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shinjaeha · 4 years ago

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ipytm ep 3 (thoughts + spoilers)

this is going to be a tough post for me to do bc honestly...this ep just left me feeling so run down. i know that the cast and crew have always strived for realism and authenticity with this series, but this one was just a lot to take in :/ my thoughts are gonna be even more all over the place than usual but idec at this point. having to rewatch this ep again is really fucking hard (even harder than itsay ep 4 bc even though that makes my heart ache, i still feel some sense of satisfaction from the development we get...this just leaves me feeling defeated in every way).

you know the drill: not an analysis, just me ranting as usual bc free therapy (and boy do i need it after this one)!! i had so many feelings watching this ep (esp towards teh but what’s new), so here goes.

we begin with the drama students rehearsing for jai’s new play, and the introduction of the plum wine which will be the recurring motif in this whole ep. the use of the plum wine in this also kind of reminds me of how teh initially disliked coconuts until he started falling in love with oh-aew and started to like them instead...i’m guessing that’s the parallel they’re trying to draw with the plum wine comparison in this.

teh’s having a hard time getting into character (which we already know from last ep was always going to be one of the toughest challenges for him as an actor). his character in the play is supposed to have a sex scene, but he’s struggling with this bc he can’t put himself in his character (akin’s) shoes, so jai ends rehearsals early.

jai gives them all logbooks which he basically wants them to treat as diaries where they’ll write everything they feel/learn and hand it back to him (he’ll be the only one reading them). ngl this already had me feeling kind of yikes (esp now as i rewatch this knowing how everything went down) since jai already has inside knowledge about teh’s feelings on his relationship with oh-aew which he can take advantage of :/ more on that later though...

it’s sad to me that so much time has passed since teh’s argument with khim and he's STILL avoiding her. khim was someone that he respected immensely (and was such a great mentor for him) so it just sucks to see that their relationship has deteriorated so much since the first two eps. teh might have had his reconciliation moment with oh-aew last ep, but there’s still a lot that he’s not ready or willing to address yet.

i understand that teh’s just encouraging jai about his work when he tells him to stop having others comment on it, but at the same time, i disagree with him bc i think it IS important to get other peoples’ opinion about your work. how else will you ever be able to see things from other perspectives if you don’t?

anyway, teh tells jai he’s seeing a play, and jai asks teh if he’s bringing oh-aew...the look on teh’s face is telling enough that things aren’t going great between them (at least on his end). this brings us to the logbook scene, where teh’s homework for the day is to write about the similarities and differences between himself and his character in the play. this gets teh to reflect on how he feels his relationship with oh-aew is changing, or specifically, how oh-aew seems to be changing so much that teh feels like he’s becoming someone else entirely...and does that mean that he still loves him the same?

i feel like this is a fairly common issue with people that have been in a relationship for a while (and this is their third year together now), so i understand how teh might start having doubts. it’s nothing that oh-aew’s done, it’s just that sometimes all these small changes can keep mounting up to the point that they feel much bigger than they actually are. oh-aew’s really just doing what everyone else does, which is grow and change as they get older, but teh’s still stuck in the past trying to hold onto what they used to have instead of evolving with oh-aew. the way teh picks at all these little changes of oh-aew does make me think that he’s self-sabotaging himself. he’s just so afraid and insecure that oh-aew will change so much he leaves him, that he has to nitpick at reasons why oh-aew’s the one that’s growing away from him (though when we watch the whole ep we know that that’s not the case at all). it’s like a ‘if i push him away first, then he won’t push me away’ sort of self-defence mechanism. either way, teh’s a constant overthinker...and he’s always been his own biggest enemy since the start, so it makes perfect sense to me that he would do this to himself here too.

i know that they’ve been together for years at this point, so things are not quite as exciting as they used to be, but it hurts to see oh-aew be so happy about getting an A for his class, and teh be so unenthused about it. oh-aew has to basically beg teh to give him attention and praise. remember when teh used to get so worried when oh-aew did badly in chinese class...and now it’s like whatever to him just bc he’s not tutoring him/they’re not in the same major anymore :((( i know it’s prob both bc teh’s still hurting that oh-aew transferred majors, and from seeing oh-aew succeed while he feels like he’s failing, but still...

also, not inviting him to see the play with him bc he thought oh-aew wouldn’t be interested/oh-aew kept falling asleep whenever they saw plays together ;;; i get the reasoning from both povs, but it still is nice to be asked :(

so one thing i have to say about the progression of their relationship here is that i just feel this huge disconnect from last ep and this ep?? i know it’s bc of the time skip (since it’s a year later basically), but to go from the end of ep 2, where they’re promising to love each other forever, and then to teh feeling disillusioned/as though he’s falling out of love with oh-aew basically right after that?? it’s so jarring. i feel like we lose so much with these time skips bc the transition from ep 2 to ep 3 is never really shown, so there’s this lack of flow there. like we’ve skipped a step entirely and something’s missing. this is the disadvantage of only focussing on one year per ep since there’s not enough time to explore as much character and relationship development when we’re only seeing an hour long snippet of an entire year. it just makes things feel superficial since so much of what we should be seeing is missing...and we basically have to fill in all the gaps ourselves.

okay, back to oh-aew ranting to his friends about how he feels like his relationship with teh is fading away bc they don’t have the same interests anymore, but also wondering if that’s just normal for long-term relationships. bless that boy that came to ask oh-aew for his ig :’) at least he knows that he’s wanted and has options, even if he obv turns him down bc of teh (for now).

plug and mangpong are dating!!!!!!! and mangpong does a horrible job of trying to hide it 😂 sidenote, but i love the way pp delivers lines sometimes (like the “just shocked”), he’s so cute. plug and mangpong’s legs touching...and the wave of nostalgia that came over me (and oh-aew) during that ;;; oh-aew seeing their blossoming relationship would make him reminisce back to his own experience of falling in love with teh...when everything was still so fluttery and new. so when teh texts him about using his car to help jai move, he looks happy. like he wants to rekindle those feelings again too.

that being said, it’s kind of sad to me how even jai shows more interest in oh-aew’s major than teh (when he asks him for his opinion on how to get people interested in his play). oh-aew’s got some good ideas and is more than willing to help (esp since he wants to connect and find a common interest with teh again). also, just bc oh-aew doesn’t want to be an actor anymore doesn’t mean that he’s completely uninterested in it. god, watching this part again hurts bc oh-aew looks so happy and optimistic. he worked so hard to help teh (and jai) only for them to betray him like that. it made me mad originally, but now it just breaks my heart :(

jai’s running acting classes again for his play, and this time it’s a workshop to help them tap into their feelings. it’s like an intimacy exercise where they give one another consent to touch certain body parts. teh is still struggling a lot with this. i think teh craves intimacy, but as he doesn’t feel that connection in his personal life to oh-aew anymore, so it’s difficult for him to draw on his experiences. he can’t even remember the first time he had sex with oh-aew properly anymore. as usual, teh’s too in his own head to just go with the flow and ~feel things (which isn’t new since teh’s had problems with this since itsay), but it’s def something that he’ll need to learn how to do if he wants to become an actor. he’s trying, but the fact that he can’t get to that place makes him feel even more insecure than ever that he might never be able to get there. imo one of the reasons teh works so hard, and is as driven and ambitious as he is, is that he’s afraid that he’ll never be good enough. he puts so much pressure on himself, and the issue with that is that he’ll never be able to live up to his expectations that way.

teh is also very much alone now. oh-aew has his group of friends to talk to about his relationship with teh, but teh just has jai at this point. he’s pushed khim away...and he and oh-aew aren’t communicating effectively (which is also why they’re on SUCH different wavelengths in terms of where their relationship is at), so there’s literally only jai for him to talk to about all his relationship issues. and to me at least, jai seems to have ulterior motives (particularly when you consider that the subject matter of his play is pretty much the same thing that teh’s going through rn). it’s times like this when i do feel kind of bad for teh, but then again, he brought this upon himself the way that he almost always does...and it leaves me frustrated instead.

jai kissing his professor though...also their conversation?? i have QUESTIONS...

that whole interaction with teh when jai catches him spying on him and the professor was SO awkward. idk what it is about teh but i have never encountered a character that has given me as much secondhand embarrassment as he does. when he starts touching the bars and avoiding eye contact i just- why, teh why?????

moving on, i’m thinking there’s prob more to that scene that we don’t know about bc jai’s shifty like that...but it’s purpose is also to shift teh’s perception of jai. before this, he pretty much just saw jai as his friend and mentor, but seeing him kiss someone else pushes him to think of jai in another less platonic light. like the first spark of attraction.

the both of them go to see the mime show (babymime), and i know that the point of this is so teh can learn to just feel and let go the way that the mimes in this play do, but idk it’s just kind of funny to me the contrast between the last scene and this one.

the leg touching scene again but this time with teh and jai...thanks, i hate it :///

teh’s already feeling like he and oh-aew’s interests are making them drift apart, so by connecting with jai, it’s that initial feeling of attraction that he used to feel with oh-aew all those years ago. jai is that cool senior that he respects...he’s goal-oriented and has so much in common with him (in a way that he feels that oh-aew doesn’t anymore), so it doesn’t altogether surprise me that teh latches onto jai in this way. esp when all their conversations revolve around what teh’s most passionate about, and what dreams they’re striving towards in the future.

it doesn’t surprise me bc teh’s affections shifted in a similar way from tarn to oh-aew when he was first starting to realise his feelings for oh-aew too (though at least he and tarn were never officially dating during that time...)

there’s a genuineness to the way teh praises and encourages jai that isn’t there when he’s doing the same to oh-aew :( and that coupled with teh lying to oh-aew about him having dinner with jai while oh-aew is at home, completely oblivious, painstakingly photoshopping his boyfriend’s face on the poster of the play TO HELP TEH instead of doing his own uni work, makes me so fucking upset for oh-aew.

it’s interesting to see how different their personalities are even when it comes to something as simple as the way they read their texts. oh-aew is so ready to accept whatever teh tells him at face value, but teh overthinks everything to the point where he jumps to a certain conclusion in his head about it instead.

but yeah, it’s just really tough to see oh-aew try so hard for teh, only to see teh do nothing back for oh-aew in return. there’s only so much one side can give. it’s the absolute lack of effort on teh’s part to even try to make things work with oh-aew that is the most frustrating thing of all. oh-aew is carrying their entire relationship rn and it makes me feel all “and for what?? why should he even bother??” about it.

sneaking to sit at the river with jai is like this forbidden, new experience, so it just enhances that feeling of attraction that teh is already feeling towards jai. and esp when he starts telling him about his previous relationship with james, the significance of the plum wine, and how jai ended up breaking up with him. since it’s reflective of teh’s own experiences atm (even in how he kind of self-sabotages himself to push people/oh-aew away first), he clearly takes it to heart. and it makes him want to do an even better job since the play is an autobiographical one for jai. not to mention, teh supposedly being the only one that jai told his story to makes him feel ‘special’......and we all know how teh likes feeling as though he’s special to someone. you can see it in how dejected he is when he thinks jai only told him his story bc he wanted him to get into character better, but perks up the moment jai says he actually told him bc teh’s been doing such a good job (and to encourage him). like i mentioned before, teh’s already feeling vulnerable and isolated from everybody else, so hearing any sort of praise (and esp when it’s from someone that he looks up to as much as jai), is going to pull him in.

when they were hiding from the security guard i was like ughhh i know where this is heading and i. don’t. like. it........

the problem is that i know where teh stands on this. like i know that there’s some attraction on his end. but i don’t know where jai stands. is he intentionally manipulating teh’s feelings for his play? is there any sincerity there? i think it’s obvious that he can tell teh is attracted to him from the glance that they share in this scene, but i can’t get a handle on what he actually wants (which i guess is the point of making his character as mysterious as it is but still). and if he can tell, and he doesn’t actually like teh back in that way, it makes the end scene even more yikes imo.

hmmm teh lying in the pool trying to recreate that feeling right before their first kiss when the both of them just let everything go and sank down into the water. that’s how you KNOW the next scene is supposed to be angsty...bc just like how their first underwater kiss had a sense of sadness to it bc they were hiding, their first (on screen) sex scene has that same sense of sadness, only this time it’s bc teh’s using his attraction to jai/his method actor desire to get into character to fuel the sex instead of bc he genuinely just wants to have sex with oh-aew. and if his reasoning for the sex is bc of that, then his task to recreate their first sexual experience will never live up to the actual first time they had sex (when they BOTH wanted it, and there were no other factors involved).

that’s not to say i don’t think teh doesn’t love oh-aew anymore. i think that there HAS to be some level of love still there amidst all of the confusion, but it feels a lot more like he’s testing his love/attraction to oh-aew during this scene (sort of like how he did with tarn in itsay) than a proper ‘love scene’. like he’s trying to reconfirm his feelings, whilst using oh-aew as inspiration for his role at the same time. it makes my heart ache that this is the first love scene we get from them this series, and it’s marred by the context of what we know is going on in teh’s head. like i said, it’s this permeating sadness throughout...and just knowing that oh-aew has absolutely NO IDEA what’s going on with teh and why he suddenly wants to have sex makes it worse. oh-aew’s been trying to make things work, and in his mind, teh spontaneously coming over like this prob makes him think that things are getting better between them since this is also the closest thing to teh showing any sort of initiative to work on their relationship in this ep so far...

and that’s not also taking away how beautifully this whole scene is shot. i’ve always loved the way that teh and oh-aew play and flirt with each other (bkpp’s chemistry is honestly unparalleled!!) so it was nice to see them be kind of playful before they started kissing again (if you ignore how sad this scene really is). i LOVE the inter-splicing between their first time on the beach and the present. the way the score swells, and little moments where you can see their feet and fingers interlocked on the beach. it gives you such a visceral visual (and totally takes me back to itsay days when that sort of imagery was used a lot more). i just hate that since we know the truth, this scene is more uncomfortable than satisfying despite how nicely shot it is.

i wish we got more domestic moments from them. i know their relationship has sort of grown past those initial moments of flirtation, but it truly makes me sad that we don’t get to see more of them as a couple in general in ipytm. moments like this where they’re lying in bed cuddling each other are so few and far between that i always feel like i have to cherish every little fleeting piece of fluff that i can get. even if idek if this can really be called fluff since the context sort of ruins it.

oh-aew’s still got his heart attack bag :’)))

he was soooooo happy when he met up with his friends 😭 but also, how the hell is it possible for teachers to move deadlines up like that. i FEEL that panic... poor oh-aew...

teh’s in rehearsals again and this time he’s wearing his moon shirt which...i do NOT need those ep 3 itsay vibes rn when i was already dreading this last ten minutes with everything i have in me :((( but anyway, jai’s brought plum wine to class and we know that teh doesn’t usually drink, but he does this time. he tells teh that the taste will change over time (it symbolises the ageing of the relationship process), and teh says it’s a pity he won’t get to taste it next time since jai wants to go abroad to study. then teh tells him he’s worked on the acting exercise and wants to try it out with jai, and i feel like we all knew where it was going to go from here.........

they really had to hammer it in with him missing oh-aew’s call too huh :/

as soon as they started the touching/intimacy exercise again i was just waiting for the catch. even on this rewatch i’m still sitting here chanting “don’t do it teh don’t do it” knowing full well that he kisses jai and there’s no changing that. but then when they cut to oh-aew walking up the stairs with the posters and you hear just how much time he’s sacrificed to help teh/jai on this...sacrificing time EVEN NOW just to go over to their uni to give them the posters when he has a presentation due tomorrow that he and his friends still haven’t finished working on...it’s just heartbreaking knowing what he’s going to end up walking in on.

whether it’s itsay or ipytm, teh’s default state is confusion. so while i think that there’s a certain amount of attraction towards jai there of course, i kind of get the feeling that he’s confusing his feelings of connection with jai (bc of their shared interests and passion) with him falling in love with jai. i feel like his attraction to jai reminds him of what it was like when he was first attracted to oh-aew, and since things have changed so much between him and oh-aew, it’s like he wants to recreate and capture that feeling again with jai (which is also why he wears the moon shirt...he wore that during itsay ep 3 beach scene, which was the moment when the attraction really started to burn between him and oh-aew). he can’t feel that same spark with oh-aew anymore, so he transfers his feelings to jai since, at this point in time, he feels closer to jai than anyone else. instead of growing alongside oh-aew, it’s like he’s choosing to revert back to a time when he was happier.

we know that teh has always been the type of person that will act on his impulses when he feels them. that’s WHY it was so hard to watch...bc i knew while watching that last scene, he was never going to restrain himself or put a stop to those feelings bleeding over into action. and esp not when it could benefit him in some way with his acting too.

in the end, it just makes me so devastated for oh-aew. and i really hope that he doesn’t let this go bc he thinks it’s just teh method acting or getting into character or whatever...i know that teh’s feeling a lot of conflicting things rn, but that’s not an excuse. he really fucked this one up.

the thing is, it’s not that i don’t think teh is capable of acting this way (i’ve seen a few people say that this is ooc for him, but it really isn’t? this confusion and impulsiveness has always been a part of his character from the very start...he was always the one that had the most trouble dealing with his feelings out of the two of them), but the time skips don’t do him any favours bc we lose all those moments that take him to what he’s currently feeling. when we don’t have those moments, then it’s a lot harder to sympathise with him. in itsay, bc we always knew how teh got from point a to point b, even if he did frustrating/silly things, i always understood where he was coming from. i always felt for him. i GOT his struggles, which was why i was always able to empathise with what he was going through. in ipytm, he just comes off as unlikeable bc of how superficial his feelings seem (from what we’re being shown on screen at least).

falling out of love with your significant other/starting to feel things for someone else is obv a fairly common experience, so i don’t blame teh for FEELING like this, but it’s how he treats oh-aew throughout this that doesn’t sit right with me. even if you feel like you’re falling out of love with someone, or that they’ve changed since the first time you fell in love with them, you’d think there’d be some motivation to at least TRY to make things work with them before giving up. we never see that from teh at all. instead, he just see him becoming infatuated with jai (so we barely see teh/oh-aew together in the first place). and while i can see now that a lot of this is due to his own insecurities and inadequacies, it’s also just so disrespectful to oh-aew who's the one that we see putting in all this time and effort (it calls back to their whole “don’t give my time to others” scene in itsay bc we see oh-aew giving so much of his time to teh through helping him out with his play, while teh’s giving that time that should be for oh-aew to jai now). no matter his reasoning, watching teh act that way towards oh-aew does make it increasingly hard to root for him. there’s just too big a disparity in how the two of them choose to act and devote their time to their relationship.

what’s frustrating is that in itsay, teh would fuck up but he would always try to make amends with oh-aew in some way. he would always come forward to try to sort things out after...but there’s nothing here. even after their dinner fight in ep 2, it’s OH-AEW that reaches out to him first (even though it’s teh’s fault that they fought in the first place). where’s that boy that dressed up in his old school uniform in order to talk to oh-aew at his school? or made a whole chinese idioms scrapbook for oh-aew? or gave up his uni admission for oh-aew? i understand that characters and motivations change (and he was obv hopped up on his first love with oh-aew at the time), but it’s just really, really sad to see teh keep messing up and not even try to meet oh-aew halfway with this. yes, you can fuck up, but there are only so many times you can keep fucking up before it starts to look more like a pattern of shitty behaviour than a few forgivable missteps.

another issue is that there’s been so much focus on teh and his flaws that a lot of the time oh-aew comes off as a side character to teh’s story. previously, i understood that since teh was grappling with his sexuality. it made sense that his journey was the primary focus of the plot and character development. but i always felt that there was more room to explore oh-aew’s story (and i thought that we would get a lot more of that in ipytm...esp after ep 1), but it just feels like we kind of skimmed past all of oh-aew’s growth and struggles adjusting to bangkok/uni life so we could turn the attention back to teh again. i just hate that we never get to see more of how oh-aew’s changed in teh’s eyes (other than the surface level things like his hair, new car and major), and that we never get to see more of oh-aew’s life when it’s not related to teh in general. i hope that we’ll get more of oh-aew in the last two eps, but i really don’t know what they’ll give us anymore.

at this point, i don’t even want them as endgame anymore given everything that’s happened in the recent ep. and it pains me so much to say that bc teh/oh-aew are so immensely important to me, but they’re just in such different places in life. and teh esp has so much more growing to do (i think i said this last week too? teh...). oh-aew deserves to be with someone that can see his worth as he is (that won’t cheat on him for one!!). i just want him to be with someone that can make him happy. what i wanted most for them out of this was for the two of them to grow to a better place (together and as individuals), and while i still want that for them as individuals, it’s hard for me to want them to be happy together anymore. at least for the time being.

i’m kind of at a loss for how they’re gonna work through this (and i genuinely want oh-aew to be able to explore his options too...particularly with someone that will actually treat him better than teh’s treating him atm). so at this point it’s kind of looking to me like a break up is inevitable? but i do think it’s necessary for both of them rn. i feel so heartbroken about it though...like ipytm is actually making ME go through the breakup...breaking up with all my beloved itsay teh/oh-aew memories :((( anyway, i think a break up is also conveniently the best time to put a time skip tbh...so we’ll see if that does end up happening now in future eps.

this one took such a long time to write up bc i wrote like a quarter of this RIGHT after i finished watching the ep (so you can clearly tell which parts were me right after the ep, and which parts were me after i had some time to sit on what happened 😂), but i thought it was best to take a bit of a break. i didn’t rewatch it again until i calmed down a little and sorted out my thoughts some more (though i know this is still pretty messy). but yeah, i’m still very much interested in watching how they things are going to progress from here...but i can’t deny how sad i’ve been feeling after this.

#i promised you the moon #ipytm #text #i feel like i always need to rewatch ipytm eps bc i'm so HEATED during the first watch #but then by the second one i've usually calmed down so much more #like i obv still have a lot of things that i'm not super happy with (and rewatching this again didn't really bring me joy) but still #i get so invested in itsay/ipytm that sometimes i just gotta take myself out of the situation and go live my life for a bit #i was meant to post this yesterday bc it's been sitting in my drafts for too long but i just woke up (it's 2am) so what better time hah

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birlcholtz · 4 years ago

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Fic Questions

tagged by @the-lincyclopedia thank you!! (fun game: watch my writing get progressively less formal as the post continues. by the end it’s like what is capitalization)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

77!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

434,378 as of this week but it does go up quite regularly

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Okay so in terms of what’s on my AO3, I have Check Please, All For the Game, Sharp Zero, HP, and Miraculous Ladybug. I also have The Forbidden LOTR and PJO Fanfiction (as in, I’ve written it, but it’s never seeing the light of day)

(technically there is a PJO fic out there that has seen the light of day but I orphaned it because I was tired of getting comments asking about when it would be updated)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

and then i met you (and the whole world changed)

for the better

Knew It Was You

come home (to you, to us)

sin bin schematics

All of these are Check Please and all of them except Knew It Was You are part of my Zimbits Airport AU!

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do! It’s actually a very recent thing that I’ve started not responding to literally every single comment. Mainly I respond because I love talking about my writing so I am going to seize that opportunity when it comes up

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Oh, DEFINITELY Happy Birthday (HP). Check out that MCD tag ahah. (I say HP but what I really mean is that I write fic about Regulus Black. The Regulus Black-centric tag is my home in the HP fandom)

fun fact: this is a very short fic that I wrote when I was 15 and basically forgot about until recently, and then I reread it recently and went holy shit?? I pulled NO punches????

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the wildest one you’ve written?

Not a ton? I think a lot of the fandoms I write for don’t really mesh that well. That being said, the aforementioned orphaned PJO fic is actually a PJO/ML crossover, so there’s that

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope! Sometimes I get comments that are just.... really confusing? And a more common thing is that in my AFTG fic I’ll get comments from people who are so focused on Andreil (or the most common ships in general) to the point that like. they miss the point of what I actually wrote. Those are annoying but they’re not hate, they’re very enthusiastic, they’re just... enthusiastic about a story I’m not writing? So it’s a bit frustrating.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No sjflskgjhgf I struggle enough to write kissing, I think if I ever tried to write smut my brain would just shut down. I’ve managed some fade-to-blacks (which are mostly in WIPs that haven’t been posted) but they rely HEAVILY on the powers of implication

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, although I have occasionally made a brief go of it, not to post, more as an exercise for myself in a language that I’m learning. Anyway I never finish them so I’m gonna say no

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not really? I’ve definitely group brainstormed fics and then written them (the best example of this being Q&A (AFTG), which was the product of a truly off-the-walls group chat), but I tend to do all the actual writing myself. I think the way I write would drive a co-writer up the wall since it’s very disorganized and I don’t write stuff down because ~I know what’s gonna happen I don’t need notes~ and it would infuriate me if I was co-writing with me lmao, so I won’t inflict that on someone else

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I regularly move through ships I’m SUPER focused on, like it’s kind of a rotation. I will forever and always ship Percabeth though.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Okay so if you follow me at @birlwrites you may know this already, but i have this ‘warmups’ document that is just like, random ideas i get that i don’t necessarily want to finish but i just want to try out for a bit? and i have a rule that once a ‘warmup’ is more than 10 pages long (so 11+) then it has to be moved to its own document, just to make scrolling through the warmups doc easier. but usually, a warmup only passes 10 pages when i’m INTO it. so i have a bazillion wips i will probably never finish. i complain about this a lot. i have so many wips. i don’t need more.

here’s one: it’s titled ‘interrobang doesn’t know they’re dating’, it’s basically a full outline for a chowder/tango fic and it would be SO cool if i could ever like. get around to writing it. but i am constantly swamped with writing projects, so it’s probably not gonna happen. if anyone’s interested in adopting it though i’d be down for that!! i think it’s a fun idea i just almost def won’t write it myself

15. What are your writing strengths?

SNAPPY DIALOGUE AND SNARKY INTERNAL MONOLOGUE. my writing is COMEDIC, 90% of my ideas are based on a funny snippet that popped into my head, a lot of my worldbuilding is based on ‘hey you know what would be hilarious’ (whenever i explain how larai selects a chosen one in the rainfall universe i start laughing, which is a STARK contrast to how it plays out on the page), i love writing funny stuff!!

also i think my writing sounds nice, a lot of the time i pick words/syntax based on sound and flow so there’s that too. and i have lots of ideas! i don’t struggle much with writer’s block because a) i have a lot of strategies to deal with it and b) i have a lot of ideas to help get around it/work with it

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

PHYSICAL INTIMACY LMAO, sometimes in my end notes on shippy fics you can see me complaining ‘it took me literally 4 hours to write that very brief kiss’. also sometimes the humor in my writing gets in the way a bit, i have to very consciously put it away so characters can actually have serious, genuine emotions. also i don’t like outlining and i tend not to get betas for fanfiction so like..... i do my best continuity-wise but having really tightly plotted stories is just not my focus lol. (and i do put more effort into that for original stuff, it’s just fic where i kind of go wild)

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

If the reader’s supposed to know what it means, then writing it in another language is iffy for me. (stuff like terms of endearment which come up a lot in fic are fine imo, you can just put a note in to translate them and your reader will prob remember)

If the pov character isn’t supposed to understand it, and it doesn’t matter if the reader understands it, then ig it’s fine? but unless you already speak the other language (and i am NOT confident in my ability to translate english into literally any other language), then i think it’s way easier to just note that a character’s speaking x language and provide tone indicators, body language cues, etc. so the reader understands as much as the pov character.

That being said there are def times when it’s used super effectively--the dialogue in spanish in cemetery boys comes to mind! that’s not fanfic but it’s still creative writing so w/e

so i guess it comes down to: does actually writing out the dialogue in the other language serve a purpose? if it doesn’t, then you’re filling up the screen with words your reader isn’t likely to understand, which i try to avoid doing

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

so the first fandom i actually *wrote* for was PJO, but i distinctly remember creating warrior cats OCs when i was little. i never actually did anything w them but i had them and my favorite was a riverclan warrior named shellstream i remember this VIVIDLY

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve ever written?

oh boy. okay so this is hard because i feel like i’m continuously improving as a writer. like in the sense that my writing is getting closer and closer to really matching my own taste? my favorites tend to always be my current projects as a result. and i do really love set those ghosts alight (HP) but it feels a little like cheating to say a fic i haven’t even finished writing yet. even though it’s def not cheating, that’s just the direction my brain is taking it.

i’m gonna say and then what? (OMGCP) because i’m super proud of the prose (especially ch 2 aka the first actual prose chapter), survived by (HP) for SUCCESSFULLY WRITING AN EMOTION and making readers cry :), and Q&A (AFTG) because i’m literally the one who wrote it and yet it still makes me wheeze. those are all fics i reread occasionally, because i’m big enough to admit i enjoy rereading my old stuff! (just like. to a point. some of my old stuff i can’t look at anymore because all the mistakes stick out to me like they have spotlights shining directly on them)

this was fun!! i’m gonna do an open tag because i just started my fall semester and brain tired. i know sometimes people see open tags and assume the op didn’t really mean it but I MEAN IT, PLEASE DO THIS AND TAG ME!!!!! YES YOU READING THIS

#tag games #long post #birl talks

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bitchsexuality · 6 years ago

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@animaliae

ok first off i’m sorry i took so long to reply!! i’ve been busy in the most tedious way possible so my brain’s not exactly my best friend right now. second off: THANK U SO MUCH these were so fun to answer!!

i’m putting all of these in the same post because i started talking and i could not Shut The Up, and i think one atrociously long post is better than four long posts when it comes to like, scrollability. scrollpastability? scroll-Something. and putting it under a readmore too for the same reasons

SO, from top to bottom:

weirdest character idea for D-N-D:

it’s an idea i’ve already had because i can’t come up with anything right now dksjfgbd, but

once i made a druid for a D//N/D-based CRPG who only cast spells when they gave him something edible (in theory ofc, the game didn’t let me eat my summoned bears... thankfully...), so i ended up with nothing but goodberries and several animal summoning spells. then i proceeded to cheat my way through the game, which defeated the point sdfgsd, but it was still fun concept-wise

also made me spend too much time wondering if the entangle spell’s vines could be eaten. i mean you can’t eat the WHOLE thing but maybe you could like, munch on it a little, or try to slurp it up like a noodle. it wouldn’t be tasty, it wouldn’t be easy, and it most definitely would not be healthy, but it’s like. the principle of the thing

if ur asking yourself WHY i did that… well there aren’t THAT many D/ND-based CRPGS out there and i’d already played that one —several times, in fact— so i wanted to try something different :0

i mean it’s not THAT weird tbh, but he’s the only OC i can think of right now that soooooort of fits? and my brain is like, a tundra of creativity at the moment. a deep tar pool that absorbs all inspiration and drags it, kicking and screaming, to its viscous doom. well you get the idea. or i hope you do because i sure fucking don’t

ideal ending for one of my characters:

hmmmm for like, original fiction characters i more or less have all their endings planned out? most of them ARE ideal because i am fully in control of their destinies and i am also a softhearted lidle bich who prefers stories with relatively uplifting/happy endings. or tbh even the ones that aren’t technically happy are still ideal in terms of character arcs, development, etc

(i might be giving myself way too much credit there though skdjgbdksjfg)

and —though this is super unlikely and mostly just me deceiving myself at this point— i do want to publish what i’m working on rn, so talking about endings would be a spoiler for something that does not exist and probably never will outside of my idiot fool head. so i’m gonna talk about an old OC that i’m not doing anything with anymore!

her name was elina and her entire deal was that she came from a family of very powerful witches who owned a, uh, i guess you could call it an archive? or a library?? idk, it was just an ABSURDLY large collection of magic-related books, and it pretty much contained all known arcane knowledge (though come think of it, “all known arcane knowledge” can’t have been THAT much because the archive was just one room. a huge fucking monster of a room yeah but like. still just One)

so anyway, her family members were very dutiful + responsible when it came to the archivelibraryroom thing, but they were also too traditional for her tastes? like they didn’t bother practicing/using magic, or experimenting, or looking for anything outside of books; they only cared about written things, and even then they did nothing but get the Very Important Books, put them in the archivelibraryroom and forget about them completely

then elina ran into a group of other magic-users who were investigating a weird phenomenon in her hometown, and she asked her family about it, but they essentially were like “oh if it doesn’t affect the books we don’t care lol anyway it’s your turn to clean the archivelibrary now”

but yeah i’m sure y’all can tell where this is going kjdfgbd elina was the typical YA protag in that she was super rebellious, so she turned her back on her family and left her house to help the group of inconveniently yet stereotypically teenage magic-users, made friends, learned about magic, blah blah blah

the issue is that i never gave that story an ending? like the closest thing to it was a vague “uhhhh elina goes back home to find the archivelibrary is burning down and pulls some kind of mysterious water magic out of her ass to save it; then her family apologizes, they begin to respect her and she stays with them to keep caring for the archivelibrary, But With A Progressive Twist”

the issue was that after writing around two chapters i realized i didn’t actually Have a plot, so i didn’t know what story that ending would be... ending... and since i couldn’t think of anything + i wasn’t THAT attached to the characters anyway i just gave up on it

but now that i’m thinking of it again, just for the sake of ending the Story That Never Was, i feel like making her earn the respect of her family just because she saved the books + proved she actually cares about that too is, idk, shallow? out of character?

because she believed that her family’s fixation on history + Neatly Documented stuff was holding them back and making things worse for everyone. she left her home behind because her ideals re.: magic —that it should grow and change to fit the context + people’s needs, and not the other way around— were so strong

OOF THIS IS GETTING SO FUCKING LONG KSDJGB i’m just gonna stop here and say: elina’s new ideal ending is pretty much that while she ends up in friendly terms with her family —because, in spite of their fundamental disagreements, they never hurt her— she doesn’t go back home and chooses to travel around the world instead, helping people in whichever way possible and freely sharing her knowledge with anyone who’s willing to listen and, at the same time, learning from them

i mean, the concept’s not too original ksjdbg just something i thought of super quick, and that’s just a half-assed attempt at closure for an OC i made when i was like… 9

headcanons about my favs:

ok this one’s hard because i’m not into any like… fandom things right now? i haven’t found anything that rly interests me or that i could see myself being passionate about, which sucks because i do kinda miss being into stuff with Established Content :(

so i’ve been focusing on my OCs + original stories and such. and i’m not sure if OC headcanons count as headcanons because i control canon so technically everything i come up with IS canon. then again it’s headcanon too because it’s a canon from my head because that’s where ideas come from. okay wait i’m not making any cents here x

but uhh knowing me i might think of something right after publishing this, so if that happens i’ll come back and edit this post :0

also just saying but if any of y’all know of something i could get into then lmk, i’m open to suggestions! preferably free stuff though... i’m beset by capitalisms

a favorite scene that i loved:

i can’t remember any in particular right now, either from my #content or somebody else’s SDFKJGBDF god my mind 😔 well i mean i’m gonna be a little bit full of meself and say that i’ve written things that i really like, especially imagery-wise, but i Also want to publish those someday… like i’ve also written original/OC-related stuff that i don’t plan on publishing, but i��m not THAT proud of them tbh :/

i was —emphasis on was— trying to write a short story about jasna (one of my D-N/D OCs, a cleric of oghma) that never really went anywhere, but i did post a snippet on my OC blog, and that’s what i hate the least out of all my recent attempts at writing? so i’m just gonna put it here again ig sdfgs (not actually linking to the OC blog post because it’s kind of a mess rn, i need to fix the theme + clean it up a bit)

if you got this far and read all of this nonsensical verbal monster: i love u with all my heart and i would legitimately die for u.

#otherworldly whispers #hope it's OK that i'm mentioning u btw!!!#just so u know i wasn't like. ignoring you or anything dsfkgsd #also if i'd answered the question directly it'd have shown up in ur activity feed anyway right? so technically it's the same #... i think...#long post #im talking a LONG ass fucking post that's not a joke or an exaggeration this bitch is LONG #text heavy #food ment - . / (Kind of? not really????)#family ment - . /#fire ment - . /#again kind of not really #ask me to tag - . /#bc im not sure how else to tag this skjdfb

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