#this all so poorly worded bc I’m not knowledgeable about this kind of stuff to really know what I’m talking about

[amethystroselily]

I think the reason I enjoy Chinese webnovels is because they’re literature (the best form of storytelling) that isn’t bound by the rules of the three act structure and have more of the arc structure used in long-running manga. Which when done right is really fun.

(TikTok showed me too many “writing advice” videos a while ago where they were talking about how to properly utilize the three act structure and it made me realize that limiting yourself to that format has been to the detriment of so many otherwise good novels. And that publishing houses and capitalism as a whole are absolutely destroying creativity in media, because why are all of these writing advise videos from people in the industry so. fucking. formulaic????)

[mannatea]

Kent/Lyn, 12 & 35. Hector/Farina, 50!

Thanks for indulging me, but sorry it took me 90 years to get to it. ;P I made it extra long to remind you of the good ol’ days!!!

Kent/Lyn:

12. who do they confide in when shit hits the fan (besides each other)?

I feel like Lyn is the kind of person to have multiple go-to people, depending on the situation at hand.

She strikes me as an understanding and accommodating friend: there are some things that she just wouldn’t burden Florina with/that Florina might not be comfortable with discussing. Rank probably matters a little bit, here, because some issues don’t leave the room (or at least they stay only with the people in the room), like state secrets or the equivalent, but Florina’s perfect for regular friendship things (especially softer emotional discussions), reminiscing about the good old days, and some good old-fashioned harmless venting.

For angry venting, there’s always Sain and Wil. Sain is the right choice if she wants someone to get angry with her—you know, the supportive angry rant-with-you kind of friend who echoes your sentiment and allows you to have a dialogue with emotion! Wil is best if she wants a more neutral opinion/listener who will offer to help/give advice after the rant is over.

Depending on the setting, Wallace is a good choice for some ranting, too, but I love the thought of him being kind of like an uncle figure to her; he fills in some of the gaps about her mother she never really knew were missing, and had a real love for both of her parents that shows in the way he speaks of them; something she kind of holds onto because nobody else gets it.

Hector’s better for a sparring match than dialogue, but sometimes that’s what Lyn needs to get her mind off of things. I like to imagine he kind of ‘gets it’ when she needs to get out some frustration or something; it’s not anything she needs to talk about, but in absence of that, Lyn is the kind of person who still has to do something. If she’s looking for a word-fight she’ll go to him, too. He’s good for that, and he doesn’t (usually) take it personally.

Eliwood is a hard one to pin down, because it’s hard for me to imagine they’re really that close; I don’t think he ‘gets’ her the way most of the other characters do? He tries, though, and that counts for a lot. Also, he’s a lot like Florina in that he’s trustworthy: a good confidante. If Lyn ever needs personal advice (relationship or otherwise), I think Eliwood would be the right guy to go to for her. He wouldn’t tease or poke fun at her, and that information would NEVER reach anyone else’s ears. Ever. He’d offer diplomatic/polite advice with a smile and with an attempt to understand the situation and any important details first. He’s good at asking the right questions most of the time.

It’s been a long time since I deeply considered Lyn’s relationship to Hausen, but I think right now I’m sort of high-key imagining that they’re almost, like…fake-close? It’s not that they don’t love each other, because I think they do in their own ways, but being related or being interested in getting to know someone isn’t just a ticket to a close relationship. Not only do you have to want that, but you have to be compatible AND willing to take the time to cultivate what’s there. Lyn and Hausen both have tons of the latter, but I’m not so sure they’re compatible.

Her friendship with Kent still matters of course, so his place in this mix is probably a bit of everything, but he’s a high(er)-ranking individual she can confide in about information the others aren’t privy to…and he’s also a very good confidante (he’d rather die than betray her trust). She wouldn’t angry-vent at him too much because rather than just get emotionally hyped with her (Sain) or listen to her and offer calm, friendly advice (Wil), he strikes me as the type who wants to Fix It Right Now—even when that’s not necessarily the appropriate response. He may also kind of freeze up and Not Respond At All (when he doesn’t know how exactly he’s expected to respond), almost as a defense mechanism to avoid Responding Poorly.

–

Then you have Kent. Besides Lyn, he uh…really only has Sain. 

But hey, that’s actually pretty much perfect for Kent. He’s never struck me as the kind of person who enjoys societal pleasure of any kind overmuch. It’s not that he finds it painful so much as maybe awkward? Most of his life has been in service and when he was younger and more impressionable—at the age where you learn to make friends and all that—he was more interested in impressing the adults in his life. Thus, he has only ever had one or two people to talk to about more important personal matters. 

Again, it’s probably for the best. A couple of very serious and important relationships is about his maximum capacity. I don’t think he could maintain a slew of decent casual friendships (the way Lyn can), but also his bar for friendship and what constitutes a friend is very high.

Fiora is a good option for some general commiseration re: failure if he would bother to open up about it, but I don’t think either of them would do so easily. Still, they’ve both been commanding officers and I think that alone gives them something to talk about and discuss. I also feel their general morals line up, so if either of them need a rant about something other people would judge them for, they can go to each other.

Fiora and Sain are both great in that they would have Kent’s back if he needed it, so depending on how shit hit the fan, he could lean on either of them (but more easily on Sain just because that friendship has been years in the making; boon companions and all that).

He has decent relationships with some other people, though. I like to think he still looks up to Wallace, thinks well of Wil, and is on friendly terms with Florina, but I imagine his general acquaintances either stagnate or suffer because he’s not good at multitasking emotionally.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though.

(I didn’t really mention Farina because...eh. I enjoy their interaction and I love writing it, but without a lot of very meaningful buildup, I wouldn’t even consider them friends.)

35. do they have any regrets (regarding the other, or just in general)?

This is a delicious question and a perfect one for Kent and Lyn. Let’s assume their paired ending:

I always take the endings (paired or otherwise) with about a grain of salt. You know: more like suggestions! 

Kent and Lyn’s ending makes a reasonable amount of sense (you may have noticed that some endings just don’t ring true to characterization), but it also manages to be ridiculously open-ended. I guess at least it’s “happy.” (Unlike Canas’s. Damn blizzards.)

Anyway, Lyn abdicates and/or never assumes the throne (I guess there’s wiggle room there), Caelin’s totally fine with being absolved into Ostia (you know this is gonna happen), and they’re so chill about this that they don’t even mind Lyn running off with a former vassal. Maybe they didn’t want her ruling in the first place?

Eh, who knows.

The wording leaves room for questions/interpretative differences and all that, but the basics of it boil down to: they both go to Sacae.

This means they both give up things to go there, but we can’t pretend Kent isn’t the one making the bigger/more obvious sacrifice. He literally gives up everything except Lyn. Which, okay, the scope of it isn’t easy for a lot of people to grasp, but like, imagine leaving everything you’ve ever known and moving somewhere else with what you can feasibly carry with you on horseback.

That might not be too hard. Lots of us have moved across a country or even overseas.

Now imagine doing this, but doing it knowing full well that you may very well NEVER AGAIN hear from the people you’re leaving behind.

And not just that, but you’re leaving everything familiar to you. You don’t know the roads, the trees, the shape of the land, the colors, the smells.

Let’s talk Best Case Scenario! Even if, in good ol’ Fire Emblem-land, where farmers can be knights and all that, Kent comes from a farming background, he’d have left that behind before age 10. Again, on the BCS track, let’s say he retained a bit of that knowledge! Great! He knows a little about living off the land!

But he doesn’t know how to do it the way Lyn might know how to do it. So we have to go back to Lyn. She’s still pretty young herself, and her culture was big on group work; it’s not like anyone did the big chores alone. So Lyn almost surely has at least basic knowledge of what to do/what needs done, but 1) never would have done all of it, because roles were outlined, and 2) after a couple/few years away from it, and without the chance to grow into her role as a woman within her society, how much of the really important survival stuff does she actually remember? (Some of this depends on how old you think Lyn is and if her society felt she was an adult; either way she wouldn’t have been an adult for very long IMO, not enough to function in her society as such.)

There’s tons of stuff to explore here!!!! 

Lyn in Caelin has the same problem Lyn on the plains has: she still doesn’t get to become an adult the way she always would have imagined she would. Her culture isn’t dead, but with less than ten surviving people, the chance of it fully dying out within a generation is huge. She can pass some stuff on to a child, but not everything. It’s not the same. She’s going to have to mourn this, and it may not hit her until she’s out there again and the reality of what’s missing hits her.

She could join another tribe, maybe—in theory, it might be more complicated than that—but their customs aren’t going to be the same. Heck, they might not even speak the same (exact or similar) language. (Would they even accept Kent with her? This could be something Lyn is sacrificing to bring Kent with her.)

Anyway, Lyn gets a little of what she wants going back to Sacae (at least freedom), but she doesn’t get her culture back and she doesn’t get that lifestyle back that she misses.

Kent’s making the bigger sacrifice, though, because nothing about Sacae is familiar to him.

Depending on what they try to do and where they go, it’s really easy to imagine regret existing in little bits and pieces.

Kent strikes me as the sort to very rarely have *deep* regrets. He may oftentimes ‘regret’ doing or saying something, but the bigger decisions he makes are done with conviction and never with haste, so he usually stands by them and his heart allows him peace.

That said, there’s no doubt he has regrets. I like the idea of him having a few regrets about situations where OVERALL he feels he made the best choice, but the regret stems from the negative things that happened because of that choice (having to fight his former peers/allies/teachers, for example, or fleeing and leaving his men to possibly die when Laus attacked). You know, he wanted to have his cake and eat it, too, but he couldn’t have both.

And then we have his relationship with Lyn.

I bet he low-key would have regrets about going to Sacae after-the-fact. Not the *actual* going, and certainly not in loving Lyn, but in not spending more time with his family beforehand, in not being more prepared, not asking enough questions, not bringing more supplies, not learning more of the language(s), et cetera. So much can go wrong out there without a support system. Kent’s not stupid and he’s not helpless, but he only has control over so much, and accidents happen. If they ended up in dire straights and there was little he could do to help...or was even actively hindering progress, he’d blame himself and it’d be a whole mess where he feels like he can’t contribute and he’s worthless, and then he’s depressed and miserable.

Lyn surely has regrets in general (re: her culture and her parents and all that), but I don’t think she regrets anything deeply easily (something she kind of has in common with Kent). It usually takes a lot for her to get that lingering gut-wrenching regret feeling. But you’d better believe if Kent ended up miserable she’d feel it. She’d hate being the cause of anyone she cares about’s personal pain, but it’d be a little extra awful if she’s fairly content out there and Kent isn’t.

I rambled too much and my head hurts so I’m not sure if any of this makes good sense, but I think there’s a lot of room for regret within their lives and even their relationship—especially if things go poorly for them. Not the loving part, of course, but the part where they pursued something and because of that their partner isn’t happy anymore (or accepted anymore, or whatever).

Hector/Farina: 

50. if one of them were to come back after a long time, who would come to who? would it go well? would the other person take them back?

The only one who would probably ‘come back after a long time’ is Farina, because Hector’s pretty much tied to his canton after the end-game, so I gotta go with that.

As to if it would go well or not, well, I’m pretty sure I’ve RP’d like 30 variations on this theme (LMFAO), but the biggest factors are: their relationship with each other, and time.

If Hector was kinda into her and she acted like she was fine with that and then flew off for 10 years and came back trying to act like nothing was wrong... Well, it wouldn’t go well. I mean, not at first anything. (Nothing a good RP couldn’t fix, though. :B)

At that point in time, though, for an example to work with, it’s hard to say if Hector would ‘take her back.’ He may be unable to do so officially (married, busy running a country that’s falling apart at the seams, he has a daughter to worry about) and/or emotionally unwilling to let her back in. (Though this depends a lot on their former relationship and how she left/if she ever wrote to him or visited, if feelings were confessed, a lot of what-ifs, tbh.)

It also depends on how lonely he is. It gets clear that Hector and Eliwood get super busy and don’t even get to see each other regularly after the end of the game, so it’s possible that Hector would desire contact with someone who Gets Him (or at least Gets What He’s Been Through). The FE7 endgame is pretty much the opposite of FE8′s: it’s like nobody even knew it was happening and they gotta go back to their cantons like they didn’t just fight a whole ass dragon; he might be happy to have someone he can talk to about that again (in the event that his former vassals may no longer be in his direct employ and/or Farina fought by his side that day).

[shadows-echoes]

Writer’s Questionnaire

tagged by: @negotiator-on-site and @deviantramblings . Thank you guys for the tag! I spent way too long thinking about these tbh.

Short stories, novels, or poems?

For reading? Novels. I love absolutely delving into a world and completely immersing myself in it. In my experience, poems/short stories are like looking through a window: the more you look, the more you’ll probably see. Reading a novel, or an entire series, is more like walking through a door into another world, and that’s exactly what I want from a story. I want it to completely consume me.

With all of that being said, what’s the exact word count that draws the line between a short story and a novel? 10,000 words might be a short story, but is 25,000 still considered a short story? 100,000? 300,000? Where is the line drawn? Tbh, I’m 100% down with any long-ish story that draws me in.

As for writing… Imma keep it real with you chiefs, the shortest stories I’ve ever written are for D:BH. Pretty much every other fic of mine is 25+ pages, and a couple of the longer ones are closer to, or exceed, 180 pages. I haven’t finished those. They’re all drafts, so to speak, and the amount of editing needed makes me balk whenever I think about it, but they’re there. The stories that I’ve actually finished are all short-ish stories lol (at least in comparison to some of the other stuff I’ve written).

What genre do you prefer reading?

FANTASY!!!! We live in a non-fiction world that can be quite depressing at times. If I’m going to fling myself into a story, I want it to be magical. I want it to have something that this world doesn’t. I want magic and dragons and mystery and soulmates and forbidden love and all the crazy shit.

What genre do you prefer writing?

Fantasy/fiction.

Are you a planner or a write-as-I-go kind of person?

It depends on the story. Most times, I’ll write one scene and it develops into an entire plotline as I write it. Other times, like with Of Blood and Biocomponents for example, I’ll spend a lot of time planning everything out before I write it so I can work in a number of clues and Chekov’s guns’, etc.

What music do you listen to while writing?

When I really need to focus, I’ll listen to anything instrumental. That can range from soundtracks (e.g. from The Last of Us, LotR, Hans Zimmer’s stuff), to more individualized and upbeat songs (e.g. Lindsey Stirling, Peter Gundry, Max Richter, Hidden Citizens) to classical (e.g. Chopin, Wieniawski, Mozart), or even just ambiance rain sounds on youtube etc. Otherwise, when I need to get in the mood for a certain scene I have entire playlists dedicated to evoking a certain emotion (e.g angst -obviously-, sadness, love, adrenaline rushes).

Fave books/movies?

I don’t really have any favorite movies so I’m just going to list a whole bunch of books/series I love: 

ACoTaR by Saraj Maas

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Learning Not to Drown by Anna Shinoda

Feminist Fight Club by Jessica Bennett

ASoIaF by George Rmartin Rmartingeorge Martin

The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (a classic that breaks my heart)

Night by Elie Wiesel (a classic that breaks my soul)

1984 by George Orwell (a classic we practically live in rn and it terrifies me)

Some Quiet Place by Kelsey Sutton

The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda (the plot twist at the end of this series blew me the fuck away. It’s been years and I still haven’t found my wig)

Any current WIPs?

Only around like… 16? (Excluding all of the half-formed ideas and prompts in my “Graveyard” folder, that is). Which is incredibly surprising to me? I thought it’d be way more. However, most of those WIPs are all… heartbreakingly long and only half-finished, so like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If someone were to make a cartoon out of you, what would your standard outfit be?

Lace-up combat boots, black jeans, and a random, probably blank, t-shirt.

Create a character description for yourself:

Hi, I’m Jayde, an average human person who thinks obsessively writing and learning new stuff are fun activities. I look like Idc but I actually care too much; I’m a ride-or-die bitch. Intovert™ (I would much rather have a first conversation w/ someone be about the trolly problem or systems theory instead of the weather). Often low-key enraged by society.

Do you like incorporating people you actually know into your writing?

Aspects of them? Of course. Actually writing them into a story? Nope. I totally draw on my experiences with certain people to help me write. That’s a given with any writer. However, unless I’m writing a biography on them with a full Chicago-style bibliography then I leave real people the heck alone.

Are you kill-happy with characters?

Depends on the characters. I have killed off a couple, but my soul is fueled on angst and there’s only so much of that a single death can provide. Nah, it’s usually better if people are alive and just… injured or... problematic.

Coffee or tea while writing?

I’m usually most productive writing-wise at night, so it’s either decaffeinated green tea or hot chocolate for me (bc I do try to have some kind of sleep schedule even if I fail with that goal).

Slow or fast writer?

So, so slow.

Where/who/what do you find inspiration from?

Anything, really. Sometimes an idea will just pop into my head and I’ll have to write it. Other times, it’ll start with a feeling, a situation, or an experience that slowly morphs into a fic the more I think about it.

If you were put into a fantasy world, what would you be?

Idk what I would be, but I’d love to be literally anything/anyone with some kind of magic or special ability. Like, bruh, I’m already human, gimme something else. Gimme some of the good shit.

Most fave book cliche? Least fave book cliche?

(Well-written) LOVE TRIANGLES AND MUTUAL PINING!!!!

I’m so fuckn horny on main for a good love triangle. When they’re done badly, they’re atrocious. That’s a given. But when they’re done well??? Hot damn. Like the kind of love triangles in ACoTaR, the Shatter Me series, or even the Trylle series (which first got me into it all). The kind where problems develop naturally between the MC and the first love interest, where the MC has to work with the “bad guy” for some reason or other and it turns out he’s actually super fuckn dope (*cough* Rhysand *Cough*). The kind where the more MC learns about the people she’s/he’s/they’re around, the more their feelings start to shift based on that knowledge.

I do not mean the kind where the MC just can’t make up her/his/their mind bc omg Hot Person #1 is so hot and looks to be carved from marble, but omg Hot Person #2 is also so hot, looks to be carved from marble, and is also mysterious.

As for a cliché I hate (if the poorly written love triangle doesn’t count in and of itself), I seriously dislike the damsel-in-distress thing. Don’t get me wrong, that card can be very well played in some cases, but when it’s the only card in the whole damn deck for 200, 300, 400+ pages? Nah, brah. I’m out. I’m certainly not asking for BAMF MC every time, but like,,, at least give the MC a goddamn spine you absolute cowards.

Fave scenes to write?

Pining and angst, baby.

Most productive time of day for writing?

The ungodly hours between night and day, when the outside world falls quietly into slumber and one’s imagination runs wild in the dark.

Reason for writing?

I started writing because I had some ideas and realized that nobody could/would write them in the exact way I imagined them except for me? I’ve continued writing because it has almost become a coping mechanism to explore and organize my thoughts and feelings and daydreams in some kind of coherent way. Plus it’s fun.

_

Tagging: @deviantsupporter @deviancy-wasteland @sunstrain @writerscavity @aerynwrites

[july-19th-club]

actually i’m not done talking abt true detective s1 i actually have a lot of thoughts about those last several minutes and how important it was that it ends on a relatively hopeful note. do we know where rust’s going? what the heck this man intends to do now that he’s confronted both his most unfinished work and his greatest source of grief? we don’t, but i think we can safely say that he’s not leaving just to go somewhere and die. in his own sour and half-resigned way, it seems like he’s intending to go get some stuff done in his life, to maybe for once make plans that don’t have anything to do with death and i’m going to put my thoughts on that under a cut bc i started writing and it just kind of got away from me and it’s more or less a whole piece of fiction now

he said something about being a painter if his life had gone differently, and i think maybe that’s what he pursues next. he’s in his fifties now, has spent more of his life as an addict than not, and i imagine that the road toward finding some kind of equilibrium is not simple. if he manages to quit drinking, i don’t think he ever manages to quit smoking. it’s a comfort thing for him, as much as he knows that it’ll be that or some other chemical damage that will get him in the end. he has a silent bet on with himself as to which one it will be, when it finally happens, but it hasn’t yet and so he gets what money he’s saved and goes on a road trip. 

it’s experiences he’s after now: he goes to appalachia, he goes to new york city, briefly, doesn’t really enjoy it, goes on toward the great lakes, goes further. he sees wyoming and the dakotas, the redwood forest region, the coast of maine. canada. it occurs to him that he’s spent his whole life on one side or the other of the contiguous states, never paid much attention to what’s in the middle. he explores. he accumulates memories, knowledge, tries to enjoy it and tries to move from one sight to the next quickly enough that the doubt and disinterest can’t creep back in. tries to appreciate things: the rain. the heat coming up from the asphalt when he stops for some lunch. the stretches where he doesn’t talk to another person for days on end. even tries to appreciate the feeling of being anonymous in a crowd, walking among many other people who are focused on anything but him, tries to see it as a natural part of the things that exist to make up the world and not a poorly-designed set for a badly-written story. and around him it continues to happen. the radio continues to play. the road continues to be long. the sky continues to be huge and filled with stars, and when whatever this is has finished Something may continue, and in it he may have the chance to love and be loved. 

maybe he calls his ex-wife, and maybe she immediately assumes that it’s a goodbye call, because it’s been close to twenty years since they last spoke and she has no illusions about the state of mind he was in at the time. she may be surprised he’s lasted this long, but she agrees to meet him. he shows up sunburnt and long-haired and craggy-looking, but with the same wry face she remembers. he shows her his driver’s license photo, in which he is still sporting a weird-old-man mustache, and she makes fun of it. he tells her everything. turns out, her life has gone in an entirely different direction. where he spiraled, she thrived. eventually she decided to become a foster parent, and perhaps she wound up adopting a girl who comes to live with her as a teenager. the girl is a woman now, and has found a nice girl of her own, and the two of them are considering children, when they’ve got the finances for it. the cycle continues. he is terrified of the concept as he would be of being dropped into a parallel world where none of the loss ever happened. there is no rhyme or reason, and he is still learning how to be optimistic about the certain knowledge that even if there is another world, there’s absolutely no plan. he’s afraid. but he is more afraid of being without family, and this knowledge is sudden but he is sure of it. he meets the adopted daughter and the daughter-in-law. the daughter’s a biochemist, daughter-in-law’s a philosophy major, and they all get on like a house on fire. he can talk with the girls for far longer than claire can about the sort of heady, probably pretentious topics they’re interested in. he moves on after a few visits, but he keeps all of their numbers close. 

he travels. he paints fallingwater. he paints the wallowa valley. watercolors - he likes them better than oils or acrylics, likes the way they soften whatever he uses them to illustrate. he paints whatever he gets interested in, sometimes stopping the truck on the verge of the highway to take out his colors and paint the chicory by the side of the road. he visits a museum to study other artists’ work, gets interested in frederic remington or somebody, goes to rodeos and paints the riders and the swirls of dust. he paints mt. mckinley from memory. he paints his own flashbacks, trying to show how the colors bleed into one another, how the images repeat and revolve. he goes back through texas and louisiana, stops in bars and orders iced tea and paints the bikers. he calls his family more frequently. he calls his one friend, asks to stay updated on people’s lives, acts interested in their affairs even when they call him on a bad day and he has to feign it. one day his families meet each other. he arranges it. they have dinner together and he gives everybody paintings and when marty asks if he’d be interested in consulting on a case or two, just when he’s able to, when he’s not busy or he’s bored, he says yes, he might consider it. he is planning to move closer to his own people, but if he does, he may need the money. he thinks of things in terms of time, now. how much of it may remain, if he is smart with it. how much of it he has already used up. there is a dark, miserable center to the thought that he is careful not to get to close to, because it will swallow up everything a man can build if he’s not paying attention.

when the daughter-in-law is pregnant, the girls ask around for name suggestions. they deliberate for nine months and then some, even after the baby is born and he, more afraid than ever, meets it and lets its small hand clutch his finger like it is the only life preserver in a swallowing sea. what can this tiny creature, just-created, with eyes that look around vaguely but don’t stop, know of doubt or fear or the lifelong drowning conviction that nothing exists for a good reason? all the baby knows is what it experiences, and so he holds it as kindly as he can. with luck, it will grow. it will be one, then two years old, it will learn words, it will begin to move around far faster than its parents can keep up, with luck or perhaps un-luck it will become five and then ten years old and develop convictions and interests and then maybe it will someday be as old as he is and it will still enjoy the world. he holds it with as much hope as he can. 

after a while, they do choose a name, one of his suggestions. miles. as in “to go, before i sleep”.