With everything that's going on in the world right now, things I couldn't have imagined back then, I don't know the extent to which this story qualifies as entertainment anymore. Would I feel comfortable putting out this story full of war and horror and misery and saying it's a fun thing for people to enjoy?

To tell the truth, I don't think I want to make upsetting things at the moment. I just did Rat-tailed Rover and had a blast. I need to have some surgeries done on my abdomen before I'll be ready to go again, and there's no timer on that, but Carnaval des Gobelins is fully written and ready to record once I'm recovered. And I have so many ideas after that, that I really think I could go as long as people care to listen. I'm having so much fun and getting so much artistic satisfaction writing songs about rat paladins and gay goblins and I'm not giving myself panic attacks doing it. I'm aware that's probably not what some people were hoping to hear re: an update on Byron, but right now I feel like I'd rather make you wonderful people smile, laugh and feel represented than present you with a really bleak story where I make a character you care about suffer over and over again.

Anyone who's been following me here or on Twitter will know that I love Byron, I adore Marius, and I value my time and friendships shared with the Mechanisms beyond anything I've ever done. That's part of who I am. The goodwill of my listeners and the Mechs fandom means the world to me. So this is not me saying that The Death of Byron von Raum isn't coming. But I haven't figured out yet how to deliver it in a way that keeps me mentally and emotionally safe and happy. I don't know when that will be, except that it isn't now. In the meantime, I'm going to throw myself into Carnaval des Gobelins (well, as soon as I've finally had my op - it's been a year and counting) and I'm gonna give you the ten best songs about folklore monsters you've ever heard. And I'll keep it up as long as you're there to listen. Thank you x

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for pushing back when my classmate was interrupted by another classmate?

Why don't I call them Josh (M21) and Izzy (F18)? Josh, Izzy, and I (F21) were doing a group activity in class that involved writing things down on a whiteboard about a character in a novel. Our group discussed and I recorded. I think the issue between me and Josh started when he contributed something and I didn't write it down. I listened to his thoughts attentively but since it was extremely similar to what was already there (think "committed to her husband" vs "loyal to her husband"), and since we'd already used half the board on the one question I was trying to budget space for the next three.

After this he seemed fixated on his ideas being written down exactly the way he said them, correcting me when I paraphrased him. Feeling a bit micromanaged, sometimes I changed it, sometimes I didn't. One member would point out something subtextual and based on the parallel stuff we learned in class, while he'd give us a few words like "wise, intelligent, complex". That's fine, but a little more surface-level; we were analyzing connections between the character and their role in society (or smth else I don't remember perfectly) so, not quite as much to go on there, not addressing the topic very deeply. For things like that, I'd write it down in brief, or ideas that came up based on his contribution. If I put myself in his shoes, I don't think this would get to me. I genuinely thought nothing of it - my job, I thought, was to condense the information I was given so we could remember it when presenting, and I still captured his ideas. He became increasingly curt and asked if I wanted him to take over the job of writing. I said no, thanks, at this point getting a little curt in return, complying less with his editorial requests.

A few minutes later Izzy was speaking, and 10 seconds in, he cut her off with an unrelated idea. I was already annoyed, but feel pretty sure that I was correct in reading this as super rude: there was no pause in her speech, he just raised his voice over hers until she stopped talking. She had been speaking up periodically, but this really pushed my buttons because Izzy is a shy, soft-spoken freshman — it felt like disrespect or even some kind of gender dynamic. He probably felt undervalued because of me, but we had listened to him speam. Why didn't Izzy get to finish her thoughts?

I let him finish and then said, careful of my tone, "I'd actually like to hear what Izzy was trying to say."

Izzy sort of rushed through her idea and then apologized (?) to Josh, who got to explain his idea too, clearly annoyed. We moved on and class ended, but Izzy no longer sits next to me. I'm a little sad about this, because we got along. I think I might have a) embarrassed her, b) come off more rude to Josh than intended, or c) provoked Josh by not validating his ideas as much as I did for the others.

I've tried to represent the situation accurately here, and I hope I succeeded. I'm finding it a little bit hard to regret what I did, at least that last part. It didn't feel disproportionate to me, and even if most people would have let it slide, it matters to me that the people I study with are treated with respect. On the other hand, if my way of writing really did undervalue Josh's ideas, I regret that. Where did I go wrong here?

What are these acronyms?

[jacksprostate]

Was just wondering how you manage to replicate palahniuk’s style so well and also obviously write his characters?

Love your blog btw!

There's a few things that go into it!

Firstly, I have the advantage of, according to my friends, before I read any of his stuff my style was already kind of Chuck adjacent. I tend to be very rhythmic in my writing, I do like to have little repetitions, I like fun descriptions — similar to how he focuses on things reading aloud well, and favoring offbeat descriptions, his little ritual words, etc. That's my biggest secret, I just already wrote pretty close to it without knowing, so I didn't have a whole lot to change. Similar dog learning new tricks sort of deal. That said, there IS stuff I actively think about, especially with regard to character voice:

There's some things I'd call window dressing — minor changes that make it more recognizable. This would be things such as: the narrator does not get put in quotes, slips into 2nd person, using a rhythm where the dialogue tag goes in front (generally Tyler says, blah, not blah, Tyler says). That also makes it feel more active and present. I also like to outright include the occasional line from the book as a referential repetition, or a spoof on a line, I think that's the fun of fanfiction. But if those lines stand out glaringly it can be a sign you either need to change your style or maybe you're just trying to stick it somewhere it doesn't belong.

There's some bigger things: sentence variation is another thing I've invested pretty heavily in on my own and something I highly recommend any writer get in the habit of, but in trying to match his character voice I do consciously feel for when something is getting too long, specifically. The key with Chuck is he can have long sentences, but they're made out of short ideas. Long sentences often become grammatically incorrect as they're separate ideas jammed together for rhythm and sense.

He also shies away from adjectives; I kind of ignore this because I love a good adjective, but I've learned from it by making sure each one is impactful in its own way. Avoid superfluousness, keep things moving. He also shies away from stereotypical descriptions, I enjoyed building my confidence making weird ones. It's something I'm keeping going forward.

Another thing with his style is he loves fun facts. Fortunately I also love fun facts. To do those you have to keep it relevant, symbolic/metaphorical, purposeful, and simple. You can totally get complex, but only using simple building blocks. It's not to show everyone you know something, it's to build a little cliff to push the narrator off of. People don't need the detailed rockwork.

He often has little... almost like an aside? The narrator will ramble or think about something else for a little bit before getting back to the present. That shaky hold on the Now contrasts with how action focused everything is and allows moments of rest even if its still action.

As for character voice, the narrator; by following the above, you can get most of it, and then remembering his general view of the world to keep things in theme. He shouldn't be happy. He should have a lot of surpressed rage. Etc. Good character writing starts with a good understanding of the character, and that's real important for whoever your pov is. Always important to check if stuff passes the "he wouldn't fucking say that" test. When I have dialogue for him, it's almost an extension of his thoughts. I mentally read it to myself with the dull affect Ed Norton used for the movie monologue, really that shit was perfect. I usually can't keep a voice in my head like that but that one... yeah.

Tyler on the other hand I have to be pretty conscious about, sometimes I'll go back through the book and read some of his lines. He tends to be very direct. Very rarely uses names, it's tempting to use psycho boy or ikea boy all the time but it's the devil speaking. Tyler is direct, always serious even when he's laughing, his statements are not mitigated at all, if he is saying a pet name it is for its own impact not to soften any sort of statement. Rhythmically I find this directness difficult sometimes, but the 'Tyler says' dialogue tag makes it feel like a religious call and response on the narrators part and serves to soften things — but have that be the narrator's perspective and choice, not Tyler's. It's pretty heavily repeated in the book. Tyler also requires a "He would not fucking say that" test and I think I've gotten better at his dialogue over time (ex: retroactively, Tyler's dialogue in my psychoactive fish story s u c k s. I mean, it works, but I didn't really have a strong grasp on him at the time and while the actions sound like him, the words and delivery don't. Now though I think my snippets and the dildo fic are pretty strong!) A lot of it is just practice and tuning your ear. Reference the original material and try to dissect it.

Hope this makes sense :) if there's anything specific where you're like "how'd you write that" I can try to answer. Glad you enjoy my blog!