#someone who's read the books tell me. give me insight on the character motivations of che'ri.

[grimmjowjaegerjaquez]

thinking about chiss a lot and i am thinking about chiss ocs' stories but also trying to figure out what the post-movie situation is for the ascendancy like what is going on over there. are things the same. they literally backed an evil empire twice (thrice??? is it implied they helped the first order maybe??? idfk) now and lost. do they realize theyre cringe. i want to grapple with the idea of a civil war going on but the books apparently dealt with avoiding one. would that be repetitive. i also want to grapple with the ozyly-esehembo shit bc its Kind of Fucked Up lmfao. i know thats what it will largely be about, but i cant just ignore everything else and focus solely on that. like thats what sanirel is for, shes like a viewpoint to see what chiss life is like for the normies that arent part of one of the big families. shes got grievances about the way the ascendancy works for sure. but i--- :thonk:

[halemerry]

hii first of all, i absolutely love your metas on GO s2! your breakdown of the last few minutes of ep6 was really insightful and i love you for your meta about aziraphale and his role as a protector - it is a very astute look into his character and motivations which not a lot of people acknowledge in their theories/speculation after s2.

more to the point of this ask: this is something i've been mulling over and is the only thing that still doesn't make sense to me in ep6. why is crowley so nonchalant, or at least not noticeably worried, about the metatron showing up to the bookshop (a space he is very protective of) and taking aziraphala away for a talk after aziraphale has already been threatened by micheal? throughout the whole season crowley has been extremely protective over aziraphale and is very much aware of the real danger he is in (re: the book of life). this is also right after crowley has returned from heaven and has learned what the metatron was willing to do to gabriel to ensure 'institutional integrity' and that much bigger plans were afoot. i find it hard to wrap my head around his calm demeanor when the metatron enters the scene and takes aziraphale away, even if it's supposedly for a harmless talk. i wonder if you have any thoughts/speculation about this?

(opps this got too long and rambling). i would love to hear your thought but ofc please don't feel pressured to answer :) love your posts about the season and i look forward to reading more from you. have a lovely day!

Hi!! Thank you so much! This ask has had me by the throat basically since you sent it. It sort of touches on some things I already wanted to write about so forgive me if this spirals a bit.

So in a lot of ways I think this is a question that can have a one word answer. But since I do wanna talk about the way the show gives us this answer I actually want to start with Nina. Specifically I want to start with the thing she tells Crowley as Aziraphale’s off with the Metatron.

“You’re the hard bitten one that can’t trust anyone ever again and Mr. Wherever He Is is the soft one that still believes in magic people being basically good and all that."

I’ve talked a little bit about this line before in my meta about the build up to the Confession here because I think it’s important to view from the perspective of how it preps Crowley for the following conversation he’s about to have. But, aside from that, I think it's really important because it's wrong. Nina is describing herself here, not Crowley. She’s projecting her own issues onto him and Aziraphale in the way that she perceives herself relating to them. Crowley himself is actually the one that calls out her trust issues for what they are explicitly. 

Nina doesn’t trust and she sees herself in Crowley far more than Aziraphale both in demeanor and aesthetic so she assumes he doesn’t trust either. But she has it backwards. Because Crowley isn’t hard bitten as much as someone who tries very hard to be perceived as such. And, most importantly in this specific context, Crowley actually trusts quite a bit.

And he nearly always has. Even as far as back as the Starmaker.

Just look at the way that the Starmaker and Aziraphale both talk about interacting with God. Aziraphale is nervous, anxious and pretty much immediately clocks that what the angel that would become Crowley is saying is going to get him into trouble. But the Starmaker? Even upset about the information he’s been given, he remains confident in the fact that it can’t hurt to ask a few questions. He trusts there to be no consequence for expressing an objection. He trusts that his opinion is valued. Even if he ends up wrong here there’s no inclination at all that he thinks his words will be taken inappropriately. And even the Fall itself doesn’t burn this out of him.

We see him trust Aziraphale, the cherub who was supposed to be guarding Eden from things like him, not to smite him on sight. And trusts him enough to not only have a conversation but express his own worries about his own actions. He then approaches Aziraphale like a friend at the Flood and makes no attempt to censor his horror at what is happening there.

Job is the first time we see Crowley act in a way that implies mistrust between them. This is the first time they’ve met since the Flood which I suspect is contributing to his reluctance to be honest with Aziraphale here. They fall into their roles and then very rapidly fall out of them. The fact Azriaphale reaches out to Crowley here is important. As is the moment where Crowley asks Aziraphale if he’s sure. After Aziraphale more or less agrees to be all in something changes. Crowley is surprisingly honest about his view on the world, mostly trusting Aziraphale not to use it against him. He places himself in front of a host of angels, trusting that Aziraphale would not expose him. And then later he’s even more honest, admitting to Aziraphale he’s lonely in an attempt to show solidarity.

The entire Arrangement could not exist without them trusting each other. Crowley’s pushing at Aziraphale’s boundaries is a constant exercise in trusting that Aziraphale will come around eventually - or that he at the very least isn’t about to weaponize the treacherous things Crowley is saying against him. As early as 1601 we see Aziraphale voicing active concern for Crowley's well being. We then see Crowley actively trust Aziraphale with both their safeties in 1941 - whether it’s trusting Azriaphale to save them from the bomb about to drop on them or trusting Aziraphale’s trust in him to not accidentally discorporate him during the bullet catch. They even explicitly talk about their mutual trust in this year during their shades of gray conversation.

During Armageddon Crowley shows up trusting that Aziraphale will help him fix this and once Aziraphale agrees never once seems to consider the idea that Aziraphale would hide anything from him (even when Aziraphale is actively doing so).

He also critically knows that Aziraphale tried to reach God and got himself discorporated as a consequence. And likely specifically knows that Aziraphale talked to the Metatron and came away from that conversation realizing that Heaven would not help him. It's worth noting whether Crowley knows this bit or not that in this conversation Aziraphale not only explicitly questions the Metatron's authority but also uses the conversation to extract information from the Metatron.

Aziraphale leaves this conversation with an active lie to the Metatron and attempts to call Crowley to tell him everything he knew. He then continually chooses Crowley over Heaven. They pick their own side and help stop the world from ending.

And then, all season, Aziraphale keeps proving that the trust Crowley has always had in him is well earned. Aziraphale, even more than Crowley himself, brings up ideas of 'us' and 'our side' and 'our car'.

Aziraphale openly talks negatively of Heaven. Not only does he agree with Crowley's disbelief that Heaven managed to stay in charge sending people like Muriel down, but he even goes a step further, implying that they perhaps never had control over earth in that way.

He also, most critically, immediately and without hesitation, tries to turn down the Metatron's offer to even have a conversation. Aziraphale, who has also just brought a group of archangels to order, reaffirms his lack of interest in Heaven right then and there in front of Crowley. Right when the Metatron has reaffirmed the threat of the Book of Life is out of play.

Crowley trusts Aziraphale. He always has. And more than ever lately Aziraphale has given him proof that he doesn't have to worry about where he allegiances lay.

But. It's also worth noting. I don't think Crowley is as chill as he maybe seems like he is. Yes, he's sprawled out and speaking casually here, but to some degree this is a bit of posturing. He's playing it cool and also not encroaching on the control Aziraphale has managed to wrangle on this situation. But he also doesn't just let them wander off either. As soon as they hit the door, Crowley is out of the chair and walking to the front of the shop to watch them leave through the window. He's keeping tabs as they walk away.

He then banishes Muriel and promptly starts to clean. Now I'm always a little wary to mix Book and Show canon, but I do think his cleaning of the bookshop (as well as him carrying around stacks of books while babysitting Jim) are manifestations of Book!Crowley's tendency to want to stress clean. He's keeping himself busy and gets done too quickly then promptly glances at his watch before throwing himself into the chair with a frustrated noise. He's anxious and stressed the entire time Aziraphale is out of his line of sight.

In other words, Crowley's not actually as calm as he's presenting himself to be. He's trying to take that nervous energy out in a way that doesn't conflict with giving Aziraphale agency. Because he trusts his angel. And that in part is why it hits him so hard when it all blows up in his face.

[ladyhindsight]

CC is clearly biased for Herondales. She tries really hard to make the reader find Herondales attractive the truth is I never felt more dry reading about Jace, Stephen, Will and James. They do nothing for me. They all have the same personality except for James who has next to no personality aside for being constantly horny for Cordeila. I dare any person disagreeing with my statement give me 5 difference between Will, Jace and Stephen personality wise. Despite all her efforts to make us like Herondales I always found the other characters more attractive. Jem over Will. Anyone over Jace. Michael over stephen. Anna over James honestly anyone over James. Kit is a mini jace no originality. Freaking Manuel from TDA came off as more attractive than Jace and that says alot 💀.

Oh and can someone please tell me her obsession with eyes, weird ass body proportions and no one mentions the way shadowhunters walk sounds hilarious ngl like what what do you mean they walk like cats or lions or dancers. If shadowhunters's walks are like cats does that mean Jace walks are cattier cuz of all the extra angel blood. I try to picture Jace's walking and all I can imagine is Andrew tate's looney tunes fruity ass walk.

Her books are the fast food of literature as a booktuber described it as.

Period.

I said sometime before that the side characters are more interesting because they aren't (as) surrounded by Clare's bias or manipulative narration. Therefore more likable because I am not force-fed how great and amazing they are, I just get to take my time with them and get familiarized with their characters on my own. Problems also arise with Jace having problems more important than the others, that his issues are the grandest and most highlighted. Also Jace, Clary, and Simon are the only necessary characters whose stories are tied to the main plot. Even their romances (Clary with both Jace and Simon) have plot relevance. Others not so much.

As Clare's writing has always been more or less mostly telling than showing, it's not surprising that she needs to tell how amazing the Herondales are instead of actually basing her pretense on actually showing. Instead the readers are just offered this premise in every story, every other character is written just admiring and loving them, so it must be true? Just have characters fawn over someone and you bet the readers will also. Right.

Clare seems to think that other characters telling things is showing.

Clare's attention strips any side character of all intrigue and turns them into what Clare's protagonists usually are. Then they become all looks and hair and eye colors and wear white shirts through which their marks shine through (like Jace literally in every TMI book). Some concepts which Clare presents in her series are complex and complicated, I can agree with that, but her writing is unable to capture any depth or meaning of any of them. Attributing factor to this is her always ending up focusing majorly on love, especially the romantic kind of the main couple, as the motivator. I've read amazing pieces of TSC fan fiction, the kind of thoughtful and honest looks on the characters that Clare is unable to acknowledge on her part.

Her writing only presents the shallowest of emotions. Her writing on grief, loss, or love aren't really thought-provoking, just more cookie-cutter ideas on top of the previous ones. Not that all writing absolutely needs or has to be insightful, it's just that people pretend her writing is deeper than it actually is. Like people think chopped-up sentences are anything but surface-level poetry when in its essence poetry as an art and craft is more than that.

Everyone is so right on money with James' lack of personality. When he got furious with Grace (rightly so BUT) I felt really weird about it. Your message really helped me figure it out though: I had no idea of his personality nor any prediction on how he may react to more controversial happenings. Well, that's not true. Everyone on the Righteous Side of things in TSC always react with fury, roasting the antagonists crisp with their verbalism. But still I had no idea. Who is this guy calling Grace a criminal and a fiend? I don't know him at all.

And what makes the Herondales great really? I don't see why James or Will are anymore heroic than Clary, Cordelia, Emma, Simon, Alec, or Isabelle. I don't think Tessa as particularly heroic but that's also my faint memory of TID and disgust of her talking, so this is not to be entirely trusted.

[spongebobafettywap]

you know after all the retconing and rewriting they've done to established characters these past 4 years that often contradicts all we knew about them and renders their motivation absolutely irrational, i ain't surprised that they'd pull something like that for nightcrawler which fucks up slightly less than 30 years (mystique reveal) and 20 years (azazel reveal) of his publishing history

what i don't get is

if the problem is azazel's character in nightcrawler's backstory (from the draco storyline),

why choose to entirely alter fundamental things about nightcrawler's life which makes some of his biggest heroic decisions overall pointless (giving up his place in heaven to keep azazel out of it since he was his anchor there + use his blood ties to him to clock him on earth) and make things more complicated and questionable about his origins by 1) giving an entirely new setting to nightcrawler's origins (cuz why the hell germany now, why the baron ...) 2) having mystique totally change roles, motivations and actions throughout the origins which goes against everything we've seen so far in main continuity and the alternative realities and 3) removing azazel completely

instead of improving on azazel's character?

there's so many blank spots in his backstory that could be filled, like a millennia worth of filling

we also don't have his pov on stuff... at all and a pov can give so much insight on someone's thought process especially villains

or hell you could reveal the draco was entirely from his pov and he preferred simplifying and seeing things this way rather than what actually happened (something people do)

it's not about making his actions redeemable here tho, it's about putting some dimension to a dimensional hopper's character and their actions

people complain about wanting to follow the "original plan" and doing anything with azazel now would lead to a lack of consistency, when what they call original plan wasn't that at all and consistency stopped mattering in marvel a long time ago with krakoa being its biggest offender

they literally retconned azazel into being a demon after austen's run ended and now went back to calling him a mutant like he originally was as if nothing happened

if i had to pick a poison, it would be that

This will be the last Marvel related question I answer for a while because I don't think the attitude of Marvel and writing of it's characters in such a pessimistic purely for shock value way is good for me to think about mentally. I am also going to make this a broader point about the Marvel/DC method of writing and rewriting and how it causes a stagnation effect.

I am not too sure really why people seem to think instead of trying to make a story work we have to go back and pretend none of the story happened, what is the point? Why should we read stories that go back and decide they didn't happen?

I guess when the goal is to have a series of characters who never age or progress beyond a year at best then you run out of new stories to tell. You have to keep going back and writing things over and over again because there is a certain point you cannot cross. But really I just feel like a story that has no ending is a pretty pointless one to read when it comes to a action adventure series.

I think in the late 20th century of Marvel you saw more of an effort to try and progress the story onwards and that whilst not always perfect at least resulted in it being a overall beloved part of Marvel. But I can't really think of anyone saying anything recently done by Marvel would ever have that same impact on them?

It seems oversaturation of comic books for the big 2 led to stagnation and retcon abominations over and over again. Maybe it would have been better for Marvel if they concluded 616 and moved onto a new universe, at least with DC the reality is always changing itself so that has a minute excuse of how the inconsistencies can work there.

Also anon I do think your idea for making the Draco be from Azazel's pov would explain a lot rather than the way they keep changing his character origins on a whim. But I don't know I don't really have faith in Marvel after what they did with Magneto and the Maximoff twins. I think Marvel is just going to be endlessly rewriting characters origin stories without there being an excuse like realities being reset in DC. They have a main timeline but with all they do it might as well not be 1 timeline.

And you are right that it makes the Amazing X-Men stories not have that sacrifice anymore which is a shame because that series at the start really felt like a return to form but I feel like Kyle and Yost kinda ruined it by focusing on Wolverine. (because we are all so starved for stories about him lol)

[navree]

Some people are very convinced that George will have Euron wipe out the Hightowers in Winds of Winter. What do you think about this? I personally don't really like it because as a House they have persevered for Thousands of years and survived literally all the fucking conquests. It makes no sense to me (and also I just don't like it because I feel like it is already a qidely misunderstood and undervalued House that will only give fire to team black stans lmao)

I don't think that Euron is going to wipe out the Hightowers. From a Watsonian perspective, I'll admit to not being a bit ASOIAF theorizer or someone who has a lot of insight into Euron as a character, but that doesn't seem to be what he's going for. Euron wants to sack Oldtown, yes, and probably gain some power in the act, given Oldtown's ties with magic. But the thing is, Euron's not actually chaotically crazy. The show did him a huge disservice by making him this lunatic pirate caricature, but in the books Euron is very calculated in what he does. And his main plans appear to be some version of "summon up eldritch apocalypse" with a dash of "it'll make me super powerful", so completing annihilating the Hightowers isn't going to be in service to those plans. There's also the fact that not all of the Hightowers are in Oldtown (Alerie Hightower for instance is either in King's Landing or Highgarden, and she's just one of probably a lot of Hightowers) and Euron would probably have to go well out of his way, for no reason, just to wipe them out.

From a Doylist perspective, George isn't going to do that because it doesn't make any sense. This might be another show thing, or at least a fandom thing, but people are under the impression that most of ASOIAF's kills are just for shock value. That is not the case. One of the things that makes this series genuinely good and that has allowed it to stay so popular is that, while the deaths are shocking and heartwrenching, if you track it back, it's not actually surprising. Ned's death is surprising yes, because it's in the first book and we're not expecting the story to go that way due to preconceived notions on storytelling conventions, but it's very possible to see how we got from point A to point B if you read AGOT again with that knowledge in mind. So even if you ignore that completing wiping a Great House off the map would be an astonishing feat, it would honestly serve no purpose other than just being a shocking watercooler moment. And despite what a good chunk of casual watchers and also D&D seem to think, that's not the kind of story George is telling. The deaths are shocking, and they are watercooler moments, but they happen with purpose, they're planned out, and honestly if you know to look for them you can see them coming, like with the Red Wedding in ASOS. There's also the fact that, quite honestly, by the time of the main series, House Hightower aren't really important. They're incredibly periphery and their strongest connection to the story, besides just being the House in charge of the city Euron wants to attack, is that a member is Margaery's mother. George may not be the most economical of writers, but decimating House Hightower would require a lot of care devoted to it if he wanted to make it any sense, and that's time and care that's taken away from, like, the actual main story and the actual characters of these books. For the sake of an unimportant periphery House in the main story? Sorry, but no.

House Hightower at least surviving Euron's attack isn't even about House Hightower itself, it's about Euron's motivations and who he is as a character, and what George as a writer values and prioritizes and the direction of the story itself. And it's also just straight up not gonna happen.

[historywench]

Babel by R.F. Kuang

I am generally underwhelmed by hyped new releases, but rarely does the popularity of a book baffle me as much as this one. The tone of this book is that of sitting through an undergraduate lecture in a combination course on the history of the British Empire and linguistics delivered by a professor who thinks they are very clever but are actually boring as hell. The author’s understanding of the history is shallow, sometimes incorrect, and often oversimplified. She knows which names and events to drop to sound informed, but has no interest in examining their relevance or influence with any depth or in engaging in the historiographic debates. Kuang’s history is black and white. No room for nuance here. This book is desperate to deconstruct colonialism, but it never gets beyond the level of simply saying imperialism is bad. There is no insight into the mechanisms of power or resistance. Of our main cast of wunderkind students, the lead, Robin Swift, is boring and painfully naive to the very end. Yet we are asked to believe that Robin, who can't put together that Anthony faked his death even though Griffin specifically told him how he did the same thing to join Hermes full time, prevented the Opium Wars. It’s absurd.  His fellow students are one dimensional characters who exist only for the author to make certain rhetorical points. The discussions between them are excruciating in their obviousness. Their relationships feel forced and unnatural. Kuang doesn’t build up to their friendship, she just tells us it exists and expects us to go along with it. What’s worse though, is these characters—who are all born in the early 19th century—talk like Gen Z kids discoursing about politics on the internet. One of the characters refers to India as a “narco-military state”. Someone else says there is a “non-zero chance” of something happening. A news headline reads “DRUGGY MCDRUGGY”? Really? A 19th century person said or wrote that? Putting the words and ideas of the 21st century into the mouths of the early Victorians is not just discordant, it’s a misrepresentation of the attitudes and rhetoric of the period. And it’s a strange choice for an author who clearly cares a lot about language since she batters us over the head with dictionary definitions on every page. Meanwhile, all of the English characters are sneering racists so cartoonish you keep expecting them to twirl their mustaches and say something about those meddling kids. All of this ignores the very real anti-colonial movements that existed in India, and China, and Haiti, and in Britain itself. Empire always had opponents and critics, but Kuang doesn't want to give them credit for that. In fact, she specifically dismisses anti-imperial British people as motivated by literally any factor other than a sense of right and wrong. An ahistorical representation to say the least. There is a resistance society at work in this novel, but it is toothless and its purpose and plan are never elaborated upon. So much for anti-colonialism. And then there is the so-called magic system which is really just nonsense. There is no magic in this book to speak of. It makes absolutely no sense that the entire industrial revolution is somehow reliant on silver bars with words engraved on them. Ovens won’t bake bread without it? Carts can’t be pulled? Modern technologies only work if the silver is present? The basics of mechanics just don’t exist anymore evidently. Seems like silver is more of a liability than an advantage. The author doesn’t explain why the British seem to be the only ones using silver either, or why the previous empires who used it failed if the silver is so all-powerful. Or why, having access to this incredible supernatural power, all they do with it is make ships sail a little faster and….make flowers look brighter? Put on special light shows? I don’t even know. What is clear, is that whatever they are doing with it, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference since in Kuang’s supposedly alternate reality the entire history of the empire carries on in exactly the same way as it did in the real world. Some of the faults of the book could be glossed over if it were at least entertaining. Unfortunately, it isn’t. The plot of this book is as dull as its characters. It is tedious and bogged down by repetition. The second half of the book strains suspension of disbelief well past its limits. The ending is ludicrous. Robin's decision to both commit suicide and convince several other people who had been part of this resistance for about five minutes to do so as well? Unlikely.  The much vaunted footnotes don’t add anything to the story the reader couldn’t already infer for themselves. There’s nothing like having your intelligence insulted every other page to make a reading experience special. All in all, this left me wondering who in the world is this book for? It wants to be Les Miserables but it doesn’t have the heart, the skill, or the courage.

[majimasleftasscheek]

I want to write some smutty fic + plot with kiryu and majima, but I've only played kiwami 2 so I'm scared I don't know enough about them as characters. Any tips or suggestions? (also bless your art c:)

klsdjkld thank you also I'm super flattered you'd come to me for tips 🥺💖 I can give a lil insight from things in the games so I’ll try not to be explicitly spoilery but just giving a heads up in case

so obvs I speak from a shippy dippy perspective but they do genuinely care about each other, especially in y3. Majima's a person Kiryu trusts and Majima's equally someone who would willingly do whatever to help out people he cares about. Majima's the type to be like yeah I'll die for you (serious)

since you've played 2, then you can very much see how Majima's willing to get back into Tojo bullshit cuz Kiryu asked him to. It's certainly telling that Kiryu goes to Majima of all people for help when it comes to Tojo shit which I think is a nice way to show he respects him to some degree. As nice as Kiryu is tho, he can still be a rude lil turd and likes to make jabs. He’s got a tendency to say shit he thinks is cool even if its inappropriate lol

also like, Kiryu doesn't really know how to read Majima but also I don't think Kiryu knows how to read many people tbh. There's a wild freeness about Majima that Kiryu enjoys seeing and indulging in, like when they fight and he seems to actually have fun with it. I don't think he's 100% aware of why he enjoys it or why he's willing to put up with Majima's dumbassery but Kiryu doesn't really need answers. Majima is Majima and that simplicity works for him

there's a lot of stuff in Dead Souls that gives insight into Majima and because I'm ill of course I know all of it. Lots of softie moments, Majima's a bit of a control freak about his appearance, he's an ass but it's playful assholery, he loves his subordinates even if he's a turd @ them, he's forgetful as shit, he's a bit of a stickler for rules - by the book type of stuff. THERE'S ALSO a part with a lil girl and he's so cute and awkward with her and it fulfills my dadjima addiction. I think Maji would love Haruka very much and Kiryu would be pleasantly surprised by that side of him

in y3, it's Kiryu's big dad simulator so you get to see him being a wise old fart even if sometimes he's a total boomer and embarrassing. He tries his best and has the best intentions but honestly his lone wolf attitude is often his downfall. Kiryu's very much a "I'll take a bullet for you even if there's other options to definitely not take a bullet" type of guy. He blames himself for a lot of problems out of his control and he's got quite the track record of running away from things if he feels like it'll be for the greater good of everyone else (it isn't lol). Suffer in silence sort of dude

they honestly don't interact much after 3 tbh cuz I guess it was too gay lmao but uhhhh they're definitely still motivated by each other's actions. 5 is very big on Kiryu beats up a lot of people again™, due to something that happens to Majima. At that point, Kiryu's life is quite far removed from the whole yakuza thing so I think it says a lot that he throws himself back into the fray for this bowlcut bitch

also! Majima’s wacky but it’s most certainly a façade. He’s very capable of toning it down in serious situations and equally, Kiryu’s a funky dude! Majima’s the type to put up fronts for his image while Kiryu’s very reserved but will absolutely go all out on something cuz he just can’t not put his 100% into everything even if it’s silly

I tried to keep things mostly factual based on the games with a couple of my own hcs thrown in so I hope it helps!!

I have another post I'm writing for like deep angsty shit for another ask so if that'll be of use to you, keep an eye out for that :)

[gold-pavilion]

Hi Red-san! ( ´▽｀)

Not sure if you got asked about this question before(´ω｀) but would you mind sharing with us your journey of learning Japanese? Such as why you picked up the language, how you learn it, obstacles you faced or advice you would give etc.

Many BSD fans are inspired to learn Japanese given how strong the literature elements the story has. It will be very nice to read your thoughts such to give us more ideas about learning Japanese as I personally admire your insight towards the language very much! Thank you! *\(^o^)/*

HI KANI-KUNNNN IT’S SO LOVELY GETTING AN ASK FROM YOU always a pleasure to talk to you!! Plus that’s a very nice question!! My experience in this fandom also tells me maaaany many people have an interest in the language itself, more than in any other fandom I’ve been in, and I find that to be a wonderful thing.

For me, it’s been… whew. To put it bluntly, I’m a slow learner. I have a thick fucking skull. So I’ve been learning japanese on and off a LONG while. I think I’ve learned a bunch of tips and tricks along the way!

I did my first curious attempts at learning a few words and stuff when I was 17, I think, translating Vocaloid songs the word-by-word dictionary way. (This was how I started learning english when I was a very young kid too; sitting in front of my N64 games, translating the dialogue boxes word by word and trying to figure out what the game wanted me to do and what the characters were trying to say, so instinctively I did the same with japanese.) Afterwards, when I went to college, I chose linguistics and translation (spanish-english-japanese-portugese) as my career, but since college was too expensive I didn’t stay long. I left it aside for some years, till I was able to pick up going to a japanese institute regularly, signing up for all the competitions and standardized tests and things I possibly could! I made sure to push myself a lot, and started practicing more actively by myself too. Now I don’t go to classes anymore, I just keep at it on my own. And I think I’m doing pretty well!

So here’s a couple of things I believe are important to learning japanese (or any language):

• Any reason for entering the journey of language-learning is good. Anything that gets you learning a new skill just cannot be bad. Who cares that it was because of anime or manga or music or whatever? If it got your ass motivated and working at it, it's a good thing! Nobody goes to a skilled sportsman and tells them "OH BUT you only started playing this sport cause of your friends?? cringe, I bet you'll drop it". Learning any new thing is a wonderful endeavor. You'll gain something you'll have for the rest of your life. Pick up whatever you're interested in picking up, and if possibly, take the chance to do it early in life!!

• PLUS having an additional interest tied to the language is what keeps you going. Language learning, more than any other skill or type of knowlege, slips away from us if we're not using it. By liking anime and translating manga in JP, by playing games and using the internet in ENG and having reasons to have the languages around me is how I make this stick.

• For the learning itself, formal classes and informal practice are both good. The eternal debate of which one is superior is silly, none should be ignored, both are good and together they lead to the best levels of knowledge. Formal classes give you a good structure and understanding of the language, informal practice gives you looseness and gets you talking. I think everyone should try to do a bit of both! Signing up for a class or learning from online lessons / books that are organized from the basics up, + using anything outside of that to practice! I'm hugely thankful for my teachers, the tests I took and academic activities I did for formal learning, and the manga and doujin and fanarts with text that are my source of practice. They both got me acquainted with japanese in different ways.

• This is my personal way of doing things, so I dunno if it works for everybody, but I like pushing myself to try new things to expand my knowledge. When I went to formal classes I'd try to be fearless and speak up in class, I signed up for writing and speech competitions and I took standardized tests as I felt ready for them. Stuff that got me using my knowledge and gave me goals. Trying to translate manga was pushing myself too, with text that looked long and daunting at first but got progressively more manageable. Now I try to push myself to talk in social media bit by bit, surely I make lots of mistakes, but that's the path to progress!

• Finally, staying humble, staying patient, listening to other people and never getting cocky. Nothing blocks someone harder from a language than thinking they're already an expert sdfgfdsh. I've seen so many people figure out the basics of speaking just like an anime character and... ending their journey right there, with half-baked knowledged and pre-fabricated sentences that don't work much in reality. Saying "I know this language" after one's first sentences will close the path forward soooo hard.

I wonder if any of these resonates with you? I'd love to know about your journey sometimes too, Kani-kun!!

[felassan]

Article: ‘Mass Effect & Dragon Age’s cast members on how BioWare builds dynamics’

I spoke to several figures from BioWare juggernauts Dragon Age and Mass Effect, to get a clearer idea of how those iconic team dynamics we associate with the two titles were created. [interviews]

This article is a really neat read. :) Contains character insights, behind-the-scenes info and some reflections on representation.

Some excerpts under the cut due to length:

A huge theme of these interviews, naturally, was BioWare themselves. As well as general praise for the support, the working environment, and the success of the finished product, many singled out individual directors by name, and credited BioWare’s focused approach with getting the best out of them. Hale even claimed they were “the unsung heroes,” that underpinned the whole Mass Effect trilogy. [...]

“Usually there’s almost always a BioWare writer on the line with us, usually up in Canada, when we’re recording. So you’ll have the director, me and one or two BioWare head honchos up there supervising. That’s the way that’s the way it worked on Inquisition too. There’s a really collaborative vibe.” [...]

This consistency across the recording process is likely why the calibre of performance is so high across both trilogies. “The team of writers of BioWare are extraordinary,” Nick Boulton [Male Hawke] says. “So they keep you on track pretty well. The key was having Caroline Livingston, who was directing most of it – all of it, in fact. She would be there to give context notes, and also keep me on the straight and narrow, as far as characterization went. So we were led through very well by the BioWare team.” [...]

Insight on Jack:

Courtenay Taylor describes Jack as being “a very comfortable pair of old stinky sneakers to step into,” and explains that her connection to Jack’s story was a core way she was able to bring it to life. “[Jack has] a pretty familiar psychology that I had. She was very reminiscent of how I was, to some degree, in high school. She’s putting up a barrier to get people to prove themselves, so you have to run the gauntlet in order to get the good stuff. When you’ve been abused as badly as she has, then psychologically one of the tracks you can take is ‘I will not allow myself to be vulnerable’. And that really resonated with me.”

Taylor also says that this guard Jack puts up meant that, ironically, many of the players found it easier to connect with her. “I got really great feedback from a lot of people about struggles that they had had in their personal lives,” she says.

“I think [Jack’s change between Mass Effect 2 & 3] is a smaller story, but it’s a big story for a lot of people. I have a lot of friends who had addiction problems. And quite a few of my friends give back by going back to the community that they’ve come out of, and finding people that need help. At its core, that’s a big, important through line for Jack – every one of us is worthy of love. And it doesn’t matter how difficult you are or how troubled you are or what has happened to you or what someone has done to you. You are worthy of loving and being loved.” [...]

Taylor also saw something personal in her own performance, especially since there weren’t a lot of women like Jack in popular media when Mass Effect 2 launched. “There was a huge amount of love for her because gender/appearance wise, she is something that I felt at that time had not been explored. And I know that some of the things were cut, but in what we originally recorded [Jack was pansexual], and in 2008 or 2009, there weren’t a tonne of conversations about being pansexual,” she says.

“She was a counterpoint to a lot of the other female characters. She was sort of the far end of the spectrum. You’ve got Miranda who’s beautiful and pulled together, but that only serves a certain population. And there are a lot of people that identify as women who could relate to having these feelings and these emotions – she’s not gender specific. To me, she’s angry. And I don’t know that there had been, at that time, a female character who was so not typically female, who was capable of such a range of emotions. She ended up being the permission to a whole group of people who don’t identify with that kind of woman. Because in entertainment, where did that bald girl with a flat chest who was pansexual go? Where do you fit in? And that really resonated with me. If you don’t relate to Miranda, Jack can be a really nice option.”

Insight on Josie:

It’s a sentiment echoed by Allegra Clark, who used a major tragedy in her own life as motivation for the siege of Haven in Dragon Age: Inquisition. “I think the first time you really start to get to know [Josephine] as a person is when she talks about Haven after the attack. That conversation she has about the first people to jump in and protect people being the workers, and how she’s just watching everything be destroyed. I was actually thinking about 9/11, as a New Yorker. So that was a very personal moment for me. But it was those little moments where she starts to open up and blossom that you get to see her as a person.” [...]

For Clark though, those boundaries were much more personal. “When I was told I had booked Josephine, I was just like, ‘I’m a companion in a BioWare game, and a romanceable companion at that’,” Clark says. “I recognised going in that people were going to connect really hard to this character. People are going to have entire playthroughs that are based around romancing Josephine. She helped me explore my own bisexuality, and that is always the thing that that warms my heart the most when people come to me about my LGBTQ+ characters, and say ‘they helped me understand parts of my own identity’. I actually wasn’t out of the closet publicly, or even to parts of my family when I started recording Inquisition. So it was interesting, getting to tell essentially part of my story as well. Before even being able to say to the world ‘hi, I’m bi’ – though all the signs were there. I was in a relationship with another woman at the time. It’s like ‘oh my God, they were roommates!”

Zevran:

While all were full of praise for BioWare’s writing and working environment, the love of actually playing the game was exclusive to Clark. Most others admitted they had never played at all; Curry confessed he had no idea if Zevran was even alive [as he hasn’t played]

Sam Traynor:

“I think Traynor was revolutionary in what she was doing at the time,” Wilton Regan says. “What was so different about Traynor was she wasn’t romanceable for either gender, you had to be playing as FemShep to choose a lesbian love option . And that was so brave of them to do at the time. But it brought us leaps and bounds forwards, because having that inclusivity then makes it just easier for the next game, and for the game today. And now it’s a standard – you should be representative of all sexualities if there are romance options in your games, and increasingly major games pretty much always have some sort of gay, bisexual, lesbian or heterosexual choice. It might not be as fluid as all of the spectrum of sexual choices, but you’ve got a strong variety in comparison to where it was 20 years ago, for example.”

Sam Traynor and Josie:

Part of representing groups that don’t often get representation in video games is that your character gets to become a role model, and that’s something Wilton Regan and Taylor have particularly fond experiences of. “It’s quite flattering and quite lovely to think about,” Wilton Regan says. “I’ve had a lot of lesbians who are coming out of the closet or coming to terms with their sexuality, who’ve come up to me and said that playing FemShep and romancing Traynor was a really big part of that. And lots of bisexual women as well. There’s something just very beautiful about the idea that BioWare has put so much faith and trust in me over the years with these really pivotal roles, and these big, beautiful characters. I feel very humbled by that. Very, very humbled.”

Meanwhile, Taylor wasn’t even sure people would like Jack, so finding out how deeply people related to her was a huge surprise, and she suspects that’s because Mass Effect allows her to be angry without being written off as a stereotypical, hysterical woman. “People didn’t like her when the trailer came out, and I was like, ‘Oh God, everyone’s gonna hate her!” Taylor laughs. “I was really surprised to be at a convention and have someone come up and say, ‘Can I introduce you to my nieces? They’re six and eight, and they love you’. I’m glad they have a good female role model in Jack.”

[ghostlywinnerengineer]

BSD DAZAI vs. YOZO

I’ve just finished reading no longer human today and I want to ramble on it. These are mostly comparisons of BSD Dazai and Yozo. So here we go... First of all it’s very interesting to me Dazai’s understanding of his suicidal tendencies has more insight than Yozo’s. Dazai sees the existential lack of meaning in life but Yozo mostly sees the cause of his suffering in his inability to live up to the standards of the society. Even when he confesses to the arbitrariness of the standards, he places the blame on the feeling of being outside but not on the standards’ meaningless existence. He is not indifferent to act of living as a whole, he is just unsatisfied and ashamed of how he lives. He is ashamed of not being similar to others and not being able to understand them. It is, his life he is opposed to. It is only at the end of the book Yozo finally concludes “everything passes”.  Whereas, Dazai is aware, from the start, it is being alive and being human that is unbearable and there is no meaning in living. An encompassing fact. He does not say my life is not worth living, life in general for everyone is worthless. Everybody dies, but continues to live until that day. They live as if they won’t going to die. And the part about not understanding people does not apply to him at all. He is capable at deducing latent and manifest meanings behind people’s actions and manipulating them for his interests. 

Life is full of suffering for both of them but Dazai is indifferent to the idea of living while Yozo strives and fails at living up to the standards of the society he perceives. Yozo is someone who is always in deep shame, he always worries about his behaviours, and he is a harsh critic of himself. Dazai does not hold any shame, he does not take life or the people around him as seriously as Yozo he has nothing to be ashamed of he is just bored with life, bored with living and the sufferings it brings. He is in apathy whereas Yozo struggles with caring too much and trying too hard. 

Drawing parallels between the Yozo in Marxist movement and Dazai after joining port mafia, it is apparent that Dazai is more serious about his involvement in illegal activities. Yozo mostly joins Marxists because he feels rightly placed in the outsider atmosphere of the movement. Dazai’s involvement in Mafia is different however because I believe he had respect towards Mori and wanted his approval at the time. The outsider, illegal character of the mafia had little significance for Dazai and the acceptance of his comrades only came second for Yozo. I headcannon that  Dazai, being the intelligent person he is, had very high standards set up to him even in his family house and his suicide attempt was influenced by these standards similar to Yozo. But unlike Yozo, Dazai had Mori, another figure who he can satisfy with his talents, another figure who can bless him with acceptance. With Mori Dazai repeats the cycle of affirmation. Mori was the one, who gave him a reason to live after he lost interest in living. (I know Chuuya played a role in it too but Chuuya was a pawn in Mori’s plan.)This acceptance was not possible for Yozo because he convinced himself his background separated him from his comrades and he run away from them. 

Yozo was the smallest children of a traditional family his morality shaped by the strict rules of that lifestyle. His own desires conflicted with that morality. It is not that he doesn’t agree with the moral standards his father hold him up to, it is precisely because he agrees that causes him to suffer. In cases when he questions the concept of morality he does it, in order to free himself from the cognitive dissonance he experiences. He is aware that the societal rules are arbitrary and it is actually the people around him who judges him, hiding behind the so called societal rules. But it still hurts him to see how people who are as degenerate as he is (or even people who are worse than him) have the higher ground when it comes to judging him. And how he is unable to protest their unfairness accepting deep down they are right about him. Dazai’s morality is shown as non-existent during his time with the mafia. It was Odasaku who points this out by saying for Dazai both sides are the same. But I think, this is not true. Dazai knows both sides are not the same in regards to morality. But it is a fact that does not interest him. He is not in the mafia because he believes what they are doing is good, beneficial, bad, evil etc. He is not interested in the consequences of his actions on the world whether be it good or bad. He is interested in acceptance and affirmation. Mori gave these to him. This is the reason Dazai was able to move the ladder of hierarchy so fast in the mafia. Of course his talents was helpful but he also had the motivation to apply his talents on the mafia missions because of Mori’s positive reinforcement. Dazai only allow morality to effect his actions when Odasaku’s life was in danger and Mori mocked Dazai for this, saying “we are the Port Mafia. We have always brought darkness, violence, and cruelty to this city. Why is that a problem now?” Mori planned Odasaku’s death knowing about their friendship, Mori knew if he let Odasuku die Dazai would feel betrayed yet he done it regardless because Dazai is not as important to him as the license he gets in return for defeating mimic. In fact Dazai leaving mafia is beneficial for Mori. Dazai had been traded by his boss, by his mentor for a piece of paper. He realized how Mori perceived him all this time, a tool and a threat to his future reign. He realized his friend is going to die because of him, because Mori wanted to use Odasaku’s death to give Dazai an excuse to leave mafia. Dazai leaving was part of the plan all along. But it was only then Dazai realized this. I’d like to add that even before Mori’s betrayal and his death Odasaku started to influence Dazai’s perspective on life. We can see this in the scene where Dazai mentions Odasaku to Akutagawa. He compares himself to Odasaku, and says “But ‘righteousness’ doesn’t take very kindly to me”. Here he considers being morally righteous as a possibility, a possibility which is unfavourable to him but regardless he evaluates his actions on a morality scale. And then there is the scene where he apologizes to Odasaku for killing the assassins and compromising his principles. He respects the moral perspective of Odasaku that is precisely why he accepts his dying will. “It was clear that those words were supported by some sort of strong basis. Whether it was past experience or someone’s advice”. Dazai believes him. On another note, I think the most important part of Odasaku’s dying speech is when he says “People live to save themselves”. He led Dazai to the path he once tried to walk on but he also led Dazai know in this path (which looks like Dazai is the one doing the good deeds, saving people, feeding orphans etc.) it is yourself who you try to save regardless. He is telling Dazai to be on the good side to save himself.

There’re a lot more I want to say while the memory of the book fresh in my mind but I realized now I’ve been writing about Dazai exclusively in the last part of the text and the comparative focus is lost so this the end for now. Thank you for reading. By the way you probably noticed that English is not my native language and I’m too lazy to upload this text to grammarly sooo… I’m sorry for any ambiguity in the text and for the grammar mistakes ://

[dandylion240]

All of the story asks please :) (Character specific ones I'd say up to you, but would love to have them be Jonah/Cecil or my usual favorites ;) )

what’s the last screenshot you’ve taken for your story?

2. describe your story in three words or less

Family, Angst, Drama

3. describe (insert character here) in three words or less

Jonah - unassuming, brave sensitive

Cecil - insightful, supportive, caring

Evan - self-sacrificing, helpful, innocent

Jayden - protective, stubborn, active

4. how did you choose the name of your story?

I try to use titles that is kind of thematic of the story I'm writing. It takes me forever to come up with a name and sometimes the name changes multiple times before it gets posted.

5. how do you choose your characters’ names?

It depends upon the story. For my Reagan family stories (TS4) I use the parents names. It's kind of a family tradition. For instance Jonah/Ethan. All boys will start with E and the girls will start with J. In my TS3 stories I sometimes choose a theme for names and use that. Like next gen of NSQL the theme is nature.

6. how long have you been working on your story for?

Well it depends on the story. With my Reagans I started writing for them in the summer of 2019. For my TS3 legacies I started in 2014 I think.

7. whats the biggest risk you’ve taken with your story? did it pay off?

I think my biggest risk is my current story Into the Depths of Darkness. I wasn't sure I could pull it off and the story has changed from what I thought it would be and the hero of the story has changed from first conception. I'm happy that Jonah is the hero of his own story and it's given him so much character growth and he's becoming more of what I always invisioned him being. I owe a lot to @mahvaladara to how the story has progressed and the ideas she has contributed. It wouldn't be what it is without her.

8. what about your story are you proud of?

There are many things I'm proud. Mostly that I continue writing even though sometimes it feels like I'm ripping my heart out to write some of things I write about and also that I don't quit even when it's hard.

9. what about your story are you looking to improve on?

There's always things that can be improved. Writing is a process that the more you do it the more you learn and get better. I could say pictures but I'll admit the storytelling will always come first over pretty pics and sometimes I just can't find the right pose to fit. Maybe one day I'll be able to make my own poses but I'm not there yet.

10. is your story fully planned or are you still working things out? is there a definitive end?

It's a work in progress. I start writing from an outline of how I think the story should go but it's loose enough for me to rearrange things or remove/add things to it as the story evolves.

11. why have you decided to tell this story? are there any messages or meanings within it?

I just like to write. If there's any message in my stories it's that family is important and no matter awful things you might face in life if you have people who love and care for you that you can endure it. But mostly that you can rise above your circumstances and still be a healthy, functioning person despite everything even if you have a mental or health problems, you can still be happy, loved.

12. do you actually play the game or do you just use it as a storytelling medium?

It's mostly a storytelling medium for me. I do play it sometimes but tbh though TS4 lacks so much depth and gameplay I find it boring after a while. I've gotten into playing TS3 again now that I have a better computer that it doesn't lag as much.

13. from basic planning to a finished post, how long does that take you?

I don't honestly know. I've never stopped to consider how long it takes.

14. do you have any regrets about your story so far? if you could go back in time, how would you fix these?

No I don't think I have any real regrets. Sure I go back and think I could have written that better or edited that picture more but for the most part I'm happy with my stories.

15. what have been the highlights of creating your story?

The highlights have always been the people who become involved in my characters lives.

16. what about the process do you enjoy?

Seeing my stories come to life. How my characters change as the story progresses.

17. what about the process do you hate?

When I struggle to write a scene and it doesn't flow the way it should. It's generally because I'm coming at it wrong. Once I figure that out than it flows. Sometimes the seeming lack of interest in what I write from the readers is hard to overcome and I feel like quitting. But the few who comment I thank because that always revs up my motivation to continue.

18. choose a song that reminds you of your story

Just one song....that's really difficult say. There are so many songs out that fit my current story. This song fits Into the Depths of Darkness because where there's a lot of darkness there's still hope to be found.

19. choose a song that reminds you of (insert character here)

Ok I'll do this for Jonah - Fight Song

20. choose your favourite shot from your story so far

21. choose your least favourite shot so far

22. choose a favourite character from your story so far

Jonah is my baby. It may not show it by I love him.

23. choose your least favourite character so far

Hmm this is difficult because there were characters I created purely to be hated. Currently my least favorite is Ethan but it's not because I don't love him but it's because of his roll in the story.

24. are there any characters who remind you of yourself?

Not really. There are certain aspects of me in all my characters or people I know in them but none are an incert of myself.

25. what inspirations have you drawn on for your story?

There are so many. I draw inspiration from people around me. From movies and TV shows I watch. The books I read. Sometimes from the people I interact with on here mainly @izayoichan @mahvaladara @jenpants and @legendofsim They've let me bounce ideas off of them and their input helps me in my stories.

26. have other sim stories inspired you?

Yes they have. See above. All their stories have inspired me.

27. what genres would you describe your story as?

Modern fantasy drama??? I have no idea if that's a thing but it best describes what I write.

28. if you could reproduce your story in another medium (movie, novel, comic, etc.) what would you choose and why?

Hmm I'd say novel or maybe series. A movie would be cool too.

29. what would your story’s rating be? (G, PG, M etc.)

Hmm interesting I'd like to say its somewhere between PG-13 and mature just because of some of the topics.

30. if you were leaving simblr and had to choose another creator to continue the story for you, who would you ask?

I think either @izayoichan or @mahvaladara for my TS4 stories since they've helped me write some of them and they would keep true to the characters as they love them as much as I do.

For my TS3 stories I would say @legendofsim since for a long time our stories had been intertwined.

31. drop some random trivia about your story

Ethan was supposed to die trying to save Jonah

Caiden was supposed to have played the part of the hero instead of Jonah

Cory was going to heal Jonah's broken heart over the of Ethan.

But as they say the story changed...

32. give a light spoiler

Someone will be heartbroken at the end of the story.

33. recommend another creator’s story!

There are so many: @izayoichan @mahvaladara @nikatyler @justkeeponsimming @amuhav @legendofsim @simlit @lilyshadowwriter @wannabecatwriter

Please don't be upset if you weren't listed on here. I love everyone I follow but these are my favorites. I have others but some aren't active anymore and stuck with the ones I'm always waiting for the next installment, even if I'm behind on a few of them.

Thank you for asking!

[pleckthaniel]

A Light In The Mist Excerpt Reactions & Thoughts

Because I was just having too many to make them all separate posts lol, so instead you’re getting this huge monster of a post.

Read the excerpt for yourself here

I guess the “Acting Leader” thing must have been a typo, because it seems to have been corrected. More proof that they simply copy-and-paste large parts of the allegiances from book to book.

I will take this opportunity to say though, that Bramble/Squirrel’s restoration as the leaders of TC just makes me even more certain that one or both of them are going to die. (I would say Bramble is more likely to die, but I’m also pretty sure that if they kill him they’ll also want Squirrel dead out of, like, spite. So idk.) If they wanted them to have a triumphant return, that would have been the happy ending of this book. Since that was the hope spot last book, the best narrative move now is to kill em in the climax.

It made sense to write the prologues in pseudo-omniscient back in TPB, where Fireheart was the only POV character and it gave us the chance to witness things he would never see. It also made some sense in TNP, when they were used to give us insight into what was going on in StarClan. By now, it’s tired and often pointless.

It is a good move to focus in on Ashfur while we still can, though. He’s very well written through this entire arc, and this inside perspective helps with that. Unfortunately, there’s just a lot of exposition to get through with him so this prologue does feel a bit rushed in that regard, but the character work is solid.

It’s been alluded to before, but I think this is the first explicit confirmation that StarClan basically cannot exist without the living Clans, and that if the living Clans collectively rejected StarClan, it would pretty much cease to exist. That feels like something a smarter series would explore. Doesn’t that impact StarClan’s motivations when they’re dealing with the living Clans? Given the arc title, I can’t help but hope we’ll get a little discussion of this in A Starless Clan, but I’ll try not to get my hopes up too much - these are the Erins after all.

This is pretty fascinating on multiple levels. First, the connection between the DF and StarClan has always previously been portrayed as a border, not a path. Are these sort of interchangeable visual metaphors for what is essentially a magic gate underneath, or is this a retcon and Ashfur literally built a wall? Second, I’ll talk about this more in a minute, but just note the conflation of the path between the Dark Forest and StarClan, and the path between the living world and StarClan. Third, the sentence “slowly... he had begun to concentrate power into his own paws” reads, to me, as him kinda mentally skimming over the part where he recruited the Dark Forest cats. I legitimately cannot tell whether that is something the book wants me to have questions about.

okay... how? I get that Yellowfang seems to trust you completely for some inexplicable reason, but surely someone must have had some concerns about this.

Legitimately, they are not fucking around with his characterization. It’s really good. Anyone who says this arc is bad can straight up fight me. Ashfur has become one of the best developed characters in all of Warriors, and certainly the best-written villain. He’s spiteful, jealous, mean, and entitled, but in a way that always feels perfectly grounded in his past as just a regular, random guy.

Okay, yeah, this is sort of what I’m getting at. This implies that there is a kind of linear relationship between the living world, the Dark Forest, and StarClan, where a cat coming from the living world must pass through the Dark Forest to get to StarClan.

From a worldbuilding perspective, this is fascinating to me because it implies that you basically go to the Dark Forest by default, which is sort of the opposite of what I and I think a lot of other people had assumed. It also kind of implies that, like... in terms of origins of these afterlives, their separation wasn’t a result of StarClan sending evil cats away, but rather separating themselves. The difference is like, the Dark Forest as a prison (and SC as regular “life”) versus StarClan as a self-declared shining city on the hill (and the DF as the unwashed masses, so to speak). Again, this brings up some really interesting questions about StarClan’s motivations that I think a smarter series might take the chance to explore, but which I know will never be touched because we never question the rightness of StarClan in this household. sigh

I also just wanna say, my beloved @lorillee​ pointed out that this kind of recontextualizes Flametail’s being in the DF in OOTS. In the books, it’s said that he was basically lured into the DF almost immediately upon arrival in StarClan, because I guess he’s an idiot. But in the perspective of this current worldbuilding, maybe he isn’t an idiot, he just got kind of captured on his way to StarClan? Again, not intended or even really canon, but interesting. (Actually, all of OOTS can be recontextualized in really wild ways with the TBC lore. I would love to see someone write an AU where OOTS plays out with TBC-era rules.)

Okay, I know I said they still haven’t explained Ashfur’s mind control powers - and they haven’t, at least not satisfactorily - but to be fair to them, they rarely explicitly write out questions like this in narration unless they’re planning on answering them later so I’m sure it will be addressed. (unless.. well, i’ll get into it a bit later)

Again, I really cannot tell if this is supposed to be a final answer to the question of why the Dark Forest cats let Ashfur be in charge. Just, “they’re evil, the end.” I’m really hoping it’s not and I’m supposed to have more questions, because I do.

I can’t remember if they established that being in the DF makes you more evil before, but I just love that. Good fun lore, retroactively justifies a lot of the weaker characterization choices in OOTS, and happens to dovetail in really nicely with what they’re about to establish about the Dark Forest in this excerpt.

Yeah, this is Warrior Cats at its best. This bit, and the preceding parts where Rootspring thinks about how he wanted to save Snowtuft, feels straight out of TPB.

I know Bristle/Root is unpopular but I unironically love how much of their relationship is built on Bristlefrost being the knight in shining armor to Rootspring’s damsel in distress. Truly a couple girlboss/malewife icons

At least a couple pages into this scene where Shadowsight does practically nothing but watch his friends get beaten up and this is the first time it even seems to occur to him to do anything about it. I hate it honestly. It’s really awkward writing, and has the unfortunate side effect of making Shadowsight look super passive in a very unlikeable way.

Like, you would think this would be the moment Shadowsight finally interferes, but nope, it takes him another several paragraphs - wherein Rootspring and Bristlefrost are very clearly losing the fight, doing worse every passing second - for him to actually do anything. Again, I don’t think the intent was to make Shadowsight look bad, but it does.

This honestly feels like a direct address to the fans, practically a taunt, but I don’t know if they’d ever be that petty.

Ashfur in the background, apparently watching this conversation without reacting or doing anything at all: 👁️👄👁️

(Seriously, are the Erins this bad at keeping track of their group scenes? I feel like they didn’t used to be.)

Whoever this bitch is, I am going to need more content about her immediately

(No, it’s not meant to be Mapleshade - Shadowsight mentions her by name a few paragraphs later)

PRAYING that this means they’re going to actually answer these questions and Mapleshade has an actual distinct motivation for participating in Ashfur’s nonsense other than “I’m evil lol”

Spoiler he’s not dead. So why did they even write it this way lmao. To add some false drama/tension????

The geography here makes no goddamn sense - they’re close enough to see this, but not to see Stemleaf, who was much closer to them when Mapleshade ‘killed’ him, and not close enough for Shadowsight to be able to see them??

GIRLBOSS FIGHT!! This moment feels fanservice-y as hell and I love it

And yet it is immediately dropped because the Erins seem to literally forget about it mid-paragraph. Seriously, Bristlefrost hits Mapleshade and then Mapleshade seems to straight up vanish from existence because she’s not mentioned again for the rest of the scene and Bristle pauses to have a conversation with Stemleaf, then goes over to Rootspring and Shadowsight, with whom she has a bizarrely calm conversation even though at this point Mapleshade and Stemleaf should both be imminent threats who are literally within striking distance.

This moment is sad and scary though. Major zombie movie vibes. Makes me wonder if they intentionally incorporated those elements as a response to how people initially wanted this series to be a rabies thing.

This piece of dialogue just strikes me as something that never would have been said in TPB, but I mean that in a good way. The series has gotten better about conversation that feels natural.

Pretty sure this is the third use of the unexpected rescue trope in this ongoing scene and the second time the mind-controlled cats have been given a chance to get away. At some point the fact that these books are all essentially published first drafts goes from amusing to straight up frustrating. It’s really wrecking the pacing.

I fucking LOVE this little argument. “I’m here here” - brilliant. Like unironically, one of Warriors’ strengths is its ability to use slice-of-life to build characters and their relationships with small moments like this one, something which this arc has been severely lacking in due to its incredibly fast pace.

(Also Bristlefrost being peacemaker - I’m no longer confident that we’ll get Bristlestar by the arc’s end, but her characterization throughout this scene makes me certain they’re at least setting up to take her in that direction. Guess we’ll see if they ever actually follow through.)

That’s a Chekhov’s Gun if I’ve ever seen one

Yeah, the amount of uncertainty they’re putting on this makes me think he’s not actually dead. Which... again, not to get my hopes up for A Starless Clan, but if an arc wanted to potentially bring up systemic issues with StarClan itself, a character who initially went to the Dark Forest be proven to belong in StarClan instead would be a really good thing to have around

Their friendship is everything to me and I’m so glad it hasn’t been forgotten. Stemleaf has such strong “straight guy with lots of bi female friends” energy

I just unironically really like this imagery.

Hmm, really hope there end up being some kind of consequences for this, otherwise all the stuff about avoiding the water is gonna retroactively read as pointless filler

Stronger over medicine cats??? Why would that be true. God I hope they explain this

I do not trust this, nor do I trust Willowshine right now. And given the way this scene is written, I’m frankly going to be disappointed if I’m wrong not to.

I can’t tell if they’re retconning out the thing from OOTS where if the trainees went to sleep in the DF they would wake up in the real world, or if this is meant to be foreshadowing of Willowshine’s being a bad actor. Unfortunately the books are so poorly written it’s impossible to tell right now

The sooner the Erins stop conflating women mothering their love interests with sexual tension the better.

It does turn out that someone’s on the other side of the blockade, so maybe this is just foreshadowing that, but this plus the moment in the last screenshot makes me wonder if something is up with Rootspring.

So basically - the Dark Forest is now a direct reflection of Ashfur’s mental state.

Actually, that’s unironically pretty cool - especially since the forest is currently shrinking and flooding, which mirrors Ashfur becoming increasingly fractured and frantic as his plans start to spin out of control. Also, it’s not like this is even really unprecedented information - after all, the Dark Forest was canonically more of a solitary confinement deal before Tigerstar essentially wished for an evil army so hard that he shaped it to his will. So like, yeah, I’m unbelievably on board with this.

What I’m not on board with, and what I’m worried may be happening, is the accompanying implication that this is why he can control the spirit cats as well. This makes no goddamn sense for so many reasons. Why would it not also work on the Dark Forest spirits? Hell, why wouldn’t it work on the living who happen to be within the Dark Forest, for that matter? Why is Ashfur apparently the only one who can do this? How did he learn that it was possible for him to do this? He has to have learned it before it happened because a pretty major part of his plan seems to hinge on his ability to control spirits. None of it makes any goddamn sense! If this is the last explanation we get on why Ashfur has sudden mind control powers, I’m going to be mad.

It really feels like this plan is going to take longer than if they just stood there and opened the barrier.

NO THE FUCK YOU DIDN’T

God damnit I love Bristlefrost so much. As much as I think StarClan actually sucks, this is such a sweet moment - like to me it’s analogous to a person who grew up in an abusive religious organization rediscovering the parts of their religion that they actually like and that is precious to them. This feels like a good cap to the part of her arc that was about trying to live up to Ash!Bramble’s propaganda.

This is the point where I start thinking, “Damn, Ashfur has been nearby for quite a while now” and we’re still only like halfway through all the goodbyes they want to do before he actually shows up. The pacing issues are strong in this book

So to recap: Interesting worldbuilding, horrifically bad writing, good characters, extremely thoughtless scene design, and I honest to God cannot tell how many of the questions I still have about the basic premise of this arc are going to be left hanging. Sounds about right for Warriors, I’m hyped.

[adifferenttime]

Honest Hearts: A Rough Rewrite

Hey! I’ve been working on an Honest Hearts rewrite-type-thing for a bit and figured I’d solicit feedback/assemble a post to store some of these ideas.

A detailed explanation of the premise is under the cut, but I’ve made this as a more interesting reintroduction to major locations, along with the characters who live there. I also have some lore consisting of letters, scripture, and holotapes that’s still in the early stages, along with a complete companion wheel for Salt-Upon-Wounds (he’ll follow you around for a little if you decide to help him out). Endings are now finished as well. I’m not planning on expanding this into a full mod, but I’m assembling everything in Twine so I can utilize branching dialogue and mimic skill checks.

I want to keep adding to and editing this because I’m having fun with it, so if you have any input, let me know!

Essentially, the story proceeds as written up until the point where Daniel sends you to either kill the White Legs or destroy their war totems. You quickly realize that their camp is deserted, at which point Salt-Upon-Wounds ambushes you, convo-locks you, and tells you that there’s an entirely different side to things here that you might not have considered.

Factions

The Mormons have established a theocracy in the Utah called Deseret, with New Jerusalem - what was once Salt Lake City - as its capital. Large numbers of them survived the initial apocalypse due to their pre-War focus on strong community ties and disaster prepping; over time, they have returned to the model of self-sufficient agrarianism that characterized the historical Mormon state of Deseret that existed in Utah in the 1800s. Their President, who wields supreme executive power, is also their Prophet. The Mormons believe he communes directly with God, but there’s some discontent in New Jerusalem over his hands-off approach to foreign policy and unwillingness to assemble a standing army. The Elders of the Priesthood are pushing him to allow for some kind of formal military to oppose what they see as revived versions of their ancestral enemies: America, Rome, and the “Lamanites” (this is what Mormons call Indigenous Americans; the “Lamanite” idea has historically been used as a justification for racism, and I’m reflecting that here because it’d be kind of heinous not to). In more than a few respects, Deseret serves as a mirror to the Legion and an exploration of the other side of the coin re: the tactics utilized by colonial empires to present themselves as legitimate while still claiming territory and steamrolling the opposition.

The White Legs are now more explicitly Shoshone, and I’m relying most heavily on the Timpanagos Band for names and historical inspiration (apparently the question of whether they’re Ute or Shoshone is pretty controversial, but I’m sticking with what the Timpanagos have said about it until someone corrects me). After migrating south in the wake of the Great War, the White Legs eventually settled in Ogden, about a day north of New Jerusalem. Initial interactions with the Mormons were friendly, but as New Jerusalem grew and its need for farmland and resources increased, tensions rose before culminating in open violence in around ‘76 or ‘77. Deseret’s party line is that the White Legs conducted a “raid” on one of their settlements and had to be driven away from Ogden; the White Legs claim the violence was not a raid, but a revenge killing after a Mormon killed a young man and was found not guilty by Mormon legal authorities (this is a theocracy, so “legal authorities” here can be understood as indistinct from “the church”). The Mormons established a new settlement on the ruins of Ogden, which they called New Canaan, and the White Legs fled to Salt Lake, where they have been dwindling in number ever since. Salt-Upon-Wounds’ plan to seek entry to the Legion is a last-ditch attempt to save his people from eradication when their neighbors and the land itself seems intent on killing them (not that that makes all the war crimes ok, which is a sentiment you’ll be able to express to his face if you engage him in conversation).

The Dead Horses are a pastoral society from out of Dead Horse Point, and are split almost down the middle along political lines. The more conservative, religious side opposes intervention in Zion. Graham desecrates the corpses of his enemies as an intimidation tactic, and because the Dead Horses’ religion is so eschatological and heavily focused on properly cleaning, preparing, and interring the dead, a big chunk of the religious leadership opposes him on that basis - they think his tactics are ungodly. They’re also worried that any Dead Horses who die in Zion and are interred there will be severed from their connection to Dead Horse Point and doomed to a separate, lonely afterlife. The younger, more progressive elements of the tribe are less traditionalist, sometimes less religious, and overall not as concerned about Graham’s treatment of the dead because of the potential benefit they might be able to derive from him. Follows-Chalk is their de facto leader, and while the Dead Horses don’t formally allocate political power, he’s among the most influential people in the informal tribal leadership. Most of the Dead Horses who’ve come to Zion have done so either because they support Follows-Chalk politically, or for practical reasons - namely, Graham’s access to a dizzying number of guns and his willingness to give them to anyone who’ll fight for him.

The Sorrows are now a terrace-farming agrarian society instead of hunter-gatherers (Zion has a lot of agricultural potential, and there’s already a few farming plots in the Sorrows camp you see in-game, so it’s not a huge departure from the canon). I’m keeping their Mexican heritage, but I’d like to give them some Ainu influences as well - partially for selfish reasons, but also because bears are extremely important to our culture and theology, which gels well with the elements of Sorrows culture and religion that appear in the canon. I’d like to keep the Survivalist because I like him, but I want to expand on their faith. One of the ways I’m doing that is by deciding they can still read English, even though they no longer speak it; it’s basically their equivalent of liturgical Latin. They’re also rigidly matriarchal and in contrast to the Dead Horses (who eschew formal political hierarchies) or the White Legs (who elect a chief who serves until he dies, is deposed, or voluntarily abdicates), leadership positions are allocated through matrilineal primogeniture; Waking Cloud inherited her position from her mother. Religious leadership, likewise, is only available to women. You’ll be able to talk to Waking Cloud about some of the ways this framework is incompatible with the Mormon perspective, and can appeal to her desire to retain power.

Characters

Canon Characters

Joshua Graham and Daniel are largely unaltered except through the addition of lore that gives insight into their cultures, motives, and pasts.

All three tribal leaders (Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, and Salt-Upon-Wounds) are either given new backstories, a different set of motives, or different approaches to one another/Graham and Daniel. They’re also explicitly leaders now - what power Graham and Daniel have, they derive from whichever tribal leader they’ve managed to attach themselves to. Of those three, I’m altering Waking Cloud the least and Salt-Upon-Wounds the most. Like I mentioned, I have a companion wheel for him so far and the bones of two other conversations - one, where you meet him for the first time, and the second, where you speak to him before the final battle. Will link as I finish them.

Original Characters

Each tribal leader now has a rival or right hand within their tribe so I can reflect the different ways the values of a specific community can express themselves.

Follows-Chalk’s primary rival among the Dead Horses is a man who refuses to tell you his name. That’s because using someone’s name in casual conversation is considered unspeakably rude, and the fact that Follows-Chalk is willing to share his own with you is, to Mysteriously Named Old Man Character, yet another sign of how disrespectful and laissez-faire Follows-Chalk is about their shared traditions. Old Man Character is suspicious of you initially, but if you speak to him more he starts to warm to you. The goal is to give you a sense that this he’s pretty xenophobic but for good reasons, and despite his political conflicts with Follows-Chalk, has a lot of love for him. He just wants what’s best for his family, and Follows-Chalk is part of that, even if Mysteriously Named Old Man Character thinks he’s making the wrong choices.

Kiiki is Salt-Upon-Wounds’ right-hand woman and intended as a contrast re: the approach to war and its costs. Salt-Upon-Wounds has done some horrible things and gets a fair bit of dialogue about that, but Kiiki is willing to go even further than he has with very little prompting. Her chief copes with what he’s done by trying to assure himself that the ends of war are worth the cost; Kiiki deals with it by trying to convince herself that the means weren't so bad, actually, and that anyone who isn’t nailing corpses to walls is being naive. All of that makes her sound pretty shitty, but she’s nowhere near as devoted to the idea of a Legion alliance as Salt-Upon-Wounds is. It only takes one very low Speech check to convince her that going Legion is a bad move, and one of the paths involves assassinating Salt-Upon-Wounds and installing her as the new leader as a way to stop the White Legs from joining Caesar. I haven’t added this path to the ending Twine because I’d like to finish Kiiki’s dialogues before I do that.

I’m replacing White Bird as the Sorrow’s spiritual leader with a woman named Imekanu. She’s incredibly old, savvy, and knowledgeable - she’s never been outside Zion, but has a store of books in English, Spanish, and Japanese that have allowed her some insight into what caused the war, if not the current state of the world. She’s also aware of the Survivalist’s origins - not because she’s entered any of his hideouts, but because she’s read over the scriptures and has correctly identified them as letters. Her perspective is that the Father in the Caves was a human being, but that doesn’t diminish his religious value. She sees him as analogous to the Buddha or a Catholic saint: human, sure, but still with access to some deeper truths about the purpose of man and the nature of human goodness. You’ll discover that this idea (that the Survivalist was a holy man rather than a literal god) is the most common perspective among the Sorrows, and you can talk to her about how this departs from Daniel’s perspective that the archetypal Father is divine, not human.

Quests

Each tribe has a specific quest that will either lower or bypass some of the penultimate checks that will determine your ending (people are more likely to believe what you’re telling them if you’ve already won their trust).

The Dead Horses: Joshua Graham has been putting the heads of the fallen up on pikes across Zion. The Dead Horses’ religion is deeply concerned with proper treatment of the deceased, and Graham’s decision to desecrate the corpses of his enemies goes against virtually everything they believe. The old man who won’t tell you his name asks you to take the heads off of the pikes and bury them deep in Zion, and to bring Follows-Chalk with you so you’ll have someone to tell you how to treat them properly. Over the course of the quest, Follows-Chalk will share some of his own beliefs about death, and you’ll have the opportunity to share your own. If you complete this quest without sabotaging it, Follows-Chalk will be willing to betray Graham to the White Legs before the final battle.

The Sorrows: This is basically just Ghost of She, but after defeating the Yao Guai you’ll discover a holotape revealing that the girl wasn’t killed by the bear, but by one of the murderers from Vault 22. Waking Cloud will speculate that maybe the Yao Guai wasn’t the ghost of the little girl at all but some other force that wanted to push you to discover the truth. If you wait until the end to tell Waking Cloud about the death of her husband, you’ll have to pass a Speech check of 75 to convince her you’re telling her the truth; completing this quest drops the check to 50.

The White Legs: Salt-Upon-Wounds will ask you to help him sabotage the Mormons’ preparations for the battle. If you help him with this, it’ll drop the Speech check for you to convince him to leave from 100 to 80. It’s not necessary at all to get the tribal confederacy ending, but a new note will appear in your inventory if you finish it and meet a couple other requirements (asking him certain questions, not attempting that one Speech check about religion, etc).

Endings

I’m trying to incorporate as much variety as possible, but there are three main ending paths: siding with the White Legs, siding with the other two tribes, and peace. The basic idea is that the outcome is predicated less on your direct intervention, and more on how other people act based on the facts they have available to them. Most of your influence is through your choices to hide or reveal key pieces of information, and the skill checks you need to access certain endings are less you convincing a character to do something and more convincing a character to believe you’re telling them the truth. There’s one major exception to this, it requires maxed Speech, and the ending it gives you is markedly bittersweet because you’re trying to get a guy to act against his own best interest. I’m writing all the endings up here, and will probably edit them as things change. The post where I explain them in more depth can be found here.

And that’s the story so far! Thank you for reading, and again: if there’s anything here you think is poorly-conceived, let me know. Thank you to @baelpenrose, who’s a grad student in the history of the American West, for helping me workshop a lot of this stuff. If you’ve got expert knowledge on any of the concepts I touch on or are personally a member of any of the groups I’m describing, please feel free to hmu: anon is on, and you’re always welcome to DM me. I’m just doing this for fun, but I still want it to be as not-shit as possible.

[touchmycoat]

I LOVE YOUR PORN AU!!!!! LIKE SO MUCH - and i'm just. if you don't mind me asking, how - the way you flesh out the characters, their motivations, and feelings in every scene in such an eloquent way, and just little things here and there, a habit or an activity that adds dimension to who they are, and - your prose is wonderful. you achieve this addictive, engrossing narrative space that readers just absolutely melt into, and i have to ask - how did you develop your writing style? 1/2

what books did you read that formatively shaped the way you write? or you know, what did you do to improve your writing? i'm so in awe of how you world-built and established the porn au - like lqg & hc being national taolu champions?? how do you come up with that stuff? i cannot comprehend the amount of research and effort that must've gone into porn au, and i'm just so deeply thankful that you decided to share that with us. i apologize if i'm coming on too strong, but wow. thank you 2/2

--

oh my god please don't apologize, when i saw your ask i rolled on the floor giggling hysterically for a solid 15 min, bless your heart

part of the answer to your question—i've taken like, 8 years' worth of creative writing classes/workshops! there was also a transnational literary component to my degree so whenever possible, i took literature classes fksjdfksd so whatever you see and like is definitely the result of a lot of work. My writing from not even 10 years ago but like, 5? horrid, ridiculous, wild, cringe. The Porn AU itself is the second draft of a MUCH more lackluster piece.

about my writing style. gosh, you really know how to make a writer blush. "I like your writing style" is literally an instant kill LMFAO okay okay, the useful answer: my primary criteria for choosing what to write is, don't be obvious, be interesting. Fiction tells us to show, not tell, right? Poetry is about concretizing the abstract. Screenwriting says cut all useless lines. A lot of writing rules and advice—never start with the weather, avoid detailed descriptions of the characters, don't use adverbs, etc.—are all really about this exact sentiment.

I once took a seminar on writing for horror movies. The golden rule of the horror genre is Never Show the Monster, because whatever the audience is imagining is always going to be scarier than what you actually show them. There are obviously exceptions to this (to all writing rules), but in my mind, it's all the same principle.

LONG answer under the cut

So you start with building a scene. I approach it like essay-writing—I state my thesis for the motivations/main propulsion of the plot. "In this scene, LQG and SY are motivated to save Cang Qiong's porn production, so they have sex on camera." Then you build the sub-motivations: "LQG is also doing this because he's pining after SY."

I learned this "thesis-writing" from theater, specifically from writing 10-min plays. Theater is all about characters being driven by their wants and needs, and the reason I say 10-min plays in particular is because longer forms of writing will give you more leeway, but in 10-min, you pretty much need your character motivations established from their very first line. That's why you need that very clear thesis for yourself—if you don't even know what the character wants from the get-go, then you can't establish who they are, what they want, and where they're going to go in a dynamic and interesting way.

So this thesis drives EVERYTHING that happens in your scene, just like an actual thesis for an essay, just like topic sentences for your paragraphs. Once I do this, I have the emotional direction & narrative scope of how much this scene will cover, I have a sense of where it begins and ends. "Begin with the dynamics of their sex. LQG starts showing signs of his feelings. Reveal LQG backstory for exactly what those feelings are and why he isn't telling SY. The rest of the scene implies that LQG's feelings may not be so unrequited, but also sets up the fundamental problem at the heart of the whole fic—SY's inability to comprehend his own feelings." This is kind of my new thesis now. They're having sex; LQG pines; SY doesn't know he himself is pining.

Now it's time to manifest. This is the "storytelling" part, and the hardest lmfao.

Personally, my approach is largely shaped by my very cool screenwriting teacher, who hammered into us: don't fucking waste lines. The Golden Rule of screenwriting is that every line should reveal something new. I found my old writing kind of repetitive, especially on the emotional front, so this is kind of my editing mantra now—is this line either propelling the story or revealing character? If it's revealing character, is it a revelation that has to happen right now, or is it slowing the momentum of the scene?

But these aren't rhetorical questions! "Momentum" doesn't just mean tumble forward as fast as you can, it also means taking the time to draw the bowstring back further, so your next move has even more propulsion. That's why you get the little "LQG has been in love with SY..." cut scene in the middle of the fucking (at least, that's my reasoning for putting it there). Every line has to bring a fresh revelation that "proves" your thesis further.

That brings me to the details. You said you like the details I inject into the world-building, and honestly that's so gratifying to hear, because that means I'm successfully manifesting my intentions, y'know? "Every line has to bring new info" kind of sounds like a tall order, but the most effective way I've seen it done in books and onstage/onscreen is with these hyper-specific details. If you're writing a scene in which someone feels dirty, never have them just say that—have them say they want to take a shower. Show them running out of bleach again as they scrub down the stall after they wash. Begin the scene like "Steve always washes his throat first now." Then pack the scene with even more revelatory details: "Soap in hand, he heard the pipes above his head groan for a half note on adagio, and readied himself for the blast of icy water that always followed." Shitty shower, probably not rich, is likely a classical musician.

By the same token, I want to build LQG's character. The "Liu Qingge has been in love with Shen Yuan" section is the first insight we get into his background and perspective, right, so: I need to establish LQG's emotional context for filming this scene -> I can characterize him as a nut for martial arts in the same stroke -> so this takes place at a gym, beating up sandbags is a classic way of showing manly emotional distress -> so give me more details on this gym -> Puqi Gym, XL the martial god is obviously the owner -> how do I have XL & LQG a relationship beyond gym owner & client? They spar together -> I want XL & HC's position in this AU to mirror their god/ghost king statuses in TGCF canon -> how can I concretize their fighting prowesses in real-world details? -> they're martial arts champions -> what's an actual competitive martial art form that involves weaponry? -> wushu -> wikipedia Wushu, find taolu weapons sparring

(I just realized that in my songxiao daycare AU, Hualian are Olympic gold medalists by the same narrative logic laksjdnflaksjdnflsd)

So, that's the flow of logic behind my world-building lmao. It's all in the details. Leverage is one of my all-time favorite TV shows and the way they build their stories is super inspiring. If their thesis is "the rich and powerful take what they want, we steal it back for you," they manifest it in the most specific and concrete narratives: mine workers who like the work but are fighting for workplace safety vs. the money-grubbing mine owner who will blow up their livelihoods if it means a bigger payday; the little girl from Iraq with refugee status forced to be an accomplice to antique smuggling vs. international smuggler with a fetish for British royalty.

Last pieces of writing advice I've gotten: pay attention to the real world. A writing exercise we did was just sit in a public spot and make concrete observations on our surroundings. There are stories in everything!!! I learned to observe things like weird holes in the concrete (earthquake? drilling accident? bullet mark?), odd patches of moss or bird shit (look overheard: it's an AC unit dripping water for the former and nesting swallows for the latter), ladies in flipflops walking alongside ladies in high heels (excited mother walking her antsy daughter to the bus for the daughter's first job interview—the daughter's shirt collar is unfashionable and she's taking the bus, so there's a good chance the shoes were passed down, maybe from an office lady aunt. Maybe she's even overdressed for the interview, so will her outfit be an unintended source of tension once she gets to the interview? Is it a group interview, to make the comparison more stark?).

Also, write what you know. You know why SY is a video editor in porn AU? Because I'm a video editor. One of my more popular MDZS fics is set in a plant shop 'cause I worked in a plant shop. SL was First AD in Bachelor!AU 'cause I was First AD on a set once. Concrete details like the editing software having a split-screen, always answering questions about how often to water plants, and being up until 3AM editing call-sheets are the ones that will fully immerse your readers.

And if you can't do the actual things, just watch someone who is, listen to them talk, pick up lingo, and fake it. I watched like a 15-min vox video on fencing for the fencing!AU and a 45-min music theory video on the hospital pianist!AU (also I started learning piano sklfjnlsdjlfkjsd). Of course, I just finished reading a wangxian fic that had me going, "holy fucking shit, the author is literally getting their masters in a music program" so my 45-min youtube video ain't shit, but if you just need a little bit of character establishment, then it's enough to do the trick.

Anyways, tl;dr. Find the details, find the tension. Never tell outright what the tension is supposed to be, manifest it instead. Make the manifestation as interesting as possible, and if it's meant to be funny, make it funnier.

Sorry this turned into a fucking lecture lskjnflskdjnflskd but last thing, someone asked me before if I had formative authors, and this was the list I wrote at the time:

Angels in America (play) by Tony Kushner

The God of Small Things (novel) by Arundhati Roy

The Penelopiad (novel) by Margaret Atwood

“Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out” (poem) by Richard Siken

Night Sky with Exit Wounds (poetry) by Ocean Vuong

Giovanni’s Room (novel) by James Baldwin (and then Go Tell it on the Mountain and then his essays)

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

And, ooh, now that I have this list I think I can even roughly sort it as such: Kushner, Atwood, Siken, and Salinger I really latched onto for their dialogue and very present narrator voice—same is true for Go Tell it on the Mountain. Roy, Vuong, and Giovanni’s Room, I think, are texts more representative of the kind of saturated figurative language I like, and emulate. Of course they all do imagery and voice and overall structure amazingly, but that’s the rough dividing line I’d draw.

But yeah James Baldwin is my fucking hero.

[lgbtkendricks]

Does Annie (1982) provide a good representation of women?

Like many PG-Rated movies of the 80s, Annie is about a young child. An orphan, to be exact. A little orphan girl named Annie. She is spritely, funny, kind, hard-working and intelligent. Even through all her hardships the beloved Annie sings and dances to her heart’s content, with a bright grin and sunny exposition, quite literally believing that no matter what happens ‘the sun will come out tomorrow’.

The 1982 film adaptation of Annie holds heart and positivity as the protagonist and her friends embark on adventures such as escaping the orphanage, visiting radio stations and the movies, tricking their spiteful and alcoholic carer Miss Hannigan and even meeting President Roosevelt. Annie is one of my favourite films of all time. In my most humble opinion, it’s a work of pure brilliance with a strong likeable ensemble and brilliant choreography. It is no wonder why it instantly became a sensation and a classic which was remade multiple times (none of which hold up to the original, although Audra MacDonald as Grace Farrell was a particularly enjoyable performance).

However, even I – who has probably watched Annie around 60 times and can recite the entire script – have to admit that there are certain faults in the adaptation. Of course, there are many questionable parts throughout: the Asian character Punjab was played by a black man and was understood to be strangely magic and only uttered about five lines throughout the entire film, and there was particularly problematic music and accompanying choreography for a Chinese man working at Oliver Warbucks’ mansion during ‘We Got Annie.’

But on a whole, the representation of women throughout Annie is both empowering and disheartening. In a way, the film is reminiscent of the wonderful 1939 film ‘The Women’, starring Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell and Norma Shearer, in which the women are entirely dominant in driving the plot forward. The only man represented in the entire film is on the back of a newspaper one of the women read in an early scene. Whilst men are talked about and fought over, we never see a single male character, which was incredibly revolutionary then and even now, 81 years later, in terms of Hollywood. The fast-paced film is told entirely through the perspectives of several women of (supposed) high-society, and it is nothing short of a marvel.

Being in an all-girls orphanage, Annie is already surrounded by young girls throughout her childhood, who all share close relationships and confide with one another. It is heart-warming to watch and highlights the importance of friendship and positivity to its equally young audience. Scenes such as Annie fighting a group of boys within the first twenty minutes do well to strengthen the empowering nature of her character and the film as a whole. Conveying Annie’s bravery proves to the target audience that they can be a strong, gallant and determined individuals who don’t give up. Unfortunately, this message is debunked a few times throughout the film. Whilst the orphans remain as genuinely admirable and understandable as possible, the three main female adults in Annie waver between aggravating and powerful.

There is Miss Hannigan, played by the extraordinary Carol Burnett, whose personality seems to waver upon hating children (specifically ‘Little Girls’ – she spends about three minutes voicing her loathing through song), yearning for a male counterpart and an alcohol addiction. Whilst her character arc is impressive, due to her sudden protectiveness over Annie after realising her brother Rooster isn’t messing about, she isn’t a particularly good example of a person. Of course, this is the point: we as an audience are supposed to hate her after seeing how frightened the orphans are of Miss Hannigan upon her first entrance into the film, alongside the way she drags Annie and her friends around throughout the musical, aiming to discipline them as harshly as possible without breaking any laws. Still, her questionable morals and decisions do not change the fact that – as a character – she is portrayed well, and her actions and arc make perfect sense once we are given insight into how she feels about her situation.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is the character of Grace Farrell, played by Ann Reinking. She is the brilliant right-hand woman to influential billionaire Oliver Warbucks, carrying three solos throughout the film - the second-most after Annie herself. Arguably, by watching how well she manages both the mansion and the song ‘I Think I’m Gonna Like it Here’ simultaneously, it is clear that Grace’s resourcefulness contributes to her position in society, portraying her as an impressive example of a woman of the 1930s. However, as the film goes on it becomes clearer that she feels she needs Oliver’s constant approval and does everything in accordance to what he decides and desires. Before miraculously singing their way through dressing up in ‘Let’s Go To The Movies’, Annie tells her new motherly figure to wear her hair down as she looks “so pretty”, to which Grace immediately replied with “oh no, Annie, I couldn’t, I just couldn’t, no, no, no!” and Annie provides an off-comment about how miss Hannigan says “a man don’t look at your brains”. Moreover, Grace seems delighted when Oliver tells her “you’re awfully pretty when you argue with me.” and nearly rushes off to get her crooked teeth fixed once Oliver points them out before he reassures her that he likes them crooked. After this, Grace sings and dances through her most energetic and impressive solo, ‘We Got Annie’, seemingly happier than ever. Of course, it’s more than understandable for someone to feel excited if their romantic interest compliments them, but after witnessing Grace’s capabilities and strong sense of self – alongside how she is Annie’s role model and thus the woman all young children watching should strive to be – it is fairly demeaning to watch Grace’s sudden incapability and giddiness when being complimented by “Oliver Warbucks the billionaire.” In fairness, it is important to remember that the actual film is set in 1933 and Grace’s reactions would have been the general consensus, and I am now reading the film in light of our Me Too era, scrutinising it just as I would anything else. Even so, at the time the film adaptation was written in the early 1980s, there had already been feminist movements such as the introduction of the washing machine for women to have the time to work weekdays as men do, and there was a slow influx of feminist books beginning to be written and published. Thus, there was no good reason for script-writer Carol Sobieski to disregard Grace’s intelligence and accomplishments in light of her sudden attraction to Oliver Warbucks – notably, Grace becomes slightly more helpless after this scene. In a way, it’s fairly ironic that the respectable Grace’s portrayal is somehow worse than Miss Hannigan’s in accordance to staying true to their characters, but I suppose that reflects somewhat the way the media currently view women: think Meghan Markle vs. Cardi B.

It’s saddening to see that even now, scriptwriters are using this trope that women can be hard-working and empowering in their chosen job, or they can be in love and focus on nothing else but their romantic interest, unable to find the balance. Whilst this is improving, there are many tv shows and films that disregard the need for change and proper accurate representation of how normal people live and balance their personal life and work ethic. To name a few that do represent this: One Day at a Time, Daddy Day Care, and How I Met Your Mother. Whilst representation of women and minorities in the media is improving, I still would like to see a wider range of films and television that further tackle and question if a character’s original motive or super-objective needs to be drastically altered for their romantic interest.

[lairofsentinel]

I love your BG3 analysis posts and wanted to get your insight into one of Gale's lines. On point 21 you discuss his 'doubt' lines. There's another line that I find similar / fitting: if the main char tells Gale they think their night together was a mistake then he says something like "Let me clear your mind of doubts: it absolutely wasn't." He doesn't discuss the 'why' of it - or express he's disappointed but accepts their choice. He tries to discourage that line of thinking outright. Thoughts?

Hey, hello! Thanks for reading those big posts. :D

[Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access Spoilers]

For those who don't know what those numbers mean: [Gale in 27 points or more]

Yeah, in (21) I found curious that he just says "doubt is a spoilsport" in another desperate attempt to make the MC stop thinking about it, and go for him already. Yes, you are right. The other line afterwards, when the MC shows doubts again about the whole night, he desperately tries to cast them aside. Again! They are like attempts of "no, no, dear, stop thinking right there. We are not a mistake, we are just we. Stop thinking. I don't care if I encourage questioning in general. On this matter, question not" XD

Which I found hilarious in comparison with his personality which is ALL the time in his mode "we need to doubt about everything", because well, that's a scholar. Scholars tend to be better at questioning than knowing things most of the time. This shows once more that he is desperate to stay with the MC, so far. I want to believe that there are not more hidden secrets, or ill-intended motives coming from him.

His mental state by the time he meets the MC is quite a mess. If you think that since too young he was abandoned by Mystra with that orb of Netherese devastation stuck in his chest... we can assume that there is a high chance for him to have been alone ever since. The quest in saving himself from that bomb probably prevented him to use time and energy in relationships (like I say in (15)), and by (12) we know he feels deadly alone. Especially if we take his description of how the bomb makes him feel, which is an increasing terror the longer he stays without consuming artefacts.

If you fail in that conversation of the Loss scene, when you insist about what he lost, he will push the MC away and will say something like "I'm strong enough to keep on". But we know that by the end of that night (or after the party in case MC did not romance him), he will say it anyway. He will talk about Mystra abandonment.  He can't hold it anymore. He needs to share the burden and find someone to trust. Which will be the MC, as a friend or a lover.

I still think about the mind-shocking impact that the Weave scene caused him. It's not only what he states, his mindset has been focused on solving his bomb condition for too long. Relationships have been out of question for a while (15).  And then, he has this Weave moment with the MC showing him their romantic interest; it not only took him by surprise, it caught him quite vulnerable too (too much feeling of loneliness and fear and despair plus the tadpoles looming danger), so the event had a stronger effect than he lets show in that moment. We know he thinks about that event the following days in between the Weave scene and the party, and apparently, that makes a click in him.

As I said, he is desperate for the MC who shared that magic moment of the Weave. Magic is his life, as he said, and sharing it with someone who has supported him and giving him their trust, it moves the ground he is walking on.

He is a char that, when a chance appears, he doesn't want to let is waste. And that romantic scene in the weave was a completely unexpected chance happening in front of him. Serendipity, as he said. (I don't know if by choosing the last option, the one in which you imagine nothing, Gale will want something anyway. I have to explore that.) (** I already explored this [here] **)

In sum, the concept here is that, as a scholar, he is into doubts and questioning all what you want. He will encourage such attitude in the MC. Except when it comes to question his emotions for the MC and their night together. Because questioning them, may cause abandon him. We also need to remember he was abandoned. Abandonment issues must to be added to his psychological profile. It was probably this issue the one that made him wait to the last moment before saying the truth. Because he is all about consent and let people know the truth, but he freaked out at the thought that maybe that truth could mean a second abandonment. That fear is there even if the MC did not romance him. He reached to a point in his life where loneliness, the bomb, and the tadpole became too heavy to deal with alone anymore. He needs the MC. And needs to be sure that they won't abandon him. That's why Gale ends up doing that rotten move of saying the truth only after sleeping with the romanced MC and after all that speech of the book of Anm: through intimacy he wanted to have a deeper link with the MC in order to prevent the abandonment. This is why he says “after all what we passed through, after the night we spent together”. He wants the MC baaaadly. And he  wants not to be abandoned again. You see him bending and breaking his usual philosophy just to avoid abandonment. That's... a bit dangerous.

Once more it gives me the feeling that Gale is a nice mature character, who knows where he walks as long as we are not in the emotional ground. Emotional-wise... seems that Gale has pretty bad experiences, filled with over-idealised situations (Mystra) or over-darkened by misery (his bomb condition and now the tadpole) and in the back of all that there is a constant abandonment issue that may make some situations quite... complicated.

Asking for middle reactions to Gale on these matters seems to be a bit too much for his char. XD This is why I like to joke that he is basically proposing the MC right there... I mean, the book of Anm speech? If you choose “hey Gale, we are not newlywed (stressing that fact), but newly acquainted”, he gives a shit to the definitions of the words (the scholar, uh), he says “let's write the prequel”. One can interpret it like... he is assuming he and the MC are walking that path through and through. He is riiight heading into marriage. Lol. I personally would not like this kind of chars, but I make my exception here because, at least, Gale has a solid reason to be this way: he may die at any moment.

This kind of soft emotional instability char may be a dangerous compound in Larian's hands. You see, Larian in DOS2 offered romances that clearly were not going to last after the ending of the game; and you had hints of that pretty early in the game: one companion was married looking for their spouse, and another was betrothed, and had a fling with the MC meanwhile, if you want to. Another companion you can romance, simply disappears later by the end of the game. So... Larian... is not Bioware. Having a man like Gale that can break or bend his usual philosophy and his morals to a certain degree when it comes to matters of the heart.... well... it's dangerous, to say the least.

I fear Mystra appearing, and telling him that she abandoned him not because she wanted to, but because the netherese orb put her in danger (a logical reason that Gale could accept without problems no matter how much he suffered because of it, check (4),(14) and (20) ). And if Gale gets rid of that orb, and Mystra asks him to be his Chosen One “with benefits” once more (lol)... I'm not so sure if he will not abandon the MC. Unless the MC accepts a polyamory relationship (with a goddess? XD), because I totally see Gale has no issues with Mystra or MC having lovers besides him. 

Magic is his life, and he longs a lot the powers granted by the title of the Chosen One. And Mystra's affections are where the true magical power lays (Gale's own words). So.... yes. Dangerous.

Ah, damn... I derailed again. Sorry.

More content of bg3 in general [here]